Survivor: Samoa – Why Erik Lost

I think Erik may have been the most surprising non-health-related exit we’ve had this season. Heck, from what we saw and what he described to me when I interviewed him, everything changed in just a few minutes, so it was kind of a surprise to everybody! What happened to turn the plans in such a completely different direction? Why did Erik lose?

We’re at the merge now, so of course our discussion will be modified to look at the new and different issues that change in the game has brought to us. But we still answer our questions by looking back at What Samoan Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s find out what happened to Erik!

It’s clear to me that Erik understood the first rule and thus the importance of scheming and plotting. He was making plans, he had what he thought was a solid alliance, and he had a good teammate (Russell S.) apparently from the beginning. He was even smart enough to know that he didn’t want to fight with an ally when John proposed ousting Monica, and thus was willing to go along with that plan. I really cannot fault him here.

What about the second rule, which warns against scheming and plotting too much or backstabbing too soon? I would say there was an impression that he was doing this, which definitely contributed to his downfall. But let’s look at the facts.

Erik was initially against the plan to oust Monica. He wanted to go after Jaison instead. But once his ally proposed it, he told me, “I’m thinking I’m not going to go against that.” He continued with this explanation of his thought process: “John was a key component of the guy alliance, so unless he’s making a huge mistake, I’m going to support that. I had his back on it. It should have been easy – it should have been the guys voting the same way, and John swore he was tight with Russell and Jaison. So you could see they were all ready to vote Monica.”

Thus, it was John who was backstabbing earlier than perhaps was necessary and John who may have been scheming and plotting a bit too much. But then Erik went to spread the word and, well, again, allow me to let his own words describe it: “They gave false information. I was going along with John’s plan. Next thing you know, it goes from that to Erik’s the one that’s devious and plotting and scheming and all this stuff happens within five minutes. It was like the Chicago fire! I’m vilified – I went to a guy who was the poison of the group in five minutes.”

It’s not clear to me if people purposely passed along false information implicating Erik as the purveyor of this new plan or if they just assumed it because he was the one passing it along and he had been calling (or attempting to call) many of the shots previously. But either way, other members of the Galu alliance got the impression that Erik was scheming and plotting too much.

Ironically, that impression came about because Erik was being flexible! He didn’t think turning on Monica at this point was the best move – he wanted to vote out Jaison. But because he didn’t want to cause a ruckus within his own suballiance, he showed flexibility and went along with the plan. D’oh!

Erik also did well with the fourth rule, as he didn’t allow his emotions to interfere with his game play. His moves were based on strategic considerations right up to the point he was voted out.

However, he didn’t do quite as good a job with the fifth rule, which warns that you need to pretend to be nice. If anything, Erik was going the other way, pretending to be nastier than he normally would be in order to demoralize the Foa Foans. He told me, “We were very tough on them, and I especially was tough on them, but my Russell and I wanted to make them appear as if they were the worst team in Survivor history and beat them in every challenge. We wanted to be tough on them.” I think this plus his natural character combined to make some of his cohorts a bit leery of him. If he had been playing the super-nice guy from the beginning, it would have been significantly more difficult to vilify him. But since he already had part of a villain type character going, it was that much easier to turn the tide against him.

The sixth rule talks about not being too much of a threat. Erik was an obvious physical threat whose strength helped push Galu to the majority position they’re in now. But what was as asset during tribal competitions can be viewed as a threat in individual ones.

More importantly in this case, though, he was made out to be a threat to alliance unity. The women on his tribe certainly didn’t want him turning on Monica, and neither did Dave.

So that brings us to the seventh rule and the question of whether the rest of the tribe made the right decision. Obviously, the four Foa Foans did – because any vote going against somebody from Galu was the right decision for them! As for Erik’s supposed Galu allies, well, I have my doubts. I think if the guys plus Shambo had stuck together, they would have had a good chance and riding to the final five. But Dave might have been smart to abandon this idea, as he was looking to, at best, a fourth-place finish behind Erik, Shambo, and John, all of whom seemed tighter with each other than with him.

It does make some sense for the Galu alliance, as a whole, to keep Monica around, as she is most definitely less of a threat than Erik. But what about John? I suspect he was put into a position where the anti-Erik vote was presented to him as a done deal with just minutes to go before Tribal Council, and he wisely went along with it. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to correct them about whose idea the anti-Monica vote actually was! And alerting Erik would have done no good either. So overall, I’m just going to have to shrug my shoulders and say, “Maybe they made the right decision, maybe not.”

But as to Erik himself, he actually did most things correctly. He made early, strong alliances. He stuck by those allies and supported them as he expected them to support him. He found the immunity idol and was properly saving it and not flashing it around to everybody he met.

On the downside, he was a threat and did present a personality that made it easy for people to believe he was working against them and only for his own good. That left him a bit vulnerable to the false charge that he was scheming and plotting too much, too soon.

Unfortunately, on Survivor, sometimes it’s not just what actually happened, but the appearance of what happened that matters. Whether through malice or accident, Erik was tagged as the traitor, the manipulator, the backstabber, the schemer – and his own alliance punished him for a crime in which he was complicit, but was certainly not the mastermind. That is why Erik lost.

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