Survivor Palau: Season 10 (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Seriously, how tight was the S-T-I-K alliance? How tight was the T-I-K-J-G alliance? There are sub-alliances within the game, subsets of the tribe, and you do what you can to not piss off the larger of the subsets. You can't bring all your allies with you deep into the game without arousing suspicion from the other subset of contestants. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a queen to get into a better position in the game. For Tom, that queen was Gregg because it eliminated a strong player for immunity.

As far as the manueverings go, Ian got caught, Tom didn't. Anything that happened before the final four was pretty much water under the bridge at that point. Whatever anyone did to get to that point was fair game in terms of who "sacrificed an ally" to further themselves in the game. That's when Ian made his mistake (plotting against Tom and getting caught). Gregg could have been saved by Katie had Katie stayed true with her "new" alliance of G-J-K during their reward time, but when push came to shove, Ian's timing of the news to boot out Gregg was good enough for Katie to go along with the plan to force a tie, or just boot Gregg off with a majority vote. Gregg's only ally at that point was Jenn, everyone else was equally culpable in his ouster, not just Tom. That was just good gamesmanship in the game of Survivor. If you're a perceived threat, but can still carve out enough allies to keep the attention on another contestant, you have to play that card.

We don't know how deep some of the pairings went. For Tom and Caryn, he knew she was an outsider, but made the effort to convince her that he'd try to keep her as long as possible, and she did the same (what other choice did she have since she was an untethered free agent at that point), and obviously she was appreciative of being used by Ian and Tom so that she kept her place, while someone goes home (i.e. Gregg). Caryn had to know Tom was "using" her, but it didn't stop her from spilling the beans of the girls voting to boot out one of the guys. Katie was all for that all-girl alliance at that time, but she's not getting raked over the coals for turning her back on the T-I-K alliance. Why?

If you are vocally bullied into changing your vote on Survivor, you're an idiot, it just doesn't happen that way. No amount of physical threat should impact your voting decision. You have to vote for the best candidate for ouster to insure your continued presence in the game. Tom didn't "bully" people as much as telling them what would be in their best interest (from his point of view). If the other people were dumb enough to believe his spiel, that's their own fault. If the people being "threatened" weren't savvy enough to go try to change their fate by cajoling the other "votes" in play, telling people that Tom needed to go home when Ian had immunity, then they deserved to be "threatened" with elimination. Everyone else was scared of getting targetted by speaking up or pointing out the obvious. You can't blame Tom for playing the cards he was dealt with, anymore than you can blame Katie for doing the same with her cards.

Just like the women believing Chris in last season's edition, it's their own fault they couldn't come together to boot out Chris before settling their own squabbles with other women.

Strong alliances within this game (throughout the game, not how it ended up):

grouping of 2:
Tom and Ian
Ian and Katie
Jenn and Gregg
Coby and Janu

groupings of 3:
Tom, Ian and Katie

groupings of 4:
Tom, Ian, Katie, Steph

groupings of 5:
Tom, Ian, Katie, Jenn, Gregg

Caryn was the free agent, and Steph wasn't really deep with another person since she was the sole Ulonger at the merge.

The reason the final 3 ended up as so was because they were the strongest core group, thanks for Tom and Ian's strong play in the immunity challenges and taking risks when the opportunity presented themselves.

As far was Tom voting against Ian, Tom already explained why he voted that way (once Ian's scheming was exposed by Jenn, Tom had no more allegiance to Ian at that point in the game). You make it seem like Tom broke some sacred promise by "turning" on Ian when Tom should have voted off Jenn to keep their core group together, in spite of Ian's own manueverings and contingency play.

If Ian had immunity among the final 4, I have no doubt that Tom was going home. It's killed or be killed when it comes down to the final 4, especially if your long-time ally plotted against you before the immunity challenge as a contingency, instead of letting it play out at a later tribal council. Plus, you could also say that Tom gave Jenn a chance to further herself in the game by voting against Ian, knowing a tie-break would decide the outcome.

