articles
January 28, 2001
Survivor Episode 1: Outback Backbiting
by Barbara Fletcher
No fire, little clean water, drizzling rain, bug-infested fruit, and clashing personalities in close
quarters. Sound like something people want to watch?
Absolutely. Viewers couldn't wait for the Super Bowl yawnfest to end -- to hear the first few notes of that
familiar Survivor theme song -- this time enhanced with
didjeridu.
The voyeuristic appetite for reality TV has been whetted once again, but this time the
squabbling, the plotting, and the backbiting takes place in the Australian outback.
Meet the contestants
Survivor: the Australian Outback opened onboard an airplane of sixteen sullen faces -- the
contestants under orders to remain silent until landing.
Once plunked down into a dusty, desolate area, they were required to make a five-mile trek lugging meagre
supplies over difficult terrain toward the Kucha and Ogakor camps.
Right away personalities emerged -- tempers flared and tentative alliances formed.
As the new survivors struggled through building a shelter, trying to make fire, finding something decent
to eat, and attempting to sleep inches away from each other, it became apparent that it was not going
to be two big happy families.
Debb Raises Hackles
Almost immediately, 45 year-old eyeliner-toting corrections officer
Debb
Eaton made waves with her team members. In one of the many trademark "confession" shots,
fellow Kucha tribe member Kimmi Kappenberg
cited Debb as a source of irritation.
"She's not someone I would talk to in the outside world because she would make me crazy."
This was followed by a few "he said she said" sessions that obviously rubbed other tribe members the wrong
way; at the first tribal council (held in a pseudo-Stonehenge setting atop a waterfall), Debb became the
first contestant to be voted off the show -- a surprise to those who equated her independent headstrong manner to that of Susan Hawk from the first
Survivor, and expected her to last until the final weeks.
Kucha Keeps Chatty Kimmi and Retching Jeff
Surprisingly, it wasn't Kimmi who got the boot, even after keeping the tribe awake with incessant
chatting.
And it wasn't Jeff
Varner who spent the entire show retching in the bushes from some mysterious
illness he picked up on the plane -- and had Debb shaking her head, mumbling about "survival of the
fittest."
Looks like it was Debb's Darwinian theories were somewhat flawed.
Ogakor Carries the Torch
At first glance the Ogakor tribe seem to be more cohesive as a group, which explains their
success with the immunity challenge: carrying a lit torch as a team through a series of
water-related obstacles.
But it is early days, yet; after all, we have three months to get to know these new contestants
and to form opinions on who will take home the million.
Let the backbiting begin!