Courtesy of CBS

In the Mt. Garnet precinct of Far North Queensland where Survivor Out Back was taped, the first gold diggers were, well, gold diggers. They used a pick and they used a shovel and what they achieved from one tedious day to the next was as predictable as the dry season that follows what those clever Aussies call The Wet. Them rough-and-tumble miners are gone, mate, but the hills are still alive with the sound of greed.

As they adjust their designer khakis and reapply their eye shadow you can hear the tribemates of Team Benetton faking happy. And you can hear them plotting in soto voce mutters how they're going to plunge a shiv between the ribs of Jerri Manthey as soon as the little bitch turns her back. Chuckle as Tina The Okie tells Little Izzy the Moccasin Maker that putting up with Jerri is "not an easy thing, sister." Cringe as Colby The Cheeseball, with that faux-werewolf gaze the players get at night, admits that "I was lying to Jerri but I won't lose any sleep over it." Laugh as Rodger Hee Haw allows that the part-time actress and full-time predator is just "way too loud." Nod knowingly as Keith Famie, the chef who's called Keith Famous by the home crowd in Michigan because of his relentless self-promotion, state that he's cooked for two presidents but has never been as nervous as cooking for Jerri. And let your heart go out to huggable Little Izzy when she pouts in that adorable Polish way of hers that boiling rice with the professional viperess looking on is like being "under a magnifying glass." Oh dear.

Finally, shudder when unctuous host Jeff Probst recounts the Reward Challenge feast laid on for Jerri, who won the boomerang contest and then invited Amber "I'll take another vowel" Brkich to sit with her at the gorge-fest. "What was it like coming back to camp," Probst asked salaciously, "your little bellies full from a nice meal?" Amber, who plays Jerri's toothsome meat puppet, hesitated not. "It was weird," she said. Dear, oh, dear.

Well, of course, I thought the stage was set, that Jerri had been told for all to hear that she should beware the Ides of March, that she better steel herself for the toughest challenge of all: her appearance on David Letterman, who is not taking kindly to apparent CBS dictates that he must showcase what he calls The Parade of Losers.

But in the end the cast members were so busy counting their day money, and slavering over their yummy nine-to-one odds of taking home that million-dollar barrel of pork, that they decided it would just be easier to vote along strict party lines. So it was Alicia who walked the Walk of Shame. And Jerri will stay to irritate us another day, thanks to her Ogakor clan's one-vote, and now two-vote, advantage over the stumbling Kuchas. If the Ogakors continue to roll on like Panzers crossing some little victim's frontier, what will happen to my personal chick to click, Little Izzy, the Boston College footwear designer who I think will win the whole shebang? Well, all I can say is, I'll be here for you, doll.