 

[Joseph S]

I don't buy the TIKJG alliance at all, it was something to use until the numbers were not in G/J's favor. Nobody makes a strong alliance of 5 when they all know 5 don't make the final show. Everyone saw J/G as inseparable. Even so, he voted out Gregg ahead of Caryn before they made a final 5.

Strategically, keeping Gregg over Steph was foolish. It forced him to lie to Steph, play Caryn, lie more behind Ian's and Katie's back, and win more immunities than would otherwise have been needed.

Tom himself brought up the STIK alliance. When it was 4-3, the logical move is to keep your alliance and vote out Gregg, then Jenn, and lastly Caryn based on who may win immunity. You've guaranteed a final 4 for yourself, kept your word, and still have Steph to use if Ian or Katie try to turn at that point.

 

[Patrick Sun]

You discount the animosity of Steph being kept around over any other "expendable" Kororian since no one wanted to see her sneak into the finals. Gregg wanted Steph out to keep the female-male ratio as even as possible, and used the animosity angle to get her out over someone else, plus, it was an easy sell to the rest of the tribe. Tom could have stepped up and tried to protect Steph, but it paints an even larger target on him, so he let Steph go. Tom correctly chose not to fight that battle to win the war.

 

[Joseph S]

It's quite clear Tom didn't even talk to her about it because he was too busy talking about rocks until the end of the game. I'm sure Steph would have been more than willing to go against Janu, Gregg, etc in a tie. When it was 4-3, he had another chance and he didn't try again.

Tom never fought any battles. He just clung on to Katie and Ian and threw them in the fire whenever his name was mentioned. He'll tell you he's with you and behind your actions, but in reality he's way behind you letting you take all the blame and none of the credit.

 

[Chris]

Joseph, not sure about your animosity toward Tom. But I felt this was the most fitting finish to any survivor. Tom played the game by winning; by winning immunity challenges (all the way through) and by playing the game hard.

Did he play the game? Yes, he did. But (IMHO) he did so far more honestly then a vast number of previous winners; more then that, the fact that he won so many immunities was in large part due to his effort as a team and as a personal effort in individual immunities.

He deserved to win (JMHO) and I was glad to see it happen that way. If one of the others was a personal friend, I'm not trying to step on their toes, I just felt as though he was in the end, the one that really deserved the $.

 

[Joseph S]

I thought the way he treated the women was despicable. He didn't have the guts to stand up to Gregg and couldn't bring himself to tell Steph about it either. However, he was more than willing to threaten Katie on the beach, did the same to Caryn, and later Ian. When asked at the final tribal council he wouldn't even answer Caryn and lied to Steph. He blamed everyone else when something went wrong. It won him a million bucks, but you couldn't pay me two million to work for or with him after seeing how he treats others. He's a 60 year old still playing grade school bully. At least Chris in the last season was a weasel and admitted to such. Tom never would and never will.

 

[Patrick Sun]

And let me guess, if you were on fire, and there was no water around, you wouldn't let Tom whizz on you either to put out the flames? How about if jellyfish stung you, still wouldn't let Tom whizz on you? Come on, you are basing so much on an edited account of the experience of this game.

Like Gregg said, some people get confused by the "characters" that the contestants get carved into by the editing or by their role inside the game, but that doesn't mean you really know these people, and how they are in real life.

 

[Brad Porter]

Tom really deserves it if, as Joseph says, he backstabbed everyone else and still got them to vote for him.

Survivor has never been about having a clean conscience and a remarkable resume of survival skills. Those are the things that the losers cherish as they go home empty handed. That's precisely why it's such a good thing for the show that someone who blatantly competed physically to be the sole survivor (to the point of begging the other contestants not to target him for his strengths) was actually able to hang on and win it in the end, instead of it just being given to the person that screwed over the least number of people.

