SEASON 9: VANUATU

It's a Numbers Game

This season is a lesson in when to play the individual game and when to focus on your tribe. On one hand, the first time your tribe goes to tribal you want to make sure it’s not your butt and if it is, you play as hard as you can to stay. But if it’s not, you vote for the strength of your tribe. This should be obvious but for some reason the male tribe just could not figure it out.

It’s definitely a delicate science of when to go hard at individual and when to play tribal. You need to be playing individual before the merge but you can’t start too early because you’ll go into the merge with numbers down. All Survivor fans knows this, I’m restating the obvious but I think it’s curious how the season, in its own boring way, also changed how the game got played. This is one of the things I really love about early games of Survivor. You can distinctly tell how each season shaped the game moving forward.

In this instance, it worked out for Chris. He had to get a younger member voted out otherwise it was him who was leaving in that first vote. Unfortunately, after this the men got so caught up in their alliance for after the merge that they continued voting out their strongest players to the detriment of their own game. If one of them had just considered for a moment that going into the merge with numbers down is worse than a strong alliance maybe more men could have made it further. Alas, it took until there was only nine players left for them to realize it's all a numbers game.

This moment came when the men, after noticing a division in the alliance with the women particularly in Eliza, planned to get Eliza voted off rather than to swing her. It seems like the worst game plan I've ever heard. So say it works, they get Eliza voted off, it's still 5 to 3, what's the benefit? The women get rid of someone annoying them and then vote off the men again. Swinging the numbers in your favor should be the obvious choice but of course everything that should be obvious in this season is rocket science for these players. Finally, Chad realized that it's a numbers game and had a light bulb moment that if he brought Eliza and Twila over they might actually have a chance. Of course, this never came to fruition because it was just too late for the men and so Sarge and Chad were voted off. Luckily, at seven players, Chris finally had a chance.

This is my first watch of Vanuatu and what has shocked me the most watching this season is how there were so many times the game could have been turned around. So many opportunities for switching and getting further in the game but for some reason these people felt they needed to stick with their alliances despite the fact they knew they were going home fifth or sixth. They would have made it so much further if they had just changed it up but the allegiance was so misplaced. I don't know why they chose to stick to the status quo until later in the game. This is when Chris has his chance. Ami and Leann are leading the game and it's either get rid of them now or take your 6th place check. Finally, Scout links up with Chris and conspires to get Leann and Ami voted off, but they needed Eliza to do this. Like I said, numbers game. Eliza hated Scout and Twila but needed to get further so I congratulate the four of them for figuring out how the game is played.

In the end, it's Chris and Twila as the final two (anyone notice they didn't get breakfast?). Chris is, of course, the winner of the season. I do think he played the best game so my brain confirms he should be the winner, but if I were the jury I'd have a hard time voting for him. Everything he said up there sounded like lying and while Twila is annoying and mean she was very honest and she never hid who she was. I'm happy for her that she got second place.

Well that's my recap and discussion on Vanuatu. It wasn't the worst season ever, but not a terribly exciting one. Let me know what you think!