Why John Lost

As John said in leaving, “Well, well, well…” The man who would be king instead finds himself the first member of the jury. He thought he’d take it all the way, but now just gets to sit and wait. What happened to his great plan? How’d his alliance fail to save him? Why did John lose? As always, let’s take a look back at What Marquesan Survivors Should Have Learned and see where John went wrong.

He certainly didn’t go wrong at number one. He schemed. He plotted. He schemed and plotted. He plotted and schemed. You get the idea. He knew from the get-go that he needed to have an alliance. And while he didn’t actually form one ‘til late into the game – pretty much because they didn’t go to Tribal Council ‘til then – it seemed to be fairly solid. He went along tribal lines, pulling together with the other three original Rotu who stayed on the tribe. They would take it all the way to the final four. Or so he thought.

Why didn’t they? Because he ripped apart rule #2. He schemed and plotted too much. He didn’t keep it secret. And he backstabbed before he needed to. Yes, he violated all three parts of this one. Often repeatedly. His open discussions of alliances with Rob were a huge mistake. Rob used them against John (and Zoe) in making Kathy realize what a precarious position she was in. After talking to Rob, he immediately planned to stab him in the back – even asking Zoe to throw a challenge so they could vote Rob out. Worse, he had told Rob that he planned to stab Kathy (and Paschal and Neleh) in the back. It was getting to the point that nobody wanted to walk in front of John! John should have picked one alliance, made whatever sub-agreements he needed to in order to keep people happy, and shut up about it. But no, he had to make sure everybody knew he was in charge and making all the decisions. That’s a sure way to get yourself booted, as he found out.

Another area where John failed was in pretending to be nice. Sure, he acted like he was all friendly with Sean, but Sean knew otherwise. John didn’t start talking politics or being mean, but nor was he able to convince his would-be victims that they were anything but, well, victims.

He did mostly succeed in keeping his emotions under control, except for one very important one: arrogance. Now maybe I’m stretching it a bit to call arrogance an emotion, but nevertheless that was one of the big things that did him in. He wore it like a badge, and everybody saw it and recognized it for what it was.

Finally, we look at providing food and not being lazy. John knew going into this that being a food provider would be certain to raise his position in the tribe. He tried to get a pig or some other wildlife, but never succeeded. Kathy took that role by getting some shellfish. Indeed, when he tried a couple times in the sea, he ended up getting wounded instead. He certainly wasn’t lazy, and his lack of good food production is not what got him the boot anyway. He tried, and it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been successful in providing a feast every night, I suspect.

What about the others, did they do the right thing? Absolutely. There is no doubt. They needed to vote off a strong player. John was strong physically, and, more importantly, he was a strong leader. Without him giving orders, the remaining Rotu Three might either be picked off or may form sub-alliances with some of the others. With John there, they would have stuck together. They cut off the head of the beast, and soon we will see if it just thrashes around ‘til it dies or if it manages to reincarnate itself somehow.

John thought he was the second coming of Rich Hatch. He had a plan to take the leadership role, put together an alliance, and cruise to the end. But he failed to understand two of the key parts of Hatch’s success: secrecy and allowing the others to think they were the leaders, or at least that they were equals. John was so arrogant he let his plans be known to one and all. He made sure everybody knew who was in charge. But he did so before he had the right to claim that role. That is why John lost.

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