Why Tina is a fantastic, unique, groundbreaking player is perhaps my favorite topic to discuss across all 27.5 seasons, so forgive me if this is long -- but surely I owe it to you to really answer your question, and surely I owe it to Tina to do everything I can to make sure as many people as possible give her the respect she earned.
The thing you always have to keep in mind when watching Australia is that Richard was basically as hated then as he is respected now. As far as, like, 99.999% of all people who watched the first season were concerned, Richard was a bullshit cheater who had taken the morality out of Survivor by changing it from a social experiment into a stupid numbers game. Virtually nobody liked Richard or the way that he played.
This had serious implications for Tina (and the rest of that cast) in two ways:
Within the confines of the show, you have to keep in mind that strategic elements are always being underplayed. The viewers wanted a winner who was totally unlike Richard, and the producers wanted a winner whom the viewers would consider at least somewhat palatable. If they had built up Tina as a strategic winner, she would have been even more unpopular than she turned out to be anyway. Strategy was inherently considered a negative thing at that point in time, and the show focused more on nature and interpersonal relationships than it does now, so it really wasn't something we were ever going to see much of in season two.
In Australia itself, in the game, the people being filmed all obviously knew how Richard had been perceived; everyone in America knew it. And they also all knew that they, like just about anyone else, didn't want to be the villain of Survivor 2 whom everyone in the country hated. So even though the contestants were all playing strategically (because, from the second Gretchen was voted out, it was too late to ever go back, and it was guaranteed that almost all people for the rest of Survivor history would be trying to use strategy to make themselves win), they couldn't do it openly, because then they would run the risk of being Richard 2.0, and nobody wanted to be Richard 2.0. And anyone who had dared to blatantly strategize on an individual level would have been swiftly isolated and removed from the game, because nobody wanted to even be seen enabling Richard 2.0. For the sake of their image and for the sake of their longevity in the game, players ironically had to seem unconcerned with their longevity in the game.
Australia is wholly unlike any other season: All of the players were following in the footsteps of Borneo... but because the storyline of Borneo was "Richard ruins everything; seriously, fuck that guy", they actually had to try to step as far away from the footsteps as possible. Keep this in mind while you are watching it: It does not appear to be particularly strategic, but that's because nobody wanted it to look that way. The players didn't want to look strategic, the producers didn't want it to look strategic, and this was all because the audience didn't want to see any strategy, because strategy is what douchebags like Richard Hatch do, and we hate Richard! This makes Australia a very strange season and an incredibly hard one to win. To do well, a player would have to succeed in playing two games at the same time: they had to play the game of Survivor, in which you use alliances and manipulate people to your own ends, which is already a hard enough task... but simultaneously, they had to play the meta-game of making themselves seem wholly unconcerned with any of this. Being manipulative is very hard. But being manipulative while making yourself look like you wouldn't manipulate a fly? Well now you're adding an entirely new skill set and a whole new, nearly impossible dynamic that is not present in any other season in the history of Survivor. To master all of those things at once, to play a game while looking like they're not playing it, would take one hell of a savvy player.
Enter Tina Wesson.
If you take Australia at face value, I agree: Tina barely says a single thing that is even remotely strategic. She basically never makes a single comment about taking someone out for being a threat, or voting out this person and that person to better her position or maximize her options or give herself the numbers. Instead, she constantly talks about who deserved to be there. Tina didn't vote out Mitchell to form a new alliance; she voted him out because he was weak! She didn't vote out Jerri because of strategy; she did it because Jerri was mean! And so on and so forth. All Tina ever really talks about to justify her votes in that season is who deserves to stick around longer in the game, and for that reason, many viewers assume that she really had no strategic brain whatsoever: that she really just cared about who she thought "deserved" to stick around. And I can't blame those viewers; that is what we were shown. But if you look at her actions throughout the game rather than her words -- and if you keep in mind that historical context, which is so critical to fully understanding literally any part of this anomalous season -- it is very, very apparent that Tina was very, very interested in strategy and not at all in who "deserved" what.
Let's start from the beginning.
In episode one, Tina's tribe didn't lose, and she did nothing of consequence. In episode two, Tina's tribe lost, but Kel was the obvious target, so Tina did nothing of consequence. (Of course, Jerkygate had big ramifications for the storyline -- but as far as the game is concerned, nothing really significant happened in episode two.)
