“It Was Just Fricking Bad Luck” – An Interview with Survivor: Micronesia’s Jonathan

Jonathan had a plan, and it looked like it would work. The first plan didn’t, and he explains why, right here. But he also explains why the second one probably would have. How is his knee? What does he have to say about the way challenges are designed? Read on to find out!

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Jonathan, and thanks for taking the time to talk to RealityNewsOnline! First, how is your knee?

Jonathan: My knee is a lot better and it is recovering. It is still quite stiff and sore, but it is a lot better. I hope to have 100% recovery, but there may be some long term issues – we’re not sure.

RNO: How long did recovery take?

Jonathan: It’s ongoing. I was in the hospital for a couple days and then moved to a hotel for treatment because the hospital was difficult, then I was flown out to a western style hospital where I was treated further and I was stitched up. Seventeen to twenty days, then ongoing here at home.

RNO: You seemed to be pushing through the pain – how bad was it?

Jonathan: It was bad. But I’m a big minimizer. It hurt and the pain got worse because the infection got worse. I would’ve stayed out as long as it was safe enough to do so. The doctor basically said I couldn’t stay out any longer, it was far too dangerous. I think the truth is they wish they’d taken me out a day earlier.

RNO: Do you think this edition of Survivor was more physical and dangerous than your original time out?

Jonathan: No, I think it was muddier. There was a lot more rain. I think that was the biggest difference. The first time out, I played hurt, but I did not get hurt. This time I played fit and got hurt. Chet’s injury was interesting – something the Favorites knew and had learned the hard way was that the worst injuries were the stones getting in your shoes and digging into your feet and getting infected. The worst time I had was when I had awful sores on my feet on Cook Islands and would put my shoes back on. He got injured in that football challenge and Ozzy and James and I did that challenge in bare feet and didn’t get hurt. I got hurt in that [later] challenge because of the terrible mud.

RNO: What exactly happened?

Jonathan: I don’t know what happened. They were not able to capture it on film. I have no memory of it. We did the challenge successfully and then were off [the course] and then my leg hurt with a big puncture and blood pouring down.

RNO: Do you think more could have been done to avoid contestant injuries?

Jonathan: This is a very touchy subject for me. No. I think they do an extraordinarily good job – this is the first season this has happened. There were a few other people taken out because of injuries [in Survivor history]. I think I’m the first due to an injury due to a challenge. It sounds like Chet got injured in a challenge as well. I think people who design these challenges are clever and smart, they don’t want anybody to get hurt.

They have a dream team out there, a bunch of young people running the challenge to make sure it’s fair – it’s a lot of work making sure it’s a fair game. But what they constantly learned was the dream team is not playing for a million dollars. So it would take 40 minutes [for the dream team to run through a challenge] and we would go and take two minutes, or vice versa. In the football challenge, the dream team did it quickly enough that they told us initially it was going to be best of three. Thirty minutes or so into that challenge, they said let’s vote – do you just want to do it once? That took 40 minutes. The dream team keeps them safe, I think it was just fricking bad luck or the rainy season. Things happen.

RNO: Going back to the beginning, what was your strategy coming into the game?

Jonathan: I knew that I wanted to work with – I had to find a set of allies out there. I did not, rightly or wrongly, trust Parvati. I did somewhat trust Ozzy, but I quickly saw a common ground – Yau-Man and I were working together. Eliza and Ami came to us within an hour of hitting the beach. That made a lot of sense to me. I really did believe Parvati, Ozzy, James, and Amanda would work together.

I guess there was some fantasy that Parvati and I could work together in a way nobody could suspect, but I saw that was not going to work – there was too much distrust. The four of us needed to pull in one other member. We pulled in two other members.

But then Jonny Fairplay lost his mind and had to get voted out, which was shocking and disappointing. I begged him to stay. He said, “you don’t need me, you’ve got five.” It was too tight a margin for my comfort, but what was I going to do? The man asked for our vote and we thought he was going to quit. So we didn’t vote Parvati and we voted for him.

Then the margin was five to four and Cirie and Yau-Man had a secret thing going. She felt betrayed and flopped away from him to get rid of Yau-Man. Once the flop happened and the mix-up, I found myself in a strong position. My leg notwithstanding. I think I would have gone very far in the game.

RNO: What was that about a secret thing between Cirie and Yau-Man? We didn’t see that and Yau-Man didn’t mention it to me when I talked to him.

Jonathan: I can tell you what my understanding is. I did not see this and maybe they’ll get mad at me for saying it. She told Yau-Man of the four clues and they were going to share the idol. He was going to try to get to Exile Island next and they would share it to the end. He felt he needed to distract the rest of us from suspecting the alliance, which I never suspected. So he suggested I be sent to Exile Island next – I don’t remember that but she remembered it.

She felt he and I were much more closely aligned than she and him and she decided to target him. Parvati needed her vote desperately so they had a meeting of the minds and found they had much more in common than with us. Of course Ami, Eliza, and I felt betrayed and blindsided. I think Yau-Man felt he had made a mistake and tried to stop her but it was too late. I told her she had no reason not to trust me but she didn’t believe me.

That’s my understanding of it. They may read this and tell you it didn’t happen that way.