Survivor
CBS
Thursdays, 8 p.m / 7 p.m. CST

Near the beginning of Dogma, Cardinal Glick, played by George Carlin, unveils the statue of Buddy Christ, the symbol of his attempt to renew interest (read: "improve market share") in the Catholic Church. While played for laughs, the line the church must walk is a tricky one. It must draw in new parishioners and reactivate those on the fence without alienating the dyed-in-the-wool faithful who find a great deal of comfort in repetition and ritual.

After creating a media sensation in its first season, spawning countless offshoots, and establishing its own solemn rituals (complete with call-and-response catchphrases), "Survivor" holds the same powerful role in reality television as Catholicism does in Christianity. (Lest you think this comparison ridiculous, consider that 51 million US viewers watched Richard Hatch win the first "Survivor" prize in August 2000. As of 2001, there are 62.4 million US Catholics. As the latter count includes many lapsed Catholics — not to mention "Survivor's" undisputed dominance in the coveted 18-49 demographic — it's actually a pretty balanced race.)

Like Cardinal Glick, "Survivor" executive producer Mark Burnett is now in the position of trying to bolster his respectable but no longer sensational viewer attendance. Subsequent season finales have "only" drawn 25-35 million people. This time, he's putting a new spin on a theme that, even according to the Christian calendar, is at least 2000 years older than Christ himself: the Battle of the Sexes. The tribes will be divided by gender, and Burnett and crack team of editors are hyping the change for everything it's worth.

For at least a month before the first episode, a preview ad's voiceover spells out the stakes: "The female tribe is playing for women everywhere ... and the men hope they won't be embarrassed." In other words, if the women win, fantastic! Burn your bras and fling away your burkhas, 'cause the times they are a'changing! And if the men win — well, they get to maintain their dignity.

Not surprisingly, the first episode, which aired Feb. 13 in a special 90-minute format, did nothing but reinforce this attitude. Even if every contestant went to the Amazon this season with the sole purpose of establishing a sex-blind utopia, the "Survivor" editors would manage to cobble together enough footage of stereotypical behavior to produce thirteen hours of all-out gender war. It's naïve to wonder whether or not we'll see the "real" personalities of the contestants; the best we can hope for is that, in the course of whittling 72 hours of footage down to 42 minutes each week, the editors will leave us with characters rather than caricatures.

The gender division begins almost immediately as the contestants travel up Brazil's Rio Negro by riverboat and are then sorted by tribe into two attached smaller boats. The male tribe is given the name Tambaqui, a native word meaning "fish"; the female tribe, in what is surely intended as a nod to Austin Powers, is called Jaburu, or "birds." The only saving grace is that, while of course the men's buffs are blue, the women's buffs are yellow instead of pink.

When the tribes separate and go to their new homes, the women appear to confirm the men's widely articulated speculation about the activities at "Camp Estrogen" by clumsily struggling to build a fire and neglecting to build a shelter. Instead, they focus on investigating the food supply and braiding one another's hair. There is a bit of drama when Christy, a children's adventure guide, reveals that she is functionally deaf. (One of the tribe members, swimsuit model Jenna, has a less-than-PC reaction to Christy, but it's unclear as to whether Jenna is more freaked out by Christy's deafness or by her underarm hair.)

Deena, a butch-looking district attorney, provides the obligatory reference to menstruation, while Jenna steps up to the plate again for the women's team by washing her underwear before any additional drinking water has been obtained because "you know, things can get down there."

Janet, a homemaker sporting neatly pleated khakis, shoulders the dual roles of "Sick Survivor" and "Older Survivor Way Out of Her League." She looks slightly bewildered, as if she took a very wrong turn on the way to a Tupperware party and ended up in the Amazon. I automatically root for her in a "bless her heart" kind of way — until she opens her mouth and breaks every rule in the "How Not to Get Kicked Off 'Survivor' in the First Three Days Handbook."

After repeatedly complaining about being sick, she confides to two of her tribemates that she "didn't realize it would be this hard physically." If the women don't win tribal immunity, Janet has made it very easy for them to decide who should go home.