It was in the third episode, the third round of gameplay, that Tina's real colors showed and that it became apparent, to the careful and open-minded observer, that she was NOT the innocent soccer mom she may appear to be. As we saw on the show, Tina and Maralyn -- the oldest two women on the tribe, both hailing from around the same geographic region of the country -- formed a very, very close personal bond. But Maralyn was the weakest member of the tribe and Maralyn was on the outside of the Tina/Colby/Amber/Jerri/Mitchell bloc that had sprung up throughout the first couple of days, so Maralyn had to go... and Tina voted her out with absolutely no reservations whatsoever. This moment was VERY big back in 2001, but has been forgotten over time. Very many viewers were very upset with Tina at the time for having the audacity to vote out her friend like that. By modern standards, this really doesn't seem so bad; voting off a friend in favor of an alliance is standard play. But in season two? When the game was still, to the audience, supposed to be about who you liked, and when Richard was despised for turning it into anything else? By those standards, voting off Maralyn was simply horrible for Tina to do, but she did it anyway to remain secure within the tribe. In doing so, in cruelly voting out her closest friend in the game just so that she wouldn't be an outsider, Tina made one thing perfectly clear: that she would do anything to win.
Now, the Maralyn vote doesn't inherently mean she's any more impressive than any modern player, but that's not what my point is in bringing it up. What it does mean is that when you hear Tina talking later on in the season about who "deserves" what, it's only because that's the way she had to sell her moves in order for the other players to buy them. She freaking loved Maralyn, but she still voted Maralyn out for her own strategic benefit, and that right there is concrete proof from very early on that Tina was not playing for who any altruistic motives about who deserved what; she was playing for Tina.
Then we get to episode four, and... fuck, episode four is a good one. In episode four, Tina Wesson reinvented the entire game of Survivor, and I am not even exaggerating. It is probably the high point of Tina's entire Survivor career. At that point in time, the power alliance on Ogakor was Colby, Tina, Mitchell, Amber, and Jerri -- in other words, everyone besides Keith. But Tina had figured out that she wasn't really a powerful figure in that alliance. It had become pretty apparent that the young people were going to stuck together, meaning that Tina could stick with that alliance for one more vote and take out Keith if she wanted to... but then she would just go home next. Tina may have been in a majority alliance, but she was still #5 on a tribe of 6, and the four above her were unified. It was basically just a matter of time at that point until her number was called and she was unceremoniously picked off. But if there is one thing we can definitely say about Tina Wesson, it is that she does not sit back and wait to be unceremoniously picked off, ever. So she decided it was time to cut ties with that alliance and create a new one of her own. She had Keith on her side, of course, but after that, it's quite tricky. I mean, it was hard enough that the other four people were incredibly close, but this also was a time when merely forming an alliance was considered immoral -- so making a bold power play against one? There's no way anyone would consider that. Under those circumstances, it would take an incredibly cunning, incredibly determined player to make a power shift happen... and a power shift happened.
The original plan was to have Mitchell and Colby vote out Amber, but Mitchell wouldn't agree to it, so that one died before it was even born. This meant that the best Tina and Keith could really hope for was a tie, and the tiebreaker at that point was past votes. Neither Tina nor Keith had any votes against them up to that point. Mitchell and Jerri, however, each had one. If Tina could get one more vote against either of those guys, then that would be enough, and the game would change.
The game changed. Tina went to Colby, whose primary motivation, she knew, was keeping the tribe strong. She told Colby -- this happened, by the way, on the walk to Tribal Council, meaning that it couldn't be shown on TV (and now, for some reason, players are not allowed to talk to each other on the journey to Tribal) -- that if he voted off Keith, then he'd be voting off one of the stronger members and providers around camp, whereas Mitchell was too weak and tired to provide anything. She told Colby that if he voted off Mitchell, then the tribe would become stronger and have a shot at going into the merge with even numbers. She sold it perfectly; by making it about "keeping the tribe strong," she played off of Colby's own motivations and the pressure on everyone in the game. Remember, nobody was supposed to be concerned with alliances this season; it was supposed to be the opposite of Borneo -- supposed to be the season where people cared about hard workers and strong tribes, not about loyalty to alliances. So Tina made Colby realize that if he remained loyal to his alliance, then he would be going against what he had professed to be his primary value -- maintaining a strong tribe -- and he'd be caring more about his alliance than about who was a hard worker for the tribe, doing the exact opposite of what millions and millions of strangers watching him would want him to do...
