Battle of sexes throws a kink into 'Survivor'
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
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| "Survivor: The Amazon" turns regular folks loose in an environment where crocodiles and piranhas are in charge.
CBS 'Survivor' 7 tonight CBS |
There's the geographic world of the Amazon River. "Certain places are just very evocative," says Joe Ramirez, a travel coordinator who persuaded the show to go to South America.
Mostly, the Amazon evokes images of crocodiles, piranhas and dark secrets. In the opener, the 16 contestants are taken to the river's Brazilian rain forest.
"Survivor: The Amazon," the sixth installment of the popular reality contest, strands 16 competitors in a remote location, voting one person out each week. The last person standing collects a $1 million prize. After tonight's opener, the show will air every Thursday night at 8.
Going to the Amazon was as much a shock for the host as it was for the contestants. "I'd never been to the Amazon," says Jeff Probst, the show's host. "All I knew about it was from (reading) 'Heart of Darkness,'" the Joseph Conrad novel which is actually set on the Congo River in Africa.
Then there was the psychological world of men versus women. That's new turf, too.
For the first time, the show begins by putting the eight men in one tribe and the eight women in the other. That required some quick strategy switches.
Some men, says producer Mark Burnett, had planned to use their brawn. That would be crucial in the competitions, and the tribes would be reluctant to vote them out.
Instead, he says, they found games requiring agility. "These guys looked like they've been pumping iron for 20 years, (but they) couldn't get across the balance beam."
And some women, Probst says, had counted on their sex appeal to keep from being voted out.
Suddenly, that wouldn't work.
"They talked about that in the first day or two," he says, "that this is not the place you want to put on a string bikini to show off your ... tight body. But if we ever merge and there are guys around, clothes are coming off."
That's been the "Survivor" story — constant shifts. Burnett has startled competitors by having them switch tribes; he's also used sharply different settings.
The first "Survivor" was set in a tropical paradise, but the next two — Australia's Outback and Africa — were harsh and unrelenting.
After almost choosing the Middle East, the show switched tone after the 9/11 attacks. It went to the South Pacific and then to Thailand.
"I just like water," says Probst, who would like to see "Survivor" try Iceland or Greenland. As it happened, Ramirez was trying to persuade producers to select one of the world's most awesome water sources as the next "Survivor" locale.
About 3,900 miles long, the Amazon is the largest river in the world in volume. It is second only to the Nile in length. It's often so wide that people can't see both sides at once. Near its delta, one of its islands (Marajo) is larger than Rhode Island.
"It's incredibly large," says Ramirez. "It has something like 10 percent of the world's rain forest. ... There are places where there are no signs of civilization."
This is not like anywhere else the show has been, Burnett says. "It's not even on that planet. It's really a wonderful place, 2.5 million miles of the greatest rain forest on earth."
Ramirez says the setting has some surprises.
One is the look of the Rio Negro. "The water is completely black," he says. "But it's considered to be the cleanest water in the world."
Another is the proximity of crocodiles and more. "The Rio Negro is teeming with piranha," Ramirez says. "But the natives swim in it."
Eventually, the "Survivor" contestants swam, too. "They were scared to death, didn't want to go near the water," Burnett says. "But a third of the way through ... they're swimming."
Their hunting was limited to a few ratlike critters, but their fishing was easier.
"There were tons and tons of fish," Burnett says. "Assuming the fish you catch don't bite off your finger."
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'Survivor: The Amazon' contestants
"Survivor: The Amazon" splits its contestants into all-male Tambaqui tribe and all-female Jaburu tribe.
Tambaqui tribe
Matthew Von Ertfelda
- a 33-year-old restaurant designer from Washington, D.C.
Rob Cesternino
- 24, a computer projects coordinator from Wantagh, N.Y.
Ryan Aiken
- Ellicott City, Md., a model and actor, who turns 24 today as the show premieres.
Alex Bell
- 32-year-old triathlon trainer from San Francisco.
Dave Johnson
- 24-year-old Ellicott City, Md., native who is a rocket scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif.
Butch Lockley
- 50, of Olney, Ill. A middle-school principal with a wife and three children.
Daniel Lue
- 27, of Houston. He's a tax accountant.
Roger Sexton
- 56-year-old Valencia, Calif., resident who is vice-president of a construction firm. He has a daughter.
Jaburu tribe
Christy Smith
- 24, of Basalt, Colo. She's a children's adventure guide at a school for the deaf, and is deaf herself.
Jenna Morasca
- Turns 22 on Saturday (Feb. 15), is a swim-wear model and beauty contestant from Bridgeville, Pa.
Heidi Strobel
- 24, of Eldon, Mo., is a gym teacher.
Deena Bennett
- Turned 36 yesterday. She's from Riverside, Calif., and is a deputy district attorney. She's a married mother of two.
Jeanne Hebert
- 41, of North Attleboro, Mass. She's director of marketing for the New England dairy industry; married with three children.
Janet Koth
- 47, of Manchester, Mo., is an abstinence counselor. She and her husband have two daughters.
Shawna Mitchell
- 23, of Redwood City, Calif., works for an outdoor retail firm.
Joanna Ward
- 31, of Orangeburg, S.C., is a single mother of one and is a certified aerobics instructor.
— Gannett News Service