In spite of the fact that all of the actual vaginas on the island are housed in the women's camp, the Tambaqui actually comes across as more, shall we say, gynocentric than the Jaburu. They are definitely more competent campers than the women, cleverly using lamp kerosene to start a fire quickly and, then (with the exception of young slackers Ryan and Dan) throwing themselves into building a shelter. As they work, however, the sole focus of their discussion centers around the women — more specifically, about whether or not they will be able to "get a little something." Just to clarify, the "something" they're referring to is not refined conversation. Obsessive talk of the women's camp — or "Camp Vagina Monologues," as wanna-be comedian Rob calls it — permeates the "Sausage Factory" (their term).

Sex in the form of gender issues is one thing; sex in the form of actually doing it is another. If anything about past "Survivors" has disappointed its producers, it has undoubtedly been the almost total lack of sex on the show. "Surely," they must have thought in the pitch sessions, "if you take a group of mostly young, fit people and force them to walk around half-naked and sleep practically on top of each other, something is bound to happen." (Ever wonder why we will never, ever see "Survivor: Antarctica"? Way too many clothes.) In fact, one of the few things to which contestants have unlimited access, along with items like antibiotic ointment and insect repellant, are condoms. God forbid a shortage of birth control stand in the way of good television.

Unfortunately, as the execs have since learned, people are kind of reluctant to hook up at the very beginning of a game show in which every personal interaction could jeopardize a chance to win $1 million. No one wants to be labeled immediately as the cad, the slut, or the tease; no one wants to be taken advantage of or be seen as an opportunist. By the time the contestants get comfortable enough with one another to even consider any physical involvement, they are as malnourished, exhausted, filthy and celibate as monks on an extended fast doing penance in ashes and sackcloth. Emaciated, but not in a sexy way.

Admittedly, there have been a few mild hints of coupling in the past. For example, Greg and Colleen spent a lot of cuddly time together on Palau Tigua, but with Greg so loopy and Colleen so sweet, America collectively decided that things between them couldn't possibly have progressed much beyond the hand-holding stage. There also have been a few individual disruptions in the sexless atmosphere: a couple of crude, sexually charged young men (i.e., the Robbs); a couple of dirty, leering old men (i.e., Tom in Africa, Clay in Thailand); Ted's unfortunate "sleep grinding" episode with Ghandia in Thailand; and one self-styled man-eating bitch (Australia's perpetually frustrated Jerri, currently "starring" in the WB's "Surreal Life"). Each season also features a pneumatically blessed young lady who strategically packs a string bikini, but by the time she knows the other contestants well enough to put it to its intended use, everyone is far too wasted to flirt.

But, by separating the tribes this season by sex (gender), however, Burnett has managed to bring sex (doing it) to the forefront. Not burdened with the effort of actually trying to get along with the women, the men are able to wind themselves up like denied adolescents on prom night, fantasizing about being with girls they've only glimpsed for a few minutes at a time. Whether or not this syndrome will eventually afflict the women remains to be seen, but this is without a doubt the most sexual tension the show has ever generated in a single episode.

The Tambaqui's crotch-oriented approach to the game continues as slacker horndogs Ryan and Dan lose the immunity challenge by ineptly straddling a balance beam instead of simply walking across it. The loss sends the men to tribal council, where host Jeff Probst toes the company line by reaffirming that all of the traditional pseudo-spiritual Survivor rituals are still in place: "Fire represents your life in this game."

Probst also emphasizes the "new twist" by relentlessly underscoring the humiliation the men must feel about their loss. The men respond to this verbal neutering by looking sheepish, then rouse themselves out of the funk with a frank if ungrammatical discussion of which of the women "have more unique assets then others." Ryan, author of this delicate phrase, is then voted off. Although they've lost one of their own, the men are cheered by the very thought of the possibility that they might eventually get laid. I'll bet producer Mark Burnett is happy, too.

— A.D. Lively (calypsobhc@hotmail.com)