I Like to Watch

Feb. 17, 2008 | Survival depends on the ability to adapt to sudden changes in your environment. For example, if that vending machine in the hall outside your office suddenly disappeared one day, you and other human beings in the area would be alarmed to find yourselves without your usual supply of cheesy peanut butter crackers and oatmeal creme pies. While some of the less adaptive among you might be spotted whimpering and scratching yourselves nervously in the hall where the vending machine once stood, more fit creatures in your group might undertake courageous missions to the corner store in pursuit of new sources of sodium and high fructose corn syrup.

These brave pioneers would forge a new path, and soon others would follow. But even the most intrepid and hardy specimens might wind up pacing the aisles of the corner store, braying and pawing at the ground over the fact that Corn Nuts aren't an adequate substitute for Double Stuff Oreos and Sour Cream & Onion Bugles.

Survival depends not just on adaptability in the face of dramatic change, but also on the flexibility of your tastes. Just as shifts in the economy might dictate that yesterday's CD-ROM producer become today's Web producer, and that today's Web producer become tomorrow's janitorial assistant, so might shifts in your personal life dictate that yesterday's smug, married stay-at-home mom become today's humble but overworked divorcée, or that yesterday's swinging bachelor become today's beleaguered husband.

As the subprime mortgage crisis and the specter of a looming recession team up on our once-great nation, shoving its face in the mud until it admits that it's a greedy, soulless, socially inept, good-for-nothing bastard once and for all, how might each of us Americans be asked to reinvent ourselves? How might we be called upon to re-imagineer ourselves from lazy, self-obsessed, pampered creeps who question authority at every turn into solid, hardworking, responsible citizens who believe in teamwork and the satisfaction that comes from toiling away all day for less than a living wage?

Will we rise to the occasion, or weep inconsolably into our hands, longing for the cushy jobs and whimsical indulgences of our glory days?

Micro-managing in Micronesia
The same brutal forces are at play in the realm of televised entertainments. Just as an unpredictable global economy renders most of us broke and unemployable, so, too, do the fickle winds of televisual frivolities blow fast and fierce, knocking the feeble and the timid to their hands and knees. As the Internets encroach on the networks and the networks desperately seek out new distribution platforms and diversified revenue streams and more eyeballs, the landscape is altered irretrievably and long-embraced programming that lolled in the primordial ooze of prime time for years is suddenly asked to stand upright, walk on two feet and whip up a green-chili-chicken casserole to feed a family of five.

Just look at "Survivor" -- no, wait. I mean "Survivor: Micronesia -- Fans vs. Favorites" (8 p.m. Thursdays on CBS). While viewers have been perfectly content for years now to watch the same 12 overachievers crouch on the same white beaches, bickering over the proper way to cook a dead rat, suddenly show creator Mark Burnett and host Jeff Probst and the executive swamis at CBS have been forced to adapt to a more competitive and hostile TV environment. Pooling the forces of their enormous brains, they came up with a brand-new "Survivor" that pits longtime fans of the show against a team of some of the best and most entertaining contestants from the show's recent seasons.

Now, let's be honest for a second. Most of the contestants on "Survivor" have been ardent fans of the show, from Rob Cesternino (of "Survivor: The Amazon") who demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of every season of the show, to the other contestants who knew just as much as Cesternino but were wise enough not to advertise said knowledge, lest they take a hard fall like Cesternino eventually did. Even so, the "Survivor" producers recognized that by denigrating these regulars as "Fans" and making them compete against "Survivor" celebrities (in the fans' minds, anyway), they'd cater to the significant slice of the population that has watched "Survivor" before and might be tempted to do so again, given the right extra-long, extra-descriptive title.

So, on the "Favorites" side, we welcome the return of James the Gravedigger, that hulking mountain of man-muscle, and Ass-Out Amanda, who appears to have secured a pair of shorts that don't require the show's editors to blur out her butt in every single scene. Some of the most memorable characters from seasons past are also here: Yau Man (little, geeky, older man), Ozzy (best swimmer ever), Parvati (flirtatious harlot whose name Probst can finally pronounce), Jonathan (easily threatened blabbermouth) and Ami (smart, straight-talking intimidator). Jonny Fairplay, aka Hippie Wrongstockings, also came back, but then he decided that he missed his unborn child far too dearly to be sitting on a beach far away from her (or the uterus she calls home), even though he might earn a huge sum of money so that his girl could go to a good college and forget the fact that her father is a notorious reality TV wanker.

Apparently intoxicated by their own mutual pseudo-celebrity, there are already two budding show-mances developing among the "Favorites": While Parvati immediately charmed and batted her eyes into James' good graces and his massive, muscular arms (So much for the appeal of a good, old-fashioned hardworking woman like the Lunch Lady Denise, eh, James?), Ozzy and Ass-In Amanda fell to making mutual googly eyes within seconds of spotting each other. By last week's episode, Amanda and Ozzy were making out at night while they thought everyone else was sleeping, and Jonathan and Cirie agreed that the two couples could be dangerous and might need to be split up.

Next page: What is this alien they call "Kathleen"?