Survivor all star - How stupid Lex was?

With so many mistakes by Lex, how do we pick the biggest? Which one was the “game-ending blunder” as he put it?

While Lex’s turn on All Stupids has to my mind been virtually one long mistake, it’s not that I think it was a mistake to have come on the show in the first place. It’s true I never really liked him. But given a choice between him and Johnny Rottenplay, I would take Lex. (But then, given a choice between anyone over Johnny Rottenplay I'd take the other guy. Well, almost. I'd be hard-pressed to choose between Ghandia & Johnny. Faced with this choice, I’d seriously consider having root canal to get out of it. Seriously. But I digress. As usual.)

Bottom line, I felt Lex belonged on the season. Note the past tense. As in, back in the days when we all had high hopes that some of the best characters would put on an outstanding display of strategizing and survival and challenge hogging. I thought Lex would be a mover & a shaker.

I’ll give you a moment to get off the floor and wipe your drink off your printout/keyboard/monitor.

I mean even after I started calling it All Stupid Survivor, I still had high hopes that Lex had gotten himself a Lex’s Gut to English dictionary and would be able to make sense of his own inner noises.

What did Lex have to do? All Lex had to do was figure out how to organize his tribe to get them (and him) to the merge with the upper hand. Maybe he didn’t count on having quite so many other alpha dogs eager to lead and quite so few pack bitches happy to be led.

But whatever, Lex blew it. And while he may have deluded himself into believing that his new strategy was nothing like the old one, it wasn’t. Lex told us he was determined to “play differently from Africa.” He seemed oblivious to the fact that it’s not the gender of your alliance, but the kind of people you take on for “true allies.” Lex’s Africa F4 allies were weak and beatable. Lex’s F4 Allies in A.S.S. were weak and beatable. Or so he thought.

Another error he made was assuming that other tribes would be as they’ve always been: fragmented, made up of small alliances constantly at each other’s throats, one of which would be only too happy to hitch their wagons to Lex’s dreams of glory.

He could not conceive of a tribe united and enjoying themselves. He could not find a way to appeal to his own tribemates to acknowledge their strengths and pool their resources to get themselves and each other to the Final 6.

Instead, almost from day 1, a guys v girls mentality reared its ugly head. Hatch refused to do any work and Colby declared he didn’t trust anyone here. When, on Day 1, his tribemates began strategizing, Lex elected to be “the calmer.” He attempted to get them to stop fighting and jockeying for position and to focus instead on shelter-building, food gathering and doing well at the challenges. It sounded like a reasonable approach at the time. I really thought he was going to do well.

Now I realize that it was Lex’s attempt to be cool, to be as UTR as a 6 foot something tattooed freak like him could be. Maybe they talked more and we weren’t shown it, but by simply acknowledging, as Colby did, that he trusts nobody, it should have been obvious that the whole group needed to talk together about how they are such a strong tribe. Somebody needed to make the rest of them see that they’d been put on the same tribe for a reason. Did no one recall the John Nash principles mentioned by Jif at the end of Thailand (I think it was)? Did no-one recognize that so many strong leader-types had been thrown together to prove something? A perfect opportunity was lost to buck the odds and nobody saw what MB was doing with this tribe.

The tribe members didn’t align solidly with one another, which could only have been done by acknowledging their strengths to each other and acknowledging that going into the Final 6 together would be as close to the “Best of the Best” as anyone would ever see. Like I said, we weren’t shown it, and I doubt that such a conversation took place. If it had, this group would have behaved differently at the turning points of this game.

After all, given their personalities and basic approach to life, they simply weren’t going to be a happy carefree life-loving tribe like Chapera. But being themselves: serious, focused and ambitious, they could have worked together to reach the final 6.

Lex appeared to take a back seat for awhile. That’s when notorious brainlessbox Colby took over the reigns of leadership and made the number 2 biggest mistake by Mogo Mogo of this game.

That mistake took place at the dissolution of Saboga. Whether it was Colby’s idea, or Lex’s, matters not. The fact is, allowing Rupert to go to Chapera was a huge error. Like I said, had the tribe been open about their strengths (and Hatch is as guilty of hiding ability re the fire-starting as Lex was about fishing), they would have seen it as a plus to gain another strong man, another fisherman. If nothing else, why let the other tribe have access and use of that strength, when so many challenges lay ahead pre-merge?

But Colby/Lex had decided that Hatch must go. To have picked Rupert might have revealed that plan. For fear of getting Hatch busy rounding up players to vote one of them off, they let the strongest player on offer go to the other tribe.

Even had the tribe not had a sit-down discussion of core goals and values, allowing the decision to select Ethan with the express purpose of booting was a key moment when Mogo Mogo’s chances of being the superior tribe flew out the window. As a tribe philosophy, it stunk. It screamed, we’re here to lose.

So what was Colby’s problem? Why was he so hot to get rid of Hatch? Colby was practically drooling all over Chuck there. “Ohh can I call a gay man a stud?” He may as well have been cooing, “Oooo Rich I wanna have your children.” This is not supposed to be about Colby – it’s about Lex’s stupidity.

And it is. Lex letting Colby run the team decision on this selection process is yet another huge mistake. Being onside with picking Ethan first was just silly. Look at what would have happened had they chosen Rupert. The other tribe is left with Jenna, Jerri and Ethan. Are they not just as likely to pick Amber’s good buddy Jenna, leaving Ethan for second pick ahead of Jerri? Even Jerri might have been a better choice than Ethan. But the point is, the first pick should have been for the best of the bunch and it was not. The second pick could have been for “easy one to toss first if need be.”

