Individual Analysis of Player's Strategies
Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Sekou Lost by David Bloomberg -- 09/15/2006 Sekou seemed a good bet to stick around for a while – indeed, only one out of five RealityNewsOnline writers predicted him to go out early! But his tribe disagreed. Why did the kick their tribe leader to the curb? Why did Sekou lose? Sekou came into the game with greater life experience and maturity than any of his tribemates. In theory, he should have been able to use these to aid his tribe and stick around for a while. In practice, not so much. So what happened between the two? Why did the women turn on him? Why did Sekou lose? As in seasons past, we will answer questions like these by looking back at the blueprint article, What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s go through it now to see why things went wrong so quickly for Sekou. The first and most important rule of all is to scheme and plot. We didn’t see much of this going on during the first couple days, though it might have happened without us seeing it due to the limited time afforded to each of the tribes. What we did see was Sundra and Rebecca linking up due to their commonalities, including coming from New York. Thus, they followed this rule by making alliances from the very beginning. But did Sekou? Well, we saw that he was tight with Nate, but that was about it. It was like the two men didn’t realize until after they lost the challenge that they were outnumbered in their tribe. Hello! That was something they should have recognized right off the bat and attempted to defuse from the outset. Instead, Sekou waited until they had lost and the women had already agreed to target him before he approached Stephannie. While he made a decent case, it was too little, too late. Since the second rule is to make sure not to scheme and plot too much, I think it’s safe to say Sekou succeeded there. However, another part of the rule says to keep your scheming secret. The three women knew Nate and Sekou had teamed up, so they viewed them as a single target. If the men had not made it so obvious, perhaps things would have been different. The third rule tells players to be flexible. Frankly, after only three days, there wasn’t a whole lot of flexibility to be had. I suppose he could have tried to see if the women were willing to go after Nate instead, but that likely would have been a fruitless effort. Sekou did fine in the fourth rule, not letting his emotions control him. But again, this early in the game, there aren’t nearly as many emotions flying around, even if they did refer to themselves as a “family” after only three days! Although, Sundra and Rebecca did vote emotionally by linking together. The fifth rule says to pretend to be nice. Sekou seemed like a genuinely good guy. Indeed, when she voted him out, Rebecca only had good things to say about him. But he still managed to annoy them with the way he took control of the tribe with Nate. And they made it so obvious too, such as when the two men stepped aside together to discuss who they would send to Exile Island, completely ignoring the women. Not smart. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. At this early stage of the game, there usually isn’t too much to talk about here. And that’s the case this time, as Sekou was not voted out for being a threat. But the seventh rule has more applicability here. It says providing food wins allies and players should not be lazy. I don’t know that we can definitively say Sekou was lazy, but the show emphasized his need for breaks – and Stephannie noticed it as well. Considering that Stephannie was the person he really needed to flip, this was not a good thing. So what about the rest of the tribe – did they do the right thing? At this early stage of the game, the tribe needed to vote out the weak. But this doesn’t just mean physically weak, as the rule specifically notes that weak players include those “who will cause divisions in the tribe that will overall weaken the group dynamic.” Rebecca believed Sekous was causing problems with establishing leadership and working together, and the women as a whole thought the team would be better without him. We’ll be able to judge the veracity of this as we see how the challenges go in coming weeks, but whether they were right or not, that was their perception. I would say that Sundra and Rebecca were likely correct in picking Sekou to go. They had issues with him, but there was more than that. If they had chosen Stephannie instead, that would have left them in a tribe with two people on each side – not a good idea. So the way things ended up, they pretty much had to pick a man. Given the choice between older, flabbier, more annoying Sekou and Nate, it seemed obvious which way it would go. As for Stephannie, I’m not sure she made the right choice. As Sekou told her, if they lose again, she could go. The other women might not want to get rid of Nate if they lose again, since that would mean getting even weaker in challenges. So who does that leave? Stephannie. But if she stayed with the guys, she could have worked a deal to ensure that if Sundra went the first time, Rebecca would go the next. But Sekou did go – and fast. He made several mistakes. Taking on a leadership role is not in and of itself an automatic sentence of death in this game. But doing it in a way that becomes a problem for teamwork is not good. And leaders should furthermore not be perceived as lazy, which Sekou apparently was. But more importantly than any of this, we did not see Sekou attempt to make any alliances or deals until it was pretty much too late. He should have realized how he and Nate had split themselves off, and attempted to make some good allies in the women. Instead, he didn’t even talk to Stephannie about strategy, as far as we saw, until the challenge was lost and he knew he would be a target. At that point, it was too little, too late. The women had decided to take the racial twist and turn it into a battle of the sexes. Once they chose that path, voting out Sekou was the obvious choice. That is why Sekou lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Billy Lost by David Bloomberg -- 09/22/2006 Sometimes in Survivor you can get away with not doing everything you’re supposed to because you make up for it in other ways. But then there are the players who don’t seem to do anything right. Was Billy one of these? How did he go so far wrong that his tribe threw a challenge to rid themselves of him? Why did Billy lose? Billy wished he were on the heavy metal tribe instead of the Hispanic tribe, but you can’t always get what you want. Fans of the Rolling Stones know, though, that if you try sometimes, you get what you need. Did Billy try? He sure didn’t get what he needed to stay in the game! What happened? Why did Billy lose? In order to answer such questions, let’s look back at, What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to see how Billy could have done better and what, if anything, he did right. Every week, we begin by talking about how the first rule is the most important and contestants need to scheme and plot. This week is no different. As we go down the list of rules, we’re going to get to some that scream out Billy’s name (like #7, for example). But that doesn’t make this one any less important. As a matter of fact, let’s switch things up a bit here and look at the seventh rule first, and then go back to number one. The seventh rule says providing food wins allies and you shouldn’t be lazy. Holy cow – I don’t think Billy could have broken this one more if he had tried. And, frankly, trying would have meant using energy, and we all know Billy wasn’t going to do that. Not only did Billy fail to provide food, but he admitted to the camera that he was going to lie back and feast on the fruits of other people’s labor. And so he did. He let other people spearfish. He let other people gather coconuts. He let other people do almost everything. It only took a few days for his tribemates to get really sick of that attitude. Meanwhile, there was another person whose attitude bothered a couple tribemates – Ozzy. Cristina sure didn’t get along with him, and yet she voted to send Billy packing. Why? One big reason is the seventh rule. She knew who was bringing home the bacon, and Billy wasn’t it! She might not like Ozzy’s attitude, but he was providing, and right now that’s more important. OK, let’s jump back to the first rule again. Despite the fact that Billy was incredibly lazy, that was not the sole reason he was voted out. We’ve seen lazy people make it before. We’ve seen food providers voted out first. Why? Because of alliances. The problem is that Billy appeared to be just as lazy in his scheming as he was in food gathering and other camp-related work. From what we saw, he didn’t approach Cristina until after the tribe lost the challenge. While she seemed receptive to his idea, it was too little, too late on his part. As the first rule notes, Billy should have been making alliances from the very beginning. But he didn’t. Instead, he allowed two duos to form – Ozzy & J.P. and Cristina & Cecilia. He fit into neither of them, and didn’t even really try. Sure, Billy talked to Cristina and attempted to get her and Cecilia to switch sides, but by then there was too much set. Hell, the tribe had just thrown a challenge to get rid of him! That’s a lot of momentum to fight. . If he had acted sooner, maybe things never would have gotten to that point. Moving to the second rule, it seems fairly obvious that Billy didn’t scheme and plot too much. So we’ll skip on over to the third rule, which says to be flexible. For example, the rule says you have to look at your situation and proceed accordingly. While the rule talks about not overworking on a lazy tribe, the converse is true as well – Billy needed to realize that he was on a workaholic tribe, and lying around simply was not going to cut it. It’s all well and good to moan that you’re not like the rest of the tribe, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. So he needed to buck up and work. The fourth rule says not to let emotions control you. While the temptation is certainly there to talk about Billy’s love at first sight, it really didn’t contribute to his loss – just his embarrassment. Really, this rule doesn’t apply much here. What about the fifth, which says to pretend to be nice. Billy wasn’t a jerk or anything, but nor did he go out of his way to be friendly with his tribemates. As the other guys noted, he couldn’t even be bothered to join them to read treemail! He believed himself to be an outcast and behaved accordingly. The sixth rule says not to be too much of a threat. Well, Billy certainly didn’t have to worry about that. The only threat he posed was to the continuing sanity of his tribe. Since we’ve already addressed the seventh rule, that only leaves the question of whether his tribemates were right to vote him off. Let me begin by saying it is almost always wrong to throw a challenge like Billy’s tribe did. If Cristina and Cecilia had decided differently, Ozzy, the orchestrator of throwing the competition, would have been toast! Probst also didn’t like the idea of throwing a challenge, but he seemed more focused on the fact that they’re now down a player. The thing is, if the player voted off wasn’t really doing anything, they aren’t down at all. The bad judgment in this case was more because of what it meant to the other individuals in the tribe than the tribe as a whole – putting each of them possibly one step closer to being booted than they needed to be. Anyway, this is the stage of the game when the weak should be shown the door. Ozzy and J.P. certainly don’t fit that bill. Cristina and Cecilia? I don’t know that we’ve seen enough to judge. But there was one obvious candidate: Billy. He was weak in two ways. First, he couldn’t carry his own load either at camp or in challenges. Second, he was weak in that members of his tribe already didn’t trust him and he was causing divisions in camp. He had to be culled from the herd. So while the tribe was wrong to throw the challenge, they were right to vote out Billy. Billy said in his final words that he didn’t play the game the way he wanted to. As of this writing, we’re not sure exactly what “way” he is talking about, but presumably it involved actually, you know, playing the game. Billy failed in two main areas. He was in a tribe of worker bees but he sat around and ate the fruit (and fish) of their labors like a parasite. And he didn’t do anything to work his way into alliances. Either of these two might have been offset by the other. But doing neither of them was fatal to his chances on Survivor. That is why Billy lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Cecilia Lost by David Bloomberg -- 09/29/2006 It looked like the vote was going against Becky, but the tables were turned. What happened? What could Cecilia have done to stop it? Why did Cecilia lose? I don’t know about you, my fair readers, but I’m still reeling a bit from the rather surprising vote this week. I was sure Becky would be going home – or at least that she would get the most votes, but maybe pull out Yul’s immunity idol. Nope on both counts. But whether it’s a surprise or expected, we have a job to do here. We have to figure out what caused Cecilia