Mariano’s greatest gift was his ability to make every player he allies himself with feel as though they were the confidant and co-conspirator who was special and wonderful and different from all the others and would never, ever be betrayed. And then: Wham! He was good at challenges (especially puzzles) and had a few other master strokes up his sleeve (such as holding an immunity idol in reserve, as insurance against the eventuality that somebody previously simpatico with him would turn on him). But his skill at politicking was what ultimately got him through.

His dominance was so total that after a certain point, it became obvious not only that he was probably going to win, but that there would be no traditional suspense this season — just the more detached sort of excitement that comes from watching a master do his thing.

In the final weeks, while Mariano fended off challenges from players who finally started to grasp the almost completely psychological nature of his game and tried in vain to counter it, I was reminded not of past “Survivor” seasons, or of traditional sports, but of what it felt like to be a kid watching my grandfather build one of his magnificent birdhouses. The seams where the pieces joined didn’t even need to be sealed to keep the water out because the thing was already watertight. That was Mariano’s game this year: watertight.

This season is the best argument I’ve seen for the proposition that the CBS series is a great new national pastime, with a complexity and metaphorical richness that no other so-called reality series provides — and that its most successful contestants are hybrids of mental and physical athletes, jockeying for advantage on a real-time chessboard with human pieces. Mariano’s gift is his understanding that once you get onto the island or into the jungle or wherever “Survivor” happens to be taking place, what happens isn’t real life, but an intense, abstracted version that’s divorced from real-world morality, no matter how stridently some players insist otherwise.

From its first season, executive producer Mark Burnett was always explicit that there were just two rules: no threatening or committing physical violence against another contestant, and no collaborating to split the prize money. As Mariano himself said during the live interview following the verdict, players tend to get confused about that because they and the other players are human beings, the friendships (or rivalries) that develop during competition feel real and in some sense are real, and the whole experience is so rarefied and overwhelming that the people who take part in it feel that nobody can ever understand them except another “Survivor” contestant. (Thus Mariano’s marriage to Brkich — and “Redemption Island” cast-member David Murphy’s on-air proposal last night to a a rather annoyed-seeming Carolina Eastwood, a contestant on 2009′s “Survivor: Tocantins.”)

But it really is just a game. You can’t go into it clinging to a personal code of honor or a religious conviction and expect to win. And if you get voted off “Survivor” and start whining about how this player or that player was deceptive or insincere, you sound dumb. You might as well join a poker game and then complain when another player successfully bluffs you. “B-b-but you LIED to me! You made me think you had a good hand, and you didn’t!”

Some of the tirades-posing-as-questions during the final vote proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the people who lost to Mariano deserved to lose, because they had failed to grasp what the game was about (physical endurance; long-term, chess-like strategizing; politics or gangland-style alliance building) and were judging Rob by irrelevant, self-serving, hypocritical standards.

“All the people that you betrayed are having a hard time understanding who you really are,” said Matt Elrod, the devout Christian who spent much of the series in solitude on Redemption Island, vanquishing other rejectees and trying to find his way back into the main competition. “None of you played a respectable game,” said Julie Wolfe, chastising Mariano and the other two finalists, Phillip Sheppard and Natalie Tenerelli, both of whom had no problem admitting that they made it to the end by being unswervingly loyal to Mariano. Then, singling out Tenerelli, she said, “Do you think your parents would be proud of the way that you played the game? Because if you were my daughter, the answer would be no.”

What show did these people think they were on? At least the elapsed time between the final tribal council vote and the reading of the verdict mellowed them, and led them to admit what was already apparent to anybody who’d watch so much as a single episode this year: “Survivor” is a great and challenging game, and Mariano is the best who ever played it.

And you thought the hype for “Pearl Harbor” would be so loud by May 1 you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself think. Instead, with summer’s movie blockbuster season right around the corner, there’s only one item for discussion in the hills of Hollywood on Tuesday: the pending writers strike.

You see, long before the writers strike of 2007, the Writers Guild of America was threatening to pull the plug the way they had in 1988. Except now it was 2001, and the networks were a little bit wiser. When the ’88 strike happened, Fox relied on new shows like “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted,” shows that were basically reality programs before the term “reality programming” existed. The networks knew another strike was possible and didn’t want to get stuck with their pants down around their ankles again.

