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The real 'Survivor' challenge

It's restore the "buzz factor." As Survivor: All-Stars limps to a (foregone?) conclusion, it's clear the experiment was bad for drama.

For a moment, forget about Frasier and cult favorite Angel; the most overlooked show this season may be the series that was once the 800-pound gorilla of reality TV: Survivor.

It hasn't been overlooked for its ratings, mind you. Survivor: All-Stars, the amped-up version with 18 past competitors stranded on Panama's Pearl Islands, has consistently scored among the Top 10 programs since its February debut, with an average of about 20-million viewers.

But the show's water-cooler quotient has diminished. First, big-business blowhard Donald Trump's The Apprentice on NBC consumed the entertainment universe, then the controversies over voting on Fox's American Idol scored global coverage (and a rebuke from Mr. Melody himself, Sir Elton John).

Even Survivor host Jeff Probst agreed. "All-Star was a fun experiment, (but) I would vote to never do it again," he said last week in a conference call with reporters. "I think the game is better played by strangers. You have 18 of your best characters, who will always give you gold. But the downside is, you've seen them all before."

It wasn't supposed to work this way.

The all-star edition, which pulled together early contestants including Richard Hatch and Sue Hawk with recent standouts Rupert Boneham (Survivor: Pearl Islands) and Jenna Morasca (Survivor: Amazon), promised a new competition between old favorites.

But the biggest-name players took a dive early, particularly Survivor's first winner, Hatch, who sought as much attention as possible by frolicking in the buff before the group pushed him out.

And there were the desertions. Before All-Stars, only one contestant had quit in seven cycles of the show.

But two left early this time: Hawk, who quit in tears, saying a nude Hatch rubbed himself against her during a challenge, and Morasca, who had an eerily accurate feeling that her mother would soon lose her battle with cancer. (I remain suspicious that producers warned her, fearing the awful publicity if they kept her in the game, unaware her mother was dying.)

But Probst noted that buzz factor and ratings often aren't connected.

"The new kid on the block always gets the press ... (and) even I have trouble finding something new to talk about for a show that's been on eight seasons," he said, noting how Survivor's buzz was eclipsed by American Idol, which was eclipsed by The Apprentice.

"We have a really loyal audience. ... They haven't deviated much from Season 3," Probst said. "I didn't think for a second that another 50 percent would start watching because of the all-stars."

Certainly, displacing pop-culture icons Hawk and Hatch for new-school manipulator Rob (a.k.a "Boston Rob" and "The Robfather") Mariano has eliminated the Clash of the Titans veneer.

It's as if you bought tickets to Ali vs. Tyson and wound up watching Laila Ali trade body blows with Tyson Beckford.

Worse, some of the spoilers and predictions made before the game began to air have proven fairly solid.

Boston software analyst Bill Marson, known online as ChillOne, predicted Mariano and Survivor: Australian Outback alum Amber Brkich would be the final two. Their romance and tight-knit alliance have proven major factors in the contest, and they now dominate the game.

Similarly, Boneham and original Survivor alum Jenna Lewis were predicted to round out the final four, a forecast proven true Thursday when "Big Tom" Buchanan was shown the door.

Now the smart money is on Brkich, who seems to be playing Mariano more than he's playing her. A win by her would cement the trend of players who fly under the radar until late in the game doing best.

Early on, it was compelling to watch old alliances fade and new friendships shatter. Brought together by the same post-show treadmill of charity appearances and paid speeches, many all-stars quickly learned that such comradeships are tenuous, particularly with a big-money payoff on the line.

"Everybody talks about how, "I'm the greatest player,' (but) there's so much luck involved," Probst said. "It's who you end up with, who ends up on your tribe. And this season, one of the big topics we're going to talk about is damaged friendships."

Now, with the exception of the always-popular Boneham, the all-star edition is packed with previously midlevel players who have hardly captured the public's imagination.

And a two-hour finale that looked like the event of the season in January seems more like a breather between the stuff we really care about: Idol, Frasier and Friends. (But Probst did echo CBS promos promising an unexpected twist during the live reunion show).

Given this crowded field, getting CBS's popular reality show back in the world of water-cooler buzz may be the ultimate act of survival.

The winner of Survivor: All-Stars will be revealed in a two-hour finale tonight at 8 on WTSP-Ch. 10, followed by an hourlong reunion special at 10.