Survivor: Fiji – Why Liliana Lost

Liliana was shocked – shocked – to be voted out. And if this had been the Ravu tribe, where they voted almost solely according to perceived challenge performance, Liliana almost certainly would have been safe and Cassandra would have been sent packing. But that’s not what happened. So why did Liliana lose?

It’s the first time we’ve had to look at a loss for somebody from the Moto tribe (there’s not much point in writing a “Why Gary Lost” article). But we’ll still do it the same way we’ve been doing it for Ravu all season – looking back at What Fiji Survivors Should Have Learned and using it as a blueprint.

The first rule says players need to scheme and plot. We didn’t get to see a lot of life around Moto camp, simply because of the way they kept winning challenges! But in this week’s episode, we saw a bit of Liliana interacting with her tribemates. Well, she interacted with a few of the male tribemates, anyway.

We didn’t see Liliana in any sort of strategy discussions other than her one talk with Cassandra. There, she told Cassandra she had to vote against her because she couldn’t turn against the others. In other words, she knew there was an alliance on the Moto tribe, and that she wasn’t necessarily a part of it.

Liliana did do a bit of scheming that we didn’t get to see (probably because it never played a role in anything). In her interview with me, she described how she told the other players she was a single mother of a three-year-old. She didn’t intend to use it early in the game, and didn’t, but she wanted to plant the seed for later in case she got down to the finals and could use it with the jury. It was a smart idea, but didn’t amount to anything because she didn’t have enough other smart ideas.

To her credit, Liliana was trying to get into the alliance. Unfortunately, she was going about it in a rather loud way. And what’s worse is that in some early Survivor Insider clips, we saw Liliana trying to campaign against Boo and Stacy. So she was going against the alliance while trying to join it. This certainly violates the second rule, which says not to scheme and plot too much, and to keep your scheming secret. As described above, she did neither.

The third rule tells players to be flexible. Unfortunately for Liliana, she never really had a chance to worry about this. She did think she was part of the main alliance, but she wasn’t. And there was really nothing she could have done to get into that alliance. The only thing she could have done differently here was to not piss off Lisi and Stacy – we’ll get to that later.

Fourth is to not allow emotions to control you. Liliana really did not like Lisi or Stacy, but she also knew she had to control that somewhat. She managed to keep it together with Lisi, but admitted to me, “Stacy and I didn’t get along at all. She irked me bad. I’m surprised they didn’t show any of that.” So while we didn’t see it, it seems obvious that Liliana had problems with this rule.

Which led directly into problems with the fifth, the rule that says players need to pretend to be nice. Apparently, Liliana just couldn’t manage it when it came to Stacy. This was not a good thing, given that Stacy was a member of the Moto core alliance.

Another problem was that Liliana herself knew she was a threat to the others. Alex said she was as strong as one of the guys. Liliana couldn’t wait for the individual challenges so she could “smash” the others. As Liliana told me, “When Lisi felt I was a threat, that was valid. I was stronger than a lot of the guys too.”

But that’s not the only kind of threat Liliana represented. Indeed, it probably wasn’t even the most important kind. To Lisi and Stacy, Liliana was a threat to replace them in the fivesome controlling the tribe. Liliana was certainly trying, and the other two women didn’t want to give her the chance to make it stick.

Liliana did fine with the seventh rule, which deals with providing food and not being lazy. If anything, it seems like Lisi and Stacy were the ones violating this one. But there is a reason this is the seventh rule while scheming and plotting is number one. Yes, it can be important. But it can go to waste if a player hasn’t done well in the other areas.

The eighth rule talks about what the tribe should do. This was the first time Moto had to vote somebody off, which means they were really in the position where a weak player should have gone. Several of the guys noted this, but Lisi and Stacy wouldn’t hear of it. They used their minority position in the core alliance to force the majority into a decision that ran somewhat contrary to common sense for the tribe as a whole.

However, the two women were not concerned with the tribe as a whole. They were concerned with their positions in the tribe and, more specifically, the main alliance. It appeared like Liliana was trying to get into that alliance, thus making her a danger to them.

While it can be beneficial to be strong, players still need to be part of the team. The women of the core alliance obviously felt Liliana was in it for herself, not them. Of course, players should be in it for themselves, but they have to hide that fact while the players are still on separate tribes competing against each other.

Lisi, Stacy, and Liliana were all angling for the same thing – an alliance with the strong guys. Lisi and Stacy were already there, and they didn’t want to open the door to the possibility that Liliana would join them or force them out. The longer she stayed, the better her chances were. So what better way to eliminate that possibility than by just booting her the first chance they got? Liliana was too much of a threat, and she failed to hide her true feelings for Stacy. At the same time, she was not covert enough in her attempts to join the alliance. All of these made her a big target, and the two women took aim and hit the mark. That is why Liliana lost.

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

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

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