Word: probst
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Reality-show hosts are half devil, half angel, tempter and comforter. (Think Jeff Probst offering starving Survivors extra vittles in exchange for their tent.) Not so Anne Robinson of The Weakest Link (NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m. E.T.), a British import game show with a Survivor twist: players vote each other off. The dour, sarcastic host dismisses losers with a curt "You are the weakest link. Goodbye." (Thanks to NBC's weeks-long ad blitz, it may be the first TV catchphrase Americans have got sick of before its show even aired). But there's an integrity to her evil-Regis...
...bumbling and his puppy-dog tears, and once Colby won the old-style Aussie-jailbreak Immunity Challenge by not dropping his lock in the grass, we had to hope it was him. (Rodger, interestingly enough for a 12-year bank president, retained absolutely none of the facts Probst dealt out in the challenge's setup, and basically stumbled around in the night scratching his beard and looking, well, looking like he really deserves to be called Kentucky...
...Rodger. There are two seasons in the Outback - the dry season and the wet season. This is the wet season," intoned Jeff Probst. "Why did you set up camp in a dry river bed?" (Probst, by the way, had an excellent episode, not only scoring with the good question - he'll bump Rather yet - but also making an uncredited appearance in a kangaroo suit...
...judge watch the tapes. This lawsuit gets at a bigger Reality TV issue: Who is the most exciting TV enemy - man, nature or authority? In the two shows' current forms, Jeff Probst and the drill sergeants match up (thematically, if not physically) as authority-figure facilitators. Both deliver the rules, make life plenty lousy for the contestants, and stir up a little conflict along the way. Nature, be it the Outback or Parris Island, heaps on some abuse, and certainly the setting is the biggest difference between the two. But the real damage - the voting off - is done...
...role is a giver and a taker, and nothing comes cheap," Probst said, his eyes flickering fire. He scolded them a while for burning through their rations, and then he asked for their shelter - "the tarps and that big ol' Texas flag" - for a fresh supply of rice. The tribe held out for 25 fishing hooks. The deal was done. And suddenly the little piggies were eating fish, and building their second house, this one made of sticks. Spirits were high again...