Survivor: The Amazon – Strategy and Sex

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Heidi and Jenna are way too easy. All it took was [Sorry, David, let me start again]

We have entered a critical moment in Survivor, the few days after the jury has become set save the two finalists, mistakes of the past are coming back to haunt some, while mistakes of the present threaten to do the same in the future .

This interval often turns out to be a crucial part of the game because, with nine players involved, bi- or tri-partite divisions usually emerge, leading to interesting girl-on-girl coalitional situations. With Roger’s departure, we now have a name for the former trio of himself, Butch, and Dave – the Three Stooges, so blind were they to Roger’s upcoming demise.

But they brought this on themselves. About a week previous they had the chance to lop off one of the breasts beasts of the Hottie Harem, Heidi. Had they kept Jeanne, the vote against Roger probably only would have been 6-4. Further, a Christy reassured after that quite possibly would have stuck with them, making it 5-5 and time for the Purple Rock o’ Death (PROD). Even if the Stooges were right about the other men sticking with them, you have to know you must split up other alliances to be on the back safe side.

On the flip side, Deena is taking some risks, perhaps unnecessary ones, in her planning. It now seems she’s decided on her 2+1+2 configuration – she and Jenna as the senior dyad, Rob as the singleton, and Matthew and Alex as the junior dyad. She forced herself into this coalition when she opted to jettison Shawna (wonder if the other males are going to resent Deena now because Shawna if still around might have taken it off for chocolate and peanut butter, too) [David make sure you take out these parts] out of fear that she could lose control of a Shawna-Alex dyad. Having reduced the Harem to four, she and Jenna apparently then figured they could bare bear to break up the Harem and to substitute in Rob, Matthew, and Alex for Heidi, Shawna, and Christy.

That may not be such a good move. Does she really think that Rob will turn out more loyal than Heidi, for example? Maybe Alex might turn resentful for Shawna’s dismissal? Wherever he’s been, Matt’s been the odd guy out, so his loyalty may not be there. Worst of all for her, when the crucial immunity challenges come (i.e., making sure whichever of Alex or Matthew is left when down to four doesn’t win that next immunity challenge, or whichever of Dave or Butch within the week is left doesn’t win when going down to seven), she would be in better position with relatively weaker females than having to eliminate stronger males.

Maybe this potentially misplaced confidence is due to her “I am female, hear me roar” rut she seems to have fallen into. She better tone it down or even Jenna will think she’s acting like an ass a female Roger and may vote to send her home a bit short of her goals. Her strategy contains much risk, but as long as she allows Rob to think he’s calling the shots, she and Jenna can strip manipulate him into leaving them as the final three, and then hope he doesn’t win the final immunity challenge.

Clothes Hats off to them, however, for it looks like this 2+1+2 configuration will avoid a Wretched of the Earth (WOE) coalition forming to take them down. Butch and Dave and Heidi and Christy, only make four. Jaburu 2.0 did keep those chicks from discovering that plans apparently have changed, so now it won’t matter. Deena, Jenna, and Rob must be careful, however, that either both the displaced members of the Harem or the one surviving after the rug gets pulled out from under the other when going down to six can’t rally Alex and Matthew into a WOE, defeating them or necessitating a PROD situation.

Likely we can look for a Pagonging of Tambaqui 2.0 by Jaburu 2.0 over the next couple of weeks, and the interesting strategic moves of this series may have come to a close. Sadly, given past series, I sort of nude knew this was going to happen.

[David, make really sure to get rid of all the strikethroughs and these comments to you. After all, we don’t want to leave the impression that Survivor and CBS are more about cheap exploitation designed to draw ratings than an interesting strategic game]

Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport where he teaches, among other things, classes in international politics, international organizations, and diplomatic history. He has published in the area of gaming simulations in international politics.

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