Why Clarence Lost

Clarence managed to make it to the merge, but he was then voted out without making it to the jury. This was pretty much the way a number of people picked it even before the show began. Why? Because it fits in so nicely with the way Survivor contestants ought to vote. Let’s take our usual look back at my article, What African Survivors Should Have Learned and see just how well people followed along. This week’s article is really a look at how poorly Clarence did and how well everybody else followed along.

The primary thing a Survivor contestant must do is to scheme and plot. Lex has been doing this quite well and has so far managed to get people to vote with him even though they don’t like him or the way he is telling them what to do. That may change, but for now it meant the end of Clarence’s stay. Clarence really has tried to scheme, but he just isn’t any good at it. For one thing, nobody trusts him. That makes it rather difficult to team up.

Because he was doing so poorly at his scheming, he probably did it a bit too much, which didn’t help his credibility problems. It might not have mattered anyway, but maybe if he had just stuck with a couple of people, he might have had a chance.

We’re going to skip the third rule for now and move on to number four, which says people shouldn’t backstab until they absolutely need to. Clarence certainly didn’t have to worry about this, but did the others on Boran need to stab him in the back yet? Does this give the original Samburu folks a chance to get together and stage a coup? Well, they are still one person short, meaning they’d need to convince somebody on original Boran to join them, but it does give them more of a chance. Still, if they had kept Clarence around, he could have won immunity when they wanted to get rid of him (remember Kelly on the first series?) and he was also the biggest risk to join with the old Samburu tribe (though they probably would have been down to three if Clarence hadn’t been booted this time). So it was probably a good idea for his own team to give him the heave-ho when they did.

The fifth item on the list is to pretend to be nice. I don’t think Clarence needed to pretend – he seems to actually be a nice guy. Not a trustworthy guy, but nice, I guess.

Sixth we have the admonition not to form emotional bonds. I don’t think that was ever an issue here with Clarence. Seventh we have the advice that providing food wins allies and you should not be lazy. It looks like the next installment of this article will have to include a further piece of advice about food: Don’t hog it. Clarence helped provide for the tribe through his muscles in the reward challenges. Indeed, that’s pretty much the only reason he was kept around. But he blew his position by eating the can of beans without permission early on and then double-dipping into the cherries as well. Throughout the game, we saw him talk about food more than any other player. He obsessed about it. And it affected the others’ opinion of him – negatively.

Let’s go back to the third item, which is the order in which people should be voted off. As noted in the article, after the merge, “it’s time to vote off the strong who are not part of your alliance.” Clarence was not part of any alliance (though he may have thought he was), and he was certainly strong in a physical sense. Lex is also strong, as I noted, “’Strong’ also means those who can organize others.” But people have not managed to side against him yet. Maybe they’ll figure it out, maybe not, but that will be an issue for a future article. For now, it was obvious to all that Clarence was a threat to win immunity challenges, so he had to go.

Perhaps being able to form an alliance would have saved Clarence. After all, even if a person is strong, if he’s helping you stick around you probably wouldn’t vote him off (at least until he’s unnecessary). But Clarence blew his chance of being in a solid alliance when he showed almost immediately that he could not be trusted. Yes, he blew a chance at immunity by his game of rockhead/paper/scissors, but I suspect he felt he would lose anyway and just wanted a 50/50 chance. Even if he had won this time, he would have been the next to go anyway – unless he kept on winning until the end of the game, which isn’t terribly likely. So really, that isn’t why he lost. He was too strong to keep around, and too untrustworthy to be in an alliance. That is why Clarence lost.

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