Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Jonathan Lost

But sometimes, a player’s emotions get out of hand, and that’s exactly what happened to Jonathan when it came to the work he was doing. He let them know his feelings, though perhaps not as much as he would have liked. This went against the fourth rule, which says not to let emotions control you. However, this was a relatively minor violation as far as it goes.

As Jonathan told me, he tried to play a rational game. He didn’t come to make friends. He wasn’t hanging around in the shelter flirting and spooning and making goo-goo eyes. And he wasn’t hampered in his decisions by emotional attachments.

Unfortunately for Jonathan, some of the others did let their emotions control them. People like Adam and Parvati could not simply see that they had been outplayed. Adam called him a “cancer” who didn’t deserve to be there. Parvati whined about how she felt sick. They both needed to be smacked and told to get over it! But that really doesn’t have anything to do with Jonathan’s actions, so we’ll move on.

The fifth rule tells players to pretend to be nice. Jonathan obviously had a few problems in this regard. He said what was on his mind a bit too much and came across as too in-your-face for some of the people there. When he was gone on Exile Island, his supposed allies realized that camp was a calmer place when he wasn’t around.

Jonathan has a big personality, and he needed to dial it back. As we’ve already discussed, it’s one thing to work hard, but another to complain that everybody else isn’t. And then there was the auction, where Jonathan got a ton of food and kept talking about it, even burping obnoxiously. That’s a sure way to turn people off, even if they believe they should keep a person around for strategic reasons.

Sixth is to not be too much of a threat. Compared to the likes of Ozzy, Adam, and Yul, Jonathan did not appear to be much of a challenge threat. However, he was a threat of a different type. As he told me, the Aitus “perceived me as a threat – rightly so – I was not just going to let them take me to the final five and say, ‘Thanks for the ride.’ I was going to do what it took to stay in the game.” After all, the Aitus had already been aligned with Jonathan once and gotten a knife in the back. It probably didn’t take much for them to start thinking about the possibility that it could happen again. At least they know where Adam and Parvati stand (or at least they think they do).

Jonathan obviously did well with the seventh rule, which says providing food wins allies and players should not be lazy. While it was not the only reason, one thing that kept Jonathan around on Raro after the mutiny was that he was feeding them. If he had just been sitting around all day, he might well have been sent packing before the merge. There were other, strategic, reasons to keep him, but his fishing definitely didn’t hurt his cause.

This brings us to the question of whether the tribe did the right thing in voting Jonathan off. Obviously, Adam and Parvati did! But what about the Aitus? I was pretty vocal in my recap about how I thought it was the wrong decision, and I still stand by that (though I know some people disagree). Jonathan was a known quantity for Yul. Because he was a rational, unemotional player, Yul could count on Jonathan to act in the way that benefited himself the most. Now, however, Yul is stuck with Adam and Parvati, two unpredictable, emotional players who are determined to stick around, no matter what it takes. While Jonathan might not have been able to rally the troops against Yul and Becky because of the opinions others had of him, Adam and Parvati might actually be able to pull it off. Plus, Jonathan would have been a great foil in the finals before the jury! And having a calmer camp with more pleasant people is overrated, if that truly did play into the reasons for voting him out.

Time will tell if Yul made the right decision, and even if it was the wrong one he might be able to rebound, but I definitely think it was a dangerous thing to do.

As we’ve seen, Jonathan did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong – often at the same time! However, while his behavior did leave something to be desired, I think it’s a minor issue overall. Adam and Parvati didn’t seem to think Jonathan was so bad when he was on their side – it was only after he turned against them that he suddenly because this horrible person they described. This tells me it wasn’t really his personality that turned them against him.

So what was it? Jonathan schemed and plotted – but he overplayed it. He quite simply schemed and plotted too much and backstabbed too soon. The mutiny set the stage for his ouster, but he was overdoing things long before then, as previous players have told us. Nobody had a good feeling about Jonathan as far as the game was concerned. I suspect everybody feared he would turn against them eventually, and he certainly would have. But part of the second rule describes the likely end result of overdoing it: “In the end, nobody will trust you and they’ll turn on you.” That is exactly what happened here, and that is why Jonathan lost.

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

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

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