John Powell – GlobalTV.com

In the game of Dungeons and Dragons you are often fortunate enough to avoid a poison dart trap installed in a treasure chest only to find that all it contains is a rusty, bent, broken dagger that couldn’t pierce the skin of a bugbear. For Saskatoon native Kane Fritzler it was very much the same scenario. He thankfully didn’t use Jaime’s fake idol at tribal council but he was still sent to the jury.

“I think that it’s bittersweet. I’m filled with gratitude! For me, it’s like my Dungeons and Dragons character is dead but I’m still in the campaign! Like, I get to come back! I definitely still have life in this game! I have a lot of gratitude for the season but what I found what that dagger for sure,” Kane told Globaltv.com.

Kane reveals that it wasn’t until much, much later when he and everyone discovered that the idol wasn’t a real one. He felt better not only for not playing it but for leaving the game with Jaime’s advantage in his back pocket. The thing was everyone who saw it thought it was the real thing not like that mess of string and beads Josh tried to pass off as an idol.

“Josh’s fake idol jam literally got ripped to shreds (laughs) but it (Jaime’s) was a good fake idol. I’ll give Matthew props on that! I thought it was real. I looked to Jamie for the cue to play it (at tribal council) and she didn’t want to so we didn’t and that ended up being a good thing. No one on the jury knew either. It was a very long time before anybody actually figured out that it was fake. Everyone thought it was real,” said Kane.

What really did fool the members of Ratu though was that Tika and Soka were working together behind the scenes. Even with Brandon being brazenly voted out at the last tribal Tika massaged and finessed the remaining Ratu members into believing that it was just a vote to remove a potential challenge beast from the game and nothing more. Part of the reason why is that Yam Yam and Carson “masked” their votes by writing down Frannie’s name when they knew that the rest of their alliance was voting for Brandon so their votes didn’t matter in the end. At least that illusion of Tika aligning with Ratu would still be intact.

“You’ve got to remember that Carson was the adopted child of Ratu. For a long time we raised him, we taught him how to ride a bike and so we had a lot of trust flowing through him. From our perspective we still had Tika. We knew that they were kind of playing in the middle because we knew that Carolyn had voted for Brandon. We had some trust issues,” said Kane.

Despite those misgivings Kane still volunteered to sit out of the immunity challenge so that the tribe could be given more rice. Naturally, Kane regrets making that choice knowing what he knows now.

“It is always a risk assessment for me. I walked up to that challenge. It was pouring rain. I saw a balancing challenge. I was like: ‘Oh, great! My best friend, bouncing on one foot! How I love doing that for long periods of time in the rain!’ I wasn’t going to be the first one to volunteer but when I thought that we sort of had the numbers it made more sense. Do I wish I would have played? Yes, because who knows? Maybe I do pull it off. But I think I would have adjusted my risk analysis to be like even if there’s like a 5% chance, just try it and if you don’t get it, who cares?” he said.

What wasn’t part of Kane’s “risk assessment” was Danny’s promise to not vote for anyone who sat out of the challenge so Va Va could eat more than burned and obliterated papaya every day.

“That wasn’t part of my math at all. (laughs) Maybe some players would be a little more hesitant but that really wasn’t the game we were playing out there. Everybody from that time was thinking about their own games and was trying to build the endgame that they wanted. I knew no one was going to give me a pass just because I gave them a quarter bag of rice and Danny specifically had literally just betrayed me! Yeah, it didn’t mean too much to me but he’s not a scout either, apparently, which blew me away,” said Kane shaking his head.

According to Kane he was actually in on a lot of the major decisions and even influenced them but none of that was shown. Kane attributes that to Ratu getting such a great start to the game and Tika stumbling right out of the gate.

“I’m a very methodical player. I had a lot of thought processes that I wish would have hit screen but then none of my freaking plans worked out! Everybody’s throwing idols everywhere or are getting medivac with their shoulders! (laughs) I think that I would have liked people to see my thought process on the show and why I made certain decisions I made but that’s how it goes,” he sighed.

One thing that surprised Kane about the whole experience besides how complicated and how many layers one tribal council vote can have was the tropical rainstorms in Fiji and how vicious they could be.

“You can prepare to survive with no food. You can make it work. I can sleep on the ground but getting hammered by Fiji rains is an insane experience!” he said looking back.

Now that he has moved onto the jury phase of the game Kane warns that those big, bold, flashy moves won’t necessarily guide his hand or influence his decision.

“I enjoy methodical players and I want players who are moving with intention. I didn’t need flashy plays. I would never vote for someone just because I liked them either. I want to see who is in control of this game and who is moving with intention. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re leading every vote but that they’re just really aware of what they’re doing. So, those are the main criteria. I would never vote for somebody for a specific event. I would always be focused on the whole game you played how well can you show me that you moved from 18 players down to three with intention through this game and how well you did it,” he explained.

When all is said and done Kane was thrilled to represent Canada even though he fell a little short and didn’t bring the win home like Maryanne Oketch and Erika Casupanan did during their seasons.

“I’m happy for the game that I played. I think that a lot of my tinkering wasn’t shown because a lot of my plans didn’t work. Like you said, my hands were kind of tied the whole time. I’m super proud though! I loved representing Canada and Saskatchewan! I played my heart out and didn’t quite get that hat-trick but I did as much as I could,” he said smiling.

Looking ahead to the future one thing Kane isn’t expecting to do is be invited to sing the Canadian national anthem at a public event any time soon. Kane jokes that his hometown Rough Riders did have some interest though.

“The Rough Riders said they need to hear it first and then they would approve it,” he laughed.

You can check out Kane’s Survivor performance here.

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