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CBS has been teasing us for years about a possible "celebrity Survivor." It was inevitable someone would attempt to beat them to the punch, and in the process, make total imbeciles of themselves. I'm a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here! had the celebrities though not the charm, ingenuity, or quite frankly, fairness of Survivor. Yeah, I know what you're thinking; how could Survivor --a show with alliances, back-stabs, petty cat fights, and double-crossing-- possibly have a show that is "less fair" when compared to it? See one episode of I'm a Celebrity, and you'll have your answer.

Here's the deal: 10 celebrities are dropped into the Australian jungle, with merely cots and an outhouse. For food, they have an allegedly clean water spring, beans, and rice. They will be here for two weeks, on a nightly mini-series, to be shown "live" (i.e.: only 90% pre-taped). Yeah, I know what you're thinking; with so many "luxuries" never seen on Survivor (cots? beans? "a toilet"?), this sounds like a cakewalk. Yeah; that is probably what the celebrities' agents told them, too.

You may ask what celebrities would agree to being part of this. They include: Melissa Rivers (Joan's daughter), Downtown Julie Brown (an ex MTV "VJ"), Chris Judd (Jennifer Lopez' ex), Robin Leach (1980's host of TV's Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous), Bruce Jenner (1970's Olympian), Alana Stewart (Rod's ex), "Stuttering John" Melendez (a recurring guest on radio's Howard Stern show), Maria Conchita Alonzo (best known for her

role in Arnold Schwarzenegger's underdog hit, The Running Man), Tyson Beckford (male model; aka, the beefcake), and Nikki Schieler Zierling (a Playboy Plamate; aka, the cheesecake). No matter what your feeling is of the motley crew chosen here, one thing must be agreed upon; they deserved better than this. So do viewers.

So, what do these celebrities do for "suspense" on this show? Good question. Every night, viewers vote for one of the stars to endure a "bushtucker trial," which is sort of like a Survivor reward challenge, without the reward. It doesn't help that the choice of who-goes-to-what challenge is left up to the home viewers, who on the majority, are even bigger imbeciles than the people behind this TV show. To wit: they consistently choose the celebrity least suited for the challenge. To make matters worse: if the celebrity fails, then nobody gets any additional food, for that whole day! What does the hapless celebrity get, for success at these trials? Carrots, potatoes, corn, and...quite frankly, crap. In between humiliations like these, they get to sing a little rap song about each celebrity in the series. YAWN.

Not that all challenges are that impossible. Some are simple "Fear Factor" stunts...yet these are being done by celebrities, mind you, who are not too keen on being within a hundred yards of a bug, let alone a whole tank of them.

Even Melissa Rivers could not hold back an outburst on the very first day of the show, where she cried of the "humiliation" she was asked to face, to put bugs in a pair of see-through clown-sized plastic pants to get her "team" food for the day. While it's easy to feel sorry for her, I ask you: isn't this the same woman who helps bad-mouth Oscar nominees every year, on the E! channel's Oscar night post-show? Her entire career is based on dissing people on what is meant to be the happiest night of their lives: "Her shoes don't match her purse!...She's too old to wear that!"...and to see her complain about a bug seems like a trifle. What's worse; whether she does the challenge or not (which she did), it isn't interesting to watch.

However, other challenges are not just humiliating; they're downright dangerous, and for this program, totally stupid. It doesn't help that their choice of host, John Lehr, lacks the experience to narrate such dangerous stunts as these. He does well with the goofier stunts --bugs, and what-not-- though when poor Nikki was being sent into a swamp of crocodiles --with her only protection being one guy with a tranquilizer gun (no, I'm serious)-- John Lehr was clearly a fish out of water. It was quite apprehensive to see a teary-eyed Nikki ask John how deep the water was in the crocodile swamp, to which he unknowingly shrugged, "Uh, I dunno!" Question: if it isn't his job to know, what is the point of a "host"...? He got better --slightly-- as the "live" show proceeded, though keep in mind; this is not a situation where one can simply "wing it as you go along." While John could learn to become a satisfactory host after a year of practice, this was just a two-week series.

Sadly, the series' boredom would only go from worse to worst. By the end of week one, the B (and in some cases, C) grade celebrities threatened a walkout, and in the process, got everything their little spoiled backsides desired: roofs over their cots, a raw chicken for every celebrity, and a pack of cigs for every smoker. A mere halfway through the series, this is as believable a tale of "surviving" as Gilligan's Island. While I don't want to see Nikki eaten by crocodiles, I do not want to see Julie Brown smoking a cigarette next to an almost perennially benched Robin Leach, eating fresh chicken, as they pat each others' backs for bravely "roughing it." In the end, it was a tougher two weeks for the TV audience than the "celebrities" on this "reality" show.

Yes, it can be said that the most likeable celebrity won the popular vote --Chris Judd-- and therein is reason for praise...though only for Judd, not the series. While his win was a nice finale, it's not enough to keep the show itself from the bottom of the barrel rating it deserves. It is of course nice that his charity won half a million dollars for his hard work, though as far as entertainment is concerned, the show fails.

As a parting thought: when faced with TV this bad, how would this series be reviewed by a film critic, who often only experiences two hours of bad entertainment, not two weeks? I'm reminded of how many times Roger Ebert used the word "hate" to describe how much he "hated hated hated hated hated" the Rob Reiner film, North. One wonders what he would say, about a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad TV series such as this. If he reviewed such a series, would Ebert be typing "bad" for a day? ...a week? ...a year? At the very least, he'd send Reiner an apology, confessing that he finally saw something far worse than North. That's pretty bad.

	Final Rating : Burnout. The lowest of low of reality TV: a pointless two week torture of B-grade stars. What was the purpose of this?
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