Courtesy of CBS

Although the sets of Survivor Out Back have been transformed from brown to green with the coming of The Wet, people are still starving in Australia. Well, not Colby, of course, the only Barramundi named after a food product. Because of his choreographed victory in another of those annoying reward contests, he got to gorge on bacon and beans and beef and peanut butter with his newest, bestest Aussie mates till the shit exploded from his person with a vehemence that recalled Susan Hawk's rant about snakes and rats at the conclusion of Survivor Island. You'd have to be grotesquely incompetent not to find some wild edible yummies in a world as lush as the Herbert River area of Far North Queensland, where this fifteen-episode slumber party was taped.

But gazillionaire producer Mark Burnett wasn't interested in picking contestants because of their soi-disant wilderness skills. With the village-idiot foresight of Ralph Nader's presidential "bid," which invited the Republicans to steal the White House, these boobs put up their camp in the bed of a dry wash. And surprise, surprise! When they came home from their rope games it had all washed away. And when Keith Famous swam after the rice can that was swept off by the flood, he'd forgotten that he'd stuffed the Barramundi's only matches his shirt pocket. The boy and girls had an icky night indeed. Ma'ams and sirs, can you say duh? Of course, even though Little Izzy promised that she was going to get "drastically primal," that succulent slipper maker and Tina Okie and The Colbster and the rest were named to the Sweet Sixteen not because of their true grit, but because of the whiteness of their teeth, the tightness of their butts, the boldness of their piercings, and, in Roger Hee Haw's case, the come-hither appeal of dem ol' hound-dog eyes. Woof!

Oh, I'll miss ogling the incredible shrinking figure and lopsided grin of that green-eyed tart from Beaver, P.A., Amber Brkich. But ever since her alliance with that meat-eating plant, the indigestible Jerri Manthey, she was fated to walk the Walk of Shame. Too bad, for me, though. Without that melt-in-your mouth Alpha Gamma Delta to ogle I guess I'll have to supplement my weekly dose of uplifting feminine imagery by sitting real close to the teedle and watching my favorite tapes of the Juggies on The Man Show. Or maybe I'll just rerun highlights of Jimmy Kimmel's "Girls on Trampolines" feature.

While the hapless Barramundis are pretending to play nice (yawn), the real action on Survivor is being played out in the courts. Tracey Stillman, you might remember, is suing CBS, claiming that Mark Burnett fixed the outcome of Survivor Island by arranging that she get the heave-ho instead of my hero, Rudy Boesch. And CBS is counter-suing the Frisco lawyer for breach of contract. Now comes CBS and Burnett again, filing suit against the Fox dramality, Boot Camp, claiming that this most excellent adventure, featuring the loose-cannon histrionics of Recruit Meyer, is violating federal copyright law and California state law by ripping off significant elements of the CBS program. Fox claims the action is nothing more than a nuisance suit.

And then the Australian government is investigating whether The Colbster violated laws protecting the Great Barrier Reef by stealing pieces of coral as bribes for the other players. The maximum fine for this lawlessness, which was captured in Episode Ten, is $110,000. Under the rules CBS imposed on its own contestants, because of his crime the Texas Cheesesteak is also subject to elimination from the contest and expulsion from the Outback, as well as forfeiture of any prize. Burnett has issued an apology.

While these developments are potentially amusing, the only thing I had to clap and whistle about on Episode Twelve was when that muscle-bound kangaroo finally escaped the murky floodwaters of the Herbert by clamoring up a bank and hopping away.

Ah, if only I had the gumption do the same thing.