Why Survivor: Cook Islands’ Candice Is Not in the Hall of Shame

When Candice was voted off of Survivor: Cook Islands, I was ready to give her at least a Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment, if not a full induction. In fact, I was ready to do so the week prior, when it became crystal clear that her choice to mutiny had destroyed any chance she had of winning, and severely hampered her allies, Adam and Parvati, as well.

But then we left the realm of television editing and started dealing with Candice directly. When I interviewed Candice, she emphatically said, “I did not choose my emotions over strategy.” She went into greater detail, saying that she knows on the show, “it looked like it was because I wanted to be with Adam,” but that wasn’t the real reason. Instead, she provided a strategic explanation, saying that she believed she was in danger with Becky and Yul, and she already felt she had a solid alliance with Adam and Parvati (which was enhanced when they saved her by sending her to Exile Island during a vote, and then when she had eye contact with Adam during the shared Tribal Council). Further, she knew from Nate (when he had been kidnapped) that Adam and Nate ran the tribe. And on top of that, switching tribes were put her on the side with more players, giving her a numbers advantage.

Well, you might say, that’s all well and good, but this is Candice talking about it after having months to think about how to cover her own butt. How can we take that seriously? The answer is that Candice said almost the exact same things in her post-vote comments and again in her day after comments, as shown on Survivor Insider.

Is it possible that Candice still made up all of this as a cover story? Yes. But she would have had to be thinking awfully quick to have it ready right after being voted out. Then again, she did spend a lot of time alone on Exile Island, so I suppose it’s possible.

But there is nothing we can prove. Do I believe she made a mistake by mutinying? Yes. We saw no indication that Becky and Yul were gunning for her – quite the contrary, she seemed to be one of the safest while Ozzy and Sundra looked to be in danger. So while she might have been thinking she might be in trouble, I believe she was wrong. (Professor Sadow examines this and related points in more detail in his article, Strategic Overview of Survivor Special: Candice’s Flawed Decisions.)

But some of the rest of her story makes sense. She knew she had an alliance awaiting her on the other tribe. She knew she could probably keep tribal leader Adam in the palm of her hand. So she probably thought she was moving to a position of strength.

And we do have to consider that hindsight is 20/20. When Candice mutinied, she could not foresee that they would lose every single immunity challenge after that, or that there would be a double-vote at one point, or that Jonathan would flip again. Or that the merge would be delayed. As she told me, “If any one of those things had gone differently, the game would have gone differently. I never could have predicted that; at the time it made sense.”

When deciding about somebody’s fate in the Hall of Shame, we have to weigh what we saw on TV and what they had to say. Here, we saw Candice acting emotionally and recklessly, with little sign of strategy. But what she has to say now makes sense, and there is nothing we saw that contradicts it (unlike many other contestants who try to cover their rears after being sent packing). On balance, I simply do not believe there is enough to (dis)credit Candice with a Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment or induction.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other related Survivor: Cook Islands articles on RealityNewsOnline:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of the Reality TV Hall of Shame, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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