Survivor: Micronesia – Why Cirie Lost

Cirie may have been the best player this season, but that didn’t get her the million dollars. Sometimes, things just don’t go the way they should. But what could she have done differently? Why couldn’t she get to the final two? Why did Cirie lose?

The easy answer to this is that Cirie dropped the ball (literally) in the final immunity challenge, when she pretty much knew she had to win it to stick around. But there were events leading up to that point – no single incident can truly describe the entirety of somebody’s game. To look at all of this, we’ll follow our usual path of paging through What Micronesia Survivors Should Have Learned.

Cirie certainly understood how important the first rule is, knowing she had to scheme and plot from the get-go. Even in the opening days, Cirie was thinking about the best way to move forward.

As Cirie told me when I interviewed her, she made an early alliance with Yau-Man to share the hidden immunity idol. But as soon as she felt like he’d betrayed her, she decided he had to leave and took immediate steps to ensure it happened. Indeed, this was a game-changing moment that I’m sorry the producers chose not to show us.

But they did show us plenty of other examples of Cirie making big moves and enacting her strategy. Sometimes, she made moves by not taking people up on their offers of deals, no matter how much they pleaded with her (such as Tracy). Other times, she pushed the action, such as the blindsiding of Erik.

All throughout, she was, as Natalie said when I interviewed her, “the puppetmaster on top.” She was either directly participating in strategic moves or directing others in how to make the moves. As Cirie told me, “I played a totally more aggressive, proactive game this time,” and she’s right. She did everything she needed to do to win, as far as strategy is concerned.

Further than that, she avoided violating the second rule, because she didn’t scheme and plot too much. She was loyal to her core alliance while still keeping herself flexible. We can see that she kept herself looking open to other ideas because other players kept coming to her, such as Tracy did before she was voted off. Cirie could have jumped around from alliance to alliance, but instead she set herself up in a key position with key people she trusted, and then whittled the numbers down one by one.

The third rule is to be flexible. Specifically, part of the rule notes, “Players have to look at what’s going on around them and judge the proper way to proceed.” It later adds, “if you see that the majority is leaning another way, by all means make sure you’re part of that majority.” Cirie did a good job here, as illustrated by how she acted when it appeared Amanda would be voted out. She could have just said, “she’s in my alliance and I won’t vote her out,” but instead she looked at the situation and realized she’d be putting herself in danger if she did that – so she planned to vote out Amanda instead.

The key to this rule is, “You need to have your finger on the pulse of every member of your tribe,” and I think Cirie certainly had this covered. Probably the only time she was surprised was in the Amanda situation.

Fourth is to ensure you don’t allow your emotions to control you. Cirie did well here also, as she made plenty of friends and was well-liked, but didn’t allow that to play into her strategic decisions. Again, looking at the attempt to vote off Amanda, Cirie was certainly friendly and solid with Amanda, but she wasn’t going to risk her game life for her. And even though she was also friendly and solid with Parvati, she tried to convince Natalie and Alexis to join her to get rid of Parvati. While it failed, that was not her fault – she made the right moves.

And, much like Natalie, she knew how to use the emotions of others to control them. After all, Cirie was the one who came up with the idea of getting Erik to hand over the immunity necklace. Why? As she told me, “Spending time with Erik, I knew he wanted everyone to like him. … I knew if we could put the thought in his mind that everyone was going to see him as a phony and untruthful and it wasn’t a good look for him, I knew the redemption thing would work on him.” So she recognized the emotional status of others and knew how to manipulate it for her own benefit.

But even while Cirie was doing that, she was one of the most likeable Survivors ever – both for viewers and her tribemates. Thus, she managed to do well by the fifth rule.