Survivor: Racial harmony

"Survivor" spoilers just as soon as I gather up the nearby members of my race to form an alliance...

Well, it was nice to see that the racial segregation twist lasted a whole two episodes -- or, if you prefer, one episode longer than last spring's gender/age splits -- but I think if Burnett, Probst, Shelly and company were looking to see whether people would align by ethnicity or what was strategically wise, they messed up by doing things in this order. Players' default loyalties are always to their original tribemates, and what we saw with the new Aitu was the white people and the Asian people sticking together, then teaming up to get rid of the others as needed. That's not anything to do with race; it's that these people knew each other much better than they knew anybody from the black or Latino teams. In this area, I think the show would have been much more interesting if they'd started with integrated tribes, then quickly merged or shuffled to see which was stronger: the bond of the first eight or nine days, or a shared cultural background.

(What was semi-interesting was that Ozzy put together an alliance of people from all four teams, which Jonathan and Yul quickly ripped apart by stealing their respective racial/tribal mates.)

It's annoying that most of the likable people (with the exception of Nate and Cristina) wound up on the losing team, while most of the hateable people (with the exception of Ozzy) wound up on the winning side. I think Jonathan could have chosen a bit more wisely; since he couldn't choose Adam quickly and Brad couldn't choose Yul quickly, he should have grabbed Nate or J.P. for a little more team brawn. As it was, they were badly outmuscled in what was one of my favorite challenges of all time when they did it in Palau. (This was the contest that firmly established the awesomeness of Tom and Ian, and it's pretty much what Stephenie's legend was built on.) Here, it went by very quickly and exactly as you would have expected from looking at the respective line-ups.

With only one challenge, and a brief one at that, plus no need to show Candice looking for an idol that wasn't there, we got more characterization and strategery than usual, which I liked, even when I didn't like the people. Parvati in particular is pathetic; I hate the flirt your way to the top strategy no matter who does it, but a girl as relatively pretty as she is shouldn't look so incredibly desperate when she's hitting on guys the way she was with octopus-catcher Nate.

What did everybody else think?