‘Survivor: Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ spotlight: Andrea Boehlke

Since we are now starting to get a little bit closer to the February 13 launch of “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” (which will amazingly be two hours long), it seems appropriate that we get now to something that we always enjoy doing: profiling some of the contestants who are going to be on the season. Since we are dealing with returning players thanks to the format, we’re going to start by focusing on them since it’s easier to analyze their games. (If we have time, we’ll also do our best to analyze the newbies based on the coverage that is out there.)

First up for us, we have a contestant who was not only a favorite of ours during “Survivor: Redemption Island,” but she was also our personal pick for that season to win it all: Andrea Boehlke. (She was also on our dream cast for this season.)

The first go-around, we want to make it clear that Andrea played a pretty great game: she did well in challenges, worked hard around camp, and was really the only woman on Ometepe who seemed to have any sort of functioning relationship with Phillip Sheppard. The latter could help her out this time since they are on the same tribe, and she may be benefited by the fact that while she did win her way back into the game on Redemption Island, she still did not do anything that will make her an immediate target here. She can come in, make alliances straight from the get-go, and probably won’t annoy anyone. Therefore, we have a hard time thinking that she will be an early boot.

The problem for Andrea once again is going to come after the merge, since there were two major flaws that caused Boston Rob to want her to be the first person from his five-person alliance … twice. First, she was a player who showed her hand a little too often. Take for instance whatever her relationship with Matt was: she was tempted to forge a new alliance, but stuck with Rob instead. We’re not saying that she made the wrong move per se since she may have been voted out earlier otherwise, but just putting her neck out there for Matt in some ways made her a target. If she didn’t want to work with him, she needed to make it more obvious.

In addition, Andrea may actually have to work on not being so likable, strange as that sounds (which she says in her video below that she is going to be working on). Since she didn’t make any enemies in the game the first time and consistently performed well, Rob, Phillip, and everyone else knew that she was a major jury threat. She’d likely have Matt’s vote, and he could sway some of the people he was at Redemption Island with. This goes back to being a bolder and stealthier player: Andrea can still be well-liked, but she needs to ensure that not everyone else is so aware of this.

Prediction: Our guess is at the moment that Andrea will probably finish in a similar sort of position, anywhere between the final eight and final four. Being an easy person to have around will make her easy to keep for a while, but we still don’t know if she can make herself less of a threat, especially on a season where there are so many people who were goats the first time in the game and know that they could only win this time against other goats.

If you want to see how we graded all of the returning players for the season, be sure to head on over to the link here.

Photo: CBS