'Survivor' Castoff: An Age Thing?
On "Survivor: Panama — Exile Island," the four teams merged into two. Unfortunately for Melinda Hyder, things ended on a sour note.
She was the second contestant to be cast off, following Tina Scheer's exit on last week's episode.
Hyder visited The Early Show to
As co-anchor Harry Smith pointed out, Shane seemed like an odd choice, considering his high strung disposition and the fact that he wasn't sure he even wanted to stay.
"The only thing that I can think of is they had an alliance," Hyder told Smith. "And in their minds it would be better to keep him because he's numbers for them, and out there numbers is a huge thing. If you have the numbers, you are doing well."
While the going was rough out there, Hyder was hoping to stay. "It was really hard out there and the longer I stayed, actually, the harder it got, but the more I wanted to stay," she said. "I wanted to fight it out."
And when the other tribemates waffled over the final call, Hyder says it was an exasperating situation. "It was really hard. At that point, I said, 'What do you want us to do? Rock, paper scissors to decide?'
"I worked my butt off to get here. I'm not doing rock, paper scissors to decide if I'm going home or not."
Smith wondered whether the decision might have had something to do with the generation gap between the contestants, calling it "an age thing." And a secret scene of Hyder, only seen on The Early Show, showed there might be something to that theory:
"My new tribemates, most of them are not somebody I would choose to hang out with in my normal life. You've got Danielle, Courtney and Aras, who are younger. You have Bobby, who was on the younger tribe, even though he's my age and then you have Shane, who is older but doesn't really act like he's older. We are completely different people. Their language is just horrible. It's lifestyle and attitudes and that type of a situation. It was an invasion, I think, a definite invasion."
After viewing that scene, Hyder said: "Once our tribes merged, all of those people came back to the island that Cirie and I had already lived on. If you will remember, the younger men and younger women didn't have shelters, really. Then they came on our island and we had this nice shelter."
Tina Scheer had been an asset to the tribe for her outdoors abilities, which included knowing how to make a shelter. But that skill didn't save her and Hyder shed some light on that.
"Part of it is because she was strong, and you do need to be aware of that because later on in challenges, Lord, she could definitely beat me," she told Smith. "But, also, it wasn't as if Tina really did all of the work. I mean, we all worked on the shelter."
Hyder, a singer, will be heading back to North Carolina, where she has a job lined up at a new theater.
As for her old tribemates, watch to see who will be the next to go, on next week's episode, Thursday night on CBS.