The Eyes— The Key to Victory

Archive

Last week, I took a look at all ten people who have been the unfortunate victims of the inaugural Tribal Councils of the various seasons of Survivor that have taken place thus far. Then, I used the mistakes the ten people made to try and form a conclusion of general mistakes people playing in this game should try not to make in the future so that they do not suffer the same fate.

This week, I want to look at the completely opposite side of the spectrum: the winners. They went out to their seasons and locations hopeful and excited, and their dreams came true. They won the million dollar prize and became the Sole Survivors.

What did they do to get to the top? How should future players try to emulate them when formulating their own strategies? Let’s take a look and see if we can come up with some useful advice for future players of this game so that maybe their dreams can come true, as well. Let’s see how you become a member of the Survivor Winner’s Circle.

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BORNEO

Winner: Richard Hatch

The naked man from Borneo that everyone loved to hate. Richard is infamous as the very first person to ever win Survivor, so when we try and see what it takes to do well in this game, we would be remiss if we did not examine Richard’s strategy very closely. At the time when he won, the game was much simpler for the reason that it was still new and fresh. Since Richard’s time, players have become savvier and shiftier, so at one level, you need to make sure you understand that. However, at the same time, the game in and of itself is complicated, yet simple. It is a game of social politics, which is a very simple concept, but very complicated in execution. Richard realized right away that this new game called Survivor was founded on Machiavellian and Darwinian principles. Survival of the fittest. This does not necessarily mean, as we all know, the most physically fit. The fittest in terms of the mastering of a complicated social web. Richard saw this right away, and spearheaded the Tagi Alliance. He recognized that while the physical side was important, the mental, social side was even more so, and he had a plan from even before he went out to the island. I’m sure you all remember that Colleen ragged on him pretty hard in the Final Tribal Council because he faltered very badly in the Fallen Comrades Immunity Challenge. However, that is the main reason why he succeeded at this game. While everyone else was concerned with other people’s feelings and voting based on who was “deserving,” Richard viewed the island as his chessboard, and played ruthlessly, but still morally enough to stand up in front of a Jury concerned about feelings and win the game.

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AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

Winner: Tina Wesson

Tina was never ruthless on the level that Richard was, but she was still very strategic. A word that I feel best described Tina is “focused.” Tina knew what she wanted from the beginning, and she had a plan to get there. She never lost sight of what she wanted to do, and like Richard, she viewed the Outback as her chessboard. People respected her as a mother figure with whom they could identify and find comfort with. Her greatest move of all, of course, was making an alliance with Colby that reached the extent to which he was willing to bring her to the Final Two instead of Keith, who he would have blown out of the water in the final vote. While a lot of people feel that Colby deserved to win because he was the physical powerhouse, Tina deserved it completely because she was the mastermind behind the entire strategic side of the game.

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AFRICA

Winner: Ethan Zohn

The first two winners, Richard and Tina, were masters of the social web of the game. Ethan was the first winner who really represented the physical side of the game. While he wasn’t the winner of the most challenges, he was one of the people who brought more physical strength to the table. However, that is not to say he did not do well with the social game. He did do well because he did whatever he could not to step on anyone’s toes. Ethan represents the mantra that “nice guys can finish first.” It’s rare to see in Survivor, but Ethan is the exception that proves the rule. Ethan won because he was a nice guy who was strong and everyone liked him. He also won in the most decisive vote to this point, the first 5-2 vote, after two consecutive 4-3 finishes in Borneo and Outback.

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MARQUESAS

Winner: Vecepia Towery

I will go on record right now and say flat out that Vecepia is my least favorite winner of all. In my opinion, Marquesas was a great season with a horrible ending. The Final Two was horrible, and the winner came literally out of nowhere. I’m still bitter to this day that Kathy lost, and if you have read my stuff at all before (especially the All-Stars columns) you know that Kathy is my favorite player of all time. However, that is not to say that Vecepia didn’t play the game very well. She did because she won. I don’t like her. She was boring and she wore her religion on her sleeve while she stabbed people in the back, but she played well enough to win, and that does say a lot in this game. Vecepia mastered the under-the-radar style type of playing, and was really the first person using that strategy who won. She came in the back door, she flew beneath the radar, and she did her dirty work where no one could see her. She, just like Richard and Tina, viewed the island as a chessboard and the other people as her pawns. She discarded the people she didn’t need, and used the ones she did. That is why she won.

