Survivor: Fiji – Why Lisi Lost

Lisi was all happy and proud of herself when she was in the Moto camp as part of the ruling alliance. But then she went through bizarre mood swings starting as soon as the tribal switch-up was done and the Lisi stood alone. Did this lead directly to her ouster? Was it really this obvious? Why did Lisi lose?

Yes, it might seem a little redundant to ask these questions about a person who told her allies to vote her off, but unless you’re a contestant taken away for medical reasons, you get treated to a column about why you lost. As always, we will address the situation by looking back at What Fiji Survivors Should Have Learned and using it as a blueprint. So let’s get to it!

Lisi told me in my interview with her that she had barely seen any Survivor on TV. Yet she did manage to figure out that she had to scheme and plot to stay alive.

While Moto only had to (well, chose to) vote off one person, there were still some very clear divisions in the tribe. On the one hand, we had Alex, Edgardo, Boo, Lisi, and Stacy. On the other hand, we had the rest of the tribe. Lisi was in the controlling alliance and put her power there to good use, ensuring that Liliana would be the one who left because Lisi felt threatened by her.

Even once she got to Ravu, she was still in the main alliance. Alex, Edgardo, and Dreamz managed to pull the wool over the eyes of Rocky and Mookie, convincing them to vote out one of their own in Anthony. From that point on, original Moto would be able to control Ravu. So they booted Rocky next, and then they didn’t even need all of original Moto – just the three from the core group. Once again, Lisi was right there in the thick of it. She wasn’t the leader or the planner, but she was a solid part of the alliance.

Lisi even managed to mostly follow the second rule by not scheming and plotting too much. Then again, that may be because she wasn’t the one doing most of the plotting, but rather following along in it. She didn’t do much with the “keep your scheming secret” part of the rule, because it was obvious to one and all who was “in” and who was “out” on original Moto. But since they only needed to vote the one time and the majority seemed pretty solid, it didn’t end up mattering.

The third rule tells players to be flexible. As we saw from the way Lisi cracked up when things changed, flexibility was not really her strong suit. In her Early Show interview, Lisi said she was fine when she was coasting, but she wanted to go when things went downhill. Not exactly a flexible attitude there. If she actually knew anything about Survivor, she would have realized that, as this rule notes, “producers will throw in more twists and turns,” and, “Players have to be ready for anything.” Lisi was ready for nothing.

This was, in large part, because Lisi was completely controlled by her emotions and made no attempt to hide it. When she wasn’t picked to be on a tribe during the switch-up, she threw a little tantrum. Then she got better. Then she threw another tantrum later. Then she got better. Etc. Lisi was a roller coaster ride, and I can only imagine her tribemates screaming, “I want to get off!” Or, more appropriately, “I want to get Lisi off – the island!”

Lisi didn’t help herself any by violating the fifth rule, which says she should have pretended to be nice. This stems back to her being controlled by her emotions, but some of the things she said. Some of it was behind people’s backs, but she also obviously displayed a fair amount to their faces. Dreamz and Cassandra certainly took their fair share of abuse, for example, and Liliana said, in her interview with me, that she certainly saw that side of Lisi.

It was this attitude that made Dreamz her mortal enemy. He had been nursing a grudge against her for… well, about as long as the game had gone on. So when he saw the opportunity to get rid of her, he pounced on it.

While Lisi now claims her last-minute change of heart saying she wanted to stay was nothing more than creating drama for the TV cameras, I don’t buy it. I think her roller coaster emotions came back to ground level and she realized that she should try to stick around. Perhaps if Dreamz didn’t have it out for her, she might have been able to convince her old Moto tribemates to target the lone remaining Ravu, Mookie (yes, I know he has the immunity idol, but if they gave him no reason to suspect he needed to use it, it wouldn’t have mattered). But Lisi’s previous behavior towards Dreamz made that a virtual impossibility.

The sixth rule tells players not to be too much of a threat. Lisi certainly was no challenge threat – according to her, she didn’t care if they won or lost (though she then whined when they lost and called her tribemates “losers”). So if she had made it to the merge, nobody would have had to worry about her in individual challenges.