Survivor: Samoa – Why Liz Lost

Poor Liz – if she had made it past just one more Tribal Council, she would have made the merge and the game would have opened up to her with all sorts of new possibilities. But it didn’t happen. What could she have done differently to perhaps make it through? Why did Liz lose?

Liz kept hanging on by a thread, first when Ashley was ousted instead, and then when Russell S. was taken out for medical reasons. It looked like she just might make it this time as well, due to the way Jaison was acting. But no, it was Liz’s time to be voted out, just before the merge.

Since we skipped a week (no point in looking at why Russell S. lost – it was kind of obvious!), allow me to remind you that we answer these questions by looking back at What Samoan Survivors Should Have Learned to see what we can find out. So let’s get to it!

The first and most important rule is to scheme and plot. Liz didn’t exactly do a great job in that regard. For example, when RNO interviewed her and we asked about her strategy, she gave a lot of “I didn’t know” answers:

I just wanted to maintain flexibility. I didn’t know who to trust or align with. I didn’t feel any particular kinship based on first impressions before we started playing. I didn’t know who I could get close to. I wanted to listen more and talk less.

Under normal circumstances, it can be difficult to know whom you can trust after just a couple days (witness what happened to Kel and Mad Dog way back in Survivor 2, or Morgan and Brianna in Guatemala, if you can even remember these folks), but either you do it or you’re gone. Later in the game you can rework alliances according to what is necessary to stick around, but early on you should make use of whatever relationships present themselves – if you don’t, you might not have to worry about what happens later in the game because you won't be around.

Russell H. obviously holds a great deal of power in the tribe. Liz tried to challenge that power, but she did so in the wrong way, and too late. Just think how different this game would be right now if she, Marisa, and Betsy had joined together early – along with another player or two – to turn on Russell as a unit instead of each going after him individually and getting knocked out one by one. But that’s not what happened and by the time Liz stood up to him, she couldn’t muster enough allies to her side because she apparently had nobody aligned with her.

Given this situation, it’s pretty obvious that Liz didn’t scheme and plot too much, so we’ll go to the third rule and ask if she was properly flexible. Obviously, she thought she was, as that was the first part of her answer I quoted above. But what she was talking about didn’t work out very well for her. She wanted to be able to go with the flow, which is fine – as long as you’re not part of the flow that is, well, going! I know other players have used the “vote for anybody but me” strategy, and occasionally it can work, but it really isn’t a particularly good strategy, as Liz found out. There is no way to guarantee the vote won’t turn against you, especially when numbers dwindle like they have for Foa Foa – and especially when there is a strong strategist in the tribe.

Moving to the fourth and fifth rules, Liz had a problem here, as she couldn’t rein in her emotions. She seemed to understand that Russell would be threatened by a strong woman like herself, but she still went after him, questioning him about the idol and not stopping even when he became prickly. Certainly with the elements conspiring against them and challenge losses piling up, it couldn’t have been easy to follow the fifth rule, pretend to be nice, and keep her feelings inside, but that’s exactly what she needed to do.

Because of that, she became a threat to Russell, in direct contravention of the sixth rule. We saw it with Marisa. We saw it with Betsy. You threaten Russell, you leave. End of story. Liz either didn’t learn or didn’t understand that lesson – or she just couldn’t stop herself by that point.

No matter what the reason, Russell knew she had to leave. On top of the fact that Liz had specifically caught on to him, he also knew the merge was coming soon and he needed trustworthy people more than anything. Jaison might have been whining and showing signs of potentially giving up, but Russell believes he is trustworthy. Same with Mick. And he knows he has Natalie right where he wants her. Liz? Not so much. And that is more threatening than anything when heading into the merge, especially when you’re already down in numbers.

The seventh rule addresses whether the rest of the tribe made the right decision. I’d have to say yes. They are going into the merge as a fairly cohesive unit now, whereas Liz admitted to us here at RNO that she “might have been seriously tempted” to jump ship and play her “flexible” strategy at that point. The others couldn’t risk that possibility and Liz obviously didn’t hide it well enough.

So much of Survivor happens early in the game, before many players even realize what’s going on. Russell took control of Foa Foa at that point and began picking off the threats to his dominance. Liz needed to align with some of those who shared a similar mindset, but instead went along with the pack in getting rid of them. That left her in an incredibly vulnerable position, because she was next on the list. If she had made it to the merge, she could have enacted a decent strategy, but for her, that if never came.

Liz was a threat to Russell for two reasons. First, she showed that she didn’t trust him and wouldn’t follow him blindly. Second, he didn’t feel he could trust her when the merge came. Since she had nobody to protect her because she had no solid alliance apart from the tribe as a whole, she was a sitting duck. That is why Liz lost.

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