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THAILAND

Winner: Brian Heidik

For the first four winners, I hope you noticed that I tried to divide up the physical and mental sides of the game, and said “This person dominated this side.” That was all with this guy in mind. Brian was the first person to win who dominated in the challenges AND mastered the social politics of the game. Brian made an alliance with almost every single person on his original tribe, especially Helen, Ted, and Clay, knowing that in the end, he would only be able to honor one. He voted people out without sympathy and did what he felt needed to be done in order to advance himself. One thing that I also remember about Brian that I liked was that he went on a challenge spurt right at the end of the game, which shows that he deliberately hid his physical abilities until he really, truly needed them so that he could do as much backstabbing as he wanted without ever being vulnerable himself. You could definitely tell the entire time that he was a used car salesman, because he was very suave and very slick. Jeff Probst put it best at the reunion show: He was always in control even though he never actually took control.

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AMAZON

Winner: Jenna Morasca

Jenna’s victory surprised a lot of people on many levels. First, she acted like a spoiled child for much of the show. She took off her clothes for chocolate and peanut butter, which did not make her popular with a lot of parents. She did not do much, if not any, work at camp. Then, after all that, she won in the most decisive vote ever (at this point) in a 6-1 landslide over the person who was stronger physically and contributed the most to camp life. So what did Jenna do to win? I think there are two main things that contributed to Jenna’s victory: 1) She won 5 out of 8 individual challenges, even more than her more physical opponent, and Colby in Australia was the only person before her to win more than that; 2) She was pointed enough to let the Jury know that. Matt was not respected at all by the Jury, and he did a horrible job answering questions. Jenna was pointed enough to say that she wasn’t the strongest or the smartest, but she was determined to succeed, and when she needed to save her butt at challenges right at the end, she pulled through and did just that. This season’s finale demonstrated very powerfully the power of the Jury and the importance of responding to them in a positive way that they will like and respect. Jenna may have been childish, spoiled, and cliquish, but she was strong enough to win several Immunity Challenges when she needed to and smart enough to respond well to the Jury’s line of questioning.

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PEARL ISLANDS

Winner: Sandra Diaz-Twine

I already told you that Vecepia is my least favorite winner. Well, contrast that, and you have Sandra. Out of all ten seasons, Sandra is my favorite winner of them all. She was so entertaining to watch, and her approach to the game was perfect, as well as classic: “As long as it ain’t me.” Sandra did not care who was going home as long as her torch was not the one being snuffed. She dumped the bucket of fish and let the tribe blame it on Christa. She was sassy and sarcastic. My favorite thing of all is her act of sneaking through the bushes to eavesdrop on conversations. She proved once again that you do not necessarily have to be the strongest person to win. You just need to be smart enough to understand social politics and the basic structure of the game: Get them before they get you.

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ALL-STARS

Winner: Amber Brkich

Or should I say Amber Mariano? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Before All-Stars even began, a lot of people groaned when they saw Amber on the list for two reasons: 1) She was not even close to what you might call “memorable,” and 2) Everyone had a bad feeling she’d fly under the radar and win while all the power players killed each other. It turns out they were right. Amber won the All-Star edition of the show because she used Boston Rob as a smokescreen and let him do all the dirty work. It WAS smart, you can’t deny that. And worked, so what are we to say? She was doing the exact same things Rob was doing, it just wasn’t so obvious because she was hiding right behind Rob’s arrogance. This season demonstrated more than any other the concept that if the Jury does not like you, you are not going to win the game. It does not matter how well you played, if you play in a way that the Jury does not respect or like, you are not going to win. Amber allowed Rob to do all the open work, and then she sat pretty in the Final Two and basically won by default. Kind of a crappy way to win, but you know what? In this game, it doesn’t matter too much. A victory is a victory.