...and it worked. Tina used morality and public opinion as her weapons to convince Colby to flip, he voted out Mitchell, and Mitchell was sent home. A new alliance of Tina, Colby, and Keith was formed, and as you will recall, that alliance -- created by Tina -- went all the way to the end of the game. Although Tina sold it as "keeping the tribe strong", and although Mitchell was in fact the weakest member, that didn't have a damn thing to do with her decision; that was just how she could convince Colby to change his vote. If she had needed to put the target onto Amber, Jerri, or even Colby to get the power play done at that point, then she would have done it. No, she didn't talk on TV about how it was a power shift to save her own ass... but that's only because Australia was the season where you just didn't talk about those things. If she had told Colby, "Hey, Colby, let's change the game and get the numbers on our side - why be in a four-person alliance when you can be in my three-person one?", then Colby never, ever would have gone for it. On TV, the vote looked like it was about who was weak and who was strong, but that's because it had to look that way for it to go through.
When Tina made this move, she completely changed the game; not only the game of Australia, but the game of Survivor in general. NEVER before had somebody flipped on an alliance to make their own standing better. Never. There was absolutely no precedent for what Tina did in episode four. But Tina went against what was expected, severed her ties to Jerri's alliance, and created a new alliance that went all the way to the end of the game. She managed to break a solid group of four, not with Hidden Immunity Idols, not by making superfluous final two deals and swearing on everything under the sun... but simply by knowing what she needed to say, knowing how Colby wanted to hear it, and saying it in that way. In doing so, she re-wrote the rules of what was possible in Survivor. She devised and executed an entirely new kind of strategic move... and she was fully aware of this. Her first voting confessional towards Mitchell remains one of my favorite quotes in the history of Survivor, and shows that she knew perfectly well what the magnitude of her power shift was:
"This was not my original, intended vote. However, on the way to Tribal Council, a new scheme was hatched, so in the spirit of the Olympics, let the games begin!"
..damn, that gives me chills. She doesn't say "You're weak and you have to go." She doesn't say "You're too tired to help us around camp, and that's why I'm voting for you." She says "Let the games begin!", because this vote was about the game, and absolutely nothing else.
The games were only just beginning for Tina; while raising her position from a hypothetical 5th on a losing tribe of 5 to a position of total safety that never wavered throughout the entire game was easily her most impressive move (and one could argue the most impressive move of all time -- it is most certainly among the most revolutionary), it was far from her last. Her tribe won the next Immunity challenge, and after Mike's accident, they merged 5-5. I've seen some people try to discredit Tina by claiming she had no control over the fact that Mike fell into the fire, but I don't agree with that criticism at all. No, Tina did not have control over Mike's accident... but what she DID have control over was the fact that Mike falling into the fire even mattered. Statistically, Kucha should still have come out on top: they had one member with past votes, while Ogakor had two.
When you factor in the fact that Keith was Immune (thanks, of course, to Tina standing up there juuust long enough to ensure he would win -- had Tina needed that necklace, she'd still be out there), that still leaves five vulnerable Kucha members and four vulnerable Ogakor members. By sheer probability, the odds of Kucha coming out on top are 25%, and the odds of Ogakor coming out on top are 20%. Jeff, additionally, would seem much less likely to have past votes than, say, the weak Rodger/Elisabeth or maybe even the confrontational Alicia, whereas the abrasive Jerri was a fairly obvious candidate for past votes. By all rights, Kucha should have guessed correctly and won the season for Mike as they said they would, while Ogakor should have guessed incorrectly and been a failed, forgotten tribe. However, that did not happen. That did not happen because Ogakor did not have to guess, and Ogakor did not have to guess because Tina Wesson was thinking very, very far ahead very, very early.
Let's step back for a second. You have probably at some point seen someone mention that (obviously barring a twist like a kidnapping, shared beaches, or joint Exile trips, in which opponents are supposed to interact) the show tries as hard as possible to limit contact between tribes. I know, for instance, that Probst mentioned it in a blog during Tocantins when Taj ran over and hugged Debbie after a challenge. While I don't know exactly when they started closely monitoring intertribal contact, I would bet money that it was right after this season. The two tribes had shown up for episode two's "Butch Cassidy" reward challenge, and they were waiting for production to finish preparing for the challenge to start. So the members of the two tribes started to chat a little bit, and I don't know how in the fuck she thought to do this, but Tina made one of the most significant decisions in Survivor history. While the tribes were waiting, Tina asked the talkative Kimmi, under the guise of friendly conversation, who Debb had voted out at that Tribal Council. Kimmi told Tina that Debb's vote was for Jeff, and Tina filed that away, knowing that the tiebreaker was past votes and that, therefore, knowing who had a past vote might come in handy a little later on...
