Survivor: One World – Ranking the Final 10 Survivors (or, You’re Safe… Trust Me!)

For those of you joining the ride for the first time, briefly, here’s how this series of articles works. Using just the episodes themselves and other authentic web-posted material (including Reality News Online’s own exit interviews with dismissed players), I prognosticate each competitor’s chances for success in this game and rank them accordingly.

Now that the merge have come and gone, the focus of these rankings has shifted toward making the endgame, and then winning it all. One thing that does not change: NO SPOILERS!!

For the second week in a row, the Insider clips have been nearly useless, as far as these rankings are concerned. There were twenty clips (including a “Secret Scene” and two “Ponderosa” entries), with fully half about the reward challenge, the reward itself, or a certain numerically-named soft drink. Add to that the uninformative Ponderosa clips, Jay’s retelling of Tarzan’s attempts at breaking up the wall for firewood which added nothing new to the tale, and three clips about how hard the conditions are (which I totally believe, but provided nothing I’d use here)… the results are that maybe one-quarter of the Insider clips were pertinent.

I so dearly miss the days when Tribal Council Voting comments were part of the Insider clips! These days, I wonder why players even bother saying anything to the camera as they vote, since none of the comments are ever heard outside of the editing room.

At the reward challenge, not everyone was shown, but did you notice that several of the players (minimally, Kim, Kat, Sabrina, Alicia, and Leif) crossed their arms across their chest as they went down the slide? This was the manner Probst instructed them in the first episode, when no one jumped that way and Kourtney broke her wrist.

That’s enough chatter – let’s get to the rankings!

Tikiano (Black Buffs)

In a conversation held at the reward, Kim and Sabrina established that they wanted only girls to be competing at the end, and that Chelsea is their third wheel. I’m buying that for now, and therefore, these three top my rankings.

1: Kim (was 1st)

To answer the question I posed in my introduction… of course Kim is still number one, and would be even if she didn’t hold an idol. Kim had an impressive week!

Although Kim did her best to keep her two major options open, the time finally came when she felt she had to declare her true loyalties. As I had surmised back at merge time, a mere six days was not enough to overturn years of gender bonding, and the all-girls alliance came out on top.

I believe staying with the women was Kim’s main plan all along, as she would have a better chance at winning the late-game immunities against Alicia or Christina than the big boys. Kim merely feigned loyalty to the Salani alliance to insure she could gain the upper hand in the game. Well played!

To get to that point, Kim played Troy like a cheap, bewhiskered, vintage Steinway. When she told Troy how Mike feared that Troy was going to win, Troy became irate, and despite an earlier, more rational conversation with Jay to the contrary, Troy willingly supported the vote-out of another male. Mike admitted in his exit interview with us, “…she knew how to play him (Troy). [Troy] and I didn’t work well together …she knew we wouldn’t talk about that [plan].” Smart.

Kim also played Mike. In his “Secret Scene,” Mike said, “Kim is so level-headed. Things will be fine; we have a plan.” Alas, it was not the same plan! SO smart!

Kim was also clever at the reward. While everyone else was fully enamored with the food, Kim was able to call Sabrina over and freely talk strategy a mere ten metres away from her upcoming victims! Smarter!

But in what might be her smartest move to date, Kim cut off what threatened to become a massive spilling of ugly truths between Mike and Jay, by jumping in and authoritatively proffering Christina as the de facto voting target. It shut down the Jay-Mike conversation completely. An M.V.P. moment, that!

On the down side, at Tribal Council, Kim rather over-explained that some people might have multiple levels of alliances, and that some folks may not really be as protected as they think. It’s never good to explain to your upcoming victims that their position is tenuous.

But the bottom line is that pretty much every twist, every flip, every change in the game has seemed to work to Kim’s benefit. I wonder if she was thinking at this point, “I‘ve seen this game on TV… isn’t it supposed to be harder than this?”

2: Sabrina (was 5th)

Sabrina was also playing a smart game. In one of her three Insider clips, Sabrina mused about being in the final three and revealed that before, “I never wanted to sit beside Kim. She's America's Sweetheart out here.” Sabrina added, “I was looking around yesterday at who are my sure votes on the jury. It was a little more than I thought.” I’m not sure whom she thought was solidly in her camp, but Sabrina was in a good position in the primary alliance, and she was correct to be plotting a path right to the end.

3: Chelsea (was 3rd)

Chelsea made two major errors in this episode.

The first was discussing alliance-insider business with Jay while Alicia and Christina sat right there. Kim called the move “asinine.” To make it worse, when Jay wondered if voting out Mike meant he was next, Chelsea’s reply of “That’s not necessarily true” was a terrible response to an alleged ally, a job of lying, and her second big error.