to end up on the losing side of the vote. Why did Cecilia lose? A surprising result really brings about the need for us to look back at What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned even more. Let’s see if we can shed some light on the subject. We begin at, well, the beginning. The first rule talks about the importance of scheming and plotting. In this episode, there were several different levels of plotting going on. There was the serious plotting of Yul, Becky, and Jonathan. Then there was the low-level plotting of Ozzy, Cecilia, and Sundra. And finally, we saw the confused plotting of Cao Boi and Jessica. Yul, Becky, and Jonathan were really working it and following the first rule. And even Cao Boi and Jessica, for all their opposition to scheming, were involved in it pretty heavily because they had a choice to make. But what about Cecilia? Well, we didn’t really see much there. She walked along the beach, talking to Ozzy, Jessica, and Sundra. They all agreed to target Becky. And… that was about all we saw! Did Cecilia ever go back and ensure that everybody was still together? Did she talk to Jessica before Tribal Council? We saw what a bad liar Jessica is, so certainly Cecilia could have gotten something out of her. But basically, Cecilia didn’t really try. She admitted in her interview with me that she tried to reach Jessica on a personal level but didn’t push on strategy. The problem is that in Survivor, sometimes your deal is only as good as the last person you talked to. Cecilia’s alliance allowed Jonathan and Yul to get to Jessica and Cao Boi, and they weren’t able to counterbalance the issues. Indeed, Cecilia also told me that she was feeling sick and didn’t push as hard as she otherwise might have to get the vote to go the other way. Scheming and plotting doesn’t mean having a few conversations and figuring you’re good to go, especially in a situation like this where the tribe is new and people are still trying to figure out the best road map for themselves. But that’s pretty much what Cecilia did. While Jonathan and Yul were giving the hard sell to two of her supposed allies, Cecilia was nowhere to be found. It seems obvious that Jessica is wishy-washy, which means her “allies” have to keep an eye on her. Nobody did. Obviously, therefore, Cecilia didn’t break the second rule by scheming and plotting too much. However, the scheming that was done was obviously not kept secret. I was going to write about how this wasn’t really Cecilia’s fault, since we saw Jessica tell Jonathan about the plot to get rid of Becky. But it turns out Cecilia told him first – we just didn’t see it! She told me this in my interview with her, and added that she doesn’t know why she told him, but she did, and that obviously pushed Jonathan to turn on the hard sell even more. The third rule tells players to be flexible. This episode tested the abilities of all players in this regard, as they suddenly found themselves with new faces surrounding them. Some took the initiative, like Becky and Jonathan. Others reacted, like Jessica and Cao Boi. And the last group just kind of sat back and let things happen around them. That is what appeared to happen to Cecilia. While the case could be made that going with the flow is the ultimate in flexibility, I can’t say that’s what she was doing. She allowed herself to be pushed around by the flow, and was caught in the undertow. Fourth is to not let emotions control you. We saw no hint of a problem there, so let’s move on. The fifth rule says to pretend to be nice. Again, not a problem. Indeed, when the new Aitu tribe came to her beach, she acted as tour guide and was happy to show them around. And those who voted her out repeatedly said it was nothing personal, just strategy. Similarly, the sixth rule didn’t really come into play, as Cecilia was not looked upon as a threat to anybody. She was just on the wrong side of the tribal alliances. Nor was she seen as lazy, thus dodging the seventh rule as well. The eighth rule talks about how Cecilia’s fellow tribe members should have voted and whether they made the right decision. At this stage, they need to be voting off the weakest members of the tribe. Frankly, it’s not clear who that is. Several of them thought that title should go to Becky. The others thought Cecilia. But those views were colored by the alliances that had formed. Still, it seems clear that on the non-Jonathan side, Cecilia was viewed as the weakest link compared to Sundra. It’s like the old joke about the two hikers and the bear – when they heard the bear approaching, one of them stopped to put on his running shoes. The other questioned him, saying there was no way he could outrun the bear. The first said, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.” The comparison of Cecilia to Becky wasn’t as important because they were on opposite alliances. Cecilia needed to be stronger than Sundra or one of the guys, and that didn’t happen. Looking back at what we’ve discussed, it’s obvious that the first couple rules were important here while the last bunch were not. Several people on new Aitu immediately sought out allies, while others mostly sat back and allowed events to unfold. Cecilia was in the latter group. Worse, when she believed she was in a majority group, she didn’t do anything to make sure that group remained a majority. Obviously, a player at this stage of the game can’t keep tabs on allies all the time, but allowing two members of their alliance to be swayed was a huge mistake. Cecilia needed to take the bull by the horns like Becky, Jonathan, and Yul. She allowed the game to happen around her instead of actually playing it. The hard sell worked against her no-sell. That is why Cecilia lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why J.P. Lost by David Bloomberg -- 10/06/2006 J.P.’s loss was somewhat predestined from the first few moments of this week’s episode. But was he booted because he was lazy? Or was there a lot more to it? Why did J.P. lose? Sometimes the result of a Survivor vote is surprising – like last week, when Cecilia lost instead of Becky. Other times, the result is telegraphed throughout the episode. This week, it was all telegraphed! That makes it a bit easier to answer the question: Why did J.P. lose? But just because the answer will be easier to arrive at doesn’t mean it’s automatically obvious. To make sure we cover all the bases, we will proceed through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned as usual. We know right off the bat that J.P. followed the first, rule and knew how to scheme and plot. Or was it just that he thought he did? Since he’s been booted, I think we have to go with the latter. J.P. thought he had the men all under control. He told them they should stick together and the women would have to keep them. Guess not! He actually failed on two counts. First, the men didn’t stick together. Second, the women were going to target him anyway. J.P.’s problem here was that he somehow missed the math involved. Four men. Five women. Survivor is a game about alliances, not just winning challenges. Yes, it’s good to keep strong players (which we’ll discuss in more detail later), but it’s not good to keep players who will end up sending you home! If Stephannie was sent packing this week, who would be next? The women would lose their numbers advantage and could have ended up getting picked off one by one. Part of J.P.’s problem was that he was viewed as violating the second rule. I’m not sure he really did scheme and plot too much, but the women sure thought he was a player – and they didn’t want to get played. We didn’t see J.P. doing excessive scheming, but the others viewed him as the king of the camp. The women knew the men had an alliance, so that certainly violated the portion of this rule that discusses open scheming. And J.P. was the apparent leader of the men, which goes against the part that notes, “if any alliances do get out in the open, do not let it be known that you are the decision-maker.” Considering he was being called the king, it’s pretty obvious he didn’t succeed there. The third rule tells players to be flexible. J.P. never even tried to bring a woman into the alliance, as far as we saw. His goal was to stick with the men. Period. Obviously, that’s not a very flexible attitude. I hope he had some sort of backup plan, but we sure didn’t see it. Fourth is to not let emotions control you. No problem here, so we’ll move on to the fifth rule, which says to pretend to be nice. Hmmm. J.P. didn’t seem to be a mean guy or a jerk, but I can’t say I would have been particularly happy to share a camp with him. He sat on his ass, ordering people around. That would have gotten real old, real quick with me. And I’m sure it did with those who were with him 24/7. The sixth rule says not to be too much of a threat. J.P. represented a threat in two ways. First, by being one of the strong guys, he could have been a threat to the women, especially, later in the game. But that wasn’t the main issue, because that’s true of any of the guys. Instead, J.P. was mostly a threat to the women because he was directing the men. As already mentioned, they realized that if they gave up their numbers advantage, they could potentially be picked off one by one, with J.P. leading the charge. That is where J.P.’s threat came in. The seventh rule came into play for the second time this season, which is a bit odd because it sometimes can go a whole season and never be touched on. This is where the telegraphing of this week’s vote really came in. Early in the episode, the women were working on the shelter while the men sat around, watching TV and scratching their bellies. OK, the island equivalent of it, anyway. Then, when one of them brought up the possibility that the women might have been upset by this, J.P. dismissed it. Bad move on both parts. Then, J.P. made matters even worse by sitting on his throne and telling his tribemates what to do! He was so comfortable with his position in the tribe that he apparently didn’t think he had to work as hard as everybody else. So, were his tribemates (including everybody but Nate!) right to toss J.P. out on his ear? Generally at this point, tribe members should generally be voting out the weakest players, those who hinder them at challenges. As such, Raro should have been attempting to send home their weakest link, which Stephannie admitted to being. However, they had four big strapping men. Losing one really was not going to kill them. In the meantime, J.P. was obviously causing tribal weakness in other ways. Some tribe members were annoyed at his behavior, others were afraid of crossing him. It’s just possible that without J.P. there, the team will gel better. We’ll have to wait and see about that. But that really wasn’t the main reason he received almost everybody’s vote anyway. J.P. seemed to think that being physically strong was all that was necessary. In his mind, the four cavemen would stick around because the dainty women were too afraid to vote them off. Wrong! Survivor is often a game of numbers, and J.P. didn’t have them. The problem was, he acted like he did! We didn’t see J.P. making alliances other than telling the other guys they should stick together. He had no backup plan that we knew of, and his main plan was essentially “be strong.” That just doesn’t cut it. There is a reason the first rule is scheming and plotting as opposed to swimming and running. What’s worse is that J.P. was tagged as somebody who did too much scheming while he truly wasn’t doing enough! That is why J.P. lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Stephannie Lost by David Bloomberg -- 10/13/2006 Pink Floyd sang, “One slip, and down the hole we fall…” Stephannie made two slips – but were they the sole reason she was sent home to eat some mashed potatoes and gravy? Or was there significantly more to the story? Why did Stephannie lose? Stephannie got herself in hot water last week, and then pulled herself out of it. This week, she got herself into hot water again! But she couldn’t get away from it this time around. What did she do wrong? How did she make the same mistake twice? Why did Stephannie lose? The theme for this week’s edition of this column will be “some people never learn.” In fact, we might even find ourselves tempted to skip over all the rules Survivor players should know and get straight to the conclusion, as it seems obvious. But we will resist this temptation and go through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned as we always do – let’s see what we can find along the way. The first rule tells players to scheme and plot. This requires making some sort of bond with other people and getting them to align with you. Unfortunately for Stephannie, she admitted she hadn’t formed any close-knit bonds with other tribe members. Sure, she was friendly enough with them, but nobody looked to her as their close ally, the person they could always count on to have their backs, etc. At a time in the game where everybody is looking for any reason to vote somebody out, being essentially an outsider is at least as good a reason as any! And Stephannie didn’t make any real attempt that we saw to get in better with anybody. She didn’t drive the strategy or turn the players against somebody else. In fact, she specifically said she wouldn’t beg. Well, it