Survivor: Vanuatu – Why Brady Lost

Brady appeared to come into Survivor: Vanuatu in a great position. He was a man among men – former armed forces, FBI agent, good-looking, nice guy. He had everything going for him. So how on Earth did he end up being booted so early? What happened to turn his world upside-down? Why did Brady lose?

How do we figure out why Brady lost? All of you regular readers already know the answer – we take a look back at What Vanuatu Survivors Should Have Learned to see what Brady did right and where he could have improved in order to stick around longer. And anybody who is not a longtime reader – well, now you know the same thing!

The first rule, of course, is to scheme and plot. As we’ve discussed in Why Brook Lost and Why John P. Lost, the younger guys on Lopevi were in trouble from the very first day. The elders banded together to get rid of the threatening young guys, and that was that. From what we’ve seen, it appears the younger guys didn’t really start to talk about who they would target until after they lost the first challenge. Indeed, in and Brook’s interview with us, he noted that he really “hadn’t figured Brady out” until Chris kept falling on the balance beam. It was only then that they started talking about aiming their votes a certain way.

But at that point, it was too late. They tried to convince Sarge to join them in voting out Chris, but Sarge already was aligned with Chris, and simply rallied the troops to get rid of Brook instead. To further compound problems, Brady didn’t even vote the same way as the other younger men, aiming at Rory instead!

Where Brady failed was in not using his ex-military connection with Sarge to form more than just a buddy. He needed to form an alliance partner, but by the time he realized that, it was too late. Sarge was hooked up with the elders and was not going to abandon them. Brady failed to follow the part of the rule that specifically says, “early on you should make use of whatever relationships present themselves – if you don’t, you might not have to worry about what happens later in the game because you won’t be around.”

Given all of this, it is fairly obvious that Brady didn’t scheme and plot too much. So we move on to the third rule, where we find he did a good job of pretending to be (or actually being) nice. Nothing to see there, so we go to Rule #4, which talks about not letting emotions control you.

Actually, there’s nothing to talk about with Brady there either! However, Brady did at least try to make use of Sarge’s emotions in trying to get the elders to vote out Rory instead. He pointed out that Sarge didn’t really get along with Rory. He went on food gathering trips with Sarge. He tried to push the buttons, but Sarge followed this rule – he is there to win, not make pals.

The fifth rule, however, finally brings us back to a discussion point for Brady: Don’t be too much of a threat. We’ve seen in this edition that the guys have been picking off the younger, more athletic men. While such a person is valuable in a mixed tribe situation, they are not as valuable in single-gender tribes. They did not show themselves to be particularly better at mental challenges, and their differences in physical challenges were not enough to make up for what might come down the road when the merge occurs and all challenges become individual. Plus, Brady is a nice guy and a good-looking guy, both of which could play well with the women after a merge or tribal swap.

There isn’t much Brady could really do about any of these things, but the fact remains that he was viewed as a huge threat by the older guys – a big enough threat to overcome any possible loyalty due to a shared history in the military with Sarge or the fact that he and Sarge got along well.