Well, there weren't really rules, right? I mean essentially, with the twists, the producers were saying, "We get to do whatever we want." I've wondered if, legally, they couldn't announce what the prize was, and then change the rules afterwards. Maybe they kept the prize a secret so they could shift the rules as many times as they needed to in order to juice every ounce of drama out of every situation.

That's an interesting technical point that I hadn't heard yet.

I will say, after you see what happens tomorrow, I think you'll find this particular discussion interesting.

Hmm. Very mysterious.

Yeah. But anyway, you had asked me specifically about Alex. Yeah, that was difficult, but Alex is just a kid, and he'll grow up and become a more tactful individual. What was much more difficult was dealing with the larger groups, and the situation that you saw with Andon as the leader of the gang with Zack and Beau and Amy. That was by far a lot more scary for me and troubling for me. That's probably the only thing all summer long that was edited in a way that slightly misrepresented what happened, because it was worse than you saw. And when I say that, people are shocked because they thought, watching it, that it was pretty bad.

It looked like a pretty threatening situation.

It was extremely threatening, and there was more said, and Andon was more in my face. I felt far more threatened at that point than I ever felt by Zack, for instance, or Alex. But the point is, it's a shame that the show had already developed a following and had already been promoted by Fox as this romp fest, because what developed was such a fascinating social psych experiment. And I think there's really a lot of value in what happened and what people saw.

The early promos said something like, "You've gotta hook up or you're gonna get kicked out of Paradise!" As if people making out under the blankets would be compelling for people to watch. But then, as the show evolved into something far more interesting than that, the network didn't really adjust its campaign to reflect that evolution.

Well, people certainly watched because of the drama and the relationships. I mean, that's what made it so compelling.

The people who were watching were people who heard that this spectacular thing was going on, on what should have been just another boring show based on a crappy concept.

Right. It would've become another "Temptation Island."

It was in many ways like the high school -- or junior high school, even -- that I've never had. I've been lucky. I didn't know that life like this really existed, I guess!

What, you hadn't met teams of thugs with waxed chests who would threaten you to your face before?

I really hadn't, and God bless anyone who had to go through that in high school.

So are you still in touch with Charla, one of the Barbies, and your closest ally on the show?

That might be one for the post-finale interview.

I'm crushed!

I know, I'm so sorry.

You're killing me! Well, we'll definitely have to talk again after the finale.

Let's just say that I did make some connections that I think will be very long-lasting. Keith is a good example of that.

He's one of my favorites.

Yeah, I underestimated his intelligence.

Well, he changed everything when he got rid of Zack, which was the beginning of the end for the Originals.

But then, he was also smart enough after that to step aside, and let me take over. But it wasn't until last week's episode ... and this is where I really gotta hand him props, because he convinced me, even, that he felt betrayed by me with regards to Scott and Holly, when he did not, and he was playing the game extremely well.

I thought he was just being weirdly disloyal out of nowhere.

Yeah, that was part of his strategy.

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