“There was a sense of powerlessness of having your product stream absolutely dry up,” said Mr. Littlefield [former NBC vice president], who now heads his own production company. “At some point you say, ‘We don’t want to be in this situation again,’ and you start to build alternatives. That process takes time.”

Luckily (for the networks) in 2001, networks had a little extra something to rely on: “Survivor” had proven to be one of the biggest boons in television history, proving that if you put people on an island long enough, eventually they would go all “Lord of the Flies” on each other. While shows like “Friends” and “CSI” still dominated the ratings for the 2001-02 season, Jeff Probst and his fire eliminations had clearly caught the attention of America. In 2004, writers would realize this formula worked even when it was scripted (as long as there was a smoke monster), and “Lost” was born.

Clearly, this was a force to be reckoned with. The 2001 writers strike ended up being more sound and fury than actual fire. By the time it came down to last-minute negotiations in early May, the writers union “won out” by getting the provisions of a $41 million pay increase over three years. Now they could get back to making more episodes of “Everyone Loves Raymond.” Silently in the wings, Fox prepared its own motherlode of a reality show, “American Idol.” By the time the 2008 strike rolled around, the chips were clearly stacked against the scribes, who now had to contend not only with the unscripted presidential election, but also with the force of Simon Cowell as well.

The latest wrinkle is announced in the title of this season: “Survivor: Redemption Island.” The “island” is actually an arena where people voted out of the main competition go up against other expelled tribe members in one-on-one competitions. Whoever survives those secondary challenges eventually returns to the main competition, invigorated by victory and (presumably) looking for payback against the people who voted them out. To jazz things up even more, the producers have brought back a couple of veteran “Survivor” players: “Boston” Rob Mariano, who appeared in three incarnations of the series, and Russell Hantz, who played against Rob in “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains.”

Hantz, a squat hustler who reminds me of a young Bob Hoskins, pursued his time-tested strategy of allying himself with two young women (on this “Survivor,” his allies were a flirty schemer named Stephanie and her best pal Krista). The gambit didn’t work because the rest of his tribe found Russell deeply untrustworthy even by “Survivor” standards, and physically revolting to boot. (He’d shaved his armpits before arriving on the island and somehow acquired pustulent scabs.) To make matters worse, Russell also got outfoxed by an aw-shucks farmer named Ralph, whom Russell had incorrectly pegged as “the dumbest person on the face of the earth.” Turns out Ralph only play-acts stupidity, and is actually a likable schemer who found the personal immunity idol shortly after landing on the island and not only kept his find a secret from Russell but played all sorts of head games with him.

Russell was voted out of his tribe and sent to Redemption Island last week, a turn of events that came as an enormous shock to him. (Anybody who makes it into the cast of “Survivor” is an alpha dog; alpha dogs often presume themselves invincible until reality slaps them across the face.) On last night’s show, he entered the arena with another voted-off cast member, Matt — a polite young blond fellow who says he’s doing everything for the glory of his God — and got beaten and sent packing. When host Jeff Probst confirmed Russell’s fate, the burly man started crying, then lowered the brim of his hat to hide his tears; but within moments he’d bucked up — out of respect for the game, he explained — and exited with as much dignity as he could muster. This is just great TV, simultaneously grandiose and human-scaled — a “Survivor ” specialty.

Boston Rob has been even more entertaining.  A grinning stud with a face like a baby Ray Liotta, he’s a classic charismatic trickster. If he were a character in a prison movie, he’d be the inmate who can get you any kind of contraband if the price is right. Rob seems completely devoid of conscience — at least in this game — but he justifies his ruthlessness in a very convincing way, treating it as an analog for life, another arena in which there really are no constraints except the ones you personally decide to observe.

True, on the island, as in the real world, there are rules, and if you break them you can be punished (or at least ostracized by your fellow citizens), and Rob knows this. But at the same time, he doesn’t believe in adhering to any rule that doesn’t advance his social station — especially rules that exist mainly to reassure all the players that they’re well-bred ladies and gentlemen even as they’re scrambling to deceive and defeat each other. That’s why Rob was so disgusted whenever his former teammate Matt would congratulate the other side after losing to them in competition. The post-game handshake offended Rob so much, in fact, that he orchestrated Matt’s ouster almost entirely on those grounds.

