Survivor: Vanuatu – Why Leann Lost

Were you too busy eating turkey and talking to relatives Thursday night to see Survivor? If so, click over to David’s recap to catch up on everything you missed! Then you can continue reading here.

Leann’s final words after she was voted out were that she felt like the world’s biggest idiot. There is some truth to that and whether or not she deserves a Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment is now under debate by the overseers of the huge Survivor mistakes wing. However, for right now we are interested in seeing what she did to make her feel that way, how the game completely flipped for her, and, of course, why Leann lost.

Whether a person leaves thinking they were smart or thinking quite the opposite, we still analyze the situation the same way – by looking back at What Vanuatu Survivors Should Have Learned to see if we can dig through all their actions and find out where they made their wrong turns. Leann had a number of things going her way, but there were some serious errors as well.

The first rule is to scheme and plot. Leann often seemed to be in the background of this, allowing others to do the plotting for her. However, she made a number of very good moves even if she wasn’t in the forefront.

Early in the game, Leann was targeted by the youth of Yasur – she was to be the first woman sent home. The elders targeted Eliza. Yes, it was the first battle of Leann vs. Eliza. But that battle never really materialized because Ami brought the two targets together and convinced them to vote out Dolly, who wouldn’t say which side she was planning to take. While it was Ami’s idea, Leann was smart enough to see the wisdom of it and she helped save herself. It also helped secure her place in an alliance with Ami, Scout, and Twila.

Indeed, that alliance seemed secure for quite a while. Leann was part of the tag-team (along with Ami) that told Rory he had no place in their alliance because he has a Y chromosome. Last week, she was a hold-out against the idea of voting off Eliza before Chad, still wanting to go all the way with the all-female alliance to the end.

However, she made some changes to that alliance. When Julie and Twila were reunited with them at the merge, Leann took a liking to Julie. Initially, it was strategy to bring Julie on the reward trip Leann had earned – and it was good strategy. But then she realized that she got along with Julie quite well and mentally replaced Scout in the final four with Julie. It was not a bad back-up plan, if it had been properly hidden.

But that’s where we start moving into the second rule. When Leann was dancing with Julie in camp and otherwise making it obvious that the two had become the best of friends, Scout started to wonder about her own place in the alliance. This started Scout thinking that perhaps she needed to do something to better her chances. If Leann had not made her new alliance with Julie so obvious, perhaps Scout would have been content to sit back and let the game play out, secure in the knowledge that she would be at least in the final four.

But Leann failed to keep her scheming secret. That wasn’t the only part of the second rule she blew – in fact, she messed up all three portions!

As already mentioned, Leann was against the idea of voting out Eliza just a few days prior. As Scout, Twila, and Julie agreed to get rid of her, Leann looked skeptical. When Ami returned from her reward trip with Eliza and the guys, Leann ran to Ami and shared her doubts. Between the two of them, they convinced Julie to switch back, which convinced Scout and Twila to not even try, which meant Chad was sent packing.

But suddenly, with one man still left to be booted, Leann had a brilliant idea – let’s vote out Eliza! Huh? Where did that come from? Well, wherever it was, it had two major problems with it: Scheming and plotting too much, and backstabbing before she actually needed to.

The fact is that Leann was in a solid alliance of at least three (herself, Ami, Julie) and possibly four (Twila) or five (Scout) if she had played her cards right. But she didn’t. She played them all wrong. She decided (seemingly out of nowhere, though one hopes there was some reasoning behind it) to take out Eliza because, apparently, she felt Chris deserved to stick around more than Eliza did. So in one fell swoop, she schemed and plotted too much – there was no reason for her to break up the all-female alliance at that point – and she stabbed Eliza in the back before it was necessary to do so.