from the TV Barn archives
Click here to return to the home page.

"CBS couldn't give just one hour of prime time to the Republican convention? For heaven's sake, they give five or six hours a week to 'Big Brother,' one of the worst TV shows in the history of the network. ... CBS should be rethinking its coverage plans, meanwhile, or perhaps rethinking whether it even wants to have a news division as part of the network. It was a sad night for the network of Edward R. Murrow." — Tom Shales, The Washington Post

Ker-plooey!

That was the sound of the Gervase-wins-"Survivor" theory going up in a cloud of smoke Wednesday night as young slacker and sexist pig Gervase Petersen was voted off "Survivor" island.

The theory, enthusiastically touted by the TV Barn Web site and disputed by others, held that the 30-year-old YMCA instructor was the eventual winner of the hit CBS game show. It was based on so-called telltale clues left behind by an apparent lapse on the part of the people running the "Survivor" Web site.

The notion was seemingly reinforced a short time later, when a clip lasting less than a second was inserted into the opening of "Survivor." It showed what appeared to be a tribal council from late in the show's run, with only four castaways in the picture — Gervase, Rudy, Colleen and Sean — though as reader Daniel Murphy pointed out, none of the people in the picture was wearing the immunity necklace. That crude piece of jewelry is handed out to the winner of each week's immunity challenge. So something was wrong with the picture. But no one at the time realized just how wrong.

The scene was, in fact, a red herring. Whether or not the so-called computer "glitch" was also a decoy set up by CBS isn't clear. But it doesn't matter. Whatever we thought it was telling us, it wasn't.

Murphy also foresaw the more practical problem in Gervase winning it all: He seemed too good a contestant. That was the same problem that killed off previous front-runners Gretchen and Greg. "I knew Gervase had something when he made a sexist joke and Joel got voted off the island for it," Murphy writes. "The Final Two is a straightforward popularity contest; the jury decides. If I were a contestant in the Final Two, I wouldn't want to face Gervase in a popularity contest. Because, as you said, he's Teflony."

Not as Teflony as we had originally thought. In fact, as the CBS "Survivor" Web site reveals, Gervase was so sure of his fate that at the tribal council, he unleashed a rant that was unfortunately omitted from the broadcast. "If you know what's best for you, you'll vote Gervase off," he declared, using that peculiar third person so popular with the young people these days.

I still think Gervase-wins-it was a heck of a theory. But as we're learning with each passing week, "Survivor" is a helluva game.

Now it's on to our next computer challenge: "On KPIX tonight, Stacey Stillman (who is ubiquitous on KPIX now) mentioned that all of the survivors except Rudy keep in touch on an e-mail list," Murphy writes. "I wonder if anyone is out there, trying to commit a federal crime by cracking into that e-mail."

ALSO: Kelly beat the crap out of her husband in 1997 and was booked for domestic battery. See the arrest warrant at The Smoking Gun.

Pick to click

Turner Classic Movies inaugurates a monthlong celebration of pioneering women in Hollywood with the documentary "Without Lying Down" (8 p.m.). That phrase is borrowed from Frances Marion, who was in her day one of the most influential screenwriters in the business — also the highest paid — to describe the unimpeded path that awaited talented women in the very earliest years of the film industry.

Each Thursday in August, TCM will present movies by some of the women featured in "Without Lying Down," starting with "The Love Light" at 9 tonight. This 1921 film, written and directed by Marion and starring Mary Pickford, was recently restored.

On this date...

in 1951, Peter Donald hosts a show where everything's made up and the points do matter. If your idea for a scene is used on "The Ad Libbers," you win a case of Maxwell House coffee. Among the celebrity panelists acting things out is 26-year-old Jack Lemmon in his first steady TV gig. -- Tom Heald

Previously at TV Barn:

 

More news you can use

Copyright © 1999-2001 Aaron Barnhart | Back to TV Barn home