might not always be pretty, but begging at least gives a player a fighting chance. Shrugging off the situation, not so much. It seems obvious, therefore, that Stephannie did fine in terms of the second rule. She certainly didn’t scheme and plot too much! I guess we could say that Stephannie was flexible according to the third rule, in that she didn’t tie herself to one alliance. But really, that’s not what we’re talking about there. It’s not like she was a floater, jumping from one alliance to another in an attempt to keep herself around. She was simply hanging out, alone – and was hung out to dry. The fourth rule discusses not allowing emotions to control you. Generally, this means not voting against somebody because you’re angry with them or not trying to keep somebody because you’re their friend. But Stephannie shed a new light on it. She allowed her emotions to spill out in the form of several statements she made that should have been locked inside her head. I’m sure it was an emotional time for Stephannie after the immunity challenge loss last week, when she and the other women couldn’t get a fire started. She felt responsible. That, in and of itself, is not a problem. But those feelings needed to stay bottled up inside. Instead, Stephannie admitted that she was responsible! She managed to convince people that it was a momentary lapse of reason and J.P. was sent packing instead of her. But then this week she had another instance of her mouth saying what her brain should have kept inside when she mentioned how part of her wants some mashed potatoes and gravy. Another emotional moment and it spread through the tribe like wildfire. Stephannie didn’t have any problems with the fifth rule – she was friendly and nice enough. Unfortunately, she was friendly with everybody without becoming solid with anybody, but we addressed that already. The sixth rule certainly was not an issue, as Stephannie was not a threat in game terms. And the seventh didn’t apply either since nobody saw her as being lazy. Thus we come to the time when we evaluate whether the tribe was correct in voting off Stephannie as opposed to somebody else. We are still at the time of the game when a weak link should be sent home. Unfortunately for Stephannie, she admitted she was a weak link last week! That’s a step in the wrong direction for her, to say the least. And, really, Stephannie was a weak link in the immunity challenge last week – though certainly not the only one. This week, there was no one weak link causing the immunity challenge loss, but Stephannie made another comment that led Nate and the guys to believe her heart and mind weren’t in the game anymore. The weak link was getting weaker. And compared to Cristina’s bossiness, Stephannie appearing to not want to be there was much worse. Pink Floyd sang a song, “One Slip,” that applies well to Stephannie’s situation: One slip, and down the hole we fall It seems to take no time at all A momentary lapse of reason That binds a life for life A small regret, you won't forget, There'll be no sleep in here tonight. Stephannie made two slips, but she fell down the Survivor hole. I’m sure it was a regret she won’t forget and she wasn’t sleeping with her tribe that night. But her slips of the tongue could have gone by the wayside if she had laid some groundwork beforehand. Yes, the main problem was that Stephannie allowed her emotions to get the better of her and said things she should have kept as an internal dialogue. But she also had nobody to really speak up for her and watch her back. She had no solid alliance that we saw to try to keep her around. Stephannie said she wouldn’t beg to be kept around. She also said she had no solid bonds with anybody. These two facts made her an easy target. Stephannie herself then pained the red bull’s eye on herself with her comments that made people think she didn’t want to be there anymore. This was a bad combination and the reasons that Stephannie lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Cao Boi Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/01/2006 It’s easy to blame Cao Boi’s personality as the reason he was voted off. But is it correct to do so? Or were there other circumstances that led to his fairly early exit from the game? Why did Cao Boi lose? Cao Boi seemed destined from the start to leave Survivor fairly early. But he did make it through several votes that could have gone against him and had a pretty good strategy for making it through this most recent one. What happened to turn the tide against him? Why did Cao Boi lose? We will not consult the spirit of the immunity idol to find the answer – it didn’t help to save Cao Boi, after all! But instead, we will follow our usual path through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to find our answers. The first rule is to scheme and plot. However, that wasn’t so much Cao Boi’s first rule. Indeed, he even told me in my interview with him that “more people should look at it as an adventure rather than a million dollars.” While this may be an admirable recommendation in some ways, it’s not so much when it comes to sticking around in the game. Cao Boi was there to have fun and participate in an adventure. He had barely seen anything of previous seasons and he was not going to sit around all day, scheming and plotting. He would much rather row over to a nearby island and have fun! Again, these are admirable traits in real life, but they are a sure path to destruction on Survivor. It might have seemed like Cao Boi did a little scheming during his first Aitu vote, originally aiming at Becky and then switching to Cecilia. But more than anything, he was schemed against, as Yul “played the race card” according to Cao Boi, and helped convince Cao Boi to change his mind. Cao Boi did indeed try his hand at scheming when it came to Plan Voodoo. But it was scheming of a somewhat undirected sort. That is, he was convinced that it was important to flush out the holder of the hidden immunity idol. He was further convinced it was one of the Caucasians on the tribe – Jonathan or Candice – and not Yul. His plan was a good one… in theory. But Cao Boi failed to take into account several things. First, that Yul might hold the idol and not want that revealed. Second, that even if Yul didn’t hold the idol, he was allied with Jonathan and Candice! Third, most of the tribe was similarly allied with Jonathan and Candice, and not with Cao Boi. Fourth, Cao Boi did not really have a good reason for people to give up these alliances just to find out who held hidden immunity. He said the Caucasians might join together at the merge and dominate the others, but it seemed to be more of an excuse than a legitimate reason. And together, these rather important items spelled doom for Cao Boi’s plan. The second rule says not to scheme and plot too much, not to backstab too soon, and to keep scheming secret. I wouldn’t say Plan Voodoo fell into either of the first two categories, but it certainly was in the third. By telling just about everybody on the tribe, Cao Boi virtually guaranteed the targets were going to hear about it and try to turn it around, even if their allies didn’t. The enormity of the plan ensured that a person in Cao Boi’s position – that is, a man without an alliance – would be highly exposed. The third rule tells players to be flexible. Reading through that rule, we find that it talks a fair amount about working to fit in with your tribe. For example, if your tribemates are mostly lazy, don’t show them up with work. That’s not the case here, though. Instead, for Cao Boi, it perhaps should talk about how if the rest of your tribe is taking the game seriously, don’t take it too lightly. Yes, it must have seemed like a wonderful adventure to go over to the other island, but in doing so, it only underscored the main alliance’s view of Cao Boi as flighty and unreliable. Fourth is to not allow emotions to control you. I’m sure that was difficult for Cao Boi, because he seems like a person who really lives by his emotions. Indeed, in my interview with him, he described the game as “exciting”; when he talked about going to the opposing camp, he truly did expect them to be generous with him. Cao Boi was not playing the game so much as living the adventure. While this rule focuses on dealing with people not as friends or enemies, but rather as opposing players, the fact is that emotions can interfere with game play in other ways. But even the main focus of this rule came up for Cao Boi. He trusted Yul, considering him a friend. Because of this, he didn’t really consider that Yul might have the hidden immunity idol; he didn’t really consider that Yul was aligned with Candice and Jonathan; he didn’t really consider that by telling Yul the whole plan, it might go up in smoke. The fifth rule has two parts – pretending to be nice and keeping controversial thoughts to yourself. Cao Boi certainly did well in the first part, as he seems to be a genuinely nice guy. But the second part, not so much. Cao Boi said what he thought. If that meant he wanted to take the immunity idol to what was said to be a reward challenge, then that’s what he said. If somebody disagreed with him, he argued. Cao Boi definitely had his own way of thinking about things, and sometimes he needed to mentally push down what he was really thinking and allow things to progress more smoothly. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. Cao Boi failed in this regard for a couple reasons. First, while he might not have been seen as a physical threat, he certainly showed his prowess in a couple areas. One of those areas is fire-starting, which just happens to be the tie-breaker in Tribal Council votes. While I doubt anybody said, “let’s get rid of the best fire-starter,” it might have played a bit in the back of their minds. A more serious way in which Cao Boi was a threat was simply in his attempt to find the immunity idol and target people who were part of the tribe’s main alliance. As already mentioned, he told Yul he was targeting two of Yul’s main allies. And he had previously attempted to vote out Becky, Yul’s tightest ally. It’s not clear if Yul engineered Cao Boi’s downfall, but I’m sure he played a role in it. Allowing Cao Boi to stick around was simply too dangerous for the main alliance. Cao Boi did well with the seventh rule, as he did his part to provide food and work around camp. But unlike some other people this season, laziness had nothing to do with the reason for Cao Boi being voted off. Now we turn our attention to whether the rest of the tribe was correct in voting off Cao Boi. It should be obvious that those in the main alliance certainly were – and that doesn’t really leave many others left. Those remaining, such as Ozzy, are in the minority and could not really have bucked the majority alliance anyway. And then there’s Jessica, who got left out in the cold. Cao Boi is the type of person who would be good to have in a real survival situation – well, as long as you can put up with his stories. He can build a fire. He enjoys adventure. But in the game of Survivor, these things are not nearly as important. Cao Boi did try to scheme, but his lack of knowledge of the game aspects hurt him. He was too open with his plan, sharing it with almost the entire tribe, including somebody who had every reason to want the plan dead. And he was something of a loose cannon in the eyes of others. Cao Boi was a lot of fun to watch and a good guy to be around in real life, but he didn’t fit in with his tribe and the scheming he attempted ensured the majority would turn against him. That is why Cao Boi lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Cristina Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/02/2006 It was suggested that Cristina was too bossy and annoying. But was that really the reason she was voted out? Could there have been other problems with the way Cristina played the game? That’s what we’re here to find out! Why did Cristina lose? What we saw of the tribe plotting against Cristina suggested a specific reason she was voted out. But was it really that simple? Was she just the bossy one who was destined to go because she annoyed them? Or was there more to the story? Why did Cristina lose? As we’ve seen over the years, it’s all too easy to find a simple reason for a person being voted out – and because it’s so easy, it’s often wrong. Is that the case here as well? Let’s go through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to find out. The first rule tells players to put aside the way you would normally behave and scheme and plot like your life depends on it – because your game life does. And thus we encounter the first problem for Cristina. While the main problem we saw on TV was her alleged bossiness (which we’ll discuss later), Cristina had an even bigger problem with this first rule. As she told me in my interview with her, “Being a police officer, I have to be a role model and there is life after the game. Little kids are going to be watching. If I can win the game that way , then I win. If I can’t, I still have to deal with my job and people.” Later, she added, “I could have come in lying and pretending. But I’m very proud of being a police officer and wanted to come in being a role model and being honest and having morals and values.” In other words, she did not come into