Survivor: Fiji – Why Cassandra Lost

Cassandra made it to the final three, but never had a chance of winning. Indeed, I was not surprised at all to find out she didn’t get any votes. But why did it happen this way? Why did she make it all the way to the end, but then not get the million? Why did Cassandra lose?

Sunday night was the finale, and now we have to figure out why things happened the way they did. We are doing so, of course, by using What Fiji Survivors Should Have Learned to investigate. How did Cassandra do?

What is the first and most important rule? If we were to judge from what we saw of Cassandra’s opening statement and answers to jury questions in the final Tribal Council, we might think it is most important to be nice to people, give them an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on. Alas, that’s not the case – not in this game.

Cassandra told me that she did make a better case than was shown on TV, but even then she didn’t describe scheming and plotting and alliance-making and the like. She told the jury that she was an underdog but then was able to help her tribe win a lot of challenges and even a few as an individual, and she deserved to be there. We did see that she couldn’t even answer Rocky’s question about how she manipulated people – because she didn’t.

Basically, Cassandra made an alliance on the first day. That alliance involved Earl and Dreamz and a couple others who were voted off. Then Earl brought in Yau-Man. Cassandra brought Stacy, but that was through a personal connection rather than scheming, by her own admission (though some of the jurors thought otherwise).

Cassandra wasn’t out there to play the kind of game we’d expect from somebody who made it that far. She told me, “I didn’t want to go out there and say anything and do anything and then go back to my real life. I wanted to play the game with integrity and believe in people all they way.” That sounds all well and good, but it’s not going to help you win a million dollars.

In many ways, Cassandra being in the final three with Earl was a repeat of last season, when Becky was with Yul at that point and everybody viewed her as nothing but a coattail-rider. Except that Becky had some arguments in her favor that showed she did more than that. I don’t think Cassandra does!

Moving on, it seems pretty obvious that Cassandra didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to the second rule, which says not to do too much of the things she wasn’t even doing – backstabbing, scheming, plotting, etc.

The third rule says players need to be flexible. But Cassandra wasn’t. In fact, the large-type-boldfaced portion of the rule says, “You cannot simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives!” This is exactly what Cassandra did. In this case, she was lucky – it did survive. But she was simply carried along with it and therefore could not explain to the jury why she did anything that made her deserving of a million dollars.

Fourth is to not let emotions control you in making decisions. It seems obvious that Cassandra did certainly play with her emotions on her sleeve and it likely affected her judgment. For example, when it came time to vote out Alex, one reason she balked at switching it to Yau-Man was that she didn’t want him to be upset. By that point, she would have had the numbers, so it wasn’t a game decision not to upset him – it was an emotional decision.

Cassandra probably would not have ended up with a better result if she had listened to Alex, but I’m using that example as indicative of her play throughout. She wanted to “believe in people” and be there for them. That’s a Dr. Phil show, not Survivor.

Obviously, Cassandra didn’t have any problem with the fifth rule, which says players should pretend to be nice. Cassandra didn’t have to pretend – she is nice, and that showed through.

Similarly, she had no problems with the sixth rule, which says not to be too much of a threat. Indeed, this is one of the reasons she made it to the final three – nobody was afraid of taking her. People didn’t want to face Earl the strategist or Yau-Man the underdog or Dreamz the formerly homeless guy. Nobody said, “Gosh, I don’t want to face Cassandra!” And with good reason. Pretty much no matter who faced her in the end was going to beat her easily.

And she wasn’t a challenge threat either. Despite what she told me she said at the final Tribal Council about her challenge performance, she was pretty much dead in the water lately. She practically gave up at one recent challenge. At the maze immunity challenge in the finale, she was wandering practically outside the boundaries and was never anywhere near the front. And she was the first one out of the final immunity challenge.

So nobody feared going up against Cassandra in challenges, and nobody feared going up against her at the final Tribal Council. It was a good combination for moving forward – though a bad one for winning.

The seventh rule played no role here, as Cassandra was not lazy. So that brings us to the jury phase portion. This appendix discusses the need to seed the jury with people who will vote for you and to make good jury arguments. Cassandra failed on both counts.

Yes, Cassandra did have a relationship with Stacy, but that was not enough to overcome Stacy’s admiration for Earl’s game play. And she was friends with Boo, but Boo voted based on strategy as well. Nobody in the jury automatically favored Cassandra – and surprisingly, several of them were against her because they were convinced she had pulled Stacy away from them. They didn’t realize they had actually driven Stacy away from them, but that didn’t matter at this point.

As for making good arguments, well, we saw how that went. I know we didn’t see the whole story, but it was clear that she was not even answering the questions that were put to her in some cases. Not a good way to make a positive impression on the jury.

In the end, I doubt it mattered. She could have given the most eloquent speeches ever, and I don’t think it would have convinced the jurors that she was deserving of the top prize. Like I said earlier, it was a rerun of Becky and Yul, except that Becky actually did do more than people knew. I don’t think Cassandra did.

There was a lot going on at the end. Dreamz caused quite a ruckus and I think that focused the jurors on both game play and how “immoral” the players had been. Cassandra simply could not make the claim that she had truly played the game to the extent of either Earl or Dreamz (or Yau-Man, or Boo, or, well, anybody). Cassandra rode the right alliance to make it to the end, but she was playing a different game altogether, one in which sweetness and light win over strategy and lies. That is why Cassandra 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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