Courtesy of CBS

Now that the yummy but insidious Jerri M. has been evicted from the debris shelter, there has fallen over Camp Barramundi a kind of hush. It's not exactly a feel-good sort of calm, it's more like the torpor of starvation. All those outtie bellies are now innies, and the adorable Izzy Filarski looks like she's working as an understudy for a remake of the Karen Carpenter Story, and even the farmer duds of the formerly flabbious Rodger Hee Haw are hanging off the Kentucky shop teacher like a muumuu on Calista Flockhart. While CBS would like to stroke us by implying that this new stillness actually has something to do with malnutrition, the truth is, without the whine and bitch and snap of Jerri, there is simply no more buzz Out Back. And apparently the only love angle we're ever going to witness now is the brief static coupling in Episode Eleven of two bored grasshoppers. I already miss Ms. Matheny, that tasty little puff adder, not as much as I miss Colleen and Rudy and Richard, of course, but my irrational longing goes to prove that sometimes you just don't know what you've got till you can't get it back. Nevertheless, as Keith Famous sang, ding dong, the witch is dead. So, is there anything for the long-suffering addicts of Survivor to look forward to?

Unless you're a client of Jenny Craig or you faithfully attend Weight Watchers, not much. While producer Mark Burnett will probably make even more coin off this Snoro Grande by franchising his own string of fat farms, since the Starvation Seven have been bailed out with emergency rice and junk food they bought with Aussiebucks host Jeff Probst handed out, we probably won't get to enjoy watching the cast waste away completely, except by the normal thinning method effected by the Walk of Shame. But the booting off the continent of this Kucha or that Ogakor has lost its kick—witness the relief of Nick "You know you're an Ivy Leaguer if you think you're too good to fish" Brown when he knew he would soon be returning to law school at Harvard, a place only Ralph Nader thinks is fun. There's a slight happy chance the remainders might drown, because they stupidly sited their camp next to a river during The Wet. And there's a more remote possibility that the buffed cast of the Fox dramality adventure Boot Camp could force march from their island across time and waste these hapless vics just for the pleasure of it, the unhinged Recruit Meyer bug-eyed with blood lust.

But what I'm hoping for is an appearance by the heavily armed hippies and back-to-the-landers called Ferals that haunt the Outback all over Far North Queensland, where Survivor was taped. These rugged dirt dogs are squatters who've just had it with the nine-to-five, or never learned good office manners in the first place, and just fade into the bush to dig gold or grow contraband. Sometimes you'll see one of these refugees from the twenty-first century plying a back road on a horse-drawn cart. If you do, pal, just drive on by. (When a person throws a hissy fit in Australia a friend might say, "Don't go feral on me, mate.") So I'm hoping some Ferals have been spying on the silliness at Camp Barramundi from the cover of their gum forest and have witnessed these inept Yanks fail to light a fire or build a proper shelter or even find enough food on their own to stave off The Reaper. And then I'm hoping the Ferals will deal with this pity party in the way that Ferals deal with everything. Finally, at long last, I won't have to watch Survivor and I'll have the time to catch up with my growing collection of Battlebots tapes.