the game with the plan of playing it like most winning players do. She wanted to win and be honest – a feat that is virtually impossible. It is fairly obvious, therefore, that Cristina did not scheme and plot too much. Indeed, while she participated in discussions about who should be voted off, I think it’s safe to say she didn’t really “scheme and plot” as such at all. The third rule says to be flexible. Part of this includes doing your best to blend in with the rest of your tribe. So if, for example, they are fairly laid-back, you probably shouldn’t order them around a lot. And if they just recently voted out a guy who tended to order people around a lot, you should consider that perhaps you might not want to turn into the next version of him! Fourth is to not let emotions control you. While Cristina did get upset after the Tribal Council at which she was told she was annoying, I don’t think her emotions really controlled her actions. Indeed, she attempted to overcome them – rather than staying mad at those who called her out, she approached them directly and tried to talk them into giving her another chance. Who knows, it might have even worked if they didn’t have to go right back to Tribal Council again (I doubt it, but you never know). But by that time, it was too late. The reason it was too late is because she couldn’t quite follow the fifth rule, which tells players to pretend to be nice. Cristina might be a very nice person, and indeed she told me in our interview that she was simply trying to take the initiative, but it was looked at as being bossy. The fact is that different people deal with others in different ways, and those ways are often shaped by our usual environments. To illustrate, let me tell a brief story. A number of years ago, a new employee began working at my job. She had some problems dealing with some people, because she was extremely direct and blunt. People took her behavior as being rude. But that’s not what she was trying to do at all. It turned out that at her previous job, she was expected to say what she was thinking and not beat around the bush. If she thought somebody was wrong, she was supposed to say so and explain why. That work environment, however, was not the same as the one she moved to. It took a little while for her to recognize that she needed to change. Eventually she did – now she’s the boss! On Survivor, people don’t usually have the luxury of time. Cristina is a police officer and probably not used to having to make nice to people to the extent her tribemates expected. By the time she was called on it and tried to make it better, it was just too late. The sixth rule tells players not to be too much of a threat. I don’t really think that was an issue here, so we’ll move to number seven. It says not to be lazy. Again, not an issue. That brings us to a discussion of whether the rest of the tribe was correct to vote out Cristina. And really, it’s a bit difficult to say. The alliances on this tribe are still a bit murky. But certainly Cristina had been called out in the previous Tribal Council and was the obvious choice to go. It was smart for the other players to allow this to continue rather than trying to shift the vote – such an action could have caused a backlash. What we saw on TV was that Cristina was voted out for being annoying. But people have been annoying and survived before. The key is that Cristina was not a schemer or a plotter. She specifically did not want to be! She joined the ranks of so many players before her who wanted to win with morals and integrity, failing to understand that Survivor is a game, not real life. That is why Cristina lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Jessica Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/09/2006 Jessica is a free spirit who wanted to experience an adventure. But that adventure was cut short. Why couldn’t she just spend her days having fun on the reef and visiting other islands? Why did her tribemates send her packing? Why did Jessica lose? Fire-dancing? Check. Stilt-walking? Check. Roller-derby? Check. Custom sewing? Check. Outplay, outwit, outlast? Not so much. Jessica is a woman of many talents, but sticking around on Survivor was not one of them. Why wasn’t Jessica able to dance around the flames of her tribemates’ torches, which all stayed lit while hers was snuffed? Why did Jessica lose? All of our questions can be answered by paging through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. In fact, I already see one issue before we even get to the rules. In the portion of the write-up before the first rule, the article briefly discusses what happened in each season. When discussing the third season, I said: Survivor: Africa saw some people revert to the cluelessness of the first series, owing mostly to those who admitted they had not paid much attention to the first two (I wonder if we’ll see a reprise on the Cook Islands). Ethan, the winner, said that he watched the previous series; Silas, who lost, said he hadn’t. There is a big hint in that – but is it a hint everybody knows? By now, frankly, there is no excuse for coming on Survivor if you haven’t seen previous editions. Yes, that includes people who were recruited, because a number of seasons are available on DVD now. Yes, I wrote the above before I knew about Jessica. As she flat-out told me in my interview with her, “I was never tuned in to Survivor. … I was not familiar with season after season and the strategies.” At least she realized, albeit too late, that this was a problem, when she noted, “I think it benefits you in the game if you are aware of the different strategies people have in order to manipulate and stay in the game longer.” Indeed, that’s what these rules are based on – the different strategies people have put together over the course of season after season. And the first, and most important, does indeed relate directly to manipulating people, specifically through scheming and plotting. Jessica failed here. Early on, she just wanted to hang around with the cool people. She quickly learned that the hanging around part necessitated actually staying in the game, and was convinced by Jonathan and Cao Boi to vote out Cecilia. But she still didn’t go in for this part of the game and was completely shocked when Cao Boi tried to enact Plan Voodoo and instead was voted out – with herself being the only person on the tribe who was out of the loop. As soon as we saw the result of the vote, it was pretty clear that Jessica would be the next to go. Sure, sometimes people who were out of the loop can make it back in, but it seemed very unlikely with Jessica, given her aversion to scheming (which she specifically admitted in her interview with me). She did try to convince people to keep her over Jonathan because Jonathan is creepy and seemed untrustworthy. But her main problem was that she was an outsider saying this. Candice and Becky might have some misgivings about Jonathan, but for now he’s their ally. Jessica is not and never has been – and she would have said anything to stick around longer. So it only made sense that they nodded their heads and agreed with her statements about Jonathan, and then voted to keep him around. Since we chastised Jessica for not plotting enough, certainly we can’t say she did it too much. While it did seem like some of the players grew annoyed with Jessica’s lobbying, it seems obvious that she was going anyway. At that point, she had little choice other than trying to convince them to keep her – she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. However, I’d like to address one of her complaints. On The Early Show, Jessica said she just wanted her tribemates to be honest with her about the coming vote. She reiterated the same thought in our interview, saying, “I lost a lot of respect for them” because they wouldn’t be straight with her. She added, “I kind of figured they would be that way.” The thing is, she should have figured they would be that way, because being that way is smart! To quote from the second rule, “Lie to their faces, then vote ‘em off. There is no reason to alert them to their impending doom – it only gives them time to plot their own counterattack.” So they were right and Jessica was a bit too hopeful. The third rule tells players to be flexible. A large part of this rule talks about blending in to your tribe – for example, if they work hard, you should work hard; if they’re lazy, you should be lazy. This needs to be extended for Jessica. If your tribe wants to sit around and compare underarm hair length, you should perhaps consider joining them rather than running off to play on the reef or go exploring. Is it dull and boring? Hell yes. So you need to decide if you want to have a short adventure or a long stay on Survivor. Jessica preferred the adventure, and that was her choice. But for the purposes of the game, that was the wrong choice. Really, it comes down to a decision between emotion and strategy. I’m sure being out there on the island can be looked at as a fun experience, especially if that is your usual nature. But the fourth rule tells players to allow their emotions to control them. While this is usually aimed at people becoming too friendly with their tribemates or letting their anger get the best of them, I think it can also cover issues like this one – where Jessica allowed her emotions to control her, wanting to have fun instead of focusing on playing the game. The fifth rule discusses how people need to pretend to be nice. Jessica didn’t have much of a problem in this regard, as she seemed very friendly. However, the friendliness only extended to sharing peanut butter kisses, not to the point of an actual alliance. Besides that, Jessica was the friendliest with Cao Boi, and they sent him packing a week earlier! Sixth is not to be too much of a threat. Jessica was not a threat in the physical sense – though she probably was stronger than some of her fellow women. She was instead a threat in the strategic sense, and this relates back to what I said about her tribemates preferring to keep a creepy Jonathan over her. Because Jessica was not a schemer and mostly just wanted to have fun, there was no way of telling what she might do in future votes. If there is a merge, would she stay with them or go over to the other side? At least with Jonathan, there is the feeling that he would stand by his alliance. Certainly he will try to turn on them at some point, but his allies likely believe they can trust him for at least a little while. Jessica, not so much. The seventh rule reminds us that providing food wins allies while laziness works just the opposite. While Jessica was not lazy, she was one of two obvious outsiders, with Ozzy being the other. Ozzy provided fish, coconuts, and even a bird! Jessica provided… well, I think she helped with the fishing, but she is no Aquaman like Ozzy. So when it came down to a decision between the two of them, Ozzy won himself some allies through their stomachs. Jessica did not. Did Jessica’s tribemates make the right decision overall? I would have to say yes. The merge is drawing near, and Ozzy will become a threat once that occurs. But it’s not here yet and he certainly helps in tribal challenges. Also, if the main alliance can bring Ozzy in under their wing, at least for a little while, they can bide their time and get rid of him later. Certainly they have to make sure they don’t forget about him, but I doubt that will happen. Jessica, meanwhile, likely could not be taken under their wing and could have bolted at the first opportunity. She needed to go. Jessica came into Survivor: Cook Islands almost the way some people came into the very first season – fairly clueless about strategy. While I know she was recruited and had other things on her mind, there is no real excuse for failing to get a handle on the most basic aspects of the game. Yes, she wanted to have an adventure. I’m sure she’s a nice person and it was fun while it lasted, but this column discusses why people lost. In this case, we have to be blunt. Jessica did not understand scheming and plotting. She completely failed to do it early on, and when she eventually tried, it was too late and not gone about the right way. She put herself in a position where she became an outsider on her own tribe, a position destined for difficulty. Jessica wanted to do her own thing. She did, and her tribemates let her do her own thing right out the door. That is why Jessica lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Brad Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/16/2006 I’ve heard a number of people say Brad lost because he didn’t mutiny and switch tribes. But hindsight is 20/20 – is that really the reason he was voted out? Or are there better answers? Why did Brad lose? In watching this season, I didn’t feel like we really got to know Brad. He helped the women vote out J.P. and was Cristina’s sole loyal ally. He chose not to swim but rather to work on a puzzle in a reward challenge. He made a few comments at camp that caused his tribemates to wonder about his loyalty. But what caused his tribemates to choose to cast him aside rather than one of the two newcomers? Why did Brad lose? As always, we will seek to resolve these questions by digging through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. By the end of this