CBS found a way to wring another hour of ratings gold (it hopes) out of "Survivor: All-Stars" — and it's not a bad way at that.
It was the second-biggest surprise in the "Survivor" season finale on Sunday, after Rob proposed to Amber, that is. (And you thought Ross and Rachel getting back together was a big deal.)
Host Jeff Probst announced that the show will give away another million dollars on Thursday (7 p.m., Ch. 2). Fans can vote for which of the 18 contestants (even Amber, who's already got her million) they'd like to see take home the cash, and the winner will be announced during Thursday's "live" show.
(The quotation marks on "live" come because, first, it's not live in this time zone and, second, we're going to see a bunch of clips from the past episodes of "Survivor.")
You can vote by logging on to www.cbs.com (which is free) or by text-messaging the word "VOTE" to 26222 on Cingular and "most other" cell-phone companies (which may not be free, depending on your plan).
You can also vote for the "best fight," "greatest villain," "sexiest guy," "hottest woman" and "top moment," which is sort of dumb, but then this is TV.
Voting ends today at 9:59 p.m. MDT.
"Survivor" has had its ups and downs through eight different competitions, but "All Stars" turned out to be very entertaining indeed. You might think that after all this time and all this exposure, contestants would realize how foolish they make themselves look and rein themselves in. You might think that contestants who had been through all of this before would be particularly quick to pick up on this.
But, no. Sunday night's finale had several of these dummies making total fools of themselves on national television.
Bitter and wildly jealous, Lex, Alicia, Kathy and Big Tom spit venom on winner Amber and runner-up Rob, accusing them of not playing nice, essentially. It was laughable, particularly from Lex, who betrayed his good friend Ethan in an attempt to win and then tried to play the martyr because he'd been betrayed by his good friend Rob.
When Shi-Ann — whom I haven't been able to stand — got up and basically accused them of being big honkin' hypocrites ("Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"), I couldn't help but applaud. It almost makes me want to vote to give Shi-Ann the million. Almost.
Good for Probst for pointing out the hypocrisy in the "reunion" special. (What were they thinking back when they had people like Bryant Gumbel and Rosie O'Donnell hosting those things?)
And good for original "Survivor" winner Richard for so forcefully pointing out how wrong Lex & Co. were.
When you're wrong and Richard is right, you're really in trouble.
It all goes to show that human nature is human nature. And that it's sometimes ugly. But oddly entertaining.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com