There's Something About Kathy

Every season of Survivor has a character who breaks out from the other players and stays in the viewers’ minds, whether they win or not. For the fourth season, Kathy seems to be the fan favorite. Why? Why Kathy? Why not Vee, Neleh, or Paschal?

Could it be that Kathy was the underdog? And Americans like the underdog? Maybe, but it’s more than that. Could it be that the final four were so despicable that Kathy is the only nice one? Nope. That isn’t it. Could it be the chance that we wanted Kathy to pull a win out from her hat? Yes.

Or could she have been the most deserving to win of the final four? Yes and no. Depends. Everyone is entitled to have his/her beliefs regarding their favorite, and there is no right or wrong answer.

The fact is, Kathy basically did something that no other Survivor was able to do, and to this author’s view, do something that only Nicole from Big Brother 2 was able to do. She turn something so completely negative around to something positive.

When the show opened, it was a given that Kathy would be the first victim from Rotu. She was loud. She was abrasive. She got on everyone’s nerves. These were no-nos, and not the kind that were eating the contestants. It was almost as if she hadn’t read David Bloomberg’s article on what Survivor contestants need to know – or rather that she had read it and decided to do exactly the opposite. You don’t stand in a stream and whistle to your fellow castaways like they are children and you are their mother. You don’t make yourself an outcast by sleeping alone from the rest of the “love tribe.”

In fact, in a nutshell, no one has really played the game like Kathy. She was breaking all the rules for Survivor. What saved her was Rotu was kicking serious Maraamu butt in the challenges. Or maybe the General’s voodoo doll worked. By the time Rotu had to start cannibalizing its self, Johnny Pots and Pans placed Gabe’s head on the chopping block, and Kathy had, due to the twist, been moved to Maraamu.

In fact, the twist gave Kathy a chance she may not have had otherwise. The first Maaraamu to be evicted after the twist was a no-brainer: Sarah. She did the least amount of work, she was the most expendable. Kathy had a work ethic. So did Gina, Paschal, and Neleh. It only got iffy for Kathy when the next tribal council came around. Would the alliance of Pappy and Sweet Pea evict Gina or Kathy? Again, it looked like Kathy might have been leaving. But fortunately for Kathy, it turned out she had nine lives, at least where this game was concerned. Paschal and Neleh banded together and voted among Rotu lines, breaking hearts of most men in America when their favorite Survivor babe was banished.

I am not going to further discuss the mistakes Kathy made in the game. They came early and she overcame them. Despite those mistakes, Kathy was doing something right. What made everyone root for her?

I have one theory. Kathy and the Robfather seemed to get the most air time of all the contestants. Maybe because they were the most interesting, or at least that is what the viewers saw. Once Rob left, Kathy continued to get a lot of air time. She was interesting. Could it be that the other people weren’t? Now I admit that we only know what is shown about the players. Obviously, the longer a person plays, the more we, the viewers, knows him or her. It’s like that for any reality show. But I found a lot of the contestants, while having fascinating biographies on the CBS webpage, were edited as two-dimensional characters. That’s the nature of the game; if the show ran more often than an hour a week, for a 13-week season, we would get to know all the people better. It would hurt more when they were evicted, and we would feel the pain I am sure their families felt when they saw their own loved ones booted off.

So again, the question: Why Kathy? Why did she appeal to the viewers? What more could it be than the underdog quotient?

Let’s see. Kathy didn’t fit into the babe factor; she was a bit too old. Not that she isn’t a beautiful woman, but Survivor babes are women under 25, or 30 if you want to push it. So that wasn’t it. She could have fit into the “mom” role, and that might have had something to do with it. But could it be that people were rooting for Kathy because she was just awesome? Because she is the type of person you would love to have at your home for a dinner? Because she was real?

Maybe it goes back to high school. Kathy didn’t belong to a clique or, if you prefer, an alliance. If you look at the Rotu alliances, you would have the alliance of John, General, Tammy, and Zoe. Paschal and Neleh formed their own sub-alliance. Gabe was on the outskirts; he was there to enjoy the experience of the game which made him a lurker, and expendable once the game progressed to the point where people were actually playing. Kathy had no alliance. When she moved to Maraaumu with the switch, she went with two other Rotu but was still a loner. True, she bonded with Gina because they had things in common, and they both had a magnificent work ethic. But Kathy knew she wouldn’t get into that Paschal/Neleh alliance. And pretty much, Kathy was going to be voted off after Sarah and Gina if it came to that, and she knew it.

Which brings me to Kathy herself. She is a strong woman, physically and emotionally. If she was fragile, it was because the game made her that way. Rob knew this when he met her for pizza and to come up with a new tribe name. He knew the scuttlebutt back in the Rotu camp and knew she was not popular. He knew that once he, Sean, and Vee were gone, Kathy would be next in the Rotu cannibalization list, and tried to open her eyes to it. Maybe the way he did it was wrong. But Kathy had figured out all the angles, as she discussed strategy with her son. Maybe it was the beer that clouded her brain that day.

Or maybe, as I said earlier, she was the underdog, the horse with the longest odds to win. She was the player who turned the whole game upside down and proved that you can make it on Survivor without an alliance – or at least who we wanted to see prove that at the very end. The player who made all the mistakes, and in so doing, endeared herself to us.

Or maybe there is just something about Kathy that led us to fall in love with her, something that defies analysis. Kathy is Kathy. The tribe has spoken.

You can reach Susan at sschechter@earthlink.net.

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