column, we’ll have all the answers we need. Unfortunately, just as we did with Jessica last week, we don’t even get to the rules before we encounter our first set of problems for Brad. There, I briefly talked about what happened in each season and noted, among other things the problems that occurred when people went on Survivor without having seen previous seasons. I detailed those quotes in “Why Jessica Lost,” linked to above, so I won’t go through them in detail again here. But Brad specifically told me in our interview, “I had only watched like season one and a couple episodes of other seasons.” Uh oh. As I said last week, the rules we go over here are based on the different strategies used by people over the course of years. Ignoring that information is so reckless if you’re trying to play Survivor to win. This brings us to the first rule, which tells players to scheme and plot if, indeed, they want to win. But again referencing what Brad told me in our interview, “I wasn’t really scheming or plotting for myself. I’m not much of a schemer.” Ouch. That pretty much says it all right there, doesn’t it? No, not quite. Brad added, “I tried to play an honest game, I thought that’s what I did and it got me in trouble.” Indeed. Brad realized too late that honesty is rarely rewarded on Survivor. Mind you, if he had watched more of the previous seasons, he might have learned that before being voted off… Still, Brad thought he was in an alliance with Nate, Adam, and Parvati. They told him he was safe and he believed them. If he had done a bit more scheming, he might have realized that his position in the tribe was less than secure. Obviously, then, Brad didn’t have to worry about failing to follow the second rule, which says not to scheme and plot too much. So we move on to the third rule, which says to be flexible. Brad didn’t do very well here, I’m afraid. The rule specifically notes, “you can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” Brad thought he was in an alliance and that was all he needed. But it looks like he never was really in that alliance – not solidly, anyway. It’s easy to look at the mutiny situation and say that Brad should have jumped ship to rejoin Yul and Becky. However, he had no way of knowing whether Yul and Becky still would consider him an ally. And he didn’t want to make enemies of his Raro tribemates. Remember that to win Survivor, you need to get all the way to the end, not just past the very next vote. Making enemies of half the people in the game doesn’t seem to be a good way to go toward that goal. And besides, hindsight is 20/20 – he thought he was in an alliance and would be safe. The fourth rule says not to let emotions control you. I did not see this as an issue with Brad, so again we’ll move on. Fifth is to pretend to be nice. While Brad could be blunt, as he was when he said it would be every man for himself after the merge, I don’t think there was anything about him that would push people away. He obviously should have watched what he said and the way he said it, though. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. Brad was not considered a physical threat, but he was a threat for another reason. His comment about it being every man for himself, however, was just one indicator his tribe had that Brad might not be loyal to them. Indeed, he told me, “I probably would have jumped” to the Yul/Becky alliance at the merge. And his Raro tribemates could obviously read this in him, as he also said, “one of the last scenes was Nate saying I would have merged back with my Puka tribe and I was a threat in that regard.” So Brad answered the question for us here – he was indeed a threat. The seventh rule says to provide food and not be lazy. We didn’t see anything that really indicated this was an issue. However, I do wonder if some of the tribe thought Brad was being lazy by choosing not to swim at the previous challenge, which helped to cause their loss. I understand his reasoning for deciding to try the puzzle portion, but it left him open to criticism for backing out of the physical portion of the challenge. At this point in the game, though, laziness is not such a big deal compared to trustworthiness. So did Brad’s tribemates make the right decision? It’s difficult to say. I do think they hit the nail on the head in pinpointing Brad’s likely decision to jump from the Raro alliance – he admitted as much! I also think Jonathan, the other possible target, will continue to be a sycophant, which means his tribemates have plenty of time to get rid of him. Besides, if there is a merge soon, there is no way his old allies would take him back. It’s not entirely clear how Brad’s tribemates knew he was a threat, but they definitely did know. Furthermore, Brad had not done any particular scheming and plotting, but rather just trusted his game fate in three people who were themselves trying to figure out the best way to win. Brad needed to increase his flexibility and shop around a bit to see where he truly stood in his tribe. He failed to do that while at the same time making it obvious that he would leave the very allies he was counting on to save him. That is why Brad lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Rebecca Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/21/2006 Rebecca broke down in an earlier immunity challenge, but was certainly not the cause for Raro’s most recent loss. So was her challenge performance the reason she was sent packing, or was there something more? Why did Rebecca lose? The past three people voted off of Survivor had barely watched the show in seasons past. So their reasons for losing ended up being perhaps more obvious than most. But Rebecca is a fan of the show and has watched every season. Still, she’s just as much voted out as they were. So why did Rebecca lose? Whether people watched the show or not, we judge them according to the same criteria, found in What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s see what we can determine. The first rule tells players to scheme and plot like your life depends on it – because your game life does! Rebecca was part of the main Raro alliance; at least, she thought she was. But that was really about it as far as her scheming appeared to go. She didn’t have any sub-alliances, she didn’t try to figure out what the next step might be or where she might want to be in the game. This turned out to be a big problem. After Raro lost their most recent immunity challenge, Rebecca knew something was wrong, as she told me in our interview. “The vibe at camp was definitely different and no one was looking at me. No one came to me to talk about who we were voting off except Nate. I knew things were not right.” This should have been an immediate indicator to her that she needed to do some work, and fast! Indeed, I asked her if she tried to convince the others to vote out Jonathan, but she said that since nobody told her specifically that they were voting her off, and since Nate said they were going with the original plan (to vote off Jonathan), that was it. At that point, she just “hoped my loyalty would persevere.” But we know how much loyalty is generally worth in Survivor. It’s not nearly as valuable as the ability to change people’s minds. If Rebecca could feel that something was wrong, then she needed to act immediately to try to correct it. When people don’t come to tell you what’s going on, you should know you’re in deep trouble. So, if Rebecca didn’t scheme and plot enough, it seems obvious that we can’t criticize her under the second rule, doing it too much. So we’ll move on to the third, which says she should have been flexible. In this, I’m afraid Rebecca also failed. I mentioned it briefly above – Rebecca had no sub-alliances or side alliances. She did exactly what the rule says not to do: “you can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” I’m not saying she should have mutinied, because there was no reason for her to do so at the time. But she should have had some sort of back room deal with a subgroup of Raro so she could be protected or at least be warned. Indeed, the third rule also says, “if you see that the majority is leaning another way, by all means make sure you’re part of that majority. You need to have your finger on the pulse of every member of your tribe. It’s not easy, but it will help keep you around.” Rebecca had a feeling that she might be in trouble, but by no means can we say she had her finger on the pulse of what was going on. She took Nate’s statement about sticking with the plan at face value and that was that. The fourth rule was not an issue with Rebecca. It says not to let emotions control you, which had no bearing on her ouster. Same goes for the fifth rule, which says contestants need to pretend to be nice. Sixth is not to be too much of a threat. Here it gets interesting. Rebecca obviously wasn’t a threat in terms of challenges. Quite the opposite. And she wasn’t a threat strategically, either, though from Adam and Candice’s point of view, keeping any of the Raros around could have been a threat if they turned against Candice. We’ll get to that more when we talk about Jenny. For Rebecca, this wasn’t really an important issue. But the seventh rule says providing food wins allies and players can’t be lazy. We never saw anything to indicate that Rebecca was lazy, but Adam did make a comment during Tribal Council about productivity, which followed a comment he made previously about her productivity at camp. Still, I don’t think it was an overall comment on her so much as it was a comparison to the very productive Jonathan. Even so, Rebecca should have seen what Jonathan was doing and tried to fight against it. She told me it was obvious that Jonathan was working his butt off, but she was too weak and wanted to save her strength for the challenges. It’s understandable, since that’s where she had shown herself to be weakest, but it also may have hurt her. So then, did the tribe make the right decision in voting off Rebecca? It’s hard to say. Given that they still didn’t know when the merge would arrive, voting off a weak challenge link did make sense, even though she didn’t cause the most recent loss. But in the overall game strategy, it was not in Jenny’s or Nate’s best interest because it meant the four-person original-Raro alliance got to stick together. The problem is that Jenny, Nate, and Rebecca were suddenly in the minority. It’s not clear how hard they tried to convince the others to get rid of Jonathan, but that should have been their number one priority. Jenny found that out right away. Rebecca said that although she was very familiar with Survivor, the game just took away her endurance. That hurt her in the challenges and around camp. But the one thing she needed to find the strength to do was to scheme and plot – especially when she felt a change in the vibe of the camp and nobody was really talking to her anymore. She should have had a sub-alliance in place long before then, but even at that point she might have had a chance to turn things if only she had given it a try. But she didn’t – she allowed events to play out around her, sending her right out the door. That is why Rebecca lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Jenny Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/22/2006 Jenny was just a castaway, on an island lost at sea. She wanted to be rescued before she fell into despair. But the message in a bottle described by The Police in their song of the same name wasn’t an S.O.S. for her – it was a note that sent her out of the game instead. Why did Jenny lose? Jenny was the victim of the surprise message in a bottle. But while she said in our interview that Mark Burnett outwitted her, that’s not really why she was voted out. What were the reasons? Why did Jenny lose? “Beware of messages in bottles” is not one of the rules to be found in What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. However, there are other things that Jenny could have known about and should have prepared for. Let’s see what they were. The first rule, of course, tells players how they need to scheme and plot. Jenny understood the basics of alliances and how important they are, but she didn’t seem to necessarily think ahead about how alliances can shift and how she might find herself suddenly on the outside. Jenny was comfortable in her alliance until the Mutiny. At that point, everything changed and Jenny needed to change with it. She should have immediately realized that all four original Raro were now together in her tribe. This never bodes well for outsiders. Furthermore, everybody knew about the Candice/Adam love interest. This also did not bode well. But Jenny still went along with the plans that had been determined by the likes of Adam. When the tribe was at eight – four original Raro/four not – she helped boot Brad. It was really at that point that she should have seen the possibility of an original Raro foursome taking control. And that was also the point at which she could have perhaps done something about it by insisting, for instance, that they vote out Jonathan instead. The problem, I think, is that Brad and Jenny didn’t really get along. So Jenny was likely all too happy to boot Brad. It wasn’t until later that this became a problem. Once Brad was gone, the original Raros were in complete control. Early in