I'm just really disappointed in the way that Ian played the last several days. At the point where he pulled Tom aside and said that either of them should take Katie on the reward if they win the challenge then I thought he understood what he needed to do to win. Everything he did after that point was just awful gamesmanship, yet he still had a chance to play out a winning strategy if Tom hadn't been fortunate enough to unlock his flag first in the final four immunity challenge. Then when he gave up a guaranteed $100K and a strong shot at $1 million - he was dead to me like Fredo in the boat.

Katie never really had a chance for anything better than second place, so I can't fault her for getting there.

Brad

 

[Patrick Sun]

Just for a stroll down memory lane of final four madness, Survivor-style:

Your fate lies mainly in who wins that 2nd to last challenge, meaning, some "popular" contestants couldn't win that particular challenge, and got sent home before they could compete for final immunity. But, it's been pretty nutty in terms of it'd be hard to script some of the things that went down in these situations each season:

Had Ian won the immunity challenge among the final 4, I have no doubt that he'd be sitting on $1 million today because Tom would have been gone, and Ian would have prevailed against either Jenn or Katie in final immunity, and Ian would have taken Katie to the finals, and he'd win over Katie as well.

In Vanuatu, Chris was just so fortunate to be stuck in a group of women who believed everything he shoveled their way, and then was able to use his "athletic" superiority to breeze through to the finals, and had the fortune of being able to bring unapologetic Twila to the finals with him.

When you get the final 4, you make your own fate. Had Rupert won immunity in final 4 for all-stars, he'd probably won the whole thing, but his "partner" Jenna L. didn't even give Rupert a chance to fight to stay in the game over Rob (because Amber won immunity then), so she sent him home by a 3-1 vote. They feared the purple rock, so jenna dumped Rupert for a sure 3rd place finish because of the tight bond between Amber and Rob.

The Pearl Islands edition where Sandra won over Lill was probably the most improbable final 2 in Survivor history. I can't really explain it, but Sandra was blunt with her strategy to be kept around and used by anyone to target someone else for the boot every tribal council. So by not being a physical threat to win immunity, she became the vote to be used by the prevailing power subset to boot anyone else but her. And it actually worked! Jon could have made it to the final 2, but he couldn't even beat any of the remaining women (Darrah, Lill, or Sandra, or the combined jury team) in the 2nd to last immunity, and actually no one had immunity among the final 4, but since Darrah was the biggest physical thread (even over Jon) so she got sent home. Lil won the final immunity, and just hated Jon, so she took Sandra, even though she might have won against Jonny Fairplay.

Brian ran the game by being the most physically dominant, and used his used-car-selling persona to sell himself as a nice guy who posed no threat to others, but then he made sure to keep less and less athletic people around him, and was able to not only run the tables on immunity challenges, but never got so caught up in personal dynamics that he dragged Clay along to the finals because he knew people hated Clay more than him.

For the Amazon edition, Jenna M. is only deserving in that she beat the guys when it counted the most to run the tables in the immunity challenges down the stretch to make it impossible for the rest of the guys to boot her out, and they just were forced to cannibalize their male alliance.

The final 4 for the Marquesas was a cluster-f*ck with the mis-used purple rock challenge. Paschal got jobbed, and so did Kathy in the final 3.

Kim J in Africa just didn't have enough votes to win the jury over over Ethan, but she made her fate by outlasting Lex and Ethan in the 2 final immunity challenges. Tom was feared enough to be cut loose, plus Kim supposedly posed no threat to Ethan and Lex, but they found out the hard way about the anatomical differences between men and women's hips in that final balance challenge.

Tina snookered everybody, playing a very subversive game, in the Outback edition. Colby would have been gone early had he not won the immunity challenges, but he put a 39-day long relationship in front of a $1 million payday. Honor or not, that was just dumb. But Tina's play gave hope to less-than-muscle-bound people that Survivor wasn't just about who was the most athletic to stave off elimination by deed, but showed that you could also play another game of social dynamics to keep your name off the ballots every 3 days.

