‘Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance’ spotlight: Will Kelly Wiglesworth finish the job this time?
We’ve made it: After weeks of spotlighting the entire cast of “Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance,” we now are profiling the last castaway competing for the million-dollar prize. Of course, this is not the end of our preseason coverage. We have an interview coming soon with someone who was out on location for the show, and to go along with that, our predictions for the season will be coming on Monday.
Enough business: Let’s talk about Kelly Wiglesworth, someone who fans of the very first season must be very excited to see on television again. This is TV nostalgia at its finest.
History lesson – 2nd place, “Survivor: Borneo.” She was a part of the Tagi alliance that made it to the end of the game, but Kelly never really felt that comfortable even using the term “alliance.” In the early days this was thought of almost as something deceptive and terrible. She won a lot of immunity challenges near the end, and was famously on the bad end of Sue Hawk’s infamous “snakes and rats” final tribal speech right before Richard Hatch got the votes to become the show’s first-ever winner.
What worked the first time – Above anything else, Kelly can boast that she was a competitor. She fought hard in the challenges, and she was at least good enough socially to get a group of people around her who didn’t want to vote her out when she didn’t have the necklace. She obviously did enough right making friends to get votes at the final tribal council, even if was not enough for her to be declared the winner in the end. If just a couple of things had been different and she had won the game, think about just how much the show’s legacy could have changed.
What needs to change – The biggest thing is just that the game has changed, and Kelly is probably going to have to adapt to it. Whether or not she wants to is something that we still have not completely figured out. She was not as active or as open as other players in the voting campaign or much of the preseason press, so she’s one of those people who we really don’t know where their head is at going into the season. We think that she is going to have to be more comfortable with some of the seedier parts of the game to succeed, but who knows? Maybe this works better than we think that it will.
Potential obstacles – We think that more than likely, she will be treated as royalty among some of the more recent contestants. Everyone loves nostalgia, right? The only problem that could come out of it is if someone else gets jealous over the attention she receives. She also has to watch out for some of the new-school players getting together, and using the advantage of knowing the speed of the game and using some of the twists against her.
Prediction – Kelly is one of the hardest people to really put on the board this season; we know that she is smart and is capable of being an asset, but will she be able to show this to the other players easily? We think what is working for her is that she is someone who will probably be viewed as easy to trust, and someone who is not going to go out there and play a ruthless, deceptive game. The truth is, we could actually see her getting to the end of the game again and facing just about the same sort of result. There’s never going to be a good reason to get rid of her before then.
How well do you think Kelly is going to fare this season? Let us know your thoughts in the poll below, and head over here to check out some of our other “Survivor” spotlights (and there are plenty of them). Also, you can sign up here in the event you want some other TV updates on all we over via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)
