Strategy and Personality As a Winning Combination: Tina Wesson

Many people don’t give Tina Wesson nearly as much credit as she deserves for the way she played – and won – the second Survivor. But the fact remains that she came out of one of the most difficult Survivor series with the big prize. And she did it by using a combination of strategy and personality to beat one of the most overpowering performers the game has ever seen.

From pretty much the very beginning, Tina was a part of the core Ogakor alliance that also involved Jerri, Amber, Colby, Keith, and Mitchell. She showed that she wasn’t simply the nice mom-type early in the game when she helped vote out Maralyn “Mad Dog” Hershey after they had been getting along so well. She further demonstrated her tactical skills by pulling Keith and Colby into a new sub-alliance and getting rid of Mitchell, but still managing – with a lot of help from Colby – to keep Jerri and Amber on a leash. As she said when she voted out Mitchell, she didn’t come to the Outback to starve herself and face the elements just so they could keep the weakest person.

That three-person alliance, of course, took her the rest of the way. While she made occasional mistakes – such as voting off Jerri before they could be completely certain that they had a majority, because Amber could have sided with the Kuchans to turn the game around, though she didn’t – Tina mostly played the game extremely well.

One key example occurred when the two tribes merged and they had their first individual immunity challenge. Tina stepped down and allowed Keith to win. She knew she wasn’t in danger, but Keith could have been if everybody had stayed true to their tribes, resulting in a tie vote, because of the previous votes cast against him. As it turned out, without Keith as a target, the Kuchans went after Colby, who had no previous votes and was therefore safe. By sacrificing the immunity win, Tina took control of the game.

From that point on, she helped to steer the votes while staying in the background. She allowed Colby to be the front-man – winning challenges, dealing with Jerri and Amber, being the obvious hit-man, etc. Meanwhile, she was able to continue portraying herself as the nice mom who everybody loves. Meanwhile, we saw that Tina was not only allied with Colby, but used Keith as well – and managed to keep Keith around even when Colby was telling the cameras about how much he disliked the chef. For example, in the vote that saw Amber leave, Tina and Keith voted against her, but Colby didn’t. Tina acted as she saw fit and was an independent force.

But she didn’t just stay in the background. When she needed to step to the front, she did, such as when the river flooded and rushing water swept away most of the merged tribe’s camp and belongings. Tina was the one who swam across the river to rescue their rice tin (while Keith was trying another route that wasn’t working very well).

Of course, the most important thing she did in the entire game was the convince Colby that he should honor their Final 2 pact. Why did he do that? Well, we have seen Colby in All-Stars complaining about people who fly under the radar and let others do the dirty work for them. However, he didn’t feel that way about Tina. In the Outback, he talked about how she didn’t play dirty, didn’t ruffle feathers, but also didn’t stay low. He felt she deserved to be in the Final 2. That’s why he took her instead of Keith. She convinced him that she belonged there, and that his friendship with her was worth bringing her. Mind you, this is despite the fact that throughout the entire series, we kept seeing Colby telling us that he was there to play the game. He was going to win the game. He would do whatever it took. Win, win, win!