TV shows: Survivor – how do you win?

Australian Survivor is on! Yay!!

I always loved (American) Survivor but over the last few years it’s been increasingly buried in horrible timeslots, so I’m coming back to the franchise after many years’ absence. The first two episodes have aired.

(Spoilers ahead.)

How do you win Survivor? After any elimination, it’s usually pretty easy to see what the ejectee did wrong.

In the case of Bianca, she started her scheming too soon. She is probably quite right that the alliance of girls is going to end up being strong and a factor in play; she might be right to wish she could break up the alliance, but sometimes moving aggressively just antagonises other people who would have otherwise left you alone. She also trusted the wrong person, trying to get him on side. Better to relax with a safe ‘elimination’ with Peter and hope to survive long enough to deal with alliances later. Try to more naturally build alliances by just befriending people and hanging out, without coming across as too strategic.

That said, I’ve got to say, people get eliminated for so many different reasons. If you were coming into the game, it’d be hard to know how to play things. For every strategic error that gets someone eliminated, there’s an opposite error that gets someone else eliminated.

For example: “He should have changed allegiances when he could and joined that other alliance.” vs “He shouldn’t have changed his allegiance; it meant nobody trusted him.”

Or: “She moved too soon to try to turn the others against him.” vs “She needed to try to turn the others against him.”

Or: “He shouldn’t have given up the idol; he got out immediately.” vs “He should have given up the idol; it would have gotten him a strong ally.”

Then there are also personal attributes:

“This person is weird and abrasive, so let’s get rid of them for the sake of team unity.” vs “This person is weird and abrasive, so they’ll be loyal to me if I’m nice to them (since nobody else is nice to them) and be an excellent person to take to the end.”

“This person is bad at physical challenges, so let’s get rid of them so our team is stronger.” vs “This person is good at physical challenges,so let’s get rid of them so they don’t win all the personal immunities.”

When all is said and done, winning Survivor requires a lot of things, and luck is one.

Still, it seems to be a general rule that if you are able to easily click with the others in your team in a kind of effortless, laid-back way, not attracting attention or getting on people’s nerves, then (as long as you’re not physically a total liability) you’re likely to make it through the first few eliminations. Bianca didn’t click, while a couple of other girls on her tribe did. It’s a shame as I’d much rather watch her, trying to make things happen, than a bunch of people who don’t stand out. I liked her.

I’ve probably only once seen someone play ‘perfect’ Survivor – that is, reading everyone else perfectly, getting everyone else on board, backstabbing at just the right moment to keep alliances together yet keeping trust, knowing who to take out when, being decent at challenges, etc. That was Rob in Survivor: Redemption Island. Seeing him play so perfectly was impressive, but it was also one of the most boring series of Survivor I’d ever seen. You need upsets to make things interesting.

It’s fun to try to guess a winner from the start, though a bit hard at the moment as I haven’t even heard every character speak. However, I’m going to guess Kate, just as a kind of random guess. She seems cool, is good at challenges, etc… well, she’s as good a guess as any other. I’ll also put in a ‘maybe’ for El or Brooke. I might make another guess after I’ve gotten to know the contestants a bit better.