Why Gabriel Lost

Well, well, well. It’s finally time to write up one of these articles for somebody from the Rotu tribe. I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen, or if their happy little band would just go right into the merge (which wouldn’t even really be a merge at that point). But John made sure that they wouldn’t be a happy camp anymore – and Gabriel was the sacrificial lamb.

As always, we’ll take a look at what happened to Gabe through the lens of my ”What Marquesan Survivors Should Have Learned” article. However, let’s face it – we’re going to find a number of things that Gabriel should have done differently if he wanted to win. The problem is that he didn’t really want to win. He wanted to “experience” it. Yeah, well, that’s great. But this column is about winning and losing, and when it comes down to it, he lost. Let’s find out why Gabriel lost.

The primary rule is to scheme and plot. Gabriel would have none of it. He wasn’t there to play. He wanted to make a nice little society. Jeez. I don’t know how things work in Gabriel’s world, but even in the real world people scheme and plot – though hopefully not to the extent they do in Survivor. “Naiveté” doesn’t even begin to describe innocent little Gabe. Needless to say, he failed miserably in this regard, because he wasn’t trying to win.

One area he succeeded in was not scheming and plotting too much. But even so, he had the same problem that Kelly had last season. He wasn’t stabbing anybody in the back, but it appeared he was getting too friendly with the ex-Maraamu, and that was enough to set off John. Appearances can be everything in this game.

Next is pretending to be nice. Well, okay, here’s another one where he succeeded – but only because he didn’t pretend. He really was nice to everybody. Too nice.

He failed in the next arena, though – he let his emotions control him. He had decided that he was there to have an experience, and that was that. Rather than thinking about the possible outcomes, he went with his heart. His heart told him to do things that ended up getting him voted off.

Finally, another area where he did well (OK, I guess there were a few) – working hard and providing food. Of course, Gabriel did it because that’s what you do on a commune; everybody has to look out for everybody else. In his perfect society, they work hard because they want to, not because it’s the right thing to do to keep you in the game. So, yes, he did it right, but for all the wrong reasons.

What about the others – did they do the right thing by voting him off? Well, they knew he wasn’t playing the game, which made him inherently more unpredictable. They couldn’t get him into a solid alliance, which is a problem when you’re trying to count votes ahead of time. While it’s still pre-merge, getting rid of him doesn’t hurt their strength, as they have plenty of others to step in. The majority original Rotu can still turn on the ex-Maraamu anytime they want (provided none of them jumps ship), and the ex-Maraamu were certainly correct to do anything to keep one of their own from getting the boot. So, yes, I’d say they made the right choice, though perhaps not one that was included in my article (because, of course, that assumes people are actually there to try to win).

In the end, Gabriel lost not because he failed to follow any one rule, but because he was playing with a different rulebook altogether. If you don’t play to win, you can’t expect to win. That is why Gabriel lost.

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