"Survivor" Flame-Out

After 10 years, and four times on the show, Boston Rob finally won the game of "Survivor" last night on CBS. We've never been fans of Rob, but the way the game played out this season, the jury didn't have any other choice than to vote for the veteran to finally win. Rob understood that if he took two other contestants to the finals with him who were even more hated than him, that he'd win, that's what he did, and he won.

A lot of people are saying Rob deserved to win, that the game is what it is, that nasty backstabbing is sometimes rewarded, and Rob does backstabbing better than anyone. But is it really playing the "best game" when the Yankees beat a high school baseball team, or when Roger Federer beats someone at Wimbledon who has one arm tied behind his back? In other words, the group of people who played this season's "Survivor" had to be some of the stupidest contestants we've ever seen on this show. They were so dumb, we're actually wondering if they're able to feed themselves in real life. So did Rob really play the best game, or did he luck out by being paired with the worst "Survivor" players of all time?

From the very beginning of the season, all the young, dumb, pretty ones on Rob's team fell under his spell and his promise to "take them to the finals". Would someone please, for the love of god, explain to these rocket scientists that going to the finals doesn't matter if you don't win in the end. Phillip, who is hands-down one of the craziest people we've ever seen on t.v., is practically beaming with pride that he "outplayed" his other contestants by making it to the finals; we're waiting for someone to explain to him that the people he "beat in the game" win just as much money as he does: bupkis. In "Survivor", whether you finish in 15th place or 2nd place, it doesn't matter, you still lose.

Here's the season in a nutshell. One team was older and smarter, and they knew to vote off their villain early on, the veteran Russell. But on the other side of the island, Rob's teammates were all very young, naive and incredibly stupid, and they not only believed all the horseshit that Rob was shoveling, they ate it up with a spoon and then asked for more. If you've ever wondered how Charles Manson was able to talk young people into committing murder for him in the 1960's, all you had to do was watch Rob manipulate his teammates and you'd understand. It all depends on finding people who haven't a brain in their heads. Anyway, the smarter team lost key challenges, putting them at a numbers disadvantage against Rob's team, and from that point on, Rob was in control of the entire game. Rob took the nutjob Phillip, and Natalie, his Squeaky Fromme, to the finals, knowing the jury wouldn't vote for them because all they did was "ride his coattails", and he was right. We're honestly wondering whether it has dawned, yet, on Natalie that she lost the game. Andrea, who was on Rob's team, was actually the best player of the game; she was the only one who really understood the game, and at times even tried to convince her teammates to do the right thing, but she had the unfortunate task of trying to talk sense into a bunch of people who had not only drunk the kool-aid, but kept pulling out the half-gallon drums to mix up a new batch.

Seriously, we love "Survivor", it's our favorite show on t.v. But this season had to be one of the last satisfying seasons ever of the show. The show's normal hallmarks of unexpected twists and turns were missing, mainly because of what we've previously described, one person told everyone else what to do, and they blindly did it. In every season, you always get one or two people who've never watched the show, and don't understand how to play, but the entire cast? We're wondering if CBS rigged the show's cast with the dumbest people they could find, just so a "t.v. favorite", Boston Rob, would do well? No one who's ever watched this show before would have kept Rob in the game; they should have realized that the only chance they had to win was to get rid of him early on. But they didn't.

The new twist on the show, "Redemption Island", in which contestants who were voted-off were allowed to win their way back into the game, was misused as well. In the entire course of the season, only twice did these contestants get to rejoin the game, and only one at a time. They should have used the "Redemption" option more often, and with more people. How much more interesting would it have been if three people who Rob voted off were allowed to return to his tribe, instead of one at a time? What good can one person do by him/herself against an entire tribe who's already voted that person off. The "Redemption" feature had absolutely no effect on the game, when it should have been a major player.

This one-off, really bad season of "Survivor" won't dissuade us from watching the show, after eleven years, it's still one of the most interesting things on t.v. But please, CBS producers, we're begging you, for the love of god and all that's true, please, please select some contestants for the next season who have at least a moderate I.Q. level and people who didn't study at the George W. Bush school of "strategery".

T.V. Round-Up

Watching last night's "American Idol", we couldn't help but think, again, that the show is on its last legs. The judges are awful in their sugary-sweet, pathological need to make the contestants feel good, even when the singers don't deserve it. And among the contestants there's no one lighting our pilot light, either. Stefano's butchering of notes would make Sweeney Todd proud, Jacob seems to be auditioning more for "RuPaul's Drag Race" than as American's next great pop singer, and we can't decide if Pia is trying to be a pop singer or the next talent winner in the Miss America Contest. Pia tried to show her soulful side by belting Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High", but she sounded like the Miss Virginia, who in the most recent Miss America Pageant, tried to "get down", as only a white girl in a beauty pageant can do, by singing The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone". Miss Virginia was laughable, then, and so was Pia last night. But hey, according to the "judges", Pia was amazing! Right. You just know that Ike Turner is threatening to come back from the dead just so he pop a cap in Pia's ass.