the most recent episode, Jenny talked about how important it was to keep their five-person alliance (herself, Rebecca, Adam, Nate, Parvati) in the game. And she was right! But by Tribal Council time, the others had turned on Rebecca, and Jenny couldn’t do anything about it. In fact, I’m not sure Jenny tried to do anything about it, other than talking to Adam, who was absolutely the wrong person with whom to discuss it. Indeed, that was when her downfall was sealed. Jenny specifically talked to Adam about voting out Candice. Hello? She didn’t believe him when he said he would, but simply by talking to him about it and indicating that she wanted him to boot her, she painted a big red target on herself. Adam now knew where she stood. Part of this is creeping into the territory of the second rule, which talks about keeping your scheming secret, but I’m talking about it here because my point is that Jenny needed to be plotting against Adam, not with him. She needed to have realized that with Rebecca gone, she could well be the next target. She should have conspired with Nate and Rebecca to try to bring Parvati or Jonathan over to their side. Jonathan was the most likely, due to his nature, I think. Since we already started discussing the second rule, let’s move on to that now. I don’t know that we can specifically say Jenny schemed and plotted too much, but I think it’s safe to say there was something about her that made people think she was untrustworthy. Part of it was the impression she gave, part was in her mistakes. I just discussed the major mistake – scheming with Adam instead of against him. That alerted him to her thoughts and was viewed by him as backstabbing before she needed to. But that wasn’t the only issue. When I interviewed Brad, he specifically said, “I didn’t really trust Jenny.” He added, “there’s something about that girl from day one that my guy was like, ‘don’t trust this girl, she’s kind of shady.’” Indeed, she did not appear to be a part of her original tribe’s alliance, as Brad was close to Becky and Yul while she didn’t seem to be. Being viewed as “shady” and plotting against the girlfriend of one of the main allies in her tribe is a bad combination. The third rule tells players to be flexible. In this case, it affects Jenny in a couple different ways. While it would be unreasonable to expect players to think, “Hmmm, there might be a double-vote in the note, so I need to prepare for that,” it is perfectly reasonable to expect those same players to be thinking more than one vote ahead rather than being locked into the one-day-at-a-time strategy. My father called me after the double-Tribal Council and asked if I thought the tribe had guessed the note called for a second vote, because the results were so lopsided against Jenny. But no, there is no evidence they believed that would be in the note. There is evidence, however, that the original Raros were thinking ahead. We saw Adam say that because of the way Jenny was acting, she was the most likely one to go after Rebecca. Obviously, the original Raros discussed this point and were thinking about the future. But just as obviously, Jenny was not thinking ahead. She told me that if she had realized she was in danger, she’d have spoken up at Tribal Council. But she apparently felt fairly safe. While she was plotting to oust Candice or Adam, she didn’t realize that the others figured this out and were gunning for her. The other way in which Jenny should have been more flexible was that, like Rebecca just before her, she missed the part of this rule that says, “you can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” Jenny believed that her five-person alliance would hold together, even as she was helping to tear it apart by joining in the voting out of Rebecca. As mentioned earlier, she needed to see the danger signs earlier and do something about it. The fourth rule says not to let emotions control you. I don’t think this was an issue for Jenny, other than as I’m about to discuss in the fifth rule. That one tells contestants to pretend to be nice and keep controversial beliefs to yourself. Jenny made some enemies early on in the form of Cristina and Brad. While this didn’t directly lead to her downfall, I do think they helped mask the overall alliance picture for her. That is, if she and Brad had gotten along better, she might have seen how dangerous the original-Raro foursome might become. Instead, I think she was all too happy to get rid of Brad. So in that way, she had issues with both the fourth and fifth rules, but they were mostly tangential. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. When the original Raros chose to vote out Jenny, it wasn’t because she would be a threat in individual challenges after the merge. Nor do I think, as she indicated to me in our interview, that they all suddenly decided she was weaker in tribal challenges and therefore would be a threat to them winning one if no merge arrived. Instead, Jenny was a threat because she had flat-out told Adam she wanted to vote out Candice. If the tribes merged, she was the most likely to flip to the other side because, despite not being tight with Becky and Yul, she might have eventually seen the writing on the wall and realized she was no longer in her supposed alliance’s plans. The seventh rule says not to be lazy and that providing food wins allies. Jenny didn’t do anything wrong here, but I do think Jonathan did some things right. He wasn’t satisfied with his position as an original Raro, but worked extra-hard to make sure he proved his worth. That brings us to the eighth rule, which discusses whether or not Jenny’s tribemates should have voted her out. At this point, I think the answer is a resounding yes – for four out of five of them. The original Raros appear to be solid. Jonathan may be the least solid of all of them, but I don’t think he was in a position to do anything different, because he was the likeliest one to go instead of Jenny! Nate, of course, was the one who didn’t benefit by Jenny leaving, but he was also the one who didn’t vote against her. I think he realizes now that if there is no merge, he’s screwed. But Jenny got screwed first, and we’ve laid out the reasons why. She did not think ahead far enough to realize the likely outcome of the mutiny – that the original Raro tribe would be back together again and cause former allies to become expendable. And when she did think ahead, she shared those thoughts with the wrong person, Adam. The double-vote was supposed to catch the Survivors unaware and unprepared. But she had telegraphed her desires in a way that allowed the original Raros to know ahead of time who they wanted to vote off next. That is why Jenny lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Nate Lost by David Bloomberg -- 11/30/2006 In his final words, Nate laid the blame for being voted out on Jonathan. And, of course, Jonathan did turn on him. But is it right to blame somebody else for his own loss? Or were there things Nate himself could have done to protect himself? Why did Nate lose? It would be easy to say that Nate lost because Jonathan flipped back to vote with those he had previously abandoned. And it would be true. But it wouldn’t really explain anything. We need to look deeper to find out why Nate lost. And how do we look deeper? I bet you know the answer, my dear readers. We peruse through What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to see where Nate went wrong and how he might have been able to save himself. Nate seemed to do okay by the first rule, which tells players to scheme and plot. He was tight with Adam, and the two of them had an agreement to take Candice and Parvati to the final four. Along the way, he also made Brad believe he was part of the alliance, right up to the time when Brad was voted out. But Nate was not in on every decision, as evidenced by the fact that he voted against Jonathan in the second vote of the double Tribal Council, while everybody else in his alliance voted out Jenny. He told me in our interview that voting out Jenny was a mistake – and he was probably correct. But he apparently couldn’t convince his cohorts of this. Part of the problem, I believe, is that everybody on Nate’s alliance is so opposed to being told what to do. I have to wonder if this affected their ability to discuss voting even amongst themselves. As the first rule notes, “The second most important attribute is that they will vote the same way as you will for somebody else to take the long hike.” The problem is that Nate’s alliance didn’t support him. They left him hanging. And no matter what he might have thought about how tight he was with Adam, that should have been a clue for him. Nate also told me that he didn’t trust Jonathan. However, it’s unclear if he actually did anything about this lack of trust. The key thing he should have done was to use his connection with Ozzy to attempt to make a back-up alliance. No matter how tight he was with his allies, he needed to have other plans, and he didn’t. He had the opportunity, but he just didn’t use it. The second rule tells players not to scheme and plot too much. He was fine here, since we just discussed how he didn’t scheme and plot enough. It also says not to backstab until you absolutely need to. Again, he was fine there. But a key to this rule is to keep your scheming secret. Here, Nate failed. Of course, Nate was not the only one – he just paid the ultimate Survivor price for it (so far – the others may be following shortly). Adam, Parvati, and Candice acted like they controlled the game. None of them hid their allegiance to each other. There was never a doubt in the Aitu alliance as to who stood where. That meant Nate was an obvious target. We’ve already partially addressed the third rule, which says to be flexible. When I was discussing the first rule, I mentioned that Nate needed to have a back-up plan, but didn’t. Well, what does the third rule say? “You can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” Yet that’s exactly what Nate did. If he had made an alliance with Ozzy, rather than just chatting with him, Ozzy might have been willing and able to aim the votes in another direction. The fourth rule has certainly been ignored by at least two people this season, but they’re both still in the game (for now). It says not to let emotions control you, and it’s pretty obvious that Candice and Adam have blown this one. Indeed, we posted an entire article on this point. But we’ll talk about that more when Candice loses, in particular. However, Nate does bear some responsibility here as well. I think the main reason Nate didn’t really seek out a back-up alliance is the emotional attachment he had to his main alliance. Hearing him talk about Adam, it was more than just an alliance, as indicated when he said things to me like, “Adam’s my boy.” Nate didn’t want to backstab his friends, and as such he bears some responsibility for what happened to him. Nate did fine in terms of the fifth rule, though, which says to pretend to be nice. Indeed, I thought Ozzy might fight to keep him because they had a friendly bond. ‘Twas not to be, but nor was it a reason Nate was sent packing. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. Compared to the likes of Ozzy and Yul, Nate was not a huge challenge threat. However, he certainly was more of one than, say, Parvati, and this may have contributed to him being targeted this time around. Jonathan didn’t want to vote out Adam immediately, and Nate was certainly the next best choice as far as strength went. But it wasn’t a major factor. The seventh rule wasn’t either – it says to provide food and not be lazy. Obviously, none of the Raro alliance other than Jonathan were exactly hard workers. They preferred to laze around while he did the work. I do think this angered Jonathan and made it a bit easier for him to double-cross the group, but it wasn’t what pushed him over the edge. Yul did that, and from what we’ve seen of Jonathan’s personality, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they were serving him peeled grapes – it came down to a choice of him staying or leaving, and he was going to choose staying every time. So did the Aitu+Jonathan group do the right thing in voting off Nate? Aitu certainly did. Jonathan? Well, some have argued that he could have double-crossed the Aitu bunch by telling them he’d vote with them and then telling the Raros what was up and convincing them to vote against Becky rather than Yul, thus making the hidden immunity idol worthless. However, this would have been a convoluted plan requiring the Raros to actually listen to Jonathan and do what he told them. Considering the way they historically bucked authority and the way they blew him off at other times when he tried to discuss strategy with them, it does not seem like it would have been a likely winner of a plan. Indeed, it could have totally backfired if the Raros decided that all this double-dealing made Jonathan the best target! So I believe he did the right thing, to Nate’s displeasure. As we saw in his final words, Nate was certainly upset with Jonathan. But he needs to shoulder much of the blame himself. Jonathan was playing the game; Yul was playing the game. Nate was playing part of the game. He had an alliance, and an apparently tight one at that. But that’s all he had. He had