The Towering Inferno

With High Drama And Operatic Emotion, Tom Wins 'Survivor: Palau'

(CBS)  Analysis of the final episode of "Survivor: Palau" by CBSNews.com's Ellen Crean.

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The one who should have won "Survivor: Palau" actually won this time, something that has not always happened.

Tom Westman (aka Fireman Tom, aka Apollo God of the Sun) virtually guaranteed his victory when he took Katie Gallagher to the final two. She may have been the favorite of Tom and Ian Rosenberger (aka Dolphin Boy), but she was far from the favorite of anyone else on the jury. She may have dodged a few bullets during the course of the game, but there was no ducking the slings and arrows that were flung at her at the final Tribal Council.

But how did she wind up in the final two? That appeared to be the result of a moral drama that cropped up in the final episode, thanks to Ian.

The final four consisted of Tom, Ian, Katie, and Jenn Lyon. Three of them (Ian, Katie and Jenn) decided very quickly that Tom would have to go if any of them were to have a chance to win the game. All that had to happen, they agreed, was that one of them, and not Tom, would have to win the next immunity challenge.

Well, of course, that challenge turned out to be a doozy (involving hooks and ladders and climbing and even swimming), and guess who won?

If you said Ian, or Katie, or Jenn, you are either trying to be funny or you haven't been paying attention to the game.

So then Tom, once again demonstrating that strain of "honor" that has served him well throughout the game, told Jenn straightforwardly that he would be honoring his alliance with Ian and Katie, and therefore, Jenn would be the one to go that night.

He even managed to end that conversation with hugs all around.

The problems began with Ian's big mouth, which had gotten him into trouble previously during the game. In a conversation with Tom that should have been uneventful, Tom told Ian that he felt badly about having to boot Jenn. And instead of saying something like "I know how you feel" or "Me, too," Ian told Tom that he was glad that he, Ian, had not been faced with that decision.

Now Tom did not come this far in the game by not weighing every word that was spoken, and he immediately picked up on the fact that, for Ian, it would not have been a "no-brainer." For Ian, he realized, there would have been a question of who to boot, and he rightly smelled a rat.

It wasn't long before Jenn informed Tom of the plan that had been in place to oust him, and when Tom confronted Ian, he stammered and stalled but in the end, he had to admit that he had, at least, said the words that spelled betrayal, although he claimed that he had just been playing the game and his heart wasn't in it.

Of course, none of this carried much weight with Tom, whose point was that Ian had been playing fast and loose with an alliance that he, Tom, had fully intended to honor.