Tuesday, October 7, 2003

BACK ON TOP: I've been asked to comment on the new season of Survivor, and gosh darn it, am I happy about this season.

Why? If you're watching, you know why: St. Rupert, mentor to troubled teens, vanquisher of all who seek to do him ill. Rupert Boneham, or, as we like to call him around here, Hagrid (or, if you like, Gimli), is just awesome. Only Sweet Deaf Christy last season has ever approached this level of being so darned endearing and adorable that you're actually rooting for him to win the damn thing.

As Tim Goodman of the SF Chronicle said of Survivor: Amazon, "'Survivor' is, plain and simple, brilliantly constructed. The format has ensured that if the casting is right -- and it's been right all but once -- human behavior will bring in all the turmoil, intrigue, humor, deviousness and thrills you could ever want."

Indeed, it's the case this season. Long winning-and-losing streaks for the respective tribes have brought out the best and worst in each, especially the meltdown of the Morgan tribe. At this point, I don't want Mark Burnett to pull any of the tribe member swaps that have become typical at this point in the game -- I want to see Morgan decimated and then see what happens at the merge, and if they're Pagonged, so be it.

Which means I have to contradict myself a little, because what I liked about the past few seasons (well, Amazon and Marquesas) was how unstable the alliances were, and it took both earlier tribe-swapping by the producers and deviously-engineered individually challenges (the "chop off the other contestants' coconuts" challenge, in particular) to keep things in flux the whole time. (For me, it's all about the strategery -- I could care less about the survival/fatigue and eye candy aspects of the show.)

This time, I just trust producer Mark Burnett to step in when needed to shake things up, and we've got the Gratist Narrator Evir -- Rupert's as comfortable with the camera in revealing his thinking as Rob Cesternino or Richard Hatch, except he's not a total shithead.

It's going to be a fun season. Screw the competition -- the Pearl Islands are where it's at.

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