Survivor: The Amazon - Why Ryan Lost

The time has come once again to take a good look at the person voted off each week from Survivor. We begin, as the spoilers said we would, with Ryan, the 23-year-old model/actor. As we have done in past years, we will take a look at how Ryan acted in comparison with my article, What Amazonian Survivors Should Have Learned. Let's take a look.

Some things change by the season, but the first rule is always to scheme and plot. Unlike what has happened in previous seasons to the first person booted out, Ryan actually did a fairly good job of this. He kept it mostly secret, got some agreements, and forged some bonds. He went down in a close vote, with Daniel and Matthew siding with him. Rob was apparently conflicted, and as I discussed at the end of the episode recap, he may have ended up siding with Roger's crew against Ryan because he didn't realize that Dave would vote against Daniel. If he thought there was going to be a tie and wanted to make sure he was on the right side, voting with Roger's group was the way to go. Ryan tried to convince him that Roger and the other older guys would pick off the youngsters one by one, but Rob apparently didn't buy it. So Ryan did scheme, but he just wasn't convincing enough.

He did well by the second rule of not scheming and plotting too much (okay, he only had three days!) and by keeping his scheming secret. They made a pact and then agreed not to even look at each other after that. Frankly, it won't help Ryan but it might later help somebody like Matthew if he wants to lie and claim his was not the third vote for Roger.

Third up is pretending to be nice. Well, we didn't really get a chance to see much of Ryan interacting with people in his tribe. I mean, he seemed like a nice enough guy and the comments we heard indicated that, but they also called him loud. I'd say this one didn't really come into play.

Same with the fourth rule, about not letting emotions control you. He seemed to stay pretty well under control. He could have snapped at Roger, but instead he plotted against him. It didn't work, but it was the right way to handle the situation.

Now we get to the real killer, though: Don't Be Lazy. Roger claimed that Ryan and Daniel didn't listen to instructions and getting work out of them was like pulling teeth. While we know how difficult it is to judge such things from the edited show we end up seeing, there did seem to be a general perception by people that Ryan was indeed one of the people working the least. His loudness didn't help matters, as he probably ended up drawing unwanted attention to himself. We never really found out why he wasn't working as hard, but it seems the worker bees came out ahead in this first battle (quite the opposite of, for example, Survivor: Marquesas).

Did the tribe overall vote out the proper person? That's hard to say, frankly. In previous games, which of course had mixtures of men and women, the right thing to do would be to vote out the weak one. But with a bunch of manly men, are any of them particularly week? Sure, Ryan had trouble on the balance beam, but Daniel took the blame for that - and it's not likely there will be another balancing challenge. Meanwhile, Rob and rocket scientist Dave couldn't do the puzzle. So there was plenty of blame to go around there.

What about the aspect of weakness that will cause divisions in the tribe and weaken group dynamics? Well, certainly a majority of the tribe felt that Ryan was doing just that. But they may also feel that way about Daniel. And Dave isn't exactly the glue holding the tribe together. The tribe is fracturing and it just so happens that a larger half broke off on Roger's side rather than Ryan's. So it wasn't the only correct decision, but it was one of several possible ones.

In general, for the first vote people are looking for something to latch onto. Often it's the person who walks around giving orders - as Butch actually noted. People get annoyed by that and band together against that person. But sometimes it's the one who is doing less than the others. People get annoyed at that as well. And in this case, four of them banded together using that as the reason. Or at least three banded together for that reason, and one (Rob) came along because it was the strategic thing to do. Ryan was perceived as lazy and immature. That is why Ryan lost.

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

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