Mon, February 9, 2004

I propose the following: Since we all know that Survivor: All-Stars isn't really going to get started until the pack is narrowed down to about ten, let's forgo the one-TribCon-per-week rule and just lump the first 15 days on the island into one 90-minute episode. There's just not enough going on to justify a weekly hour of television at this point. There are way too many contestants bonking around, and with three separate teams it's impossible for Burnett to focus on everyone each week, so it's arbitrary random chaos. (And disorganized, too.) It's pretty clear that the first major twist (second, if you count the whole three-teams thing [which was apparently a surprise]; or the mezzanine) is going to be merging. With one team already down to four members, and only six on each of the others, at some point very soon it will be necessary to do some sort of merge or re-shuffle. I'm predicting a merge down to two teams, but a shuffle of the remaining 15 players (after next week) into three new teams of five would be fine, too. I'm just saying, let's get to that, because until that point, there doesn't really seem to be anything at stake.

I can remember screaming and squirming through quite a few challenges in Survivor: Pearl Islands. (Ask Andy; he was there.) But, this week, they just don't affect me at all. Sure, I'm in favor of Saboga losing immunity because keeping Jenna M and Amber around as long as possible tends to arouse my sense of strategy. Ahem. But, generally, I have yet to invest in any team or player to the extent that I care if they do anything or win anything.

Perhaps this is because, as astutely pointed out by the sexiest non-bald Lex on television, "it's business this time." In previous Survivor seasons, we've learned that nothing big really happens until you get down to the last few players. Certainly, because of the four or five crates of twists which fell off a truck near Burnett's house, this will change with Survivor: All-Stars. But, until those twists kick in, all the infighting and political jockeying is just window-dressing. These people are Survivor professionals, so none of that matters any more. I find myself agreeing with Hatch (Shudder.) that all the craziness about keys and challenges and rewards is nonsense – a distraction from the actual game at hand. Sure, for Survivor neophytes, it's an important part of refining strategies, scoping out alliances, and familiarizing amongst the teammates. But these are professionals; they can skip over that stuff and, what's more, we know that, so somebody needs to make with the twists or start editing these episodes a little tighter.

I mean, look at it. Tina was eliminated not because she messed up on a challenge and not because she upset her fellow competitors. She was let go because she had won a previous game. That's unprecedented. Nobody has been voted off the island before just because of something that happened to them before the game even began. It's a whole new game. Watching Probst fuss with the competitors over their inability to swim in formation during a reward challenge has lost its sense of urgency. Even Hatch's nudity is boring and commonplace. And a little irritating. Believe me, I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but it just seems pointless for him to be constantly getting naked in front of everyone. What's the point of it? It seems like it's meant to keep the other competitors off balance, especially because he strips to start each challenge, but by now they must be as bored with it as we are, so how can that be effective? From Dalton Ross's account, what's on display is utterly unimpressive, so... why?

My guess is that Burnett isn't making it hard enough on these people. They have time to lie around thinking about their Survivor personae and how they'll look on TV, so they get bored and start trying to get attention. For example, Amber – a terribly poor and terribly forgettable player from the Australian season, now that she's been around once and done the "Playboy" shoot, she's more savvy about her use of camera time. She's busier looking sexy and busier engaging the other team members so that once the footage gets to the editing room, there's something usable with her in it. This is the case with everyone, and it's another example of how this time around, the players own the game, not Burnett or Probst. Again, I'm sure this will change when the twists start twistinating – all the more reason to go ahead and bring it the hell on! Burnett's oompa-loompas need to stop with the meticulous foley sessions of sloth movements and concentrate full-time on deploying the track-tested, wind-tunnel approved 2004 twists!

I'm ever-so-hopeful that they'll start showing up next week, and aside from the aforementioned imbalance in team rosters (before long, they'll have more contestants sitting out of challenges than participating), the other evidence that keeps me optimistic is Probst's little impromptu speech at this week's TribCon. Unsolicited and out of nowhere, he just starts waxing philosophic about how tough it is too vote and how "complicated" this new All-Star game is. Get the man a loosely knotted vintage necktie, he's channeling Avril! My only explanation for this unprecedented random soliloquy is that it's more of Burnett's dreadfully unsubtle foreshadowing and it means that the challenges the competitors think they're facing now are nothing but bundt cakes and shoeshines compared to the hell that awaits them in the near future. Otherwise, why the hell is Burnett releasing Sk8er Probst on us all of a sudden?

I'll give Rupert credit, though. He's doing his part to keep the game fun by consistently maintaining his crowd-pleasing habits. Was anyone surprised when he immediately set to work whittling a new spear? He's the SpearMan, lest anyone forget, and no amount of niminy-piminy jousting by Ethan is going to compare to his superior spearsmanship! In other news of Rupert, Self-Fashioned Hero: In the immunity challenge, when every team used the first dive to untie all the knots, the first thing through my mind was "Watch Rupert try to lift a box on the first dive, even though everyone else will just untie, resurface, and dive again to start lifting boxes." Sure enough, Rupert doesn't disappoint! This is the same guy who illustrated Rudy's entitlement to remain in the game by stressing that the game is so difficult that "it's even killing me to be out here." (Emphasis totally his.) Yes, Rupert is once again spouting about how people deserve to stay on the island because they've played the game with Honor (which means they've been in an alliance with him). He was insane enough to pal up with Rudy on day one, and such is his level of delusion that he actually believed that such an alliance could last to the final two (or help either player). Fortunately for Rupert, he was handed a mulligan by his team this week; Rudy's elimination means Rupert is back on the market for alliances, and Rupert voted for Ethan which means that he honored his word to Rudy right up until it stopped mattering (and beyond).

Next week: It becomes painfully clear that Hatch isn't back to win or to prove anything about his supreme manipulation faculties. He's back because, although he won the first Survivor, he didn't do it in a way that made him sufficiently famous. What Hatch learned in the last three years is that, unless you generate some Johnny Fairplay hype, Survivor celebrity isn't the meal ticket it was cracked up to be. He's back on the island for the sole purpose of making a spectacle out of himself, thus cementing his fame for as long as he wants it. The old tricks (smugness, random nakedness) haven't worked so far, so Hatch has decided to skip right over jumping the shark, and just start wrasslin' the sumbitch. I'm hoping that a) his hand gets bitten off; b) he gets voted off the island; and, c) he never gets another magazine cover again in his life.

POLL:

Let's Play Dress Up

Probst would look cuter in:

	A cowboy outfit.
	A little blue sailor suit.
	A tutu and ballerina tights.
	A watery grave.

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