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So, you think Matt was on a Sno-Cap sugar high when reviewing the movie you just paid $7.50 to see? Here's your chance to sound off.
A former military survival school instructor, Cordy seemed as well-prepared physically for life on a desert island as any of the 16 contestants. What she wasn't prepared for was the ruthless gamesmanship required to be a Survivor winner.
When members of her Pagong tribe proposed forming a voting alliance once they merged with the rival Tagi tribe, Cordy was the one who convinced the others not to adopt the idea. Vote your conscience, she told her fellow Pagong on the eve of a merger. And as soon as the merger occurred, the Tagi alliance targeted her, as the strongest leader among the former Pagong, as the first to go.
Oh well; Cordy says her reaction to being voted off the island, and thus having lifted from her the burden of trying to "outwit, outplay and outlast" her fellow contestants, was "relief."
Besides, even for the victims, Survivor is turning out to be something of a windfall. Now the likable Cordy is a Survivor analyst, providing her insights each Thursday to WJXT TV-4, Jacksonville's CBS affliate, and to WJXT's Post-Newsweek sister station in Orlando, WKMG.
Last Thursday she was in Jacksonville to watch Episode 3 of Survivor: The Australian Outback, the new edition of the high-stakes game show that is proving even more of a ratings bonanza for CBS than the first Survivor.
While Cordy ate dinner -- including, appropriately, raw fish, the dinner having come from San Marco's Kyodai Sushi Rock Cafe -- she kept up a running commentary for the benefit of Mary Baer, the TV-4 anchor who would later interview her during the 11 p.m. newscast, and for me.
Given Cordy's scruples, I wasn't surprised at her reaction when Maralyn "Mad Dog" Hershey, a 51-year-old retired cop, was ousted by an emerging Ogakor alliance. That alliance included 30-year-old Jerri Manthey, an aspiring actress who seems to be channeling Lucretia Borgia, using her charms to manipulate the male members of her tribe into doing what she wants. It also included 40-year-old Tina Wesson, a nurse from Knoxville, Tenn., who had spent most of the first three episodes cooing about her developing friendship with Mad Dog.
"How's that knife feel in your back?" Cordy asked as the camera focused on Mad Dog moments after her ouster was announced. "I think Tina just -- -- me off."
Reflecting on her reaction to the voting, Cordy noted that she's still not emotionally equipped to be a winning Survivor. "I lost, that's the thing," she said. "I'd vote Jerri off in a minute. But strategy-wise, that might not be the right move."
Cordy said she has not been overly impressed by the new Survivor cast. "I kept thinking that watching the first show would give them some insight," she said. "All it did was screw them up."
Instead of preparing to spend more than five weeks without enough food -- Cordy said she spent her entire plane ride to the South Pacific eating Hershey Kisses to bulk up -- the current cast seems to have spent their preparation time dieting in order to look good on TV, she said. "They all tried to get pretty."
Now they're all hungry and surly, she said, noting that a producer had told her the Outback cast has a far more restricted supply of rice than the island cast was given. But despite the hunger, the new Survivors are ignoring some food sources (figs and insects) and wasting others (discarded fish bones, skin and guts). "They're throwing away food left and right," she said.
Survivor producer Mark Burnett -- "we called him Marki de Sade," Cordy said -- has been quoted as saying the current cast would "eat Richard alive," referring to Richard Hatch, the manipulative winner of the original contest.
Cordy disagrees. "There's no organization there," she said. "I don't see anybody with Rich's finesse."
Nor, for that matter, with Cordy's combination of decency and competence.
Mostly, it's just rats and snakes, the human variety, who will provide Cordy with 10 more weeks of deliciously compelling whining and backstabbing to analyze.
Charlie Patton writes about the arts and popular culture for the Times-Union.
  
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