421. Lex van den Berghe (All-Stars, 9th place)
Speaking of sore losers, here's the original. Again, as I said with Russell, this is meant to cover Lex's All-Stars performance only. His Africa incarnation is still in the running. I generally don't believe in the "bitter jury." If you're so much of an ass hat that you can't figure out how to vote people out while not making them hate your guts (it isn't that hard, really), then that's your problem. But if there's one person that I hold a double-standard to with this, it's Lex. And part of the reason for that is that he held betrayal as a double-standard himself, and another part is that he took his bitterness to a whole new level. The third reason is because his bitterness actually changed the course of Survivor history and ruined more than just his own season. But more on that later. Let's begin at the beginning.
All-Stars, the first season to feature returning players. They brought back 18 of the most popular players from the first seven seasons and put them in one game, and let's face it, Lex HAD to be in that group. He was a huge personality in Africa and came one immunity challenge away from winning. So if you're picking out the most popular players from the first few seasons, especially way back then, Lex is a no-brainer. And he ends up on probably the most well-balanced tribe. The red Chapera tribe consists of the over-the-top caricatures and misfits. The yellow Saboga tribe is made up of the nice/sensitive people who are fan-favorites (save Jerri) but relatively weak in challenges. And then you have the green Mogo Mogo tribe, which consists of Lex, Richard, Jenna M., Kathy, Colby, and Shii-Ann, who in their original seasons represented the pinnacles of consistency in terms of physical, social, and strategic games. And for the first few episodes, the game and edit go as planned - the misfits are getting the goofball edit, the fan-favorites are losing all the challenges, and the consistents are just kinda there (except Hatch, but we'll get to that in his write-up later).
Once it comes time for Mogo Mogo to start voting people out, Lex lets go of his friends Hatch, Colby and Ethan, assuring each of them, "It's just a game," and "It's not about whether you win or lose." Fine whatever. Then the tribe "swap" happens, which isn't so much a swap as it is send Amber over to the other tribe. And if what I've heard is true, that's exactly what the producers intended. According to Jerri, they had them stand in a specific order in line and had the buffs laid out one on top of the other in the urn. So when Lex, Kathy, Jerri, Shii Ann, and now Amber lose the next immunity challenge and it looks like doom for Amber, Rob whispers to Lex that if he spares Amber he will try to help him out at the merge if he can. So Lex makes his own dumb move here. Nobody forced him to do anything. Instead of taking the bull by the horns and breaking up the single most powerful two-person alliance in Survivor history, he votes out Jerri on the hope of empty promises from Boston Rob. Oh, and let's not forget that he uses his "It's just a game," speech on her as well. You all know what happens next.
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