Another thing that’s returned to the forefront this season is the show’s ability to fill the screen with psychologically complex, often vividly odd human beings — the kinds of people you might see in a documentary by the Maysles Brothers (“Salesman“) or in the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest (“Best in Show“). The cream of the crop this season is undoubtedly Phillip Sheppard. He used to be a federal agent and sees fit to mention that fact every 45 seconds. He also keeps telling everyone who’ll listen that his word is his bond, which on “Survivor” either marks a player as laughably naive or totally dishonest. He has a gorilla tattoo on one arm and a lion tattoo on the other; don’t ask him to explain what they mean unless you want to hear a story longer than “The Iliad.”

Phillip has spent much of this season tromping around the island in raggedy fuchsia briefs, making condescending remarks to the women (and a few of the men), bragging about how he can spot a liar instantly, and otherwise demanding to be praised as the nicest, coolest, most brilliant hombre alive.  An episode a couple of weeks ago practically stopped in its tracks to observe Phillip trying to hunt tiny crabs with a huge spear; the hunt was intercut with a tearful Phillip monologue about how proud he was to don a uniform and serve the greatest country on earth. The segment deftly walked the line between mocking Phillip and gazing in awe at his originality and utter lack of self-consciousness.  So much of “Survivor” is like this: a game show, a window into American delusion, and a grand opportunity to people-watch. 

Over the years, while the depraved reality three-ring circus of surgically reconstructed housewives, striving entrepreneurs, C-listers and ladies who want to marry Flavor Flav has collapsed in on itself, “Survivor” still survive — thrives, even. After a few scattered bad seasons, the show has been on a roll lately, thanks to some well-timed twists and casting stunts (All-Stars! Race wars!), hitting a high point in the colliding self-righteousness and open hostility of “Heroes vs. Villains.”

Now that the show’s loyal audience has grown accustomed to these gimmicks, though, each new season requires a new stunt. While the “Old vs. Young” teams that launched the current season of “Survivor: Nicaragua” (8 p.m. Wednesdays on CBS) looked promising at first — how would hot youngsters with brawn match up against unhot oldsters with brains? — the formula caved in when the Youngs proved to be beautiful, strong and at least functionally smart, while the Olds turned out to be every bit as whiny, arrogant, vindictive and pathetic as … well, actual old people. Oldster Dan brought along a pair of bad knees to match his $1,600 pair of Italian leather shoes (huh?). Oldster Holly stole and buried Dan’s shoes in the sand (why?), then rolled out the extra-large crazy guns by confessing her crime to Dan and everyone else. Meanwhile, oldster Marty indulged in an all-too-familiar “I am the puppet master” routine, even as he demonstrated that he had about as much strategic finesse and self-knowledge as a sock puppet. One with googly eyes and really bad hair.

Despite their physical, mental and emotional handicaps, the old tribe had one thing going for them: former Dallas football coach Jimmy Johnson. Although “Survivor” producers had never cast a celebrity on the show, it was instantly clear why they’d break their own rule with Johnson. Not only is he a longtime “Survivor” fan, but he epitomizes the strengths, wisdom and charisma that come with age. From the first day, he was a magnetic presence on his team whose natural leadership couldn’t be denied. He made tough calls, he rallied the team, he calmed them when they were disappointed; this was the kind of leader that every “Survivor” player, squatting in the cold and the rain, might’ve dreamed of. Using only his words, he made shivering in soaked clothes while the TV cameras rolled seem like a deeply valiant and enviable act. Even better, he even made it clear that he didn’t want to win at all, he simply wished to enjoy the experience and be the best team member that he could possibly be.

So what did the old team do? They voted him out almost immediately. Then they lost, and lost, and lost, and kept losing.

Now, if you’re an old (old starts at 40 here), whiny know-it-all with creaky joints and a bad attitude like I am, the last thing in the world you want is to watch other old, whiny know-it-alls hobbling around on the beach, cradling their creaky elbows, moaning about their bad knees, complaining about how cocky or unstable or weak everyone else on their stupid team is. “He thinks he knows everything, but he’s wrong!” the old people said of each other. “I’m the one who knows everything! Me! Owww, my back.” If I wanted to hear pathetic old people whimper about other pathetic old people, I’d attend more neighborhood zoning meetings.

