Survivor: Tocantins – Why Taj Lost

It is my opinion that Taj could not have won Survivor unless she and Erinn had made it to the final two and she gave excellent answers to jury questions while Erinn gave horrible ones. But she could have made it a little bit farther, at least, and given herself that chance. Why did she end up blindsided instead? Why did Taj lose?

Even on a day when I have to write four of these articles (well, three plus a “Won” article, to be specific), we still address our questions the same way – by looking through What Tocantins Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s see what we can find out.

The very first, and most important, rule is of course to scheme and plot. We already know that Taj was able to be a part of a couple alliances – the Exile alliance and of course her alliance with Stephen and J.T. But how much actual scheming and plotting did she do?

My thought: Not much. From what we saw, she pretty much did what she was told by her allies. Even when she voted in a manner that didn’t seem to go along with her allies, it became clear that she did so on orders to make it look like she was not a tight part of the alliance, in order to make Coach and Debbie feel more comfortable. In other words, she didn’t do much of her own scheming and plotting, as far as we could see.

Still, we have to give her credit for hooking up with the right people to go far. She had the Exile alliance, which certainly could have been used to get her near the end, and she had her Jalapao three alliance, which did get her near the end. But again, a lot of the reason for that was based on other people saving her – as discussed by Stephen in front of the final jury – not on her saving herself.

Frankly, Taj was too trusting. She even said when she voted in her final Tribal Council in the game, “It had to be me or you,” talking about Erinn. But the thing is, it didn’t have to be one of them – they could have joined forces and targeted Stephen. Sure, it would have forced a tie, but at least she’d have had a chance. And she even called herself “the fire-starter” in her statements we heard while the other players did their walk of remembrance and brought it up again at the reunion. In other words, she would have had a really good chance at a fire-making tie-breaker. But Taj never once thought to make the move to turn her own game around.

The second rule mostly discusses scheming and plotting too much. Certainly, Taj didn’t have to worry about that. But part of the second rule deals also with keeping your scheming secret, and we have to take a look at Taj’s ability to keep a secret – or, rather, her lack of ability. She had the hidden immunity idol and left it sitting around in a not-so-hidden place such that J.T. found it. Similarly, she wanted to keep her husband’s identity a secret, but let that slip early in the game. Keeping secrets was not really Taj’s forte, which I think impacted her ability to scheme well.

The third rule talks about the need for flexibility. While we could say that Taj created that flexibility by joining up with both Brendan and Stephen early, this just takes us back to what I already said about her scheming. Yes, she was in multiple alliances, but she was not – from what we saw – the one deciding on which way to steer. J.T. and Stephen made those decisions and she went along with them. Was that good enough to get near the end? Yup. Good enough to get to the end? Nope.

The fourth rule tells players not to let their emotions control them. I’d say Taj had good and bad points here. In terms of the good, she did follow orders and voted out those who needed to go in order to advance her alliance to the win, even when she liked the person being targeted.

But on the negative side, Taj said herself at the reunion that J.T.’s name never came up as a target because he’s so sweet. Because he’s so sweet?! That’s a terrible reason to ignore the possibility of voting somebody off! Indeed, that’s a great reason that a person should be voted off – as Stephen found out the hard way.