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TV Diary -- "Survivor: The Australian Outback"
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Look back in hunger
Episode 14: Survivors agree -- you can be too thin! Plus: A surprise guest.

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April 27, 2001 | Day 37. There's a huge sun on the horizon. Little pink clouds blow through the sky. A dozen tiny black ants run every which way. And Elisabeth-with-an-s is spending some quality time with the camera.

"I'm the last of the Kucha tribe," she says, after having watched her comrade Grandpa Rodger take the fall for her at the last tribal council. "I was lonely last night. It's different here without Rodger. He was a little treasure I happened to find out here from Kentucky."

It's a sentimental moment for someone who's basically dying of hunger on camera. We see dissolving edits of Elisabeth behind wispy smoke, Elisabeth walking through the trees in slow motion, Elisabeth palming her forehead and wandering aimlessly.

All of a sudden "Survivor" is a Hallmark commercial. What's next -- a close-up of an old Koori man with a teardrop in his eye?


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We see Elisabeth scraping the dregs of the rice out of a pan, sitting around the fire with chef Keith, cowboy Colby and nurse Tina. On a voice-over, she's saying that Rodger wouldn't want her to lay down and die, which happens to be a lyric from Elisabeth's Beth Orton CD. But in front of the others she's admitting that she didn't expect for the game to be so emotional.

We like Elisabeth, of course -- but we get the sense that she probably finds a lot of things emotional, including particularly cute puppies and movies starring Julia Roberts.

Tina and Elisabeth lie on the river beach together. Elisabeth says she misses her family; Tina misses her husband and her children. With Tina up on her elbow, listening intently, Elisabeth opens up: "Sometimes I feel like I'm not here for my life."

We wonder what she means. What part of being on the wrong side of the Equator and the opposite side of the hemisphere, shadowed by cameramen 24 hours a day and surrounded by half-starving, sallow-faced contestants on the most-watched television show in America seems incongruous with the life of a 23-year-old shoe designer living in Newton, Mass.? Don't post-college Yanks travel Down Under all the time?

Colby is a little sensitive as well. He takes a little dip in the river. He misses his mom. He says he talks to her every day when he's off by himself.

"She doesn't respond to me orally, but I know she's hearing me," he says.

As if to mock Colby's claim, we see him in camp chatting with the two women. He says he's going down to the store. Do they want anything? He's going to stop at the ATM machine and pick up some cash. He's crazy, see? Outback life has finally cracked him. Apparently everyone else is really tired because no one laughs.

We are really tired too. We think we know what's going to happen on "Survivor." The Ogakor members are going to mercilessly execute Elisabeth tonight. And on next week's finale, Keith and Colby are going to make short work of Tina, because neither would like to give the Jury of the Damned the opportunity to give her a million dollars.

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