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It's funny you bring that up. I actually did ask Chris about this, because it has always been a pet peeve of mine too. Why did Julie get off the hook, and why did Chris get demonized by Probst, when Julie did the exact same thing to Chris back at the merge?

One of the things I told Chris was my theory that Vanuatu wasn't a beloved season because Probst hadn't sold it to the public. Like a pro wrestler who doesn't "sell" his opponent's punches, Jeff made Chris look bad by not treating his win as an incredible ending.

I've always felt that Jeff had been too close to Julie during Vanuatu, and it hurt the end product. Since Julie was mad at Chris, that meant that Probst was mad at Chris too. Probst internalized his girlfriend's anger, and made it his own, and I thought you could tell during the reunion show (and afterwards).

Like you said, during the reunion show, Jeff went out of his way to point out how cruel Chris had been to Julie. He went out of his way to make Chris look like a dick in front of the Survivor audience, and I've always been annoyed that the host would actually do something like that. Jeff completely sold out his Vanuatu winner (both at the reunion show, and in postseason interviews) and I asked Chris if he had felt the same way.

First off, Chris agreed with my comments that he had voted out Julie basically out of revenge for what she had done to him. He said that she screwed him at the merge, and he got her back in the final five. And he was sort of upset that nobody ever sees it that way. People always say "Chris didn't have to be an ass to Julie", but they conveniently forget that she completely screwed him over when she turned on Sarge at the guys back at the merge. Chris was completely justified in getting revenge after something like that!

I've always felt there was a double standard among the Survivor viewing audience when it comes to men vs. women. If a woman completely screws over a guy, it tends to be viewed as "Ha Ha. Men are so stupid." But if a guy does the exact same thing to a woman, it gets villifed. It gets a response of "What an asshole! He didn't have to play like that!" It's a total double standard, and it's sort of hypocritical to think that young female players shouldn't be treated like that. Look, young female players can either screw other players, or they can be screwed. They are no different, or special, than anybody else. Just because they are young and cute doesn't mean they should get preferential treatment. And that's what I've always felt happened with the Chris vs Julie situation. She screwed him, then he screwed her back. But Chris was the only one who got grief for it because Julie was just a hewpwess wittle girl.

Whatever. Young females on Survivor either ARE real players, or they AREN'T. You can't have it both ways. And if they play with fire and start deceiving people, they darn well better expect that they might get burned.

So I asked Chris about this (and even explained my double standard theory). And he surprised me by saying that Jeff actually apologized about this. Jeff actually did sit down with Chris after Vanuatu and said he was sorry for being too close to Julie, and for not treating Chris's story like the amazing comeback it really was. Jeff freely admitted that he had been too emotionally involved to really appreciate what Chris had done, and in any other season it would have been different. And since then, Jeff has changed his stance on how he talks about Vanuatu.

So anyway there's your dirt. Yes, Jeff was probably too close to Julie to really be an effective host, and yes Jeff really did apologize for how he had "minimized" Vanuatu.

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its not like he had such a great relationship with Eliza that he was the only one in the game who could convince her to do something.

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Well except for the fact that you're wrong. Twila couldn't have gotten Eliza to flip. Scout couldn't have gotten Eliza to flip. And by default, I guess that leaves the only person who could: Chris.

To repeat for the umpteenth time, yes it was Twila's plan. But Chris was the only one who had any sort of bond with Eliza. It wouldn't have worked without Twila OR Chris. In this specific instance, the two of them teaming up was like the Gatekeeper meeting the Keymaster.