Survivor: Thailand - Why Erin Lost

To be completely honest, we are going to have a bit of a difficult time figuring out why Erin lost. It's not like we were given many (any) hints. Hell, most of the time I kind of forgot she was even there! But we'll do our duty, look back at What Thai Survivors Should Have Learned, and see what we can dig up about why Erin lost.

When trying to figure out a mystery, it's always best to start at the beginning. In this case, that beginning would be that she should have schemed and plotted. Hmmm. Well, did she? Unfortunately, this, too, is part of the mystery. We do know that she at least had been telling Robb what he wanted to hear earlier (like when she dissed Shii Ann to him, and apparently told him she'd be voting against Shii Ann when she really wasn't). She was in the core Sook Jai group who got rid of "troublemakers" Jed, Stephanie, Robb, and eventually Shii Ann. So she must have been doing something right. Beyond that, though, she obviously didn't do it enough. Perhaps when they got down to the final four of their tribe, they felt that they didn't really want to plot against one another - or perhaps that's how she felt. She said that she had no clue this was coming, yet the other three obviously did because they voted as a unit. So somewhere along the line, she failed at scheming and plotting.

On the flip side, at least we can say that it does not appear she schemed and plotted too much. So we have that one answered, anyway.

She also did okay in the area of pretending to be nice - at least once Shii Ann was gone. Actually, even when Shii Ann was there, whatever she said or did appeared to be behind Shii Ann's back enough that Shii Ann singled out Penny rather than her. But either way, it does not seem to have had any effect on this particular vote. Nor does the fourth rule about not letting emotions control you. In fact, we saw so little of Erin I'm not even sure she has emotions. OK, a bit of an exaggeration there, but the fact remains that this was a non-issue.

Another non-issue was the one about providing food and not being lazy. We have not seen any evidence to indicate that she was anything other than a good worker who did her share of the chores.

So, this brings us to the point of looking at whether her tribemates voted off the right person. But even this is a bit murky because we don't know when the merge will be (heck, we don't even know if a merge will be, though I rather doubt we'll go the entire time without one). If they have to presume that they will continue to compete as a tribe, then they need to aim at the weakest link. It sure isn't Ken or Jake. That leaves Penny or Erin. It's hard to say which is stronger between the two of them. Frankly, I was expecting Penny to go because of indications that Ken, at least, did not trust her. But something obviously made them aim at Erin instead. I can't say it was wrong to get rid of her, but I can't say that it was particularly correct, either. We just don't have enough information.

My suspicion (and I emphasize that I'm only conjecturing here) is that Penny may have said something to Jake and/or Ken to indicate that she would be willing to vote against Erin. If this happened, it may have just made things easy enough for the two to decide to go against Erin. After all, none of them seemed to really want to fight it out at this point. So if Penny took the first step, that might have just made the following steps simple for Jake and Ken. Alternatively, the two men might have realized that Penny, being more manipulative, might be better able to infiltrate Chuay Gahn than Erin would. But again, it's all speculation. The only thing we can say for certain is that Erin definitely did not take the opportunity to scheme and plot enough to save herself. We cannot say why, or how much she tried. We can just say that whatever she did, it wasn't enough. And that is, I guess, why Erin lost.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline, and can be reached at rno@pobox.com.

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