We won't forget -- not that we haven't tried -- Michael's howls of agony and fried hands after his tumble into the campfire. (The mishap removed Michael from the game, trimmed his Kucha tribe's ranks and allowed the Ogakor tribe an edge its members never gave up.) We won't forget, either, Ogakor's spirited "Mad Dog" Maralynn, removing her false teeth on camera before downing a live worm in a gross-stuff-eating challenge. Or Jerri, the conniving bartender/actress, responding with a stunned, "Checkmate. You guys got me," when her former Ogakor alliance mates turned on her and voted her out of the merged Barramundi tribe.

"Survivor: The Australian Outback" (which wraps up in a three-hour extravaganza Thursday night) had some great characters, for sure. And as for adorable couples, I'll see you your Colleen and Greg and raise you the touching May-December attachment between Kucha's dewy Elisabeth and courtly Rodger (aka "Kentucky Joe"), which culminated in Rodger's noble self-sacrifice as ouster fodder so that Elisabeth might live three more days.

But this round of "Survivor" also showed the strain of keeping the franchise going well after everybody with a TV has seen how this thing works. Having watched the Tagi alliance make it to the final four in the first series, the players on "Survivor: The Australian Outback" expected alliances to be made. And they made them too early, as far as viewers were concerned, because it took the suspense out of the voting. After the tribes merged, Ogakor and Kucha continued to vote along tribal lines, leading to an unprecedented (and unprecedentedly dull) number of ties, which had to be broken by arcane rules about which survivors had more votes cast against them in previous tribal councils. "Survivor 2" suffered from the lack of a wacky wild card like the original series' Dr. Sean, who adopted an alphabetical order voting system after Tagi and Pagong merged into one tribe.

And the Ogakor alliance held; from the beginning, scrappy nurse Tina and sullen chef Keith had hitched their wagons to studly auto customizer Colby's star, expecting him to take them into the final three, and he did. Unfortunately for Tina, Keith and viewers, gentlemanly Texan Colby was also the physically strongest person left in the game. It got pretty tiresome watching Colby yell "Sweet!" after winning half a dozen reward and immunity challenges in a row.

	"Survivor: The Australian Outback" -- Salon's episode-by-episode guide "Survivor: The Australian Outback" 8-11 p.m., Thursday Print story E-mail story

This doesn't mean there won't be any drama to Thursday's finale. Keith may look like a third wheel now (it's no secret that Colby and Tina can't stand him), but he may wind up in the driver's seat; you have to figure that both Colby and Tina would want the friendless chef by their side when the seven-person jury of previous castoffs has to vote for the winner.

It's a good thing the "Survivor" finale formula has built-in elements of betrayal and karma to hold our interest, because if "The Australian Outback" had to depend on the remaining players' charisma, we'd all be switching over to "Friends." I mean, look back at the final four contestants from the first series. Between Machiavellian Richard, sneaky Kelly, crabby Rudy and vengeful Sue, you had a rogues' gallery of personalities to root for or against. This time around, though, "Survivor" is afflicted with an unfortunate case of "Big Brother" syndrome; the edgier players -- Jerri, her steely little minion Amber (still waters run deep, my friends), bitchy Jeff, buff Alicia -- are gone, and the final three (actually, the final five, counting Rodger and Elisabeth) were the show's blandest non-boat-rockers.

That nice guys do finish first may be cheering news for society as a whole, but it doesn't make for the most scintillating television. (It won't make for record-breaking final episode ratings, either, I betcha.) The April 19 and 26 episodes of "Survivor: The Australian Outback" were, simply put, tedious. They played like an endless, repeating loop of lethargic challenges (the emaciated survivors were weak and exhausted), homesickness and pensive shots of players waxing philosophical about the toll the game takes on body and mind.

Previews of the April 26 episode hinted that there would be a special visitor at the Barramundi camp. Those of us who were praying for the return of Jerri or Michael, or even a surprise spot check by Richard Hatch, had our hopes dashed. It was only Colby's mom, bringing hugs, tears and a sackful of letters from home for all the remaining survivors. If this keeps up, we won't be able to tell "Survivor 2" from an old rerun of "China Beach."

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