Why Kim J. Lost

When I saw that less than 5% of RealityNewsOnline readers picked Kim J. to win Survivor tonight, I figured I was on pretty solid ground to start “Why Kim J. Lost” early. You guys are a pretty astute bunch, after all. After she won the first immunity challenge of the night, I was still pretty confident. I knew the second would probably be one of endurance and there was no way she would win that one, right? Wrong. Uh oh. So then I was thinking that I might have to scrap the work I put into this article – I was beginning to get worried and vowed never to do that again. Luckily, we were all correct. She didn’t win against Ethan. She pulled a Colby and brought in the nice guy rather than the villain. I still had to do plenty of modification here, but at least I didn’t have to throw it all away. So now it’s time to take a look back at What African Survivors Should Have Learned and compare it to how Kim played the game.

Well, maybe saying she “played the game” is overstating things. Kim didn’t so much “play” as just kind of float along while things happened around her – at least until the finale. Indeed, as we look through the different rules, we will see more of this.

Take the first rule, scheming and plotting. Did Kim scheme or plot? Not really. Sure, she joined an alliance – she’s no idiot, after all. But whenever the opportunity came to plot some sort of path to victory, she always -- always -- took the route that didn’t involve actual scheming. The first time she actually tried to do something was last episode, when Teresa was about to be voted off and she joined with T-bird to talk to Lex about getting Tom off instead. But then she voted with the Boran Boys Club anyway.

Obviously, we can throw out the second part, which is scheming and plotting too much. And also the rule against backstabbing until you need to. Hell, this woman couldn’t even find a knife, let alone plunge it into anybody’s back. Her version of backstabbing too soon is apparently any time before the final two. We saw that when she discussed why she voted out Tom – he had been doing too much scheming at the end. Jeez, woman, that’s what the game is about! Did you just expect him to sit back and let things happen however they happened? No, he tried to take the bull by the horns, but Kim thought that was the wrong way to play.

She did follow the rule about pretending to be nice. Several times we saw her being nice to somebody’s face and then talking about them behind their backs. Hell, we didn’t find out how she really felt about Tom until the final Tribal Council. Of course, as usual, this didn’t actually lead to any sort of strategy, but at least she wasn’t outwardly nasty or anything throughout the game.

Same with the rule against forming emotional bonds. She became friendly with Kelly, Teresa, and others. Yet she had no problem voting ‘em off whatsoever. After all, that’s what the alliance said to do. You must do what the alliance says. At least that’s what she apparently thought. Now at the very end she did think more with her emotions than her brain in bringing along Ethan. But I’m not sure it made a difference.

As far as not being lazy, well, she wasn’t. But she wasn’t strong, either. There is no rule about not losing the contests for your team because, well, it’s not like it’s something you can do anything about. It’s not strategy, just physical ability. Had there been such a rule, she would have failed, several times over. She was lucky to make it to the merge – lucky that Diane was in such bad shape, lucky that Jessie was in bad shape as well, and then lucky for the twist that brought easy target Silas over. Once she made it to the merge, there was no incentive for voting off a weak person.

Indeed, that brings us to the strategy of voting. I would normally discuss here how she supported or went against the proper vote order, but since she never appeared to actually make a decision herself, there is little point in talking about it. As noted above, her team did vote in the proper order – getting rid of the weakest links first. She made it to the merge when the strong and those on the wrong side of the alliance were targeted. Then she just sailed on in. It was frequently repeated in the final Tribal Council that you don’t get to the final two by luck. I disagree. She rode in on the Boran Boys’ alliance’s coattails. She did win two challenges, but while both were deserved, you have to wonder how Lex would have done if he weren’t sick the entire night before. Don’t tell me there’s no luck involved.

Hell, even her statements before the second-to-last immunity challenge indicate that she knew damned well that she was a fourth wheel. She didn’t do something about it beforehand, though. It got to the final three and she still believed she would lose to either one. Perhaps if she’d thought ahead a bit, she could have placed herself in a better position.

Mind you, she said on the post-finale reunion that she believes she would have lost against either one, and that Lex was not the villain he was portrayed to be because most of what he said was said privately. She decided ahead of time that she would lose, and therefore picked the person she wanted to win. Should she have considered that maybe she had a better chance against Lex? Could she have beaten him? Maybe not. But that is all the more reason to have done something that could move her into a better position earlier.

Kim did not think ahead. I half wonder if she kept believing she was lucky to still be there and therefore that caused her to play it safe all along. She made it to the final two by luck early on, by riding coattails later, and then by winning two immunity challenges in a row. But because she hadn’t planned ahead, #2 was as high as she could get. That is why Kim J. lost.

Even though Survivor: Africa is over, you can still order Survivor III, the Diary, by Mark Burnett

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