Survivor: Pearl Islands – Why Andrew Lost

Well, we’re back down to just one column on why a person lost, and I’m happy for that. I was actually planning on doing columns on why each Outcast was voted back in, but we don’t exactly know that, so there’s little point in speculating too much. So presuming you’ve read our recap, we’ll just concentrate here on Andrew, the lawyer who was sent packing just before he would have reached the jury. As always, we’ll look back at What Pearl Island Survivors Should Have Learned to see where he went right, where he went wrong, and why he lost.

As always, the first – and most important – rule is to scheme and plot. Frankly, Andrew did a great job in this department. He pulled together an alliance of four or five (it’s never really been clear if Darrah was a solid member or an outlier) and held them together through thick and thin – mostly thin. He managed to lead his tribe without being targeted until the merge – something that is not often accomplished. He saw where there were people his alliance could target and focused in that direction. Were it not for the big twist, he would have been in an excellent position going into the merge. The four others with him would almost certainly never have turned on him, and if he could have picked off one Drake, they’d have been in it for the long run. But, of course, things have a way of changing quickly on Survivor. The best laid schemes of mice and men…

What about scheming and plotting too much? Andrew didn’t seem to have a problem with that. Nor was there an issue with backstabbing before he needed to – although one might suggest that he should have kept Ryan S. or Lill around rather than holding on to Osten or Darrah. (Indeed, as Professor Sadow noted in his Strategic Overview article, if Andrew had sent Osten packing earlier, Lill might not have harbored so much resentment and they might have been able to bring her back into the fold when she returned.) But that’s not really part of this particular discussion. However, the fact that he was in an alliance with Ryan, Tijuana, and Darrah was certainly no secret. While normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal at the merge, it was for the returning Lill. When she came back, she saw immediately that she was a fifth wheel. She knew that even if she joined with the Morgan Four, she could never get higher than fifth place – if that. Because his alliance was so obvious that he apparently couldn’t even argue against Lill when she pointed it out, she was already on a path to look for another solution.

The third rule is to pretend to be nice. While Andrew often seemed like a nice enough guy, we have heard from both Ryan S. and Lill in their interviews with RNO that he never really accepted them into the tribe. Ryan told us that he felt out of place, the rest of the tribe was superficial, the five of them (Andrew, Tijuana, Ryan O., Darrah, and Osten) had a tight social bond and wouldn’t let him in, etc. Lill said that Andrew seemed to “have it out” for Ryan. None of these are conducive to keeping fellow tribe members happy. (For the record, we will be asking Andrew his side of the story on this issue and others in our interview with him.) Mind you, Andrew might not really have worried too much about this because he certainly didn’t expect them to come back once they’d been voted off! But if what Ryan S. and Lill have said is correct, it started from the very beginning, not just when Andrew and his alliance were going to get rid of them. So he had no idea how long they might be around. All in all, it’s just not a good idea to treat somebody so poorly that you alienate them. You never know when you might need them to be on your side.

The fourth rule is to not let your emotions control you. Andrew was good at this for most of his time on Survivor. However, when they lost the challenge to the Outcasts and knew somebody would be coming back to haunt them, he lost his composure. Even his alliance-mate Tijuana saw that he was upset and worried that somebody might try to take away part of his leadership.

But had he just vented to those on his tribe at the time, that might have been okay. However, he couldn’t seem to hold back his anger when Lill returned. His talks with her when she returned were awkward, at best, and she saw right through his claims that he had told her they love her prior to booting her out, as if that made it all okay. No matter how hard he tried, it was obvious that he didn’t want her there, he didn’t feel she had the right to be there.