This time, the host is recalling the entire season: 16 survivors, two tribes and the subsequent plagues: fire, flood, famine, evil bitch queen.

You know the story.

Last season, the "Survivor" finale was the biggest TV show of the year, after the Super Bowl. CBS would love for the same thing to happen tonight, but there's a lot less fanfare. Ratings for the second edition of "Survivor" are pretty good, and CBS is certainly given credit for coming up with a "Friends"-crushing method of fighting NBC for dominance in the highly remunerative Thursday night advertising sweepstakes. Still ...

Probst, Benevolent King of All the Koalas, is here to take anyone just tuning in through our story thus far, in baby steps.

It's for people who have a life.

Or the people who couldn't bear to give up "Friends."

So are Ross and Monica married yet?

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At this point in the first season of "Survivor," in the final televised two hours of the show, we were down to four nasty, venal people. We didn't want any of them to win the money.

This time around, we're down to cowboy Colby, gentle Tina and chef Keith. Do we really care who wins?

Colby, to us, is just a big good-looking jock. We don't think he's going to have a hard life. Rooting for him would be like rooting for the Yankees, or the Michael Jordan Bulls or even the old Dallas Cowboys. Everyone might like a winner, but we'd much rather pull for the Cubs in five. Either that or the nerdy boy with the book under his arm and we haven't seen him since "Freaks and Geeks" went off the air.

So that rules out Keith. Too arrogant. And here lately, too Robert Bly. We're sick of all this stuff about personal growth and relationships; it seems a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who said he'd rather see another player lose than win himself.

Of course that other player was Jerri, onetime ruler of a vast puddle of evil but now just another defenestrated queen in hair perm disguise, but we're guessing that, oh, Buddha, for example, didn't put a retribution gate at the foot of the path to enlightenment.

And Tina? Too wispy. We don't like the way she cut down her friend, Mad Dog, so long ago. Or tore into Kel's backpack. And her alliances have always seemed a little shifty from our perspective. We could never be sure if she was playing with Keith or with Colby. She was also kind of passive-aggressive, rarely standing up for anyone, much less herself.

She seemed like a follower, allowing Keith or Colby make decisions. It was arguably -- indeed, demonstrably -- an effective strategy, but we're not excited about it.

Alas, we're stuck with them for a final two hours.

And besides, it's kind of easy to see who's going to win. Colby and Tina are going to find their alliance tested when it comes to seeing which of them will win the final immunity challenge and get the privilege, in this context, of entering the final two with Keith.

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