Is Amanda Kimmel the most tragically flawed Survivor player? She spent 78 days in China and Mironesia without ever getting voted off, but no million dollar prize. She has the strongest social game of any player I can think of, but can’t communicate the worthiness of that skill to the jury. The players who voted for Parvati really thought that Amanda was lucky and had no idea how she got there. I’m not sure she knew how she got there either, but she wasn’t lucky.
For the past few seasons I’ve bought into a Survivor pool and I picked Amanda in Survivor: China.? Her main flaw seemed to not knowing when to oust Todd at the right time, but she also made a terrible case for why she should win.? In Micronesia she had to work much harder to stay, but was always able to repair her alliances after they were broken.? She also was the first person ever to properly use the hidden immunity idol and that allowed her to coast into the final four.
Going into the final she decided to take Parvati over Cerie, presumably because Parvati would be less sympathetic to the jury, but Amanda never used the final tribal council to highlight any of the reasons why Parvati shouldn’t get the million.? Eliza even handed the roadmap for Amanda in one of the earliest questions.? She told Parvati that she respected Parvati’s game, but didn’t understand why she also did plenty of mean and arrogant things that didn’t affect the game one way or another.? If Amanda had used that angle I think she would have turned Eliza’s vote making it 4-4 instead of 5-3.
?I’m not done writing on this topic, so I’ll probably add some more later.
