It's almost as if they're plotting against you. They're giving you the evil eye, and when you walk away from them, you're sure they're talking about you behind your back.

As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not trying to get you.

Over in the Ogakor tribe, everyone's hungry and paranoia is striking deep.

Keith, who's supposed to be a chef, doesn't seem to know how to cook rice.

It's mushy and has the consistency and taste of glue.

"This guy's supposed to be a cook," Jerri says, emphasizing the last word with derision.

Comely Jerri, who's a bartender in Los Angeles and is billed as an "aspiring actress," is the villain in this new edition of "Survivor."

She's going to be crowned as the new Richard Hatch, but she's really something else.

She's a Heather. In the movies, Heathers, superficially pretty but internally insecure, are the compulsively plotting high school girls who humiliate the shy guys and the plain Janes. They always get their comeuppance in the end.

But "Survivor" is not a movie.

Jerri's supercilious enough to look arrogant and self-satisfied even while sitting in a pool of river water, from where her cutting criticisms of most of the other people in her group punctuate the rest of this episode.

And sometimes she dispenses worse than criticisms.

Kel, the quiet 32-year-old Army intelligence officer, has fishhooks but no fishing line and is getting nowhere trying to bring in some tasty marine treats.

Tonight's big drama comes when Jerri tells the Ogakor group that she saw -- or thought she saw -- Kel walking in the woods, gnawing on something that looked suspiciously like beef jerky.

After she tells the other members of the tribe, in minutes the group turns into the outback equivalent of a band of Jacobins running torches through the streets of Paris and looking for someone to behead.

Kel is out in the brush scrounging for bait, and we think it's lucky he is. The light in Jerri's eyes is positively Robespierre-like. We expect a quick camera cut to a shot of Kel buried up to his neck in the sand, Australian fire ants approaching, and Jerri standing over him dripping honey onto his head.

Instead, in Kel's absence the other seven members of the group root through his personal effects, looking for his secret stash of Slim Jims.

They don't find anything. No one calls Jerri on what sure looks like an accusation made up out of whole cloth.

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics