Courtesy of CBS

If you slipped under the spell of the ludicrous doggerel intoned by various orators in the final episode of Survivor Out Back, you might conclude that the gum forest of Far North Queensland was a sort of vicious, backstabbing seventeenth player, a mean Mother Nature who behaved like Jerri Manthey in the clutches of a menopausal heat flash. This corn, the CBS spin on the "events" of the last fourteen weeks, tries to tug on the strings of our little black hearts by painting the contestants as valiant castaways marooned in an unforgiving wilderness. In fact, the floodplain of the Herbert River is a verdant and bountiful garden offering treats from every food group except Cheesewhiz, just waiting to be picked. But the Americans that producer Mark Burnett dumped here couldn't pick their noses. While they were mostly cute and fashion-forward, they couldn't light a fire without a match, site their camps in places that wouldn't wash away, build the kind of shelter that actually keeps off the rain, or even avoid malnutrition, although they were surrounded by fish and fruit. You'd have to stretch to find a more incompetent bunch of campers -- Ralph Nader comes to mind, as does Tammy Fay Bakker, and Pee Wee Herman. As directed by Boy George.

I could almost hear the faint strains of "Waltzing Matilda" as host Jeff Probst, the Survivor Doughboy, urged Tina Okie, Keith Famous, and The Colbster to pay "homage to the land" by flinging the totems they decorated during arts and crafts into the waterfall. It seemed like a marginally cool idea until you realized they were just throwing garbage into the river. "We've taken a lot from the land," Colby observed wistfully, reminding everyone of the pending legal problems with the Aussies arising from his pilfering of coral from the Great Barrier Reef. And then the sun set and rose again and Joeys were ahoppin' in the bush and crocs were aslitherin' on the beaches, and then the sun set and rose yet again, and the clouds skudded overhead and then the sun set again and the stars wheeled around the Southern Cross. This filler was the good part.

The really bad parts were the endless self-absorbed soliloquies as the final troika of dolts expounded endlessly on the theme "What the Survivor Experience Has Meant to Me." I napped in my Lazy Boy while this went on, dreaming about a catfight between Jerri and the adorable Little Izzy that ends when Izzy bitch-slaps the loathsome soap opera diva with a pair of hiking boots she designed herself. I woke up and the threesome was still skittering across the landscape, so I went fast-forward, which revealed how silly the whole show looks. But, at last, after yea, lo, these many weeks of bug-eyed boredom on Thursday nights, my end was near. First, the clinically stuck-on-himself Keith Famine—who was strung along by Tina and Colby in the manner of cheerleaders adopting a fat girl because she makes them look good—couldn't remember much of anything about the other contestants. Lost in a cloud of anxiety because he realized that he got engaged on international television to a woman whom he had dated for only a month before they shipped his butt to the Herbert, he was defeated by The Colbster in the all-important final Immunity Challenge. Then, the Kangaroo Court voted. Then the ballot box was sealed. Then we went live to CBS studios in LaCal, and whee! Tina Okie wins! I laughed and I cried when I saw her hillbilly clan in the studio audience rejoice because the cabin would finally get indoor plumbing. "I have evolved," Tina announced. "Who I started out as is not who I've become."

This evolution, of course, this mutation, actually, is now the major cultural catastrophe facing the planet. Like the plague of poisonous cane toads overwhelming Far North Queensland, it's apparently too late to rub out Mark Burnett's monster. CBS prez Les Moonves has announced two more shows, Survivor III, slated for taping somewhere in Africa, and Survivor IV. I can already hear faint strains of "The Lion Sleeps At Night."

But as the sun rose this morning on my Lazy Boy and I realized that I won't have to watch Survivor II any more I turned my face to the resurrecting light and shouted to the heavens: "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"