Viewers must survive drought until Australia
By Shannon Harrison, ne news editor

     Survivor, CBS’ phenomenally popular reality game show, has dominated our lives since its debut, but now we can relax—it’s over.
     For the past 12 weeks, millions of people have been glued to their televisions to find out who will be the next victim kicked off and who would come out the victor. Now that the winner is known, the fun is over.
     Many of you may protest that the show never affected you at all—that you never watched it, and probably never will. Still, you couldn’t avoid it. The players were on magazine covers, talk shows, commercials and advertisements.
     If you started to become curious about these people and decided to watch one episode of Survivor, you were embarrassed, but when you started watching it over and over, you began to root for certain people and decide which ones are worms.
     Many spoilers of the world tried to ruin the secret of the ultimate survivor, but CBS was too smart. It became one of television’s most guarded secrets.
     Rumors of false winners only fueled the show’s popularity. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who the remaining players would be, even if you had watched only a few episodes.
     So, I, like many others, found myself anxiously awaiting Wednesday nights to see if my favorite person would become sacrificed or survive one more tribal counsel.
     However, early in the series when Richard Hatch, corporate trainer; Kelly Wiglesworth, river guide; Rudy Boesch, ex-Navy Seal, and Susan Hawk, truck driver, formed an alliance and began kicking teammates off one by one, it became obvious who the remaining four would be.
     Some of the people that formed alliances were probably not the best examples of the human race, but they did play the game the way it was meant to be played.
     All right, my favorite contestant didn’t win. Colleen, a.k.a. sitting duck, had a chance to be in the final five, but at the last minute the alliance decided to vote her off. However, because of my dislike for a couple of the back-stabbers (Rich and Sue), I had to continue watching in hopes that they didn’t get the chance either.
     It ended with a mock trial of seven former teammates pitting Richard against Kelly, who, thanks to her ability in winning four straight "immunity challenges," wound up in the final two.
     Finally, after months of pondering, the shocking verdict was revealed. The one who outplayed, outwitted and outlasted the others was Richard. The man whose cunning and arrogance earned him both scorn and respect from viewers walked away with the $1 million and an Aztek sport recreation vehicle from Pontiac.
     Did he deserve to win? Probably. Did we want him to win? Not in a million years. Between his cockiness and his nudity, he was the contestant that we loved to hate.
Now that the show’s over, we can put these 16 people behind us and look forward to meeting the next 16 in the Australian outback. Whether CBS can repeat the initial Survivor’s success is unknown, but most of us can say that we survived Survivor.