Survivor: Micronesia – Why Kathy Lost

You may be surprised to even see this article. Why would I write a column about why Kathy lost when it’s obvious – given that she quit? As I said way back when I wrote Why Osten Lost, dealing with the first Survivor quitter, for one thing, it’s a tradition. For another, we can look at what happened to cause Kathy to get to this point.

Even though this is an unusual circumstance, we’ll address it in mostly the usual way, which is to go through What Micronesia Survivors Should Have Learned to see what we can glean.

The first rule that Kathy should have followed was to scheme and plot. But we didn’t see any of that from Kathy. Instead, we saw Tracy holding the threesome of the two of them plus Chet together and apparently doing all the thinking for the three of them as well.

When I asked Kathy, in my interview with her, about her strategy, she didn’t have a whole lot to tell me. Her original plan was to find other misfits and band together. Okay. Did she really expect a majority of her tribe to be misfits – at least misfits who still would fit together enough to hold an alliance?

She also apparently expected there to be more tribemates closer to her own age, with whom she could bond. She had Chet, who was a bit older than her, and Tracy, a couple years younger. I’m not really sure why she would expect more than that – three people over the age of 40 on one tribe is right around the maximum we’ve ever seen (I’m not going to go back and double-check 15 seasons – but that’s my gut feeling). As a Fan, Kathy should have known that.

And age does not always tell the whole story. She told me, “It’s odd how you can see little cliques forming even before you can speak to each other. I saw that coming and said uh oh.” Just because a few people may make eye contact with one another doesn’t mean another player can’t break into the group. But it takes the ability to do that – something Kathy didn’t really seem to have (we’ll get to that more in a bit).

So Kathy really only had two allies in her original tribe – Chet and Tracy. She relied on them for more than just strategy, but for emotional support as well. Both of them ended up on the other tribe after the switch-up, but then she apparently became close with Jonathan. Wouldn’t you know it, he ended up leaving too, meaning Kathy had nobody to help her with the strategic aspect or the emotional part of the game.

But we’re still focusing on strategy – and it’s safe to say Kathy really didn’t have any.

So then, we should be able to check off the second rule, which deals with scheming and plotting too much, right? Well, sort of. There is this annoying little portion of that rule that says not to be open about your alliances – and Kathy couldn’t have been more open if she’d have been bunking with only her allies. Oh wait, she was – at least with her original tribe. However, even this obvious display of an alliance didn’t really contribute to her game demise.

The third rule says players need to be flexible. I think we’re safe in saying Kathy most certainly failed here. She relied heavily on Chet and Tracy, and then Jonathan. When those people were taken away from her, that was it. Done. Kaput. She said she tried to bond with the others, but couldn’t. The problem, however, is that she needed to try harder (and we’ll address more on this topic later). Also, I’d like to quote from Why Osten Lost, with adjustments for Kathy:

The [third] rule is to be flexible. [Kathy] definitely was not. I’m not entirely sure what [s]he expected in this game, but perhaps [s]he would have been better suited to something like Big Brother. Although, frankly, I think [s]he would have left that show too because even without physical problems, [s]he still would have faced being cut off from the outside world and thus suffered mentally.

[S]he failed miserably on the fourth rule, against allowing emotion to control you. … Instead of focusing on doing what [s]he needed to in order to survive, [s]he seemed to focus more and more on how bad things were. [S]he let [her] emotions run away.

This brings up the question of why this happened. I don’t know that I can fully answer that question, but part of it seems to be a horrible misconception coming into the game. Indeed, Kathy was in a bad way within the first few days of the rain and little sleep. Still, she stuck around for a while after that. But how could she not know how bad the conditions could be? She told me, “They show it raining for 10 seconds, you don’t realize it’s 12 hours.” But the thing is, most viewers do realize that. Most of us hear the contestants complaining about how bad it is. I’m just not sure how Kathy missed that.