Survivor: Palau – Why Stephenie Lost

By all rights, Stephenie should have been a goner the moment she came over from Ulong as the final member of that now-extinct tribe. But she also had an alliance with three of the Koror members. Somehow, she split the difference – not progressing to the Final Four, but making it a couple weeks longer than might have been expected. Why did Stephenie make it as long as she did? More importantly, why did Stephenie lose?

There is a way to answer these questions, as we do every week. Let’s look back at Stephenie’s actions in comparison to What Palau Survivors Should Have Learned to see what she did right and where she went wrong.

Of course by now you know that the most important rule is to scheme and plot. Stephenie seemed to understand this, though there was precious little scheming going on at her old Ulong camp. Still, what little there was, she did. She may have even been the only one on Ulong to tell a lie when she swore up and down to Bobby Jon that she had not cast the vote against him.

Even before Ulong or Koror existed, Stephenie was part of a four-person group who promised to watch out for each other and try to go all the way to the end. As luck would have it, the other three ended up on Koror, but they seemed willing to welcome her back at first.

Indeed, Stephenie made it past the first “merged” vote in large part because of that alliance. Once she had made it beyond the first vote, she had good reason to think she’d make it further.

Unfortunately, then Tom/Ian/Katie’s other alliance started pulling back on them. Stephenie did not fit into Gregg’s plan, so he wanted her gone. Stephenie was not able to successfully counter the move, in part because I doubt she understood why it was happening (kudos to Gregg for covering up his ulterior motives).

Stephenie made it past her second merged Tribal Council pretty much on force of will alone – she had a lot, Janu had none remaining. Afterwards, her alliance tried to reassure her that she was still a part of it, but they were less than convincing. Oddly, Stephenie chose to try to get the women together – I say “oddly” because Katie was far less convincing in her lies than Tom.

It might seem like the all-female alliance might have worked had it not been for Caryn. But I tend to think it was doomed from the start due to the Jenn-Gregg relationship/alliance. Stephenie would have been better served to try to figure out why the Tom/Katie/Ian alliance had turned on her, and then use that to her advantage. If she had dug around some more, she might have discovered Gregg’s true reason and used that to cement her place in the foursome against Gregg.

Then again, Tom knew that he could be targeted as a threat and didn’t seem inclined to do anything strategic about it! Instead of worrying that the various threats might target each other, why not form an alliance of threats? If Ian, Tom, and Stephenie had stuck together, and pulled in somebody temporary until it got down to the end, they could have faced each other on a more level playing field, which seems to be the kind of people they are. Instead, they all seem focused on finding a weak link to face, but that only means they will likely be picked off instead.

So it boils down to this: Stephenie did not do a good enough job of reading the situation and taking the proper angle on convincing the right people. However, even if she had it’s unclear if she would have succeeded.

The second rule says not to scheme and plot too much, not to backstab too early, and not to let your alliances be known. Stephenie didn’t have any problems here, though I would argue that her prior alliance of four did backstab too early.

Third we have the rule encouraging people to pretend to be nice. I don’t think Stephenie needed to pretend – she seems to just be a genuinely nice person. Because of her demeanor, he was welcomed into Koror with open, friendly arms (though some of that was simply acting on Koror’s part, I’m sure). Stephenie’s departure had nothing to do with personality issues.