They acquired those prizes Ethan and Jerri. Next trip to TC, the alleged plan to boot Ethan "changes" all of a sudden and the only person who thinks it might be a bad idea is Jerri. And she only runs to Hatch so she can orchestrate a dig at Colby. But Hatch can't even summon enough power to vote out Colby instead.

So Hatch goes. And it doesn't seem like much, but in my view that right there was the biggest error this tribe made. By this point, Hatch had been getting in the fish. The gang was eating well. Yet paranoia reigned, and too-early preparation for “Final Four” resulted in the departure of someone who would have helped guide the tribe to the Final 6 intact more or less, but certainly with the upper hand.

The next loss, of Colby, was the boot that got many people bandying the phrase, "Lex’s biggest mistake." However, at this point, it had become kind of moot. Without Hatch, Lex is looking at 2 strong players surrounded by a bunch of middling to weak ones. Perhaps they could have tossed Ethan, but who would have been next? Lex? Why should he trust Colby when Colby already said he trusts no one?

With Colby’s paranoia equaling Lex’s own, and his presence not obviously contributing to the tribe winning, what difference did it make, really? I began to see that Lex’s only hope was to go for a tribe that didn’t carry automatic Boot Me Now targets in the way that Colby and Ethan carried. So these two boots made sense in a cockeyed sort of way. I mean, given that they had to boot someone, why should Lex trust Colby? Why keep a previous winner?

So we arrive at the momentous occasion. First, of course, there is the summit of leaders, convened by Lex. Remember how he selected Rob for the pre-merge chat, and poured out his heart and soul as far as the game is concerned? "Can’t wait for individual immunities and being one tribe" and basically just finally getting to that for which Lex had been preparing ever since he lost his place in Africa. Whatever Rob said during their conversation, it made Lex feel like he might have a chance to forge a bond later with this obviously successful leader.

When Rob promised Lex he’d take care of him, it was simultaneously hilarious and sad. Too bad Lex assumed he and Rob were on the same page. Too bad Lex didn’t consider which meaning of “take care of” Rob might be using in this situation. Too bad Lex didn't realize Rob intended Lex to misunderstand him: asking “with tears in his eyes” that Lex look after Amber and sucking Lex into believing that there was a pot of gold at the end of this particular smokescreen.

And make no mistake, Lex admitted (in a TV Guide Online interview) that he made the move of keeping Amber for strategy, in the hopes that Rob would welcome him with open arms into his alliance, thereby transforming Lex’s extremely weak position into a potentially game-winning one.

Rob has been masterful at giving other players what they deserve. The only thing Lex has mastered is being a hypocrite. Looked at as the pitiful hope of a worthless leader, it was simply inevitable (a) that Lex would keep Rob's girl hoping against hope it would forestall a booting that (b) he had had coming to him after forging a path through the season that was fraught with bombs only because he placed them there.

Lex believed Rob because he neededs to believe him. Needed desperately, as a man drowning in quicksand clutches at tiny tree branches hoping they can support his weight as he pulls himself out of his quagmire.

Having divested himself of all the incredible power that Mark Burnett had bequeathed his tribe from the outset, Lex was reduced to hoping that Rob’s word was good and that Rob would take him in and give him a final 4 alliance because they’ve shared some tender moments “in the real world.” Lex's whining about Rob's betrayal is just the dying bleating of a lost goat, who had so much and threw it all away.

And never mind that following Marquesas, Rob candidly admitted to lying to get ahead in the game. Or that Rob’s tribe has “lost” exactly 3 times: one time when they were too full from their rice reward (and they got rid of weak link Rob C.), one time when Jenna couldn’t see straight after Sue left and one time when they failed to come first and Mogo Mogo got first pick of the Sabogans.

Or that every other challenge Chapera has outright won. They won more rewards than any other tribe, came first in Immunity Challenges even when coming second didn’t mean taking a trip to Tribal.

Something special was going on over there, but Lex never stopped to question why the team that on paper should have been at Tribal every three days, was instead taking home the prizes and the 1st place IC wins.

Why should Rob’s outside friendship with Lex be any different from Lex’s outside friendship with Ethan?

Getting to the end game this season is about building an alliance made out of your tribe. JennaM left the tribe with all its best kinds of strength: Hatch the brute strength and keen plotting mind, oh yeah and the fishing. Colby with his good general knowledge, physical strength (and eye candy for everyone ), Lex the fishing strength and all round physical strength. Kathy is a known hard worker around camp and has good endurance. Even ShiiAnn has proven to have good balance. When they were at 5, they needed to be focused on hogging more strength, not selecting someone for the express purpose of booting him. They were making choices like a tribe that expected to lose and needed to plan for it.

How could Lex think that Rob would have had the intention of making room for him in his happy winning tribe, all of whose efforts had helped make those wins possible?

Getting rid of Richard Hatch not only gutted the tribe, it gutted the season. Not, mind you, that I'm not enjoying watching Boston Rob. I am. I love how he is handing these weenies their tiny minds on nationally seen platters.

But how much better to have had two extremely strong tribes at this stage, instead of just one? I see the booting of Hatch as the key error, the most important mistake that Lex (and Mogo Mogo) made. It's possible that had they booted Ethan, per plan, they could still have made it to the merge with the upper hand. When Lex and Kathy decided they could do just fine without Hatch, they sealed their fates.

All the other mistakes become the inevitable attempts to climb out of quicksand that they are. Goodbye losers. (Yes, Kathy's turn is not far behind.)