Survivor: Samoa – Why Betsy Lost

In the RealityNewsOnline pre-show roundtable prediction article for this season of Survivor, I predicted that Betsy might stand up to the wrong person and get sent out of the game because of it. Then she stood up to Russell and, well, I’m writing this column about her being out of the game. Was I really that good with this particular prediction or were there other reasons? Why did Betsy lose?

Betsy was the third person to leave from Survivor: Samoa, and indeed her Foa Foa tribe, but there is no point to write about Mike’s departure, so this is only the second column of the season. Yet looking ahead, the reasons may be eerily similar to the first column, Why Marisa Lost. Indeed, I believe I will be quoting liberally from that previous article as we go through What Samoan Survivors Should Have Learned to see what happened.

As usual, we begin with the first and most important rule, which addresses scheming and plotting. Unfortunately, Betsy didn’t play up to snuff in this regard. Despite the fact that she is a big fan and has been trying to get on the show for years now, when I asked her about her strategy in my interview with her, she didn’t talk about forming alliances or getting in good with other players. Instead, she said, “I was hoping to play strong and work hard around the camp … I just wanted to be a strong physical player.”

Oy.

How many times do we have to see the same thing happen on Survivor before players realize that simply helping out around camp is not generally going to keep you in the game?! Heck, even Mike fell prey to the same thinking – if he had not been pulled for medical reasons, I’m sure I’d be writing about him right now, as he told me, in my interview with him, “I wanted to kind of be the avuncular laid-back kind of older guy, and kind of take over the cooking responsibility and keep the fire going and have them kind of rely on me for those things and slide under the radar for the first few episodes at least and then start playing Russell’s game. But … everybody was kind of strategizing Day 1. I was kind of oblivious to everything the first day – I was keeping the fire going and looking around going, ‘Where is everybody?’” Apparently, the same was true for Betsy, as the two of them were seemingly each other’s only ally.

Still, Betsy did some things right. As I said with Marisa, Betsy gets some credit for “realizing how shady Russell was and trying to get her tribemates to rally to that same cause. The problem was that Russell had outschemed her.” Betsy told me, “When I was trying to talk to the girls and they didn’t say anything, I’m thinking, ‘What did Russell do to them? How did he get such control over these women?’ I couldn’t grasp it. I still don’t understand it! Well, allow me to explain. The “control” was that he approached each of them for secret alliances on Day 1. They believe they are safe – and indeed they are safe if they do what he’s telling them to do in these early goings. It was simply too soon for them to turn on him when there were easy targets available. And since Betsy hadn’t done much scheming of her own, she didn’t have any way to counter that. As I said last week, just replacing one name with another: “So [Betsy] was trying to undo what Russell had already done, which is a difficult task, especially that early in the game.”

I’m going to once again quote from “Why Marisa Lost” and just replace her name with Betsy’s for the second rule:

Where [Betsy] really messed up, though, was in the second rule. While [Betsy] was fine with the part that says not to scheme and plot too much, it also says to keep your scheming secret and not backstab before you need to. [Betsy] telling Russell that she was worried about him [and Betsy also adding specifically that she didn’t trust him] definitely fell into the category of not keeping her scheming secret.

Betsy had no issues with the third rule because, like Marisa, she really didn’t have time to be flexible. We could say she could have been flexible by pretending to still be aligned with Russell, but we already addressed that above.

Betsy does differ a bit from Betsy in the fourth rule, which says not to allow your emotions to control you. While Marisa telling Russell she was worried about him was an emotional response, I don’t think that was the case for Betsy. She did the same thing, but for slightly different reasons, so she doesn’t take a hit here.

She could, however, have done much better in terms of the fifth rule, which discusses pretending to be nice. When I asked her about why she told Russell she didn’t trust him, she responded, “Russell just makes your skin crawl. You just can’t even stand looking at him.” And that came across from her, adding more reason for Russell to want to be rid of her – plus, it probably also contributed to the others not wanting to go along with her. They may have figured Betsy just disliked Russell rather than listening to any valid reasons she had for wanting them to turn on him.

The sixth rule, which tells players not to be too much of a threat, takes us back to a repeat of Marisa’s performance again. Russell had a plan and Betsy threatened that plan by realizing what he was up to. Therefore, she had to go.

The seventh rule addresses how the other players should vote. In this case, they felt Betsy was the weakest at challenges – I’m not sure if they were right or not, but the perception was definitely there. Added to that was that Russell, their lord and master, wanted her gone. Rather than rock the boat, it made sense for them to get rid of her and keep their own positions safe.

As with Marisa before her, Betsy was the main cause of her own game demise – with Russell acting as the tool. She did not come in with a good strategic plan and Russell, who did, clearly outschemed her. Beyond that, Betsy opened her mouth about not trusting Russell when she should have known better, given that he had just ousted Marisa! Put these two main reasons together and that is why Betsy lost.

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