Survivor: South Pacific - Page 8

Immunity Blog: Episode 8

Posted on Nov 4, 2011 04:56pm

BY ROB CESTERNINO (Survivor Amazon & All-Stars)

Last week in this blog I wrote about the 5 Reasons why Ozzy’s decision to go to Redemption Island was the wrong decision to make. After 1,000 words and one Redemption Island challenge it turns out that I was the one who was wrong. Since now I’m the one in need of Redemption, I’ve decided to dedicate this week’s blog to the 5 Reasons why Cochran made the right decision this week.

5. Nothing to Lose – As you know by now, on this week’s Survivor, John Cochran decided to vote against his tribe to prevent a 6-6 stalemate and avoid picking rocks for elimination. Cochran’s decision has been highly scrutinized and is considered to be a bad game decision by a majority of the viewers I’ve heard from on twitter. The most common criticism was that Cochran took himself from being sixth in his own tribe to now being seventh in Upolu, thus making it a bad move. However, the fact that Cochran was sixth in his own tribe is exactly the reason why I like what he did.

If Ozzy was the one who defected to vote against Savaii, I would agree with the backlash. However, Cochran was not in a good position at all. Yes, Cochran could have easily stuck with Ozzy, Keith, Jim and company until the final six and attempted to make a play from there. Cochran may have somehow even been able to find himself in the final 3, but without a real chance to win. Last season, viewers screamed for Phillip, Andrea, Grant, Ashley or Natalie to make a move that could possibly prevent Boston Rob from winning the game. Ultimately, those players all chose to be content to sit next to Boston Rob as he collected 8 of the 9 jury votes and one million dollars. Cochran didn’t have a real shot to win before this move and therefore had nothing to lose. I’m still not convinced if Cochran has a shot now, but the difference is that for the first time in this game his destiny belongs to him, not Ozzy.

The real mistake in all this belongs to Ozzy. The reason Cochran had nothing to lose was because Ozzy never offered Cochran any incentives to remain loyal to Savaii. Does anybody really think that Boston Rob wouldn’t have had a side deal for the Final 3 with Cochran and Dawn from Day 5? Ozzy just did not do enough to protect against this possible defection, which is unfortunate since he’s the one who had everything to lose.

4. Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Lost in the fervor of people saying Cochran betrayed his tribe is the fact that Cochran prevented a draw of the dreaded purple rocks. Due to the two immunity necklaces, the two survivors receiving the votes and the play of the hidden immunity idol, eight contestants would have had to draw rocks to determine who would go home. Of these eight players, there would have been five Upolu tribe members (everyone except Rick) and the three unprotected Savaii tribe members, Jim, Keith and of course, Cochran.

By making this decision to betray his tribe, Cochran avoids the 12.5% percent chance that his game ends on the spot. It’s very easy to say from your couch that Cochran should have played the percentages, but it’s an easy thing to do when its not your potential million dollars. Furthermore, Cochran ran a 37.5% chance that someone from his tribe pulls the dreaded rock (including himself). In this scenario, Coach’s tribe likely picks off the remaining members of Savaii one by one. Instead of leaving things to chance, Cochran makes the only move that 100% guarantees him three more days on the island by breaking it off with Savaii like it was a Kardashian wedding.

3. Time Heals All Wounds – Another argument I’ve heard against Cochran’s decision is that Cochran has assured himself he can’t win because now Ozzy, Keith, Jim and Whitney all hate him. As a viewer, sometimes we forget how long the Survivor game actually is. Sure, we all know the game takes 39 days, but for the Survivor it seems far longer than that. Remember a few episodes ago when we all thought Ozzy would never forgive Jim, Keith and Whitney for voting out Elyse? After a few hours of pouting, that whole incident is water under the bridge. This episode ended on night 21, meaning there are 18 days left in the game. Far too much can happen to assume we know how anybody will vote in the final tribal council yet.

Even if the Savaii tribe never speaks to Cochran again (and if I recall, not too many of those players were particularly fond of him in the first place), he made six new allies by choosing to defect to Coach’s tribe. Certainly, it is possible that Coach’s tribe may simply discard Cochran once he’s served his numerical purpose but Cochran now has more friends in the game than he did at any earlier point in the game. Finally, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to get labeled as “the guy who the jury hates”; sometimes it’s all you need to make it to the end.

2. Long Division – Cochran now finds himself aligned with Coach’s tribe as seemingly the seventh member of a completely solid six-person group. While Cochran himself may not know about all of the Upolu tribe’s issues, as viewers, we are well versed. Only two episodes ago, we watched as Coach and Albert butted heads about keeping Edna around in the tribe over Mikayla. Coach always preaches loyalty, but I know he would certainly vote out any of his own alliance members if he suspected them of conspiring against him. Of course, there is also always the possibility of another Brandon Hantz outburst. With so much time left in the game, there are countless opportunities for Cochran to work to divide the members of Upolu and get himself a better deal.

1. When Right is Still Wrong – Okay, I betrayed you. Like Cochran said to Jim, “I’ll explain it”. This list is actually four reasons why Cochran was right and one reason why Ozzy STILL made the wrong move last week – even though it “worked”. Last week, Ozzy decided to send himself to Redemption Island to make sure they got Christine out of the game to prevent her from re-joining Coach. Unbeknownst to Ozzy, Christine never liked Coach and would’ve probably switched to Ozzy’s side. To accomplish this, Ozzy sent himself to Redemption Island instead of Cochran. Had Ozzy sent Cochran to Redemption Island, Cochran would’ve likely not returned the game and had the opportunity to betray Ozzy.

Furthermore, Ozzy’s performance at the Redemption Island duel did nothing to help the cause of reality stars who would like to break into acting. Ozzy lost a lot of credibility with Upolo and potentially crippled his chances to win their votes in a final tribal council. Ozzy is no longer playing like Ozzy. Ozzy used to be known a dominant physical threat who was an honest stand-up guy. With his reputation tarnished and down in the numbers it’s looking more and more like Ozzy’s game is going to come down to just how long of an immunity challenge run Ozzy has in him.

I know many won’t agree with what I had to say about Cochran’s big move, let me hear from you on twitter, @RobCesternino – and please help support our friend Ethan Zohn in his ongoing battle against cancer by using the hashtag, #GetBetterEthan

On November 08 2011 21:43 mdb wrote:
I dont agree with the Cochrans move at all. If he gets to final 3 who will vote for him? There will be at least 2-3 Savaii members, who will never vote for him and the rest from Upolu, from whom except something crazy happens I dont see who will vote for him, given the fact that we havent seen tribes with such close relations between the members for a while in survivor. This was cute way to guarantee his stay for few more episodes, but in the long run it was very bad descision imo.
But this is survivor after all and anything can happen

On November 10 2011 20:39 ePdeLay wrote:

he knows he cant win, so he can at least give a "fuck you" to his old tribe while at it.

On November 12 2011 17:00 Superiorwolf wrote:
Meh I think Cochran could give a convincing speech at the end and try to show that he 'decided his own path' or some stuff like that. I think it's definitely a viable reason to switch rather than have your fate chosen by chance. Also I totally agree, they never show ANYTHING involving Rick haha

On November 18 2011 00:02 Stimp wrote:
Ugh they threatened a big move then just didn't do anything.