Survivor: Tocantins – Why Jerry Lost

Last week, I began my column noting, “Sometimes, it just doesn’t take much to be one of the first ones voted out of Survivor.” While for Candace, it was her mouth that caused problems, for Jerry it appears to have been a problem a bit lower in the digestive system – his stomach. But was that the only problem? Did his tribe really send him packing for such a pedestrian reason? Why did Jerry lose?

When somebody is sent packing due to a health issue, I occasionally hear from readers wondering why I bothered to do this column. We need to remember, though, that what appears to be the obvious reason might not always be the correct or complete reason. Of course, sometimes it is. The way we find out is by paging through What Tocantins Survivors Should Have Learned in order to see how the contestant in question – in this case Jerry – did overall.

The first rule, which is always the most important, tells players they need to scheme and plot. Overall, the scheming on Timbira has not been of the secret alliance type – at least not that we’ve seen. Rather, they’ve gone vote to vote worrying about who is weakest or who is most annoying (another form of weakness), and of course Coach wants only the strong to survive.

But Jerry told me, in my interview with him, that “Basically, the men on the tribe kind of had an agreement that we would stick together through thick and thin.” He added, “if we could start weeding the women out, we’ll make it to the end – that was pretty much our strategy.”

Of course, my first question is what they meant by “through thick and thin,” since it appears the first time “thin” came around, they voted out Jerry! This tells me it really wasn’t much of an alliance other than an alliance of expediency. The real quote should have been, “the men on the tribe kind of had an agreement that we would stick together as long as nothing came up.”

And that’s where Jerry’s problems first began. We’ve seen people voted out due to health reasons. But we’ve also seen people stick around despite such issues when they had a solid enough alliance to keep them around. In this case, Jerry wasn’t an integral part of any specific plans, so he was interchangeable with somebody else when he became a physical liability. Compare this to the way Tyson has ingratiated himself with Coach and you have to wonder if Coach would have so easily sent Tyson packing if he had been the one with the stomach virus. I suspect the answer is “no.”

Obviously, therefore, Jerry didn’t violate the second rule, which warns against scheming and plotting too much. As such, we can skip right to the third rule, which tells players they need to be flexible. At this point of the game, that type of flexibility deals mostly with how they interact with their tribemates. Here, Jerry did a good job. As he told me, he came into the game planning to “keep a low profile, lay low, and try to win people over. And just not try to cause any controversy, just be in the background not out front with yelling and screaming and boisterous opinions.” That was especially important with this group, as there were already enough type-A personalities, and Jerry just “let them hang themselves” by staying out of their way.

Jerry also did fine in terms of the fourth rule, which talks about not playing emotionally. Admittedly, he didn’t really have much time to do anything wrong here, but he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t have had a problem with it anyway. Unfortunately for him, the others followed this rule as well and voted him out even though they liked him.

And why did they like him? Because he followed the fifth rule and was a nice guy. Heck, he even got along with Coach, as he told me, “we had a pretty good bond. … We’re cool.” That wasn’t a problem here.

Was Jerry a threat, per the sixth rule? He could have been if he had been allowed to remain in the game to the merge, but that wasn’t what happened here. Instead, he was a threat of a different type – his illness made him a liability in challenges, which was a threat to the tribe as a whole. The choice was whether to keep him around and vote off somebody who was weak overall (Debbie, Sierra, or Erinn) or to vote off the person who was weak at that moment and could cause them to have to vote off more people – when they didn’t know whether he would soon be better or stay sick.

Which brings us nicely to the seventh rule, which discusses how the other players should vote. We are still in the phase where the tribe should be voting off its weakest links. Was that Jerry or one of the women I mentioned?

Personally, I think they should have given Jerry another shot. They could have voted off any of the other three (though Erinn was certainly the most likely target from what we saw) and given Jerry a few more days to see if he recovered. This would have kept the men together as a group and the only downside would have been the loss of a weak woman (with the added bonus of getting rid of somebody they didn’t like if they voted off Erinn). If Jerry recovered, great! If not, then they vote him off next time.

But that’s not how they were thinking. Even Jerry himself told me, “I would have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot and it was one of them.” I can’t say it was the wrong decision because I wasn’t there – I just don’t think it’s the decision I would have made.

At the top of this article, I asked if Jerry’s stomach problems were the only reason he was booted. As we have seen here, it wasn’t. Was it the major reason? Yes. But I believe if he had done a bit more to form at least one solid alliance, it might have earned him a stay of execution – maybe only a few days, but sometimes that’s all it takes. Jerry didn’t have that backup plan in place, so when he became the weakest link on the tribe, they were all (except Erinn) sorry to see him go – but they sent him on his way. That is why Jerry lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent Survivor: Tocantins articles here on RealityNewsOnline:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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