Week 7: Jury Management

Welcome back everyone due to technical difficulties I wasn’t able to post my weekly blog last night so here we are for a special Monday edition of Surviving with Lucas

Today we will be discussing the crucial impact the jury has on the game of Survivor and what the term jury management really means.

As discussed in a previous post the jury consists of the 7-10 players voted off post-merge that votes for the overall winner of Survivor. Now, the idea of jury management is something that fans of the game tend to throw around when discussing the games of winners and losing finalists. This is because some of the best players have made it all the way to the end of the game but lost at the final tribal council…Why?

The answer to that is many times people forget that SURVIVOR IS REALITY yes production edits the episode to follow a certain storyline but every single person playing is real. They have real thoughts, real feelings, and real emotions. What this boils down to is even if you played a masterful strategic game, won competitions, played idols, and manipulated everyone it doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to win. The way that you treat the other players going into jury has an impact as they are the ones deciding if you win. This means that continuous backstabbing and lying although effective in getting to the end might piss of every single jury member into not voting for you.

In the past juries have also not favoured extreme arrogance both during the game and when the player has plead their case at final tribal council.

At the end of the day what I hope you understand is that survivor players are just like you and me, we’re human. I’d like to sit here and tell you guys that if I was voted off I wouldn’t be bitter and I’d vote for the player that most deserved to win but the truth is I don’t know. Imagine you going to play Survivor and you form an amazing relationship with someone and you believe this person is your ride or die but all of a sudden they turn around and vote you out because they see you as a threat. You thought this person was your best friend and now that you’re on the jury you might be feeling angry and who knows that might drive you to not vote for them out of spite. It sounds extremely petty but in a game for a million dollars and everyone’s emotions heightened it’s happened A LOT.

Just to show you how ruthless juries can be I’ve attached a video of some of the most brutal jury speeches in season’s past (Up until Season 34, at final tribal council each member of the jury were allowed to address the final 2 or 3 and ask them questions to help them determine their decision)

Before this blog ends I want to draw your attention to timestamp 1:22 on the above video. In this season Natalie ended up winning which is still an extremely controversial win. A majority of the fans of the show thought that Natalie “rode the coattails” of Russell Hantz meaning that he pretty much dragged her to the end and she did nothing to advance herself in the game. Russell on the other hand manipulated, lied, played idols, won challenges, and was the main figurehead of the season. However, Russell was so rude and arrogant that the jury was incredibly furious with him. Russell ended up losing and the sole reason for that was his poor jury management.

That’s all for today thank you all so much for reading my blog and I promise that next week I will deliver another post on Sunday, Lucas out:)