Survivor: The Amazon - Why Rob Lost

This segues nicely into the fourth rule, which is to not let your emotions control you. He didn't like Roger, but that didn't force him into doing something he would be sorry for later. He had been verbally attacked by Jenna and Heidi, but when he saw that Christy's vote was unreliable, he had no problem approaching them with a new plan. Whether he liked a person or disliked a person did not really matter - he went with what he felt was the best gameplan to move him forward.

In the fifth rule, Rob did fairly well. We saw him working when he needed to - such as when Roger still thought he was in charge. On the other hand, we saw him lying around when the other members of his alliance were doing the same. It seemed that he molded his behavior to the circumstances, which worked out well. Generally, it has been assumed that workers would be better liked than lazy players. However, we have seen several times before when the lazier players took control because they didn't really want to work, and the workers were voted out (remember Hunter in the Marquesas). By doing what the rest of his alliance was doing, Rob avoided setting himself apart from them (not to mention he avoided leaving them alone for long periods of time when they could have plotted against him).

So, did Jenna do the right thing by voting off Rob instead of Matt? Looking at the final voting result and what the jury members said after, the answer is obviously a resounding "yes!" But if we step back to before the vote, did she know? It appears that she did, indeed. While we saw a storyline that led us to believe the others would dislike Rob for his backstabbing and might feel favorable to Matt as just the weird but kind of nice guy, Jenna said that she knew Rob would beat her. She said several times that she wanted to take real competition to the final two, which led us to believe she thought she could beat Rob easily. But she later said it was all a ploy and knew that the jury would favor her over Matt, but Rob over her. This was not a jury of vindictive people as we have seen in some previous games (such as Survivor: Marquesas). These players seemed to realize it was a game and needed to be played. If there are any doubts about that, we only need to look at Christy's vote for Jenna as support.

In the section about voting people off, I note, "After the stragglers are gone, you need to refocus on the strong. In this case, the strong are those who… threaten your chance in the end, either because they can win the immunity challenges or because they are popular with the future jury." Jenna saw this factor and knew Rob had to go.

Frankly, at that point I'm not sure there was anything Rob could have done differently. Maybe he could have joined with Butch and voted against Matt. That would have put Jenna into an untenable position of having to face two people who were likely popular with the jury. But would Butch have gone into such an alliance when he thought he had something going with Jenna? Who knows. Obviously, we can move further and further back in time and provide what-ifs, but the further back we go, the murkier it gets, especially in this series, where alliances seemed to change by the day!

Certainly, Rob could have won if he had stayed on the beam longer in the final immunity challenge. However, let us remember that Jenna is a model. While I don't know for certain about Jenna's background, it seems that most models would be trained to have poise and balance. They may have to be in uncomfortable positions while being photographed, for example. And they may have to stand in one place for a while. In other words, Jenna had a bit of an advantage in this particular challenge.

So then, we've been through this all. Why did Rob lose? He fell off the beam. He had played too well leading up to that point and therefore was a threat to Jenna in the end. And, most importantly, Jenna knew it. She pulled through when it mattered most and won the last two immunity challenges. She got rid of her popular opponents, one of whom was Rob. And while it might not be the most satisfying answer, that is why Rob lost.

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

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