Survivor: Palau – Why Gregg Lost

Gregg had a plan. That plan was apparently to stick with his group of five as long as he could, and with his twosome right to the end. In the meantime, he needed to flip one of the opposing threesome. He did – if only temporarily. But then his plan was over, and so was his time on Survivor. Was the plan at fault, or did something else happen? Why did Gregg lose?

While Gregg was completely surprised, all will soon become clear to us. That is because we will use What Palau Survivors Should Have Learned as a mechanism for examining what Gregg did right and where he went oh so wrong.

The first rule, of course, is to scheme and plot. Gregg did this well – after all, he had his plan. For most of the game, Gregg didn’t really have to do much of anything because Koror kept winning. But he did become part of a five-person alliance that was supposed to last until the final five. He also made an alliance/love connection with Jenn for the final two.

But within a final five, two is the minority. So he had a plan. Gregg knew he needed to break up the threesome of Ian, Tom, and Katie. He certainly had to make sure that Stephenie didn’t join them and become a Final Four!

Gregg succeeded in the latter, getting rid of Stephenie last week. But then came the tough part of his plan – getting somebody to flip. And that’s where things started to break down. You see, this part of the plan wasn’t really the best idea. It relied on prying loose a member of an already-established threesome. It meant he had to convince somebody that he or she stood a better chance against a known couple than against one of the others in their alliance.

Luckily for Gregg, Katie was just the sort of person to fall for that. So he worked on her and got her over to his side.

Unluckily for Gregg, he didn’t foresee that Tom and Ian were smart enough to figure out his grand scheme and make a bold move to counteract it.

It comes down to this: Gregg was simply outschemed. I think he realized it, too, at the end. But he should have realized it sooner. He needed to find a better way to shore up his majority, but he ignored the possibilities – such as grabbing Stephenie or Caryn.

He also had problems when it came to the second rule. He didn’t scheme and plot too much, but he did fail to keep his scheming secret. Gregg did not learn from the Rotu 4 in Survivor: Marquesas. When it came to the reward challenge, he showed exactly who he was standing with and who he was against. He not only tipped his hand, he laid it out on the table for all to see.

But this wasn’t the first time Gregg had done that. He also violated the rule against coupling. Yes, it worked for Romber, but that was an exception, not the rule. Gregg joined up openly with Jenn as both a romantic couple and an alliance. This fact helped Ian and Tom to decide Gregg was the appropriate target. It should have set off warning lights for Katie as well, but, well, she’s Katie. And it’s not like Katie didn’t have Probst practically shoving it in her face. But this article isn’t about Katie, so I’ll drop it for now.

The third rule is to pretend to be nice. As Caryn noted, Gregg was nice to everybody, didn’t piss anybody off, and was a lock to win if he made it to the Final Two. Unfortunately for Gregg, he didn’t get that far.

Other than his relationship with Jenn, Gregg did fine in controlling his emotions. He made his decisions based on strategy, not on who he liked or didn’t like (again, other than Jenn).

But he hit a snag in the fifth rule, because Gregg was a threat. Koror was a tribe full of threats, actually. Gregg was planning on knocking out his two main threats, Tom and Ian. But they acted first, in large part because they saw the threat Gregg posed.

First of all, Gregg was really the only person who threatened their superiority at challenges. But beyond that, he threatened them with his strategy. Once Ian and Tom put together all the various pieces, it became apparent that Gregg’s plan was to vote them off. There is nothing in Survivor more threatening than that!

The sixth rule, against being lazy, didn’t come into play here. But the seventh did – because Gregg was not particularly flexible. He had “the plan” and refused to deviate from it. Stephenie interfered with “the plan,” so rather than adjust the plan and possibly make use of her, he made sure she was gone. By being stuck to his plan, he failed to see that perhaps he wasn’t making the best decisions. That failure led directly to his overthrow.

So did the other tribe members do the right thing in voting out Gregg? Hell yes! Tom, Ian, and Caryn had no other alternative – Gregg had to go, or they would. What about Katie? Well, she really didn’t have much choice. Ian and Tom backed her into a position where it was either vote out Gregg or have a one-in-three chance of going home herself. She was not willing to risk those odds, and I can’t say I blame her. Plus, there was another one-in-three chance that new alliancemate Jenn would have gone, leaving Katie in a weak position. So by rejoining with Ian and Tom (and now Caryn), Katie brought herself back into the majority and gave herself a chance to keep going.

Gregg seemed to be a strategic player, which is good. But he allowed other things to get in the way. He formed a relationship with Jenn, which can interfere with proper decision-making. And he assumed that he could flip somebody from the opposing threesome to his own, and that once flipped the person would stay flipped. Because he was so busy planning his own strategy, he never saw the opposing strategy coming. Gregg was a plotter and schemer, but he was outplotted, outschemed, and outlasted. That is why Gregg lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our Survivor: Palau Episode 12 recap:

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

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