Survivor: All-Stars – Why Tina Lost

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later – previous winners being targeted because they were previous winners. It happened sooner to Tina Wesson, winner of Survivor: The Australian Outback, who didn’t have a single vote cast against her in her first go-round. This time, it only took four.

While the question of why Tina lost may seem to have an obvious answer, sometimes there is more hidden as we dig deeper into what happened. So, we will begin the trek that we will make 16 more times this season as we look back at What All-Star Survivors Definitely Should Have Learned to see why Tina lost.

The first rule, as it has been since the days when Richard Hatch first walked around a beach in his birthday suit, is to scheme and plot. Tina found herself in a situation where scheming and plotting was immediately necessary. Unlike normal Survivors, this was not an even playing field. Almost everybody knew almost everybody else (Rupert being pretty much the lone exception – and some even knew enough about him to make some judgments) and several people had some definite opinions about those they were playing against before the game even began.

The sides were chosen quickly. Jerri felt that Tina still hates her – and she may be right. Jenna doesn’t want any previous winner to win again, period, end of story. So the two of them were natural allies. Ethan and Tina knew they had big targets on their backs, so they were natural allies. Rudy and Rupert both play the game honorably and stick to their word, so they were natural allies. Two against two against two. Something had to give. Jenna and Jerri made the first move to bring Rupert (and therefore Rudy) into the fold. Ethan tried as well, saying that Rupert should side with them because they are people of their word, like he is. But what we didn’t see anywhere was Tina. According to Tina’s CBS morning show interview, it wasn’t shown, but she did approach Rupert with an alliance, claiming that since she knew she wouldn’t win, she wanted him to win. Hmmm. Still, from what we know, she didn’t approach Rudy and she didn’t even try to talk to Jerri to assuage her feelings or try to form an Outback alliance. What did Tina do? From what we saw, not a whole heck of a lot.

Obviously, then, Tina didn’t have a problem with the second rule, against plotting and scheming too much. And as far as the third, she didn’t need to pretend to be nice because everybody already knows she’s nice. And the only controversial belief she had is that she thought a winner could win again – extremely controversial as far as Jenna was concerned.

The fourth rule, against letting emotion control you, is a bit up in the air. If Tina didn’t approach Jerri because she doesn’t like Jerri, then Tina failed her. Like or dislike, she should have tried to bring Jerri over to her side.

The real problem occurred with the fifth rule, against being too much of a threat. As far as Jenna is concerned, anybody who had won previously (so that means Tina, Ethan, Rich, and the other Jenna) have no business winning again. That makes them all immediate threats. The fact that they proved they could win shows how well they can play the game. That may have contributed to Rupert’s decision to side with the whiners and against the winners. After all, he has already said that he’s back to win money for his family, so he may figure he has a better chance against Jerri and Jenna than against Ethan and Tina.

The sixth rule didn’t come into play here. While some people e-mailed me to say that in the article on what Survivors should have learned and also in the RNO Roundtable prediction article we didn’t properly take into account the fact that the players were dumped with no food, no drinkable water, no fire, etc. and therefore “survival” techniques would be more important, the first vote showed that it’s still based on game play. Tina wasn’t voted out because she couldn’t start a fire or because she didn’t bring back food. It simply wasn’t an issue.

The seventh rule is to be flexible, but Tina didn’t really have much opportunity to do that, so we’ll give her a pass.

So, what about her tribemates – did they vote off the right person? Well, the idea is to vote off the weak in the beginning. In this case, nobody really showed themselves to be particularly weak. It didn’t seem that any one person was the cause of their immunity challenge loss, for example. With nobody standing out, and with the likelihood that there will be some sort of tribe shuffling fairly quickly, it made sense in the eyes of Jenna and Jerri (and apparently Rupert and Rudy) to get rid of a previous winner. And if they lose again, so what? Then it’s Ethan’s turn. Odds are rather against them losing three times before a tribe shuffle. While I hesitate to say it was the “right” decision, it at least wasn’t a horribly wrong one.

Everybody knew that the winners would have targets on their backs – the question was how those winners would handle it. We heard Tina privately say that she was playing for the competition, and then later we heard Jenna mention something similar about the winners in Tribal Council. If Tina said that publicly as well as privately, it might have helped swing votes against her. After all, Jenna and Rupert – at least – are playing for the money. Why keep somebody around who has admitted they’re just there for the game because they already won the money once?

Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what Rupert was thinking when he chose to side against Ethan and Tina. But we do know that Tina didn’t manage to scheme and plot well enough to get him on her side. She immediately found herself on the defensive and we didn’t really see her go on the offensive in an attempt to break up the anti-winners alliance. Combine this apparent lack of strong action with the fact that others saw her as too much of a threat, and you have the recipe for being voted out quickly. That is why Tina lost.

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

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