Why Lindsey Lost

The kiddie alliance lost another member this week as Lindsey followed her pal Silas out of Africa. As we do every week, let’s take a look at my article, What African Survivors Should Have Learned, and see how she and the others stacked up. Let’s answer the question: Why did Lindsey lose?

The first thing to look at, as always, is whether she schemed and plotted. Lindsey definitely did this – joining the alliance of younger players on Samburu and helping to convince Silas to stick with them instead of going over to the older folks. It helped that she was the beneficiary of overheard information when Frank spoke out too loudly about the elder alliance (rather ironic, eh?), and thus she was able to pin down Silas.

But was it really scheming and plotting? I mean, most scheming is done secretly. There was nothing secret about Lindsey. She not only was totally open about the alliance, but rubbed it in the faces of the elders.

Moving on, I wouldn’t say she schemed and plotted too much – other than that she just wouldn’t shut up (apparently) even after they knew what they were doing with the ex-Borans. It seems the three kids had a need to keep talking about it and talking about it. If they had just kept their mouths shut, she would have been safe. Instead, she repaid her Karmic debt and had her plot overheard by the opposition.

In looking at the voting order suggested to tribe members, I noted last week that we had moved into the phase where it was no longer necessary to target the weak. Indeed, this was true again here, since they are assuming the merge will take place and they won’t have to worry about tribal immunity any longer. Lindsey might have been a strong competitor for the individual immunity challenges, but that isn’t why they voted against her. In this case, it was simple survival that caused them to vote for her – because they knew her previous votes would break the tie. Obviously, she was the one they needed to target.

The rule against backstabbing isn’t really relevant here, so we’ll pass over that one quickly. They definitely did pretend to be nice – acting friendly with the kids while secretly griping about the lack of work ethic. In this case it didn’t really matter much since everybody on the tribe knew how the vote would go no matter how nice they were to each other.

But what about the admonition not to form emotional bonds? The ex-Borans know it’s a game and that they had to get rid of Lindsey to win. Lindsey had the opportunity to turn on Brandon and side with the ex-Borans in order to continue her time in Africa. She chose not to. Whether she could have convinced Tom, Lex, and Kelly that she was sincere was unclear, but in the end she didn’t even try. She chose friendship over her chance to win a million dollars. Some may find this laudable – as they did when Colby did the same thing last season. Well, those people have the right to feel that way. But Survivor is first and foremost a game show. You don’t purposely lose on Jeopardy because you feel you really like the guy next to you; you shouldn’t do it on Survivor, either.

Finally, the last rule is that providing food wins allies and you shouldn’t be lazy. Lindsey obviously blew that one. But did it contribute to her downfall? Maybe. If she had been a hard worker and she had decided to turn on Brandon, perhaps the ex-Borans might have trusted her. But since all she did was lie around all day with her fellow Samburu kiddie pals, she was not in a position to make that happen. Perhaps more importantly, she might not have had the previous four votes from the original Samburu elders if she had gotten up and done some work. While it was not a direct cause of her loss, her laziness certainly didn’t help.

Taking all of these things into consideration, what do we have? First and foremost is the fact that Kelly overheard the conversation about Lindsey being vulnerable. Kelly, Lex, and Tom should have figured this out already, but they hadn’t, and Lindsey probably would have been safe had she and Brandon and Kim just kept their big mouths shut. But we also have the fact that she wouldn’t have had those four previous votes to worry about if she hadn’t been part of the do-nothing crowd to begin with. To top it all off, she allowed herself to become emotionally attached to her alliance partner, Brandon, and thus could not bring herself to turn on him when it mattered most in the game. Combine all three of these things and we see why Lindsey lost.

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