sadmad: You know guys, there are still a few questions I have with
regard to what we saw on the show that maybe you might be able to
shed some light on for me.

MM: Let's hear 'em.

sadmad: After Linda meets David for their final luncheon date, she
goes back to the Villa where she sits down across a table from Cat.
She then takes a swig out of some bottled water, gives out a kind of
a sigh, and says to Cat 'I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to be here
anymore'. Now, in light of the new information we've acquired, what
in the world could that have possibly meant?

OS: Hmmm. Yes. Strange. Very strange, indeed. Statues on Easter
Island, sadmad.

sadmad: Huh?

MM: It's like we said before, sadmad - sometimes figuring out what
was real or not real or what was actually going on during a sequence
on this show is more baffling than trying to figure out how those
huge statues on Easter Island ever got there. I have no freakin' clue.

OS: Me either. One school of thought has suggested the possibility
that Linda agreed to come back to the show on condition she
would 'win', but that as things moved toward the denouement, she
started wondering if FOX/RSL was going to spring another little
surprise on her.

sadmad: How so?

OS: Meaning she became paranoid that, despite what she may have
thought, those same FOX/RSL producers (who really were capable of
anything) were going to pull a fast one and turn the tables on her.

sadmad: I still don't get you.

OS: That Linda began to worry that FOX would play her for a fool and
allow Cat to 'win' in the end anyway.

sadmad: Accounting for a sometimes unusual 'shading' in the tone of
her performance at the end?

OS: Right. It's an interesting theory, isn't it?

MM: Yeah. Looking back, however, there are a couple of examples where
it really looked like Linda seemed pretty sure of herself. The first
was when she meets him again for the first time on that Tuscan ranch
after she came back. The tone in her voice as she said "Hi, David!" -
sounding for all the world as if she was announcing 'Hi, David! Here
I am! The answer to your prayers!

sadmad: Heh. Very true. You'd also have to look at how, there in
Venice, after being away from the goings-on for so long, she pushes
David away when he tries to kiss her making him feel like a putz. Not
exactly behavior you would apply to someone who may have felt she was
trying to make up for lost time in competition with the others.

MM: Agreed. Unless that kiss attempt and rebuff had been,
er, 'scripted', that is.

OS: No telling. And go back to an interview segment we were given of
Linda that appeared after the Venice episode. Linda, in close-up,
looks to be wearing a red top. But it didn't look like anything we
had seen her wear in any of the segments with David or the other
girls - so who knows when it was actually taped. It was in the
context of Linda having missed so much of the other parts of the
show, while Cat had been there all the way through - and we hear her
say something about how Cat is beautiful, but 'she had her chance'.

sadmad: I remember that.

MM: Well, there is a school of thought which suggested that Linda may
have let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, right there.

OS: There may have been other such examples where the editors left
evidence in the final cut - either out of laxity, or even possibly as
a sort of an inside joke among themselves, never figuring the
audience would ever catch.

sadmad: Such as?


(Part X-c to follow)...