Losing Like Nobody Has Lost Before: The Ulong Tribe from ‘Survivor: Palau’

Pa-gong vt., to pick off an opposing tribe one by one after the merge on Survivor – n, one of the first two tribes on Survivor, where alliances were not made and the Tagi tribe picked them off one by one after the merge.

U-long vt., to completely and disastrously lose every tribal immunity challenge in Survivor and thus have your tribe decimated – n a tribe on the tenth Survivor series that could not work as a team and therefore lost every immunity challenge until only one person remained.

The Reality TV Hall of Shame previously recognized the Pagong tribe from Survivor: Borneo with a Hall of Shame Moment. Now, another tribe has emerged on Survivor that will have its name similarly go down in history and be converted into a verb, as shown above – but this deserves more than simply a Hall of Shame Moment; this is a full induction.

The Ulong tribe on Survivor: Palau has done something that never happened before, never should have happened this time, and quite possibly will never happen again: They lost every immunity challenge. Time after time Ulong visited Tribal Council, while the Koror tribe only visited once – forced by a twist in the game that caused both teams to vote off a person no matter who won the challenge.

Ulong began their slide to shame by voting off the strongest person on their tribe, Jolanda. Maybe it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but once she left there was no guiding force, no concept of team, and no clue of what to do. When I asked Bobby Jon if he thinks things would have turned out differently if Ulong had kept Jolanda, he noted that she “was an asset” and “she was in the Olympics for crying out loud.”

It was only downhill from there. Other members of Ulong had their thoughts on what went so wrong. In particular, Angie and Jeff seemed to hit it on the head. Angie noted, “We just didn’t work well together and no one wanted to listen to anyone else.” Jeff similarly said, “If you don’t feel like everyone is playing for each other, you never come together [for] a win. … You have to be able to count on someone before you can expect anything from them.”

Indeed, this may also explain why it seems there was very little scheming and plotting on Ulong, despite the repeated trips to Tribal Council. Nobody felt part of a team. Even those alliances that did exist were quickly and easily broken (such as voting out Angie when Ibrehem was given immunity). Ulong wasn’t a tribe – it was a collection of individuals. And as individuals, they were picked off one by one.

Ulong did win a few reward challenges – but those challenges generally were simple and required only one skill. For example, the Pringles reward required only that they could shoot a gun. There was no thought, no strategy, just aiming and firing. The immunity challenges, though, required multiple skills and the ability to work together. Let’s take a look at them:

• The very first challenge was to decide what items to untie and then run with them to a canoe and row that canoe. First, the tribe couldn’t decide what items to bring; then they couldn’t figure out how to row.
• The second challenge required swimming to a floating platform and then diving down 10 feet to a rope strung through a barrel and attached to a footlocker that was 50 feet away. While under water, they needed to pull the rope so as to move the footlocker closer. Once they got the locker to them, they opened it and released eight mess kits. They brought those back to shore and decoded the word based on the dots and dashes on the mess kits. Ulong never get into a rhythm as far as going underwater and dragging the trunk – they didn’t work as a team.
• The third challenge was the one in which each person wore a belt clipped to a common tribal rope; they needed to move together as a tribe, each carrying a backpack weighing 20 pounds. They needed to run through shallow water in an oval track, starting from opposite sides, with the goal being to catch the other tribe. When somebody quit, they had to hand off their weighted backpack to somebody else on the team. Once again, Koror worked as a team, distributing the weight and planning when to make their runs at Ulong. Indeed, when they were discussing the challenge at Tribal Council, Bobby Jon said Tom beat them but Ibrehem noted that Tom and his team beat them, not Tom alone.

• The fourth challenge was the one-on-one battles on platforms where the Ulong women did well and the men… didn’t. Part of the reason for Ulong’s loss here is that their dwindling numbers meant Koror could pick and choose who to sit out – like Willard. And it seemed at times they just didn’t try as hard as Koror.
• The fifth challenge wasn’t really for immunity, but rather the chance to pick who on the other team received immunity (though they didn’t know it at the time). Once again, Ulong’s teamwork failed. The challenge was to dive for sake bottles. Ibrehem took far too long and still didn’t get a bottle.
• The sixth challenge was to tie up a box and then cover it up with lumber, then to undo the other team’s work. Koror had a plan, Ulong was scattered. First, James assured everybody that he could tie a great knot – except it wasn’t so great. Then, when they were supposed to go into the water to get lumber and add more knots, James was busy with his clothing. Koror worked well as a team. Ulong didn’t.
• Seventh was the slide puzzle challenge. Why Ulong put Bobby Jon in charge, I’ll never understand. Coby worked well for Koror, but Bobby Jon never seemed to fully get a grasp on the puzzle. Eventually, they swapped out and put Stephenie in his place – she did make progress, but by then it was far too late.
• The final tribal immunity challenge involved swimming underwater to get puzzle pieces, running and balancing to bring them back, putting the puzzle together, doing a word search, and figuring out the final answer. Once again, it was a challenge that required many different skills, and while Ulong did okay in some of them, they simply couldn’t put it all together. They especially fell apart when trying to solve the puzzle. Again, it seemed that even though there were only two of them left, they just couldn’t work well together.

In Survivor history, we have seen tribes that didn’t particularly get along with one another. Yet somehow they often put that aside to work for the common goal of immunity. But on Ulong, it seemed to not even be that they didn’t get along. Maybe not getting along would have been better, because it would have shown some sort of emotion when it came to their team. Instead, Ulong functioned as a group of individuals.

Meanwhile, Koror knew how to work as a team. They didn’t always like each other, but they knew how to work together. They went on hunting parties together. They found the flint that had gone overboard together. Coby even went so far as to say it was the first time he really felt part of a team.

Ulong was a “pretty” tribe that just never came together. Early on, they thought they would kick Koror’s butt. Instead, they performed so poorly that from now on, whenever we see a Survivor tribe that gets repeatedly beaten, we will talk about them being “Ulonged.”

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

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