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VANUATU

Winner: Chris Daugherty

In a season dominated by females, the male rose to the top and claimed victory for the first time since Thailand. The funniest thing of all is that Chris could have easily been the first person voted out because he did one of the things that last week I said usually caused someone to be voted out: he badly screwed up the first challenge and sent his tribe to Tribal Council. But he demonstrated the right attitude in the first episode when he said that the game was “outwit, outlast, and outplay….not outbalance.” He helped pull together an age-based male alliance, saved his butt, and voted out all the young guys. Then, at the merge, when the men were completely outnumbered by the female alliance, Chris, the last person on their hit list, waited patiently and bided his time while he waited for the inevitable crack. Once he found it through Twila he used it, slipped into it, and rode it all the way to the end. Like many winners before him, he was ruthless, betraying close friends like Julie and Eliza just so that he could get to the end. Then, he was savvy enough to apologize to them in the final Tribal Council and butter them up enough so that they would forgive him.

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PALAU

Winner: Tom Westman

Tom’s entire game was the exception that proved the rule. 99.9% of the time, if you rise up and take a leadership position early on in the game, you will pay for it eventually. Either your own tribe will get fed up with it and vote you out because of it (this season’s first boot, Jolanda, would be a prime example, one of many) or the other tribe will get wind of it and vote you out first in a merge situation (Pearl Islands’ Andrew Savage). Tom, on the other hand, took control of Koror from day one. Even though he didn’t want a leadership role, he took it, and it was very open. (Brian in Thailand did have control, but it was not as open as Tom’s control was, so that’s where the difference is). He then proceeded to break record after record. He led his tribe to victory after victory, annihilating the other tribe completely, something that had never been done before in that style. I BELIEVE (it would have to be double-checked) that he broke Colby’s record with respect to the number of individual Immunities he won. He became the oldest winner of the game ever, and he did it in a very decisive 6-1 vote, the third of the series’ history. Sandra is my favorite winner of all time, and I’d have to call Tom the runner-up. He was definitely a very well-deserving winner.

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No matter who you are, whether you are likeable or loveable, if you win this game, you deserve it. The object of this game is not to be the nicest person. The object of the game is to be the last person standing at the end. As you can see, there are many different routes that people can take to get there, which is why Survivor is still fresh and interesting and popular after ten seasons. There are no rules to how you must play this game, but there are ten models to follow.

There are a couple of common denominators I was able to draw that future players of this game would do well to keep in mind before they went out to play:

1) YOU NEED TO BE RUTHLESS. The majority of the winners understood that this is just a game. There are friendships that form, but in the end, you can’t bring the friendship into it. If you’re soft, you will not win. You need to be a little cold, and you need to be a little selfish. Just don’t go overboard like Boston Rob, or you risk turning the entire Jury off to you, and then you definitely won’t win. Richard, Tina, Vecepia, Brian, Sandra, and Chris were the winners who understood this concept the best and demonstrated it in their games. That’s six people, more than half. Sandra’s words of wisdom form the attitude YOU should have if you’re ever lucky enough to play this game: “As long as it ain’t me.” Get the other players before they can get you. Do what you must.

2) RESPECT THE JURY. If you are lucky enough to make it to the Final Two, then you need to understand that the Jury is your ticket to victory. You need them to win. Under NO circumstances should you EVER blow off a Jury member’s question. Before the vote, while they are on your tribe, do your best to get to know them personally. Try and feel them out so that might have a clue on how to respond to their questions on the Jury. Know them well enough so that you have a fairly good idea of what they want to hear. If you need to suck up to them, suck up to them, but don’t back down. Step up and be proud of the way you played, and make sure you get the point across that you got there because you played better than they did, but also don’t be arrogant. Find the balance between pride and deference, and you will find that you will probably get some votes.

As I said, there is no tried and true method for winning this game, because everyone used different methods. Just make sure you understand that, above anything else, this is a social game. Get to know people, but don’t be afraid to cut them loose if you need to. Respect the power of the Jury, and keep them in mind as you send them over there and respond to their questions in the Final Two. You don’t need to be the strongest or the smartest person to win: you just need to understand the game and you need to understand people. Therein is the key to victory.

“See” you next week!