Back to the island

THEY CAME AT US WITH SPEARS: That's the title of the premiere episode of Survivor: Vanuatu, the reality series' ninth saga, which begins at 8 tonight on WTSP-Ch. 10. "Yes!" we exclaimed on hearing that title. We knew Survivor would eventually become as trashy as the majority of the genre it pioneered. Clearly, it must be bringing on Britney Spears - and maybe even future hubby Kevin! - to welcome the 18 contestants to Vanuatu, an island in the South Pacific. She'll give them pep talks. She'll give a concert. The official Survivor clothing will be tour T-shirts that have been sitting in storage since Spears cut short her last junket.

Talk about motivation. Those 18 people will do anything to put off returning to a culture that produced her.

Well, upon further investigation (i.e., we watched the preview tape CBS provided) we discovered ...

THAT'S "SPEARS' AS IN THE THINGS YOU THROW: The contestants are greeted on Vanuatu by a tribe of real natives who somehow were persuaded to perform for them what host Jeff Probst calls a "tribal ritual rite of passage." This involves the male tribe members running up to the contestants on the shore's edge, doing tribal yells and pushing spears in their faces.

The contestants look sufficiently freaked out.

RUPERT WHO? Based on the preview tape (which included everything but who got voted off first), Survivor is still the master of reality TV. It keeps its basic formula and uses its usual expert casting, editing and imagination to suck in viewers with a taut, compelling story - even outdoing the previous two seasons, Survivor: Rupert and Survivor: More Rupert.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!! Every standard Survivor element has a twist, starting with the decision to continue with 18 contestants, the number it had for last spring's All-Stars, which was two more than usual.

Also this time, the tropical locale is introduced as a place where the natives must "grant" the contestants "access to the land" before the nubile young women can wear their skimpy clothes and the studly young men can go shirtless.

This leads to the "ritual rite of passage," which, Probst tells the contestants, some might find shocking. By the looks on their faces, it seems some would have preferred Britney.

LET'S TWIST AGAIN AND AGAIN: As has happened before, the tribes are divided into men vs. women. But this division is made during the "ritual rite of passage." The native tribe members herd the Survivor women to the side while the men get better seats and are honored guests. This is supposed to tick off the women.

As usual, the females can basically be divided into Hot Young Chicks and Tough Old Broads. But it's interesting to see in the HYC group Dolly Neely, a 25-year-old sheep farmer from Mercer, Pa., who says that during the ritual, it didn't bother her to see an animal slaughtered because it's what she does for a living.

And once viewers think they've got the men sorted out - who's a Hunky Himbo, who's a Wise Older Guy and who will despise whom - things get shaken up when Chad Crittenden, a 35-year-old teacher from Oakland, Calif., peels off the lower right leg of his long pants to show that he wears a prosthesis from just below the knee. He had an amputation because of cancer 20 months ago.

BUT IT MEANS HE HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR, RIGHT? Brady Finta, a 33-year-old FBI agent from Huntington Beach, Calif., gets about halfway through the show as the Colby Donaldson Good Guy Hero Type. Until Crittenden talks about his leg. The camera cuts to Finta saying in an interview later, "Grrreat. The guy with the mechanical leg is going to win for sure. He's nice. He's smart. He's quiet. And you know he's got the underdog thing going on."

FROM THE TYPECASTING COUCH, WITH PERSONALITY: There's also the Too-Overly-Confident Male, Chris Daugherty, a 33-year-old highway construction worker from South Vienna, Ohio, who says of the team split: "Men against women. It's perfect. I can outsmart eight men ... a lot quicker than I can outsmart eight women."

(He also is used to reintroduce us to the editing trick call dramatic foreshadowing.)

There's the Big Tom Buchanan Good Old Boy Type, Travis "Bubba" Sampson, a 33-year-old former pro wrestler and current Wal-Mart employee from Johnson City, Tenn. Sampson has the voice and attitude of Buchanan, the rural Virginia turkey farmer from Africa and All-Stars, but he's a few pounds lighter. And he is wearing an un-Tom-like orange T-shirt that says "Bob Barker" and has a black drawing on it of what is supposed to be The Price Is Right host. He's a fan.

AND SOMETIMES YOU DON'T CHANGE A THING: The first challenge, a combination for reward and immunity, has a Survivor standard: Each contestant has to get across a balance beam. The men usually aren't good at it.

And remember Daugherty and his dramatic foreshadowing?

Sharon Fink can be reached at 727 893-8525 or fink@sptimes.com

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