Survivor: Fiji – Why Anthony Lost

Anthony was in trouble before the tribal switch-up. Afterwards, he was in big trouble and he knew it. Was there anything he could have done differently or was he a dead man walking? Why did Anthony lose?

It’s easy to say Anthony lost because he was the weakest of the he-man women-haters club known as new Ravu. But would that be right? Let’s go through What Fiji Survivors Should Have Learned to find out.

The first rule, as always, is to scheme and plot. I think Anthony understood that he had to do this, and indeed he told me in his interview with me that he had plots and plans for the future.

Unfortunately, as much as I liked Anthony, I just don’t think they were very good plans.

While we didn’t see much of his thought process on the show, Anthony indicated to me that his plans involved looking ahead to see who could get him to the merge. He believed Mookie was one of these people, and thus did not join in an alliance of the weak to get rid of him. I think this was a big mistake.

Anthony knew that he was not on Rocky’s good side. In fact, from what I heard from other former Ravuans, he was Rocky’s favorite target. Even Anthony couldn’t believe it when Rocky started complaining to him about Rita. And while it certainly made good sense to feed that fire and put Rita squarely in Rocky’s sights, it also made good sense to try to eliminate the strong on the tribe.

Let’s face it, eliminating the weaker contestants wasn’t helping. Anthony needed to be thinking about himself. If the tribes had stayed intact, who was going to be the next person voted off of Ravu after Rita? Anthony might have suspected it would be Michelle – after all, it would have continued the anti-woman trend – but he should have been more worried about himself. Besides, Michelle was one person he listed (along with Yau-Man and Earl) as somebody he wanted to go to the merge. Thus, he needed to look forward than the vote against Rita and figure out his best strategy. I do not believe that strategy involved voting out Rita and letting the strong guys – who pretty much picked on him – survive.

It might be said that throwing out Mookie wouldn’t have mattered, because Rocky would have still been around. But in fact, it could have made the new tribes completely different, with Rita instead of Mookie. And in any case, Anthony certainly had no way to know there was a switch-up coming. Maybe it’s Monday morning quarterbacking on my part, but I just don’t see how Mookie was going to help Anthony while he was paired with the rockhead. And considering Mookie went right along with the anti-Anthony vote, that seems to bear out my thoughts.

Moving on, the second rule tells players not to scheme and plot too much or backstab too soon. Obviously, that wasn’t a problem for Anthony, considering I just spent several paragraphs saying he didn’t scheme and plot enough or backstab in a timely fashion!

That brings us to the third rule, which tells players to be flexible. Anthony seemed to get a bit too locked-in to his own plan and thinking he needed Mookie to move forward in the game. He needed to look at the bigger picture and realize that getting rid of some of the muscleheads was necessary. If the others wouldn’t go for Rocky, as he indicated to me, then it had to be Mookie.

Fourth is not to let emotions control you, while fifth is to pretend to be nice. I don’t normally combine these two, but in this case it’s appropriate. Anthony certainly didn’t have a problem with either of these, as he did an admirable job of keeping his emotions in check and being nice and calm. Survivor is not normally a game where the loudmouths move forward, as Rocky is doing. In most cases, Anthony’s nonaggression stance would be the correct one to take. Unfortunately, he found himself in a weird situation.

Then again, I don’t know that fighting back would have really worked, even though Rocky claims it would have. After all, Dreamz fought back early on and they just ended up arguing into the night. So while Rocky says he thinks people should stand up for themselves, what he means are people should stand up for themselves as long as they’re not standing up to him. That made it a no-win situation for Anthony.

Another no-win was the sixth rule, which says not to be too much of a threat. You might initially wonder how the allegedly-weakest member of new Ravu could be a threat, but that actually answers the question, at least from the points of view of the other Ravuans. In a tribe full of alpha males (or alpha male wannabes), the least alpha will appear to be a threat because he might cause the tribe to lose upcoming challenges. In this mindset, it almost makes sense. Almost. Of course, the problem is that Rocky’s idiocy has probably caused more challenge losses (and will continue to do so) than Anthony’s relative lack of strength.

The seventh rule, which addresses laziness, was not an issue here. From what we’ve heard, Rocky is about the laziest guy there, while Anthony was tending to the necessary chores.

So we arrive at the eighth rule, which addresses what the other tribe members should do. Here, we are still at the phase of voting off the weak. However, new Ravu took this a bit too literally, going for the person they deemed as physically weakest. Watching the way Rocky has acted and the way his tribe has cringed at his behavior, I think they would have been much better off getting rid of him. He was not physically the weakest, but when it came to mental tasks and teamwork in challenges, Anthony had him beat by a mile. I guess we’ll see how Ravu does from here on out.

Right or wrong, Anthony was indeed targeted as the weakest link. But it didn’t have to be this way. Anthony needed to do some better planning and be more flexible earlier in the game – at the very least, one episode sooner! If he had done so, he could have broken up Rocky’s power base and maybe even gotten rid of Rocky himself, if he had started early enough. In any case, the tribal situation would certainly have been different.

Anthony had a plan, and he stuck to it. But in Survivor, a new plan can often be a better one. He chose not to align himself with the weak and target the strong. That led to him being perceived as the weak on a tribe full of strong. That is why Anthony 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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