Survivor: Gabon – Why Susie Lost

Consider me shocked! I didn’t think Susie would get a single vote, let alone three. I mean, even Jeff Probst was surprised at how many votes she received! And I’m sure it takes a lot to surprise him after 17 seasons of Survivor. But there she was, just one vote away from a million dollars after doing… not a whole lot for 39 days! So how did she make it so far? How did she come so close? And yet, why did Susie lose?

Whether a player is the first one to lose or comes within just one vote of winning, we address their situations the same way – by taking a hard look at their actions in comparison to the rules listed in What Gabon Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s see how Susie did.

The very first, and most important, rule is to scheme and plot. How did Susie do in that regard? Well, we really only have to listen to her talking to Jeff Probst in the finale to answer that question. Susie admitted that she just waited for people to tell her what was going on, rather than making the moves herself, and then just going along with whatever she was told.

It’s not much of a strategy, when it comes down to it. However, this season, it obviously had some merit. After all, as Bob told me when I interviewed him, “Everybody who stepped up to the plate got whacked by the pitcher.” So Bob stayed back, and Susie stayed even further back – indeed, pretty much in the dugout, to extend Bob’s metaphor.

Indeed, when I asked Susie herself what her biggest game moves were, she said, “One of the biggest moves was flying under the radar. … When I stepped back, I let everybody be the chief and [figured] I’ll be the Indian. … My game plan was to let everybody else make the decisions and so my game plan was to not open my mouth.” Not exactly the high point of strategy on Survivor.

But frankly, that “strategy” (if it can be called that) worked to get her where she needed to be. It seemed that every time somebody thought about getting rid of Susie, another, juicier, target made him/herself available. So she stayed low, under the radar, and just voted out anybody who wasn’t named “Susie.” Heck, in Crystal’s case, she even voted based on “C” coming before “K” (for Ken) in the alphabet! Unbelievable!

However, once she got to the jury, that sort of “strategy” was not really what they wanted to hear about. Most jurors – even those as spiteful and, in some cases, hateful as this bunch – want to know that a finalist played the game rather than just sitting around and letting the game play them. I am still shocked that Susie received the three votes she did, especially from Ken, who considers himself a strategist and fan of strategy, and then voted for the person who had the absolute least strategy simply because he didn’t like how the other two answered his questions (for more on that, see my interview with Ken).

Obviously, Susie didn’t have a problem with the second rule, which says not to scheme and plot too much. Just as obviously, she was fine with the third rule, which emphasizes flexibility. Since she was willing to go along with anything that didn’t involve getting herself voted out, she wasn’t overly attached to any one alliance. Whoever made her the best (or most recent) offer won her voting services.

To give her some credit, Susie followed the fourth rule and didn’t allow her emotions to get in the way of her game play, such as it was. As much as it pissed off Marcus, she was absolutely right to point out that Survivor is a game. She played it, and she played him. (And frankly, he deserved it. But we already addressed that in Why Marcus Lost.)

At the same time, as much as we saw Susie annoying people with her chattering (I think she was lucky Bob didn’t take a swing at her after she won final immunity and then went on and on and on about it), she knew that she needed to be nice to the other players, in accordance with the fifth rule. As she told me when I asked why she thought she got the three votes, “I want to believe that it was probably my not disrespecting people and just being honest with them and being kind. I was very giving. I didn’t feel I had to be nasty about anything. With Kenny, Crystal and Matty, who voted for me, we had a good connection, we were good friends. I just adore them. I got along with everybody.”