Kelly of the first Survivor had to run the tables down the stretch to get to the final 2 because she had no allies to get her over the hump with no immunity protection. Unfortunately for her, her lack of people skills doomed her over an improbably vote for Hatch.

 

[Patrick_S]

He’s 41 and obviously your characterization is not correct. If he really was the "grade school bully" the jury would have voted against him ala Rob in All-Stars.

 

[Joseph S]

I would expect deception, plotting and manuevering or playing it straight down the line.

What Tom did with his "intimidate, harass, and threaten the weak" veered down the psychopath pathway. I don't find his behavior acceptable at all from an 18 year old, let alone a 40 year old man paid to "Serve and Protect."

As for the fire analogy, I think Tom would drive you up to it, give you the hose, let you run in, never hook it up to the hydrant, and blame the deaths on their failure to put the water on the fire.

 

[MikeM]

I totally disagree. Tom played the game with a lot of honestly, and was one of those types to try to keep his word, etc. If he made the offer to Ian, you're assuming it was off the table 4 hours later, and you're assuming he was not taking him to the final two. As Jeff said, the two didn't even speak for the lat 4hrs or so. Ian could have easily said something like, "Tom, this is going to last forever, we're both never going to give up. Are you still a man of your word?" He'd have to say yes and follow through with it, or he'd be just as bad as Ian in the previous Tribal Council.

I liked Ian, but Tom was awesome. It was nice to see someone who deserved to win, win it all. As for some saying he didn't give some of the women much respect, he'll I wouldn't have either when it comes to Katie, Caryn or Jen. They all seemed to bring nothing to the table, and were just dead weight in the tribe. Kudos to Tom.

 

[MikeM]

Firemen don't "Serve and Protect", that's the police.

A psychopath? Part of the game is to Outwit. You have to use your noodle. Sometimes people lie, sometimes people cheat, sometimes people need to be pushed. He's playing a game where it's almost a given you're going to have to screw people over, including people you consider friends. That's part of the game, and he played it better than anyone else.

 

[Joseph S]

Exactly, you would use your noodle. That's not what Tom did. He would hover over, point, pester, threaten, and harass if you were a woman. That's the way a psychopath deals with challenges. It's the abuser role and he played it well. In the end, he couldn't even bring himself to admit it to them. When the final immunity challenge was over he didn't even bother to tell Ian that he had done the same and he unsterstood and/or forgave him for possibly doing what Tom actually did three times to Ian.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Good grief, clinging to this "Tom rebuked Ian 3 times" scenario is getting stale, and has already been explained away. Get over it, Tom played the better game. If the women really thought they were threatened by a psychopath, how do you explain every single woman on the jury voting for Tom?

 

[Steve K.H.]

Now if Katie had an OUNCE of honour or integrity... she would have refused to allow Ian to ask himself to be voted off.

That would have created an interesting final vote... as it was, it was predictable.

What made this even more predictable was there was no airing of the questions of the jury to the final two. Right away that tipped it off that everyone was going hard at one and not the other.

It was a great series though... I liked this as much as the two with Rupert.

Tom willed himself to victory and wasn't a slimeball all the way like some others were... he used people's minds to beat up themselves.

Now, if we could only have a Survivor without two set tribes to start with, i.e. rotate the participants in and out of the tribe after each tribal council.

 

[Joseph S]

I agree he played a better game.

That's the age old,"Why do victims stay with their abusers?" question. At the time of the vote, Caryn didn't know he was lying for sure and Katie didn't have a vote. The only other choice they had was Katie who I don't think anyone could justify voting for as a winner.

 

[Patrick Sun]

OMG! Okay, I'm done with this portion of the discussion.

 

[Joseph S]

Tom won't let you. He won't stop until you're shaking.

But I will. I'm done too. Didn't really mean to drag it out this long and will leave it at that.

 

[Ty Zucker]

All the talk about honesty in Survivor continues to crack me up.

It's one of those games where lying and deception is part of it. Not much different than Poker, in that respect.