Addison's Survivor Grades -  SEASON ONE: PULAU TIGA
  Name Grade Comments

Sonja Christopher  ? Booted for being old and easily-injured, which led to a tribal downfall at IC.  Her strategic inclinations remain completely unknown.
BB Anderson D- Setting the stage for many a Pagong with a vague, scrap-like fragment of a strategy rattling around in his head.  Just about embodies my “insurmountable personal problems” criterion for low grades.
Stacey Spillman D I came, I helped win a tribe IC that I wouldn’t shut up about, I annoyed the hell out of my tribe even more than a 72-year-old curmudgeon who dinn’t even know what em-tee-vee meant.  Still, points for trying to consciously put together a voting bloc – rare insight indeed in S1.
Ramona Gray ? While it could be argued that it was her social behavior that got her voted out (“Too little, too late”), clearly her problems were brought on by day-one illness that didn’t ever really let go.  In the absence of other information about what she was trying to do in the game, I give her a ?.
Dirk Been F

Clueless.  I can’t really blame him, but still.  Clueless. Props for being one of the least sore losers ever in Survivor history, though.

Joel Klug C- I struggled with Joel, because he was in the unique position of being more or less surrounded with nonstrategic players.  What could he do?  Didn't seem to understand that the pre-merge vote would look ahead to postmerge immunity threats, and also made himself a target with an obnoxious attitude.  Still, credit where credit is due: more than any other Pagong before the merge, he understood that Survivor was a game that had voting in it and stuff.  
Gretchen Cordy F+ I'm really sorry.  I loved her, and I'm giving her the + because she really just didn't know any better.  But she didn't have a strategy.  
Greg Buis D-

Tremendously fun to watch, one of the great comic relief Survivors (a criminally small category: casting and editing need to tilt back in this direction IMO).  Strategically vacant for the most part – he gets this high a rating only for the harebrained deviousness of trying to flirt with Richard to stave off his own doom.  He would have been better suited putting his energies elsewhere, but the only way the F rating won’t be completely swamped by the poor Pagongs is if I give them points for moves that demonstrate they were at least conscious during the game.

Jenna Lewis D- This would be an outright F except for the attempted underdog alliance (or as it’s sometimes known, the Barbecute Alliance).  Didn’t go anywhere, but it elevates her, barely, into the category of people dimly aware that there’s a game going on.  
Gervase Peterson D Minus for general Pagong spirit.  Plus for card-based schmoozing (transparent, but represents social strategy instincts).  Also, if my memory isn’t failing me, Gervase was sympathetic to Joel’s ambitions of a unified tribal vote post-merge.  I really can’t wait to see how Gervase does if Tournament of Champions happens and he’s in it (certainly he’s the most likely Pagong): in the post-S1 Survivor world, Gervase could be playing with a completely new deck of cards.
Colleen Haskell: D

Wheee, this is the last one of these Pagong entries I have to write.  At least until I get to Africa and Kim Powers shows up.  Anyway, the rundown: After Joel, the only Pagong to take actual initiative in terms of strategy.  It was clearly too damn late to make any difference, and she should have cast a wider net and reached out to Kelly.  Oh well.  At least she was entertainingly clever.  

Sean Kenniff C+ Understood the importance of joining the Tagi 4 even after they axed his buddy Dirk.  Managed to make it look like he wasn't part of the alliance but was instead a complete idiot.  Acting dumb and playing smart….too bad he was always playing for F5; there were better options open to him.  Once the alphabet plan came out, he had no chance of ever convincing a majority Pagong jury that he deserved the million, but he might have made at least an effort for an underdog alliance that would have maybe gotten him to F2 with some immunity work.  
Sue Hawk C+ Picked up alliances quickly and seemed to be in a good position to make it to the final 2 (and lose to Richard).  Her inability to manage her relationship with Kelly, as well as an apparent loss of focus on her go-against-Richard-and-win plan led to an F4 tiebreaker meltdown and her exit.  Up until that point she had played the Demon Bear role to Richard’s Fox (or, I suppose, Snake) with impressive blatancy while never really making herself a target the way Rich was. 
Rudy Boesch B- Shockingly adaptable – from cranky old bastard to loveable old coot in about the space of a week.  Has any other Survivor except maybe Kathy made such an impressive turnaround?  Quickly grasped the power of the Tagi alliance as well as his need for it to have a chance of surviving.  A slip of the hand kept him from F2 (and possibly victory?) – leaving that aside, he really didn’t build much of a plan for getting through the F4 once he got there.  But what do you want out of the old guy?  He’s seventy-fricking two!  Go, Rudy!  
Kelly Wiglesworth C- Having absorbed alliance-ism from Richard and Sue, and also having the physical prowess and dogged will power to pull off an immunity streak, Kelly had no excuse save social anxiety not to come up with some kind of game plan that she could actually feel proud of and give a convincing case for at F2.  Her dithering and vote-wasting were totally inexcusable given the options available to her – forming up with Sean and the last couple of Pagongs would have taken a lot of work and persuasive effort, but it would have been do-able.  Failing that, she should have embraced the “dark side” at the jury, and differentiated herself from Rich with her alliance streak and underdog-within-the-alliance status.  This would have gone over a lot better than the unconvincing “good person” spiel she came up with.  Kelly is Survivor’s Hamlet, doomed by her indecisiveness.  
Richard Hatch A Relied a little too much on the dumbness of Pagong, and if he was playing with more devious people he could have been chewed up by a Jenna/Colleen/Gervase/Sean/Kelly type alliance.  But he was playing against newbies, and he knew it - he could read the other players pretty damn well.  Not as well as he thought he could, but hey.  His whole game played like evidence items with his jury remarks making a thesis statement - bonus points for being able to sell himself clearly and honestly, which several members of the jury clearly respected.  Richard Hatch stole the game of Survivor from Mark Burnett, and he still hasn't given it back.
Grading System  x  Pulau Tiga  x  Outback  x  Africa  x  Marquesas  x  Thailand  x  Amazon  x  Pearl Islands

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