Survivor Fiji Episode 8 Alex and Edgardo: The Real Loser  4/12/07

Perhaps lost in this “Much Ado About Lisi” episode was a critical error by Alex and Edgardo when they voted Lisi off the Fijian island. The two close allies could more easily be forgiven had we not already seen them back on Moto as perceptive game players.

The arithmetic is always key in Survivor.

When Alex and Edgardo were on Moto, they wisely saw that Stacy and Lisi exhibited dangerous high school cliquish behavior towards Dreamz and Cassandra. Alex and Edgardo reviewed the future voting numbers with Lisi and Stacy as well as with Boo, unsuccessfully pointing out that an alliance of 5 might not be enough when the merge came.

Lisi would have been perfect to keep in the game for as long as possible.

Lisi would have been the perfect ally for Alex and Edgardo to take along for the ride. In the Ravu camp

Lisi still felt close to Alex and Edgardo. Disliked by Dreamz and Mookie, she was naïve in saying whatever came into her head. How often have we heard in confessionals, as we did with Lisi on Exile Island : “That’s the way I am!” to explain a Survivor blunder? To Alex and Edgardo Lisi was an unpopular, close ally who seemed to be averse to good game plotting. She was the perfect choice to take along as far as possible, even to the final endgame. In her bio, Lisi lists The Economist as a favorite magazine. She must have had some smarts, even though she showed us few of them. Edgardo described her as “unstable”. She waffled back and forth about whether she could cope with any more Ravu or Exile Island hardships. But, at the same time, she was a wealth of information for Alex and Edgardo. She revealed the Exile Island clues to them (she claims now to make up for the loss of her vote), and she correctly sized up the danger of keeping Dreamz around.  

 Alex and Edgardo lost sight of the arithmetic.

      Back on Moto, Alex and Edgardo were too late in preventing the alienation of Dreamz and Cassandra. But they correctly assessed the math. It was therefore surprising that they did not similarly go over the arithmetic before choosing Lisi over Dreamz to boot. Dreamz revealed openly to all of Ravu that he was close to Cassandra. Mookie was tight with Dreamz and could easily rekindle his close ties to his ex-Ravu, now Moto pals, Earl, Yau-Man and Michelle, come merge time. Looking ahead, Alex and Edgardo could have seen that with Lisi gone they could be going into a tribal mix-up or merge down 4-6. 

 Why didn't Lisi care how she would be portrayed to the world by quitting?

      As a musician, Lisi must know that image means a lot. By being cast in an unflattering way, she could have hurt her prospects for performing musically in the future. By speaking so negatively of her Ravu-mates, didn’t she think about how her Survivor performance would be viewed? I cannot understand why she would want to be portrayed as a quitter. With her constant talk of quitting, she converted her 15 minutes of fame into 15 minutes of infamy. It’s very difficult to understand.

Why did Alex and Edgardo let Mookie share the immunity idol?

Maybe Alex and Edgardo thought that by sharing the idol with Mookie his loyalty to them was assured. By leaving Dreamz out of the loop, wasn’t Dreamz being abandoned, just as Alex and Edgardo feared back at Moto? If Dreamz and Mookie were good friends and allies, couldn’t the good will of the idol sharing with Mookie be negated by Dreamz getting upset and convincing Mookie to abandon his new buddies? Sharing the idol with Mookie but not with Dreamz looks like a mistake and is another argument that Dreamz had to go.  

Previous Survivor parallels:

1. In the Survivor All Stars season, Lex and Kathy, two previous Survivor standouts, decided to vote out the unpopular Jerri Manthey instead of the all-too-obvious Amber, and
2. A personal favorite: a terrible missed opportunity, when Survivor Africa antagonists Frank and Brandon won a reward challenge together and were given a private showing of “Out of Africa”, with popcorn no less, but could not find a way to join forces to attack a very vulnerable Lex-Ethan-Big Tom alliance.

In the All Stars game, Lex and Kathy were the next two voted out after Jerri. In Africa , Brandon and Frank were the next two to exit the Kenyan game reserve after their missed movie bonding opportunity. One can only wonder if Alex and Edgardo are not about to repeat the pattern.