Meanwhile, the youngsters were frolicking about, their supple young parts bouncing in their bikinis, their awe-inspiring meat Chiclets bronzing nicely in the Nicaraguan sunshine. Of course they weren’t getting along well or anything like that — but young people are used to hating each other for no good reason. South Central bad girl NaOnka hated long-haired Spicoli-style dude (whose real name I don’t remember because he was instantly renamed “Fabio” when he hit the beach — they even use “Fabio” in the opening credits). Stranger still, everyone seemed to dislike Kelly, a great athlete with a prosthetic leg, unfairly targeting her as a threat to win the “sympathy vote” early on, even though she wasn’t remotely the type to pander for a jury’s sympathy. The young team was playing by mean-girl high school rules, cavalierly booting whoever seemed uncool or out of sync with the majority. And who was at the center of it all? Mean girl Brenda and her sharp metrosexual boy sidekick, Sash.

Depressingly enough, it soon became clear that Brenda was the sort of effortlessly confident popular girl who barely had to lift a finger to make the tribe do her bidding. Gigantic, gorgeous country boy Chase followed her around like a puppy dog enforcer. NaOnka made an early alliance with her and silently backed her every move. Even though Sash seemed capable of striking out on his own, he stuck close to Brenda, with her casually dismissive, insidiously passive demeanor. Like all quiet but powerful popular girls, Brenda insisted that no one yammer on about strategy or get paranoid or negative around her. Rather than playing the game outwardly, Brenda wanted everyone to mirror her calm overconfidence and follow her lead. Brenda was the anti-Jimmy Johnson: no apparent strategy, no words of wisdom, no comforting assurances for her closest allies, just shrugging and sighing.

In other words, “Survivor: Nicaragua” was really starting to suck.

But then, on Thursday night, the tide start turning. Holly says that Brenda is a threat, and she wants her gone. Benry also wants Brenda gone. Dan, wincing and grabbing his bad knees, agrees. The big surprise, though, is that NaOnka, former Brenda ally, takes her own former enemy Fabio aside, and tells him that everyone else wants Brenda gone.

Loyal puppy dog Chase tells Brenda that everyone wants her gone. And what does she do? She shrugs and sighs and basically says that campaigning to save herself is beneath her and against her personal philosophy, which amounts to something along the lines, “I rule, therefore I should continue to rule.”

Best of all, the immunity challenge requires players to support their weight by holding onto a longer and longer rope, testing their strength and endurance. The final two to battle it out? Huge young country boy Chase and little 56-year-old country woman Jane. Finally, Chase falls, and Jane is the winner! A victory for unpathetic old people everywhere!

At tribal council, Brenda tells Sash to give her the immunity idol using only her big brown eyes, but instead Sash gives her the Heisman. Almost everyone, including Chase and Sash, votes Brenda out. Now we see how far shrugging and sighing gets you in this game.

Episodes like this one demonstrate exactly why “Survivor” has survived all these years. After weeks of predictable, depressing developments, there’s an unexpected uprising, and the whole season is transformed. Next week, a whole new game begins, because all of the preexisting alliances have been tossed out the window in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, all of our prejudices have been overturned: Oldster Holly turns out to be sane, sidekick Sash turns out to have a mind of his own, dimbulb Fabio turns out to be much smarter than he at first appeared, and oldster Jane turns out to be the toughest of them all.

This is what we want from reality TV: We want to be surprised by real people. We want to think we have them figured out, only to peel off new layers and discover new strengths, new weaknesses, new peculiarities, and new charms. Somehow, against all odds, “Survivor” delivers.

A Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Beresford-Redman in the April 8 killing of his wife, Monica, whose body was found in a sewer of a luxury Cancun resort. Investigators have said her body showed signs of asphyxiation and evidence of a heavy blow to the right temple.

The former “Survivor” producer and co-creator of “Pimp My Ride” reported her missing two days before the body was found. Beresford-Redman, 38, says he is innocent.

He returned to Southern California in May even though Mexican authorities had confiscated his passport. He had not been charged at the time, however, and was not barred from leaving the country. It is not clear where he crossed the border or how he did so without his passport.

——

Associated Press Writer Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles contributed to this report.