no backup plan, despite having told me things like, “I knew if anyone would betray me it would have to be him.” Nate’s alliance chose to keep Jonathan around. Nate should have seen the problem with this and done something about it by forging his own path. Instead, he followed them in lockstep, right up to the point where his torch was snuffed. That is why Nate lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Candice Lost by David Bloomberg -- 12/07/2006 The Candice we saw on TV is much different from the Candice who talked about her experience after she was voted out. Can we look at these two different stories and determine the key? Yes we can. So why did Candice lose? When Candice was voted out, the reasons seemed obvious. But “seemed” is the key word here. Once she hit the interview circuit and the Survivor Insider recordings were released, we found that appearances do not always tell the full story. With all of this in mind, why did Candice lose? Although we will use information outside of what we saw on TV, we will still go through it in the usual way, by looking at What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to see what we can learn from both Candice’s actions on TV and her words later. The first rule tells players to scheme and plot. According to Candice in her post-vote interviews, she knew this. She says she is a huge fan of the show and has never missed an episode. And she says she knew she had to make moves to survive. This is sharply contrasted by the Candice we all saw on TV. That Candice never showed any inclination to this type of behavior. But as we all know, behavior can be edited out – it just can’t be edited in. So let’s take a look at what she had to say for herself. Candice says she decided to mutiny because she felt unsafe in her Aitu tribe and thought Raro would be better. She “wanted to make a move to control my own fate in the game,” according to what she said in her RealityNewsOnline interview. Controlling your own fate is indeed a positive aspect in Survivor, and it would have been smart to do so. Unfortunately, Candice made some significant mistakes in analyzing her situation, as outlined by Professor Sadow in his Strategic Overview of Survivor Special article. In other words, she tried to scheme and plot, but she just wasn’t very good at it. Which raises the question of how she did in terms of the second rule, which advises against scheming and plotting too much, says you should keep your scheming secret, and further proclaims that you shouldn’t backstab until you absolutely need to. Wow. Candice was zero for three. Let’s work backwards. The mutiny is where Candice blew the third part. She stabbed her entire tribe in the back by jumping to Raro. This included portions of what could have been a solid alliance with Yul and Becky. The fact remains that we saw nothing to indicate those two were planning to turn on Candice. And indeed, even Candice herself talked about how honestly Yul was trying to play the game. So it would have gone totally against his character to tell her she was an ally and then vote her out. Even if she was totally dedicated to flipping against Yul and Becky, though, Candice should have – and could have – waited. She let her true colors be known too soon, to her detriment. Ironically, part of the reason Candice felt she might be in danger on Aitu was that she failed to keep her scheming secret. Part of it was the fault of Adam and Parvati, her true allies who saved her from a possible vote by sending her to Exile Island. But that wasn’t the only indication of where her true loyalties were. She was far too obvious about the possibility of rejoining her original allies. And then, once the tribes merged, Candice made it clear that she would not even consider turning on those same allies. There is a reason Yul approached Jonathan rather than Candice. The Raros might have called Jonathan a “rat” and various other terms, but the fact is that he’s still there and Candice isn’t. Her loyalty was far too obvious. The overall concept of scheming and plotting too much encompasses both of these, and more. She thought she could leave Aitu, where she felt like she didn’t have much of a say in things, and move to the king’s ear in Raro. This turned too many people against her for her to ever have a serious chance at winning. The third rule tells players to be flexible. It might seem at first glance like Candice embodied this through the mutiny. After all, she was flexible enough to abandon her tribe. But really, I see it as inflexibility. Candice was locked in with her original allies, and nothing – but nothing – would change that. Let’s compare the way Candice acted with some of the others in the game. Candice hit it off with Adam and Parvati. They became allies and friends. No matter what happened in the game, Candice wanted to go back to them. Jonathan, on the other hand, believed himself to be part of the same alliance. Yet he was always making other plans. He schemed with Jessica, he schemed with Yul, he schemed with just about anybody who would listen. Then, when he found himself in potential trouble after the merge, he schemed with Yul again. And speaking of Yul, he has a tight bond with Becky, but otherwise has shown himself remarkably open to change. Ozzy and Sundra were supposed to be the next to go on Aitu. Yet when Yul found himself on a tribe of only four, with those two as part of the tribe, he immediately adopted them into his plan and his confidence. He knew they had to stick together, no matter what the plans might have been previously. Those are two examples of flexibility that occurred this season. Candice exhibited none of this trait. The fourth rule brings us to where we thought we would focus before Candice did all her post-show talking. It says not to let your emotions control you. From what we saw, Candice wanted to be with her friends, and that’s why she mutinied. But Candice says no, it was a ploy to make people think she wasn’t plotting their demise. While I’d like to believe this, I simply cannot accept it totally. It seems clear that part of the reason she was allied so tightly with Parvati and Adam was friendship (and more, with Adam, though that apparently disappeared after the show). That friendship, I believe, blinded her to other possibilities. She was able to rationalize her decision to mutiny using strategy as a cover, but I think her emotions were at least partially responsible. Fifth is to pretend to be nice. I don’t think Candice had a problem in this regard. Yes, she came down hard on Jonathan at the dinner incident, but she was already going home by that point, and she knew it. Speaking of the dinner incident and jumping ahead a bit, the seventh rule says providing food wins allies and you shouldn’t be lazy. While Candice has said she doesn’t think she was lazy – just worn out – nobody can deny that Jonathan’s ability to feed the tribe helped him. It helped him make it to the point where he could turn on the Raros, and it helped him against Candice. It’s unclear just how serious Yul was about the possibility of voting off Jonathan instead of Candice, but one thing that I’m sure weighed on that thought process was that Jonathan was a giver while Candice was a taker. Going back to the sixth rule, it says not to be too much of a threat. Frankly, at this point int he game, Candice was not a big threat. However, compared to Parvati, she was certainly the most dangerous when it came to challenges. Might as well get rid of her first. So did the tribe do the right thing in voting Candice off? Hell yes! Even if they don’t trust Jonathan or don’t particularly like his behavior, he is a necessary evil. All of the Raros need to be gone before they can consider getting rid of him. Candice was just one of three. In the end, I do believe Candice when she says that she was not just some lovesick dingbat who switched tribes to be with her sweetie (thus the reason she did not get entered into the Reality TV Hall of Shame). However, nor was she a brilliant strategist. Candice made numerous mistakes in judgment and decided incorrectly about how to proceed in the mutiny. She backstabbed too many people, too soon. She allowed everybody to know exactly where she stood, and that standing was determined at least in part by emotion. Candice had an alliance from the start and never left, making her completely inflexible at a time when she needed to be evaluating all of her options. That is why Candice lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Jonathan Lost by David Bloomberg -- 12/13/2006 Jonathan had a lot going against him by the time he was voted out. He was a “rat,” a “cancer,” he made some people sick, things were nicer at camp without him, etc. But were these the reasons he was voted out, or is there a different tale to tell? Why did Jonathan lose? Jonathan had been playing a dangerous game on Survivor for almost his entire time. He darted from alliance to alliance, and back again, racking up enemies. Along the way, some of his fellow players also talked about how they found him obnoxious and unworthy. Which caused him to be voted out? Why did Jonathan lose? The case of Jonathan being voted out is really a perfect one for this column. There are numerous causes that appear to have come into play, and it helps to dig into What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned to see whether one of those causes overshadowed the others or it was a combination of factors. Let’s take a look. Jonathan certainly knew that the most important thing he had to do on Survivor was to scheme and plot. He knew coming into the game that he had to stay one step ahead of everybody else, even telling me in our interview, “If a move was going to get made, I wanted to be the one to make it. I did not want to get played. If I was going to think of something, somebody else was going to think of it, so I was going to do it faster.” This meant that Jonathan was not going to wait around for alliances to happen, he was going to create what he needed. Since the first rule specifically says, “From the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships,” we can see that Jonathan was headed in the right direction. On the original Raro tribe, Jonathan was in the majority alliance. On the merged Aitu tribe, he was in the majority alliance. After the mutiny, on the new Raro tribe, Jonathan was once again in the majority alliance. And when he flipped back to Aitu, he again put himself into the majority alliance. Indeed, Jonathan was in the majority alliance for the entire game, right up to the moment he was voted out by his own majority allies! Also to Jonathan’s credit, he came over to Raro at the mutiny as the last person added to the tribe. Most of the others didn’t particularly like him. Yet somehow he lasted through one, two, three eliminations before the merge! So if Jonathan was on top of the game to this extent, what went wrong? Well, that’s where the second rule comes into play. It says, quite clearly, “Don’t scheme and plot too much” and “Don’t backstab until you absolutely need to.” Jonathan had problems in both areas. Let’s address backstabbing first – specifically, the mutiny. Candice previously gave her reasons for jumping ship. While they were not quite enough to land her in the Reality TV Hall of Shame, they weren’t necessarily very good either. Jonathan suffered from some of the same problem. He was – as far as he knew – closely aligned with Candice. He knew Yul and Becky were too tight to break up and he believed Adam had the hidden immunity idol. So he felt it was best to be with the idol and not with an inseparable duo. Thus, he knew he had to go to his original Raro teammates at some point. That point came sooner than he expected when the mutiny arrived and he made a quick, though he says calculated, decision to go with Candice. Looking back, it was obviously the wrong decision, as Jonathan himself admits. As he told me, “I played such a careful, deliberate game,” until that point. He recognized that Ozzy was probably the next Aitu to go, and then Sundra. He would have been safe down to four. But he blew it. In his own words, “I played an endgame way too soon.” That’s very similar to backstabbing before he needed to, which also describes what he did to his Aitu allies. Now let’s address the scheming and plotting too much. I’m pretty this is obvious to everybody. Jonathan was a known schemer on his original tribe and then on Aitu, long before the mutiny. Players I interviewed said things like, “Jonathan creeped me out” (Jessica), and described him as a “pushy used car salesman” (Cecilia). But as long as he was on their side, people didn’t seem to mind too much… until he turned on them. Then Jonathan mutinied and left behind four rather upset people. It is amusing to me that the Aitus took out their anger on Candice, repeatedly sending her to Exile Island, while leaving Jonathan alone. It’s almost like his betrayal didn’t surprise them, while hers did. That says something about their impressions of Jonathan. The mutiny was where everything went wrong. When Jonathan later found himself in the position of needing to jump back again, he really didn’t have a whole lot of choice. Yul blackmailed him into rejoining the Aitus (earning himself a Reality TV Hall of Fame Moment in the process). We’ve already briefly addressed