Survivor: Samoa – Why Russell Lost

I usually save the “winning” column for last, but this season I did Why Natalie Won first because, frankly, it was easier to explain. This might seem odd – if Natalie won and Russell lost, then shouldn’t they be somewhat flip sides of each other? Well… not really. In this case, it may well be that Russell lost a lot more than Natalie won – that is, the jurors were more voting against him than for her. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. After all, that is the question: Why did Russell lose?

We will answer that question through our usual means, by going through What Samoan Survivors Should Have Learned to see where Russell went wrong and compare it to what he did right. In addition, I have received massive amounts of reader mail on this topic (I’m sorry, I just can’t respond to all of it!) and I will be incorporating some of those thoughts here (I’m also sorry that I can’t adequately give credit – there is simply too much and too many people with overlapping ideas to keep track of every individual e-mailer). So let’s get to it!

We all know where we begin – with the first rule, about the importance of plotting and scheming. Obviously, Russell knew this too, because he made it not only the focus of his game plan, but almost his entire game plan. I don’t feel I really need to go into much detail here because everybody knows Russell was the best strategist on his season – heck, even Jeff Probst blogged about it!

Here is where the “however” hits, though. Note the part near the end of this rule where it says, “it should be noted that the best schemer does not always win. While this is the most important rule, it is not the only one.” And this is where our journey really begins.

I’m surprised I didn’t hear from a lot of viewers who thought Russell had totally violated the second rule, against scheming and plotting too much. But really, that should not have shocked me, because RealityNewsOnline has the most astute readers on the web! The fact is that Russell did not scheme and plot too much. He played the game hard – harder than anybody else this season and maybe harder than anybody ever. But he didn’t overdo it because what he did worked.

For example, he made multiple Day 1 alliances. Yet even as he knocked out supposed ally after supposed ally, the ones he kept continued to believe he was loyal to them. Heck, Mick told me that even after the whole show was over.

This reminds me of an epic con that I’ve heard about. I don’t know if it was ever done or just talked about, but here is how it works: You find a bunch of people who bet horseracing. You give each of them a different prediction for the trifecta (or whatever the biggest bet is called, based on the order of finish of a number of horses). After the race, you ignore the ones to whom you gave wrong predictions. For the ones to whom you gave correct ones, you give them each another set of predictions. You keep doing this until you’ve whittled down the numbers to just a few. By this point, you’ve got those few believing that you have the awesome ability to predict the outcome of horse races! Then you bring in the monetary aspect for yourself and get them to give you money – that’s where the con part comes in, of course.

What you’ve actually been doing is just culling out all the people who wouldn’t believe you anymore and stringing along those who would until you can fleece them. That’s precisely what Russell did. Marisa, Betsy, Ben, and Ashley couldn’t complain to their tribemates about how Russell betrayed them because they weren’t there anymore. When they were no longer of any use to Russell, he dropped them. But Jaison, Mick, and Natalie (and later Shambo) continued to believe they were the chosen ones because they were in the group he was stringing along until he didn’t need them anymore – as Shambo and Jaison eventually found out.

The whole point of this rather long discussion is that Russell generally did not scheme and plot too much because he did a good enough job with it that he was never caught by those who were still in the game. Even amongst those on the jury, only Jaison really held a grudge because of this situation.

That does lead to one of two points where Russell could have improved here. Even though he didn’t fail, he should have actually broken this rule and told Jaison that he was being voted off. I know the rule says it’s better to risk not telling them, but after such a long time of being together, in this case he should have given Jaison a heads-up just before Tribal Council.

The other place where Russell went wrong here was in the section of the rule that notes, “if any alliances do get out into the open, do not let it be known that you are the decision-maker.” Russell wanted credit for all of his blindsides and strategic eliminations. So even when all of the finalists had voted out all of the jurors, those jurors still blamed Russell more because of his braggadocio over being the big chief strategist. It’s a difficult line to walk, but it seems pretty clear that he went over it.

In terms of the third rule, we can look back a few paragraphs to the discussion about the way he kept all of those multiple potential allies around and see how it gave Russell a large amount of flexibility, in accordance with the third rule. Even after the merge, he continued to keep his options open, such as when he made a fake alliance with John and then a false promise to Brett near the very end.

Indeed, even within his Foa Foa four, he knew only three of them (or maybe even two) could make it to the very end. He didn’t apparently decide on his final three partners until he got down to that point – again, keeping his options open while convincing each of the other three that they were definitely going to the end with him.