‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ spotlight: Corinne Kaplan

While the vast majority of the cast from “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” is all from the past four or five seasons, we’re pretty thrilled that the casting producers dipped back into the well a little bit for Corinne Kaplan. The “Survivor: Gabon” alum was notorious for being one of the nastier competitors to ever play the game, and her verbal assault on Sugar in particular at the Final Tribal Council is something that most other angry jurors can only really aspire for.

But is Corinne really a good player? This is what we wonder, and hopefully this is what we will find out early on this season. In Gabon, we almost understand to an extent why she was so angry. Before a tribal swap sent her ally Marcus home, she was in a pretty good spot: she had a powerful “Onion Alliance,” was not perceived as a target, and was just unpopular enough that she could have made it to the end of the game. Then, Susie more or less ruined her whole game by siding with Crystal and Kenny (who, by the way, needs to be on another season ASAP).

The strengths we see Corinne bringing to this game are first and foremost intellect and the ability to read others, since we really don’t think she ever got credit for either one of these things the first time around. She picked alliance partners early on who she knew would not only be loyal, but also were bigger targets than her. She’s also pretty hilarious if you get her sense of humor, which can be pretty valuable around camp.

While we’ve hyped up her “meanness” here, something that could work for her in this season is that “Survivor: Gabon” was long enough ago, and she did not just make one terribly bad move like Erik Reichenbach, that we really could see her going under the radar and not really labeled as “mean” at all. Not everyone on her tribe may have seen her season, either, so she can have a chance to make a good first impression.

Now, we turn to Corinne’s drawbacks as a player … and they could be potentially big ones in this game:

1. You have to get Corinne to really appreciate her, and we’re not quite sure that either Brandon Hantz or Phillip Sheppard in particular have any sort of sense of humor at all. We don’t know how she will get along with them, let along other strong players like Brenda Loye or Malcom Freberg.

2. Who will she really align with? We see Brenda and Andrea likely going after Malcolm and Erik, while Cochran and Dawn will surely have one another’s backs. She could work her way into a pack with the latter duo, and she better hope so since the other options include Brandon, Phillip, or Francesca.

Prediction – Ironically, we see Corinne getting a similar sort of exit to Marcus: she’ll probably get a good thing going early in the game, but then get hit by a twist and fail to recover. While some of the favorites may not know her well, the fans surely will; and if she gets sent over there midway through the game, they will likely hit her hard with some preconceived notions and she will be an easy target.

With that being said, we genuinely think that Corinne could make it to the end of the game if she makes it to the merge. What was smart about her Gabon game was that while she had plenty of enemies, she also had plenty of friends; and if she has enough allies on the jury and takes two people who did nothing all game to the last tribal council, these people alone would likely give her the support needed to win.

How do you think that Corinne is going to do on this season? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and you can read more of our spotlight series over at the link here.

Photo: CBS