this elsewhere, but just to drive home the point – despite what some people have thought, Jonathan really did not have a choice in the matter. He could not have lied to Yul and then convinced his Raro allies to vote out Becky because the Raros refused to believe him. Besides that, Jonathan was pretty much guaranteed to get no better than fifth place if he stayed with the Raros. However, jumping to the Aitus meant the possibility for getting further – for example, potentially joining with Ozzy and Sundra to oppose the inseparable duo. What is the point I’m trying to make here? That jumping back to the Aitus was not scheming and plotting too much. It was the right move at the right time. However, he had put himself into the position where he had little choice but to do that because of his poor decision to mutiny previously. Still, whether we think rejoining the Aitus was the right thing to do, obviously his previous Raro allies disagreed. Adam and Parvati, in particular, believed he was scum for doing what he did – apparently forgetting that this is Survivor, not One Big Happy Family, and also forgetting that they themselves had backstabbed people who were supposed to be their allies (Brad, Rebecca, Jenny). But let’s get back on track with Jonathan. We’ll move on to the third rule, which tells players to be flexible. I think we’ve established that in some ways, Jonathan fit that description – too much so, in fact. But when he returned to the Aitus, he was showing the necessary flexibility. Some players would have ignored or blown off Yul’s overtures – and been tossed because of it. Jonathan saw that it was the best deal he was going to get. However, in other ways, Jonathan failed to be flexible enough. The rule specifically notes as one example, “when you are in an alliance of lazies, working hard may not be the best idea.” It is true that Jonathan wanted to show his worth to his Raro allies by feeding them, and I can’t fault him for that. But if he was going to do the extra work, he needed to keep his thoughts about it to himself rather than letting it slip that the rest of his tribemates were lazy do-nothings, even though that’s exactly what they were! But sometimes, a player’s emotions get out of hand, and that’s exactly what happened to Jonathan when it came to the work he was doing. He let them know his feelings, though perhaps not as much as he would have liked. This went against the fourth rule, which says not to let emotions control you. However, this was a relatively minor violation as far as it goes. As Jonathan told me, he tried to play a rational game. He didn’t come to make friends. He wasn’t hanging around in the shelter flirting and spooning and making goo-goo eyes. And he wasn’t hampered in his decisions by emotional attachments. Unfortunately for Jonathan, some of the others did let their emotions control them. People like Adam and Parvati could not simply see that they had been outplayed. Adam called him a “cancer” who didn’t deserve to be there. Parvati whined about how she felt sick. They both needed to be smacked and told to get over it! But that really doesn’t have anything to do with Jonathan’s actions, so we’ll move on. The fifth rule tells players to pretend to be nice. Jonathan obviously had a few problems in this regard. He said what was on his mind a bit too much and came across as too in-your-face for some of the people there. When he was gone on Exile Island, his supposed allies realized that camp was a calmer place when he wasn’t around. Jonathan has a big personality, and he needed to dial it back. As we’ve already discussed, it’s one thing to work hard, but another to complain that everybody else isn’t. And then there was the auction, where Jonathan got a ton of food and kept talking about it, even burping obnoxiously. That’s a sure way to turn people off, even if they believe they should keep a person around for strategic reasons. Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. Compared to the likes of Ozzy, Adam, and Yul, Jonathan did not appear to be much of a challenge threat. However, he was a threat of a different type. As he told me, the Aitus “perceived me as a threat – rightly so – I was not just going to let them take me to the final five and say, ‘Thanks for the ride.’ I was going to do what it took to stay in the game.” After all, the Aitus had already been aligned with Jonathan once and gotten a knife in the back. It probably didn’t take much for them to start thinking about the possibility that it could happen again. At least they know where Adam and Parvati stand (or at least they think they do). Jonathan obviously did well with the seventh rule, which says providing food wins allies and players should not be lazy. While it was not the only reason, one thing that kept Jonathan around on Raro after the mutiny was that he was feeding them. If he had just been sitting around all day, he might well have been sent packing before the merge. There were other, strategic, reasons to keep him, but his fishing definitely didn’t hurt his cause. This brings us to the question of whether the tribe did the right thing in voting Jonathan off. Obviously, Adam and Parvati did! But what about the Aitus? I was pretty vocal in my recap about how I thought it was the wrong decision, and I still stand by that (though I know some people disagree). Jonathan was a known quantity for Yul. Because he was a rational, unemotional player, Yul could count on Jonathan to act in the way that benefited himself the most. Now, however, Yul is stuck with Adam and Parvati, two unpredictable, emotional players who are determined to stick around, no matter what it takes. While Jonathan might not have been able to rally the troops against Yul and Becky because of the opinions others had of him, Adam and Parvati might actually be able to pull it off. Plus, Jonathan would have been a great foil in the finals before the jury! And having a calmer camp with more pleasant people is overrated, if that truly did play into the reasons for voting him out. Time will tell if Yul made the right decision, and even if it was the wrong one he might be able to rebound, but I definitely think it was a dangerous thing to do. As we’ve seen, Jonathan did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong – often at the same time! However, while his behavior did leave something to be desired, I think it’s a minor issue overall. Adam and Parvati didn’t seem to think Jonathan was so bad when he was on their side – it was only after he turned against them that he suddenly because this horrible person they described. This tells me it wasn’t really his personality that turned them against him. So what was it? Jonathan schemed and plotted – but he overplayed it. He quite simply schemed and plotted too much and backstabbed too soon. The mutiny set the stage for his ouster, but he was overdoing things long before then, as previous players have told us. Nobody had a good feeling about Jonathan as far as the game was concerned. I suspect everybody feared he would turn against them eventually, and he certainly would have. But part of the second rule describes the likely end result of overdoing it: “In the end, nobody will trust you and they’ll turn on you.” That is exactly what happened here, and that is why Jonathan lost.

Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Parvati Lost by David Bloomberg -- 12/15/2006 Once Jonathan jumped from the Raros back to the Aitus, did Parvati even have a chance? What could she have done differently, either before his flop or once he was gone? Why did Parvati lose? To determine why Parvati lost, we cannot simply look at what happened in the most recent episode. But nor can we simply say she lost just because Jonathan screwed her and her alliance over a few weeks ago. So let’s look at everything that happened to Parvati recently and see if we can determine why she lost. This we will do, of course, by viewing these occurrences through the lens of What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. So let’s begin! It’s difficult to say if Parvati understood that the primary rule to follow involved scheming and plotting. On the one hand, early in the game she did seem to get it – she knew she had to get people on her side and was coy about which way she would vote until a firm majority had been created. But later in the game, she appeared to forget that, well, it’s a game. She had her pals – Nate, Adam, and Candice – and they were going to the final four. The problem, of course, was that they weren’t the only ones in the game, and somebody had neglected to tell the others they were supposed to just roll over and die. Instead of her foursome plus Jonathan, it became the Aitu foursome plus Jonathan. Whoops! That marked the beginning of the end for Parvati. Once Jonathan switched sides, the Pagonging began, with just a short interruption to get rid of Jonathan himself. In a last-minute desperate attempt, Parvati did try to scheme a bit, attempting to bring Ozzy over to her (and Adam’s) side. One main problem, I think, is that doing so would have only created a tie vote. That would have put Parvati against (presumably) Sundra in a fire-building challenge to determine who was sent packing. If Parvati lost, that would have put Ozzy in a really bad position – one that he obviously didn’t want to risk. By that point, though, there was really very little else Parvati could have done. And since she had no other alliances to fall back on, she was doomed. It might be suggested that Parvati schemed and plotted too much at the end. After all, Yul felt the way she was flirting with Ozzy was threatening. But I would argue against such a claim. Desperate times demand desperate measures – and Parvati was nothing if not desperate! She had to pull out all the stops to try to stick around. She was going either way. The third rule tells players to be flexible. As hinted at in discussing the first rule, Parvati failed here as well – at least when it counted. She tried to remain flexible early on, and it worked for her. But she gave that up later, latching on to her group of pals. She forgot a key point of the third rule: “You can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” Yet that’s exactly what she did. At the merge, she made no serious attempt to seek out a backup alliance. So when Jonathan flipped, she was dead in the water. Fourth is to not let emotions control you. In general, I think Parvati did okay in this regard, though she screwed up in the same way as her allies did. I said for Nate: “I think the main reason Nate didn’t really seek out a back-up alliance is the emotional attachment he had to his main alliance. … Nate didn’t want to backstab his friends, and as such he bears some responsibility for what happened to him.” Replace “Nate” with “Parvati” and we have the same point. The fifth rule reminds players to pretend to be nice. Parvati followed this one most of the time – except when it came to Jonathan, of course. She ragged on him over and over and over again. But I guess she figured he wasn’t going to vote to keep her around anyway, so it didn’t matter. And she was right. Anyway, the point is that the Aitus didn’t vote her out for being nasty – they voted her out in spite of being nice. In the sixth rule, we find advice against being too much of a threat. With Ozzy still around, it’s hard to believe anybody else could be considered a threat. But with Ozzy holding immunity, the Aitus looked to the second biggest threat. Yul was correct in his assessment. Parvati did come in third in the immunity challenge – behind Ozzy and Yul himself. She has done well in balance-related tasks, while Adam has frequently blundered around like a drunken bear. But she was a threat in another, more important, way. She was flirting with Ozzy and trying to sway his vote. Maybe it wasn’t going to work this time, but what about when they were down to the final five? Might she have been able to work some magic by then? And what if she somehow talked Sundra, for example, into splitting from the Aitus along with her? After all, Sundra cannot feel too comfortable knowing she will likely hit the final four with the likes of Yul and Ozzy! Yul could not let this possibility occur. He had to nip it in the bud, and that’s exactly what he did. The seventh rule says providing food wins allies and players shouldn’t be lazy. From what we saw, Parvati blew this one. But I think it’s also safe to say it didn’t matter one bit. Parvati was not voted out for lying around – it was strategy, pure and simple. So did the Aitus do the right thing in getting rid of Parvati? Absolutely. Either Parvati or Adam would have sufficed, really. As we’ve discussed, she appeared to be the bigger threat. And Ozzy, as big a threat as he is, had immunity. So that was that. Parvati’s downfall, as we said, began when Jonathan jumped back to the Aitus. Part of that was her own fault, as Jonathan noted in his RealityNewsOnline interview, “They would not work and had no game plan, they were not interested in winning.” He didn’t want to help the Raros win. Then, when he made his move, Parvati found that she had no moves to make. She had bet her whole bankroll on a single alliance – and she missed the flop, so to speak. She tried to find a crack in the Aitu alliance, but it was too little, too late. That is why Parvati lost.