Hatching a Plan: The First Alliance

By: Adam Mortensen


The Show-Survivor: Borneo
The Participants-Richard Hatch, Rudy Boesch, Sue Hawk, and Kelly Wiglesworth
What Happened?-These four create the first alliance and change the game forever
Awards-The Machiavellian Medal for Strategic Thinking

If these four wouldn't have come up with the concept of an alliance, reality television history might have changed forever. Who knows when (or if) somebody else would have come up with the idea. Even if somebody else came up with the concept, it probably wouldn't have been called an "alliance." We could be referring to "pacts" or "allegiances" had the term "alliance" not been coined by Richard. Reality television may have been dead years ago without these four. Everybody tuned in week after week to see if the poor Pagong members could break up Tagi. There may not have been more than one season of Survivor if these guys hadn't bonded.

The origin of this alliance was on the first day. We didn't see it on the first viewing of the show but extra footage showed the group beginning to form. At first it was just Richard and Susan (I believe Susan was the one that actually came up with the idea) but they eventually expanded to Rudy and Kelly. The early tribal stage was really easy for the four. After they god rid of Sonja they were in control (they had over 50% of the votes). They then proceeded to eliminate annoying Stacey and threat Dirk. After those three boots, the two tribes merged and this group was again in danger.

Luckily, the Pagong tribe had no idea that these four were going to vote in a block for the rest of the game. They actually targeted their own members. Thus, it was really easy for the four to knock out survivalist Gretchen and crazy Greg. By then they once again had the upperhand. The Pagong tribe didn't really even have a clue of this alliance until they were down to three (and powerless). Jenna tried to swing Kelly over to their side but the old alliance held. Three of the members also toyed with the idea of eliminating Kelly before the rest of Pagong but that didn't happen. They easily made it to the final four.

There it got sticky. They would have to start eliminating themselves. Kelly and Sue had been fighting for the previous few episodes so it seemed likely that one would go. Richard and Rudy (they had a final two pact) decided to stick with Kelly and eliminated Sue. However, Kelly then won the final three immunity challenge and voted off the old veteran Rudy. Richard and Kelly were in the final two. As most of you know, Richard ended up winning the game.

Why does this alliance deserve a spot in the reality tv hall of fame? It might very well be the thing that brought reality television to its current spot as a hit genre. It also helped launch several other shows based exclusively on scheming. Finally, it helped change Survivor to a political game instead of an adventure series. By doing those three things it assured itself of a hall of fame moment way back in 2000.

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