Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Jenny Lost

The other way in which Jenny should have been more flexible was that, like Rebecca just before her, she missed the part of this rule that says, “you can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” Jenny believed that her five-person alliance would hold together, even as she was helping to tear it apart by joining in the voting out of Rebecca. As mentioned earlier, she needed to see the danger signs earlier and do something about it.

The fourth rule says not to let emotions control you. I don’t think this was an issue for Jenny, other than as I’m about to discuss in the fifth rule. That one tells contestants to pretend to be nice and keep controversial beliefs to yourself. Jenny made some enemies early on in the form of Cristina and Brad. While this didn’t directly lead to her downfall, I do think they helped mask the overall alliance picture for her. That is, if she and Brad had gotten along better, she might have seen how dangerous the original-Raro foursome might become. Instead, I think she was all too happy to get rid of Brad. So in that way, she had issues with both the fourth and fifth rules, but they were mostly tangential.

Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. When the original Raros chose to vote out Jenny, it wasn’t because she would be a threat in individual challenges after the merge. Nor do I think, as she indicated to me in our interview, that they all suddenly decided she was weaker in tribal challenges and therefore would be a threat to them winning one if no merge arrived.

Instead, Jenny was a threat because she had flat-out told Adam she wanted to vote out Candice. If the tribes merged, she was the most likely to flip to the other side because, despite not being tight with Becky and Yul, she might have eventually seen the writing on the wall and realized she was no longer in her supposed alliance’s plans.

The seventh rule says not to be lazy and that providing food wins allies. Jenny didn’t do anything wrong here, but I do think Jonathan did some things right. He wasn’t satisfied with his position as an original Raro, but worked extra-hard to make sure he proved his worth.

That brings us to the eighth rule, which discusses whether or not Jenny’s tribemates should have voted her out. At this point, I think the answer is a resounding yes – for four out of five of them. The original Raros appear to be solid. Jonathan may be the least solid of all of them, but I don’t think he was in a position to do anything different, because he was the likeliest one to go instead of Jenny! Nate, of course, was the one who didn’t benefit by Jenny leaving, but he was also the one who didn’t vote against her. I think he realizes now that if there is no merge, he’s screwed.

But Jenny got screwed first, and we’ve laid out the reasons why. She did not think ahead far enough to realize the likely outcome of the mutiny – that the original Raro tribe would be back together again and cause former allies to become expendable. And when she did think ahead, she shared those thoughts with the wrong person, Adam. The double-vote was supposed to catch the Survivors unaware and unprepared. But she had telegraphed her desires in a way that allowed the original Raros to know ahead of time who they wanted to vote off next. That is why Jenny lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent Survivor: Cook Islands articles here on RealityNewsOnline:

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