This entry is only going to be interesting to a very niche audience of Survivor fans, but hopefully for those 2 or 3 people it will be pretty fun.

I’m going to try to explain why I enjoy watching Survivor. I treat the show like an interactive strategy game, where in any given episode I can take the situation of any player and try to map out a theoretical way for them to make the final tribal council (and hopefully win).

This week was episode 9 of the 22nd season and I’m going to take my position at the start of that episode and map out what I think is one way for us, as David (lawyer from Zapatera) this time, to win the game. (Spoiler alert if you haven't seen this season yet, of course).

First off, we have to approach Boston Rob. Rob is completely controlling the game, and his 'buddy system' means that it will be tough to get one on one time with anyone else. We tell Rob that we’re playing this game to get as far as we can, mainly for the increase in prize money. We also says that we know at this point we can’t win, but that we have a proposal that would see Rob win the game and us finish 2nd or 3rd. His current plan is to take Natalie and Philip, and while Phil isn’t ever going to win, Natalie could easily win by default if enough people are pissed off at Boston Rob by the end (ala Russell's previous two seasons).

Our plan? We're going to start playing a 24/7 Borat-like character, 'The biggest douchebag in Survivor history'. If we don't act well enough, Rob can vote us off. If we do, he will never have a reason to.

Here’s what we tell Rob:

- We start fighting with Julie about anything we can think of. Over a few discussions we get more and more insulting, and Julie will almost certainly respond genuinely. But rather than do anything as obvious as flipping to the other side (something that would create suspicion amongst the existing Ometepe alliance when they don’t need us), we simply become an alliance of one. At the next tribal council, despite the fact that Mike is going home, we vote for Julie (as well as writing something absurd like ‘time to leave bitch’ on our voting paper).

- The next few votes should go pretty smoothly. We fall out with our previous tribe because they feel legitimately aggrieved at us turning our back on them for no reason, and we simply fuel the fires by saying we doesn’t want to be affiliated with them anyway. With us lacking any bond with anyone, we would be seen as the most logical number 7 (after the 6 in the Ometepe Alliance). As the days go on, we make sure to fall out as much as possible with every former Zapatera member, thus ‘ensuring’ they will never vote for us at the end.

- When they reach that number 7, it’s going to be clear that the previous 6 are very close to needing to vote each other out. With everyone looking to get further in the game, we invoke the fear that if any of the women make the final three they will have a great chance to win by default having not directly sabotaged anyone. At this point it shouldn’t be too tough to convince Philip and Grant to form a 4 way alliance with ourselves and Rob, with of course the plan being to vote us out at number 4.

- At this point of the game we will destroy our chances of getting any jury votes from the girls. As soon as the first girl is voted out, we start to arrogantly boast about our ‘all man’ alliance, making misogynist comments wherever we can fit them in. Just as with the Zapatera members, none of the girls (including the first girl out who hears our horrendous statements at tribal council) will ever vote for us.

- Next two votes are pretty simple, down to final 4. Whenever a person comes back from redemption island, we should always have the numbers to immediately vote them off again.

- While Philip is a crazo, Grant has definitely remained pretty likeable throughout. Given our track record with the jury so far it should be a no-brainer that we should make the final three with Rob and Philip.

All of the recent seasons have ended with a final three, so barring some crazy redemption island twist this should be the case again.

We tell Rob that we’re just hoping that we can get one vote from the final tribal to beat Philip into 2nd place, but that in all likelihood we will both get zero and Rob will win with 100% of the votes.

Our real plan is, come the final four, hopefully have someone other than Rob win immunity (if we win it will be a lot easier/risk free to push this plan). We take Grant aside, let him know he’s going home and Rob is happy about it, and offer him the chance to stay. Once we tell Phil both us and Grant are voting for Rob, and that Rob is clearly going to win the game, barring a meltdown he will have no real choice but to follow.

At the final tribal council, we recount the entire story starting from the day Mike got voted out. We apologise to everyone for everything we said, but assure them that it was all an act and that keeping such a character going for so long, in addition to creating your plan to go from 10th to top 3, has to make us the most deserving Survivor winner of all time. Say that when everyone is watching on tv they’ll all know we were simply acting, and we actually said really nice things in the private interviews to balance for the in person stuff (whether we actually do that or not is a personal preference).

We end by saying “I've clearly played the best game of the remaining three players, and if you don’t vote for me it’s because you’re mad at a character. Would you dismiss all gangster films because you don’t approve of murder?”

We’ll probably lose to Grant in the final three, but if our tribal speech is convincing enough we might just nick a victory. If not, we should definitely be polarising enough to take second place and a healthy profit from the game.


K.