...and that is why Ogakor did not have to guess. So long, Jeff. Ogakor is now up 5-4, and Tina is responsible for it. Yes, Mike fell into the fire, but if Tina hadn't been thinking on day four about what might matter on day twenty-one, Mike's accident would never have been enough for Ogakor. It certainly was a huge group effort on the part of Ogakor to conceal who had had past votes, and everyone played their role in making sure that Keith won Immunity, that Jerri seemed nice, and that Colby seemed abrasive, but when it came to the part that really mattered -- knowing who had past votes on the other tribe -- Tina is the one who got it done. But, as with the scheming before Mitchell went home, it happened at a time that wasn't being filmed and couldn't be shown on TV.. and at a time at which contestants are now prohibited from communicating.
Alicia was voted out next for being a physical threat with no real connections, and then things got a little interesting. As the editing portrayed it, Nick saved himself with a clutch Immunity win, and then Jerri was voted out for being annoying because Elisabeth pushed for it.. but think about it: If Jerri really was annoying enough that Ogakor would eat into their own numbers just to get rid of her, then why did Nick need Immunity? Nick wasn't annoying at all; surely he'd have been safe no matter what if Ogakor was planning on taking out their own member just due to a personality conflict.. so there must be more to this story than there seems to be. Why did Jerri really go home? The answer, once again, is Tina.
By this point, Tina had more direct ties to virtually all of the other players in the game than virtually anyone else in the history of Survivor has ever had. She had a final two deal with Colby within a three-person alliance of Tina/Colby/Keith, and her bond with Colby also put her into a four-person pact of Tina/Colby/Jerri/Amber -- a remnant of Mitchell's crew -- all within the larger five-person Ogakor alliance of Tina/Colby/Keith/Jerri/Amber. Already a remarkable setup, but her ties went beyond that. She had also bonded closely with the two-person alliance of Rodger and Elisabeth, putting her into a three-person group of Tina/Rodger/Elisabeth. This meant that at the start of the jury stage, the only people Tina wasn't directly connected to were Alicia and Nick.. and now you know why Alicia went first. When I said "no real connections," I really meant "no connections to Tina"; to say one in a conversation of the season two dynamics is to say the other, because if you read between the lines and map out the character dimensions in your head, Tina really is at the center of all of it. That is why Nick needed Immunity: because everyone else was close to Tina, and because Tina decided who went home, sitting comfortably in a position of ultimate power that nobody was able to see through the haze Tina created every time she talked about who deserved what.
When Nick won the Immunity he so desperately needed, Tina was faced with a difficult decision. She had to secure her alliance with Colby and Keith (for reasons I'll get to a bit later on), which meant that she had to turn on Jerri/Amber or turn on Roger/Elisabeth. I have seen Tina take a lot of heat over the decision to vote off Jerri, because she took an 'unnecessary risk' by creating the possibility of Amber flipping to Kucha, but that's simply not true. No matter what happened this round, she would be severing a tie, and no matter what happened, there was the risk that Nick, Rodger, Amber, and either Jerri or Elisabeth (whoever was still in the game) would pull off a power shift. Because Nick won Immunity, Tina had absolutely no option other than to take out one of her pawns, and she had to just make sure that it was the least valuable pawn who took the fall. She ultimately decided to sever the tie with Jerri -- making sure, of course, that Colby and Keith voted the same way, so that the blood was not on her own hands at all -- and while Tina's detractors like to claim that this was a risk, it was actually the safest move possible.
This left Amber, an incredibly passive player, totally isolated, while leaving Roger and Elisabeth, an incredibly moral pair (remember: it is season two we are talking about here), feeling indebted to Tina. Rodger and Elisabeth were a far less strategically-minded pair than Jerri and Amber were, and Tina has already flipped on Jerri and Amber before, so counting on Rodger and Elisabeth to return a favor is much safer than relying on Jerri and Amber to return one. Rodger/Elisabeth/Amber teaming up with Nick was never really going to happen; Rodger/Jerri/Amber teaming up with Nick probably wouldn't have, but it still might have. So Jerri went home, and once again, it was under the guise of Jerri being mean, Jerri being undeserving, Jerri not needing the money. And if you are growing skeptical, if you think that Tina wasn't really thinking about the long-term implications of such a move and really was just voting her conscience... then let me remind you that we are talking about the woman who voted off her best friend in the game on day nine and pulled off the first power shift in the history of the game the very next round, leaving a former ally in tears while she insulted him to the camera.