(pia toscano - where is a good case of laryngitis when you need it?)

(the poor, simple-minded matt)

"Survivor" has had it monumental screw-ups in the past. James got voted out with two, (count'em, two!) immunity idols in his pocket, and didn't think to use one to save himself, and Jonny Fairplay's entire tribe believed him when he said his grandmother had died, (which wasn't true), only to have Fairplay come back later and use it against them. But in last night's episode of "Survivor", we might have just witnessed one of the biggest missteps of all time. Matt finally won his way back into the game after winning six straight challenges on Redemption Island, only to be promptly voted right back out again. Oh, Matt, Matt, Matt, ye of the golden locks and the Sarah Palin-like pea-sized brain. Boston Rob hated your ass in the first week of the game, and what in god's name made you think he was going to change his mind about you? Jesus, you'd think some of these contestants had never watched the show before. But it's okay, Matt can win his way back into the game once again, later on, and we're hoping he will, just to see if he'll continue to embarrass himself on national t.v. with yet another classic, boneheaded move.


(at left: barbara eden today;
at right: barbara eden on "I Dream of Jeannie")

Over on "The Joy Behar Show", Barbara Eden, of "I Dream of Jeannie" fame, was on to plug her new memoir, "Jeannie Out Of The Bottle". She told one really interesting story of meeting Sen. John F. Kennedy one day in the 1950's at Idlewild Airport, (which would, of course, later be renamed JFK Airport). She didn't know who the young Senator was, but enjoyed chatting with him, and just before she left to board her plane, he slipped a note in her pocket. When she read the note later, it was simply signed, "JFK" followed by his phone number. Joy asked Eden if she ever called the number, but according to Eden, she didn't. Wow, JFK must have had more extramarital sex than a Republican Congressman at a hooker's convention on "dollar whore night". Or Newt Gingrich.

Why Didn't Anyone on Gilligan's Island Look Like This?

Unfortunately, one of our favorite Survivor contestants, James Clement, was voted off the island this week, due to a knee injury. James is one of the hottest reality stars to ever find his way on t.v., and watching Survivor for the rest of the season just won't be as exciting without him. So here's a gallery of parting shots to help us remember just how sexy this guy is; it might be the last time we see him for awhile.
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Reality Round-Up

We're "Survivor" fanatics. Period. Enough said. And this season's edition of the popular reality show does not disappoint. Set in Brazil, the cast is filled with enough misguided egos and malicious backstabbing to keep us tuned in and loving every minute of it. We'd watch the show for the sexy host, Jeff Probst, alone, but luckily the show is entertaining as well.

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Among the cast crazies, first there was Sandy, the happy hillbilly whose Southern accent was so thick that she kept pronouncing "camp" as "caimp", with two to three syllables. We loved Sandy, but she was a little squirrely, and her fellow castaways couldn't wait to get rid of her. She was voted out fairly early.

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Then there's Coach, the ego-maniacal soccer coach who resembles Fabio, complete with the '80's Chippendale's hair-do. The funniest thing about Coach, is that, despite his macho-laden boastings, he really sucks as an athlete. He finishes last or near to last, among the men, in all the athletic challenges. You just know that back at his university they're reconsidering his tenure as coach, and not in a good way.

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Tyson is the Johnny Fairplay wanna-be, but he's not mean enough or emotionally unbalanced enough to hold a candle to the infamous former Survivor backstabbing star. Tyson does like to walk around naked, but as with most people who revel in the nudist lifestyle, he has the kind of body that leaves us begging for him to be clothed.

And poor little cutie, Spencer. Spencer was the 18 year-old, token gay competitor. We had high hopes for Spencer; he was young, athletic and had supposedly watched and studied every single episode of every broadcast of Survivor. Plus he was gay, which is a big advantage in reality shows; gay people by experience have had to learn how to deal with adversity and how to navigate among varying personality types just to survive in real life, so a reality show is usually cake. But somewhere along the way, it was obvious that Spencer hadn't really done his homework. When he became the target for elimination, he seemed to accept his fate, and skulk away like a beaten dog. Somebody needed to remind him, that when targeted for ouster, that is the exact moment at which you turn on every scheming, lying and backstabbing trick you've ever learned to convince everyone else to vote a different way. But Spencer didn't, and he was voted out.

We love Taj, the former pop star as a member of the singing group, SWV. She's wily, smart and a very good player. But just as the Republicans have tagged Michelle Obama, some see Taj as a "sassy Black woman", and her temper might get her into trouble.

We're going to predict right now that the winner will be J.T., the cattle farmer from Alabama. J.T. came across at first as a little dim-witted and maybe not up to the athleticism required to make it in Survivor. But as the early episodes unfolded, it became quickly obvious that not only was J.T. the most gifted athlete on the show, but his intellect and understanding of others was razor-sharp. Unless the others vote him out to get rid of their biggest threat, which often happens, J.T. should easily win this edition of Survivor.