Survivor Island of the Idols: Why was _____ voted out in 20th place?
The first castaway to get their torch snuffed on Island of the Idols struggled with the most old school Survivor quality that is so essential to early success.
This post contains spoilers from the first episode of Survivor: Island of the Idols.
Professional poker players continue to have a tough run on Survivor, as Ronnie Bardah became the first eliminated castaway of Island of the Idols. Initially, it appeared that Ronnie was part of a legitimate alliance that could string together a strong majority. That prospect crumbled when Ronnie received seven out of nine votes! What went wrong?
In all honesty, Ronnie didn’t do anything extraordinarily wrong to warrant being the first boot. However, it was the little things that hurt him in the end. This early into the season, it came down to who the castaways could trust, and Ronnie came across as a little too conniving. It wasn’t that he was caught aggressively scheming, he just didn’t come off as genuine to his tribe as someone like Elaine did.
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One of his downfalls was targeting a player that so many castaways developed a liking to. It didn’t take long for Elaine to become the tribe’s class clown, making everyone laugh. What’s great about Elaine is that her great sense of humor and down to earth personality made her come off as a genuine, trustworthy person. Other players value that transparency, whereas Ronnie looked like he was hiding his cards a bit.
As a result, when Ronnie and Aaron set the plan to vote out Elaine, it was hard for their tribe members to come to terms with that vote. I understand that the first vote is never easy, but you have to come up with better criteria than a castaway being too likable. That might work right before a merge or later on in the season, but not three days in.
Even though Elaine didn’t even end up being Ronnie’s final target, that choice did enough damage. After that awkward confrontation when Elaine asked why she was the target, Aaron and Ronnie’s decision to change the vote to Vince didn’t help either. If anything, it convinced people that Vince and Elaine’s opinion of Ronnie being too hard to trust was true.
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It’s hard seeing someone who had the capability of playing a solid game have their torch snuffed so early on. Although Ronnie is at fault for some of the ways he handled the vote, by no means did he make any serious mistakes. It came down to the oldest rule in the book: vote out the person that you don’t trust the most. Unfortunately for Ronnie, he just couldn’t build enough trust with his tribe to counter Elaine’s straight-forward personality.