With Rodger and Elisabeth feeling indebted to Tina, no power shift came even close to occurring; they voted off Amber, who in turn voted alongside the remaining Ogakor members to eliminate Nick, whose Immunity win had done nothing but grant him three more days. After Nick came Amber, and with that, the two players left who had no real ties to Tina (and, consequently, no ties to any other player in the game, because Tina was always the center of power, always the nucleus) were gone. Tina found herself in a 3-2 majority over Rodger and Elisabeth, and what did she do to decide who went home first? Why, she did exactly what the sweet soccer mom who cares about morality would do: she asked Rodger who needed the money more. He said Elisabeth needed the money more, and with that, Tina had a safe out; she could vote out Rodger, but have it be because Elisabeth needed more money, because Elisabeth was, once again, "more deserving." So Rodger became a martyr, and Elisabeth fell next, and as far as anyone who wasn't paying close attention needed to know, it was simply because Tina cared so much about who "deserved" the money -- a mantra that probably made Maralyn gag and curse at the TV screen at her house. With Elisabeth gone, Tina was now covered on all sides. Either of the other players would take her to the end, and this was not happenstance. This is why she needed to make sure that her alliance of three -- not the alliance, but her alliance, because it was Tina who created it by taking out Mitchell -- would make the end. Colby and Keith really didn't care for each other, so either one would take her to the end, and she would beat either one of them.
Her final three setup was absolutely perfect; no matter what happens from this point on, Tina Wesson is the Sole Survivor. (Of course, you could honestly backtrack even further and say that, barring a Kucha Immunity streak, Tina was the guaranteed winner as soon as Nick or even Jerri was eliminated.) It ended up being Colby who took her, Tina told the jurors in her Final Tribal Council that she played with a strong strategy and that people should vote based off of that (it's always fun to see people say "Tina rode Colby's coattails" when Tina was the one telling the jurors to cast their votes based off of strategy), and that is what they did; by a 4-3 margin, Tina became the second champion of Survivor. I definitely agree that if you just watch Australia, it doesn't look like Tina is a strategic player at all. You could watch it a hundred times in a row and never pick up on it, because it simply is not there in those episodes unless you know what you are looking for, and some of it is not in the episodes at all. But I hope that this post has changed your perception of her to some degree, because if you know what went on behind the scenes of that season and then read between the lines as you watch the parts we did get to see on television.. what you see is absolutely one of the most cunning strategists the game has ever seen. Her actions speak far more accurately than her words.
It is very easy to not notice her strategy, because let's be real, Tina doesn't look like a strategist at all. For a long time I thought she was boring as hell and a winner who just waltzed into it by being nice. She's a smiling Southern soccer mom; that simply does not seem like someone who is playing this game to win it. Add to that the fact that her game revolved around pretending she wasn't playing a strategic game, and of course it seems like she means it when she talks about wanting someone to win who "deserves" and "needs" the money. And I'm sure that she does mean all the things she says about wanting life experiences and loving the outdoors and wanting to make genuine relationships with people, making it even easier to take the other, similar things she says at face value... but when you think about the context of the season and look at her votes or at her final confessional of the season (in which she explciitly states that she came out there to win the game herself, not to give it to somebody just because they deserved it -- this is as close as it gets to Tina actually admitting on TV that the whole "deserving" mantra was a facade), it is pretty apparent that she was more self-serving than she wanted, or was able, to come across. And if you look at the events of the season, she was the one with all the post-merge connections, she was the one who had a perfect endgame setup, she was the one who got Ogakor the majority, she was the one who got herself a majority within Ogakor by pulling off what was the show's first power shift.
And at the end of the day, those efforts got her all the way to the end without anyone ever casting a single vote against her at any point in time, even though she never once had Immunity.
The last thing I'll say to demonstrate that Tina really did have a strategic mind is look at her opening speech at FTC. She tells the jury to vote for who they thought played a strong strategic game, not to vote based off of who hurt their feelings. Tina -- the Southern soccer mom, not the big athletic guy -- was the one who said people might vote against her because they were upset at her! Tina was the one who wanted people to vote based off of strategy! It's such an unexpected dynamic to see the soft-spoken woman saying "I hope you guys vote for me because of my strategy, not against me because you're upset at me" when she's sitting next to the challenge-dominating man.. but that's what makes her so interesting.
