An "Insider" Look at Survivor: Vanuatu, Episode 8: Alas, Rory, We Hardly Knew Ye

I said last week that John was the wrong person to vote out, and I think I've been proven right. Survivor history (not to mention human nature) proves that people will stick with their original alliances. Just as Twila and Julie stuck with the women, so John would have. With the sides even, it would have been simple to convert Scout or Twila (or both), assuming they targeted the proper person. "Hey, Twila, who do you want us to vote out?"

Rory's Final Words: What surprised him is the amount of work it entails. You can't imagine the difficulties and how hard it is to play the game. It's physically grueling, emotionally battering. He learned that he can go way outside his boundaries. He's pushed himself WAY beyond anything he thought he would be able to do. He learned that his endurance and stamina are better than he thought. He learned his wife adds a lot to his faith, and he's grown a lot as a man. You have to work to get anything. He'll never forget Vanuatu. He is by far the biggest winner on Survivor, he may not have the million, but no one has enjoyed being on this land as much as he has. He just wishes he could have lasted a little longer.

Scout Dissects Rory: She has two minds about almost everyone she knows. She's tried to be a peacemaker at Yasur for Rory, she thinks she was very fundamental in saving him on the first vote. He's grown emotionally, he's developed skills he didn't know he had. She wishes he gave a little more once they came to Alinta, since he established the alliance with the other men. She doesn't see a relationship with them that equals an alliance, like she and Twila have a relationship. She's sharp! She doesn't see a definable relationship in that alliance. Just the energy she sees, she thinks it's time for Rory to go home. He's pushed and shoved for Ami to go home, and as a result, he's going to be taken out. She talked to him privately about getting rid of Eliza, and he was adamant that it has to be Ami. Scout just can't go there, so if not Ami, then who? When you look at camp, it has to be Rory, he's just the odd man out. She wishes he'd played along. She's been supportive of him, listening and helping him with his problems, she wishes he'd been willing to play the game a little more. Explains a lot, really.

Rory, the Day After: His experience is that nobody has enjoyed the experience more than him. Make a long story short, he enjoyed it. He probably needed to be knocked out soon, because while everyone else is complaining about food and being tired, he's at 110%. He could easily do another 20 days. Without having any extraordinary accomplishments, he would say that a day he enjoyed was to wake up, have coffee, sit on the beach where no one else is there and drink his coffee, then take a walk in the bushes just looking at plants and animals, come back, head out and do the same thing on the coral, see some sea snakes and octopi. To be able to do that in the course of three or four hours, being from Iowa it was a slice of heaven to him.

There were two points that he bottomed out. The first one was the day after Bubba was voted out and they went to the hog catching challenge. Jeff asked Lopevi what they thought about Bubba being gone, and Sarge, Chad, and Chris all said that they couldn't believe it wasn't Rory. Here he is in the ladies' camp, and all he wants is to go back to Lopevi where he has an alliance, and they dogged him out. He didn't exist. That completely isolated him on the island. That told him he had to shift into another gear. The second time was the day he had the conversation with Ami and Leann, where Ami basically told him that they were a female tribe and he would never be a part of the team no matter what he did. And he would be voted out the first chance they got. Ironic, isn't it, that he fought so hard to stay in Yasur, and he thought his saving grace was the merge…

He is extremely disappointed in the men. Chris and Chad and Sarge, and John, when they saw how Lisa was voted out, they should have seen it as an opportunity to go into the merge at five men vs. five women. And they're SO STUPID that they didn't take advantage of it {rant beginning} they voted John off, they put all their trust in two women they'd known for nine days, and they kicked someone off that they'd known for 20 days. In doing that, they automatically doomed every man in the island. And it didn't occur to a single one of them. Sarge is getting tired, Chris has been suffering physically since the beginning, and if his injuries continue to be as bad as they have been, he'll be lucky if he makes it out on his own power. Chad… Chad is an extremely smart man, and he would have thought that he would have seen it coming. Seeing the shock on their faces when they realized they were bamboozled by Julie and Twila? {disgusted} UGH.