Survivor: Palau – Why Jenn Lost

Jenn made it to the Final Four and had a shot to go even further. However, when it came to making fire, Ian definitely brought the heat. Of course, that’s not the full reason to explain Jenn leaving at that point. So what is? Why did Jenn lose?

We just saw the finale, so by now readers certainly know how we’re going to answer this question. Let’s look back at What Palau Survivors Should Have Learned to see what Jenn did right, where she went wrong, and what she could have done differently.

As always, the first rule is to scheme and plot. Until the very end, we didn’t really see Jenn doing much of that – even Tom noted as much in answering her question at final Tribal Council! However, she was indeed part of the alliance of five that dominated Survivor: Palau for so long. Was she the brains behind it? Probably not. But she made her alliances and stuck to them while riding in Gregg’s wake.

After Gregg was tossed, Jenn found herself somewhat alone. Still, she managed to avoid being the next one sent home when Caryn was instead targeted. And she came so close to making it to the Final Three. Jenn saw the possibility of a rift and used it to her advantage by urging Tom to talk to Ian with her standing there. Because of this maneuver, she forced a tie at Tribal Council.

Unfortunately for Jenn, the tiebreaker was something she had little chance of winning against Ian. So she needed more than the tie – she truly needed to get Katie on her side. Despite the problems Katie had with Ian, though, she still apparently saw him as her meal ticket to the Final Two, and she wasn’t going to give that up.

But earlier in the game, Jenn had the opportunity to break with the alliance of five and, along with Katie, form an all-female alliance. Both women agreed on The Early Show that they didn’t do it because first they didn’t want Stephenie to have a shot at winning, and then because they didn’t want Caryn to make it to the end either. Besides, they were counting on Ian as their ticket.

Their reasoning for getting rid of Stephenie is sound, but strategically the idea of tossing Caryn because “she sucked” is not exactly a homerun. In fact, I might even go so far as to say, “it sucked.” They had the opportunity to take the game away from the men, but they wouldn’t do it. After that point, they really had no chance at all.

Moving to the second rule, Jenn – like partner Gregg – failed to keep her scheming secret. She openly partnered with Gregg both romantically and as an alliance. When Gregg showed his hand at the reward challenge when he took Jenn and Katie, Jenn was automatically associated with his failure (as if she hadn’t been already). Because Gregg became the target, Jenn immediately became a game orphan while Tom, Ian, and Katie maintained their Final Three alliance – though with some bumps along the way. Jenn needed a way to break into the Ian/Katie bond, but in part because she had been so strongly paired with Gregg, she was not able to wedge her way in there.

The third rule says to pretend to be nice – Jenn had no problem here as far as we can tell, so let’s move on. The fourth says to not let emotions control you. As we’ve already discussed, she allowed her dislike of Caryn to color her strategic vision. She was so against the possibility of Caryn moving forward that she failed to recognize is was also her only real chance of making it to the end.

Once again, no problem with the fifth rule of not being too much of a threat. She was up against Tom and Ian, so she never had to worry about that in the slightest! Same with the sixth rule, from what we saw – no complaints about her being lazy.

What about the seventh rule, being flexible? As we heard from Tom in the reunion, Gregg believed that once you had a plan, you stuck with it. Jenn went along with that while Gregg was in the game, which ended up being to her detriment. It probably played a role in her not forming a women’s alliance, for example, and it meant she didn’t foresee the move that Tom, Ian, and Caryn would make against Gregg.

However, once Jenn found herself without a partner, she became more flexible. She saw which way the wind was blowing and joined the others in voting out Caryn (though, again, she probably would have been better off to get the women’s alliance together – but it didn’t look like Katie, or for that matter Caryn, was really cooperative in that). And when it was obviously going to be her time to go, she had a last-ditch effort to stick around, which almost worked.

Jenn made it to the Final Four and came as close to Final Three as could be without actually getting there. But she mostly staked her game life on Gregg and his plan. When that plan was overturned, she was left to drift in the wind. Jenn tried to make a comeback, and indeed did better than I would have expected, but it was just too little, too late. Jenn’s only real chance of winning Survivor was to form an alliance of women and get rid of the strong men. She failed at several opportunities, leaving her no real hope of winning. That is why Jenn lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other Survivor: Palau Finale articles:

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

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