Survivor: Cook Islands – Why Adam Lost

Much of this article can be a straight copy of the same column I wrote for Parvati on Friday, just changing the name “Parvati” to “Adam.” But rather than do it the completely lazy way, let’s look to see if there are any differences at all. Let’s determine why Adam lost.

Like Parvati and every other player of the season (other than Yul, of course), we will investigate this by looking back at What Cook Island Survivors Should Have Learned. Let’s get to it.

The first rule tells players they need to scheme and plot. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Adam ever really got that. Still, he did manage to be the last Raro standing, so he deserves at least some credit for that, I suppose. Even so, it wasn’t so much due to his scheming skills.

Before the mutiny, Adam believed he and Nate controlled Raro. After the mutiny, this belief continued. And indeed, they voted out one supposed ally after another, all the while ignoring Jonathan.

Obviously, that was a decision that came back to haunt them. Part of this was due to arrogance. He, Nate, Candice, and Parvati were going to the final four in their minds, so he didn’t need to do too much thinking. As I noted in “Why Parvati Lost,” with a couple minor name changes:

Instead of his foursome plus Jonathan, it became the Aitu foursome plus Jonathan. Whoops! That marked the beginning of the end for Adam. Once Jonathan switched sides, the Pagonging began, with just a short interruption to get rid of Jonathan himself.

But it was too little, too late by then. Adam had no more allies and no hopes to create a new one. He had painted himself into a corner by only aligning with Nate, Candice, and Parvati. Nobody else wanted to listen to him. Ironically, he would have had a better chance if Jonathan had still been around (and he hadn’t called Jonathan a bunch of nasty names), because Jonathan would have looked at where his best chance was in the game, and he might have found it with Adam.

Given that we don’t think Adam schemed and plotted enough, how did he do in terms of the second rule? Well, we can say he certainly didn’t scheme and plot too much. But did he backstab too early? Yup. Just ask Jenny. And did he fail to keep his scheming secret? Yup. Again, just ask Jenny!

Jenny figured out that Adam would not turn on Candice – his scheming was out in the open. Jenny saw this as a threatening situation and wanted to terminate it. But instead, Adam got it into his head that Jenny needed to go first. So he stabbed her in the back. But by doing so, he allowed Jonathan to stick around and stab Adam and the other Raros in the back. Whoops! That was just poor planning on Adam’s part, and the incorrect belief that Jonathan could never go back to those he betrayed once. As various Raros were voted off since that point, several of them have said voting off Jenny instead of Jonathan was their biggest mistake, and I don’t think I can disagree. Adam led that vote.

The third rule tells players to be flexible. Adam… wasn’t. He, like Parvati and other Raros before them, failed to follow a key point highlighted by this rule: “You can’t simply tie yourself to one alliance and hope that it survives.” But that’s just what Adam did. He tied himself first to the original Raros and then to the new and improved Raros with Nate added in. He never appeared to consider making any backup alliances among the Aitus – why should he bother when he controlled the game, right? So as I said for Parvati just a few short days ago, when Jonathan flipped, Adam was dead in the water.

Adam suffered from the same problems in the fourth rule as many of his allies did. From “Why Nate Lost”: “I think the main reason Nate didn’t really seek out a back-up alliance is the emotional attachment he had to his main alliance. … Nate didn’t want to backstab his friends, and as such he bears some responsibility for what happened to him.” Replace “Nate” with “Adam” this time and we have the same point.

Of course, there is the added part for Adam that he had coupled up with Candice and also played snuggle-bunny with Parvati. I think he was having a good ol’ times with the young ladies, and there was no way he was going to do anything to vote them out. Indeed, we have to remember that the reason he turned on loyal Jenny was that Jenny was afraid Candice had horned her way into the alliance. She was right – and that caused Adam to make a move that certainly helped kill the Raros.

Fifth is to pretend to be nice. I think Adam did fine in following this rule (as noted above, he was a little too nice to a couple of the ladies). It was certainly not the cause of him being voted out.

Frankly, the same is true of the sixth rule, which says not to be a threat. Amusingly, little petite Parvati was voted out before Adam because she was considered more of a threat than he was. He might have been big and brawny, but that also meant he was more affected by the lack of food. That allowed him one more day in the game, but there was nothing he could do to make good use of it.

The seventh rule says not to be lazy. What we saw of the Raros, they all pretty much blew this one, which helped cause Jonathan to turn his back on them. He didn’t want that group to win, which made his decision easier. It’s hard to say if he would have stood by them if they had been a harder-working bunch, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt. After that point, though, it really didn’t matter.

It seems a bit silly to even ask the next question, which is whether the Aitus did the right thing in getting rid of Adam. Of course, in a case like this we have the benefit of hindsight. Yul obviously did the right thing. Other than that, it’s hard to say. If Ozzy and Sundra had joined Adam, they could have voted out Becky or at least gotten rid of the immunity idol. Either would have drastically changed the outcome of the game and maybe given Ozzy the win (I don’t think either Becky or Sundra could have won in the final three format, as they would have always had a stronger player with them). But hindsight is 20/20.

In the end, Adam was simply the last of the Raros. He was voted out for the same reason as the others – because he was not in the Aitu four. His biggest mistake was in worrying about Candice instead of Jenny, and thus sending Jenny packing before Jonathan. That set the stage for everything that would happen right up to the finale. Adam allowed his emotions to interfere with his decision-making and backstabbed too soon, in addition to not having a backup plan. That is why Adam lost.

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

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

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