ALABAMA TRIO SURVIVES

al.com: TV: ALABAMA TRIO SURVIVES

By MIKE BRANTLEY
TV & Media Editor

This week on the TV reality show "Survivor: Palau," the weaker Ulong tribe became weaker still as another of its members -- Kimberly Mullen, 25, of Huber Heights, Ohio -- was voted off the island.

That reduces Ulong to five members, as compared with the Koror tribe's undiminished nine members. But the three Alabamians on the show, all members of Ulong, survived another week to remain in the hunt for the $1 million prize that will belong to the player who outlasts everyone else.

When it became apparent during Thursday night's episode that Ulong had lost its fourth straight immunity challenge -- which could have given the tribe temporary immunity from losing another member -- there was little suspense related to who would be cast off the remote Pacific island where "Survivor: Palau" was filmed. In previous episodes, fellow Ulong members have complained bitterly about Mullen's contributions.

"Kim is a little bit useless," offered James Miller, the 33-year-old steelworker from Mobile, during the episode. "She likes to get out of things."

The other Alabamians still on the show are Ibrehem Rahman, 27, a waiter from Birmingham, and Bobby Jon Drinkard, 27, a waiter and model from Troy.

Koror and Ulong each chose leaders for their tribes in this installment, and his fellow Ulong tribesmen and tribeswomen picked Miller. Not everyone was a fan of Miller's leadership, however.

"James, he's going to end up driving people insane," said Mullen during her final episode on "Survivor." "I'm sitting back and watching people slowly lose it."

Before Ulong's fourth ill-fated immunity challenge, Miller said, "We are not going to Tribal Council again, you understand me? I'm going to stomp anybody's *** that lags."

But it was Miller who lost the challenge for Ulong, as Koror member Coby Archa, 32, of Athens, Texas, pushed Miller off a platform suspended above the water in one of the Paluan island's protected inlets.

"It feels terrible to have my butt whipped by a homosexual, you know," said Miller, who during another portion of the show described himself as "a redneck." "But a lot of gay folks are strong. They are all working out at the gym."

"Survivor: Palau," which for four weeks has aired at 7 p.m. Thursdays on CBS stations including Mobile's WKRG-TV5, stranded its contestants on a remote island in the western Pacific Ocean. The game calls for the weekly elimination of players.

The program will move to a new night for two weeks, as the network's coverage of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament on Thursday nights will necessitate "Survivor" airing at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, and Wednesday, March 23. The show will shift back to Thursdays on March 31.

The first half of this week's episode centered on a reward challenge. The challenge: Be the tribe to build the best bathroom. The reward: a custom-built shelter in which to live.

Series host Jeff Probst provided both Ulong and Koror with a toilet seat, a shower curtain, lumber and the choice of six tools with which to construct a bathroom. Each tribe's leader -- Miller for Ulong and Ian Rosenberger, 23, of Key Largo, Fla., for Koror -- chose the tools.

"I wasn't trying to be the leader," Miller said. "They picked me. Luckily they did pick me, because if they didn't we wouldn't have gotten the tools we needed to build our lavatory."

But Ulong didn't build the best lavatory, and Koror members won the shelter -- and a place for respite from the rats that were infesting their camp.

In his leadership role, Miller seemed to aggravate some members of his tribe, particularly the women.

"I'm very happy to have James as a team leader," said Stephenie LaGrossa, 25, of Philadelphia. "But he can be very fatherly, which can be very annoying at times."

Angie Jacusz, 24, of New Orleans is a Ulong member who seemed particularly bothered by Miller's zealous leadership.

"When I have something broke in my house, I fix it," she said. "The landlord doesn't fix it. I fix it."

"Survivor: Palau" has remained a consistently strong performer for CBS during its first month on the air. According to Nielsen Media Research, the show was the sixth most popular program in prime time last week, drawing 21.68 million viewers to the March 3 episode.

All the episodes have been filmed, and all the players have long since returned from their seclusion in the Pacific Paluan islands, but how far each player made it in the contest is kept secret from viewers and even from contestant family members.

"Everyone is back home, but we do not allow the survivors to talk to the press at all until they are either booted off the show or win the show as it airs," CBS spokeswoman Peggy Vargas said as "Palau" was about to hit the airwaves.

In the first episode this season, two players were eliminated in the opening minutes as one player picked another to stay, leaving the final two unpicked players out of the $1 million game. Even Miller's sister, Teresa Miles of Folsom, Calif., had no idea until the episode aired whether her brother in Mobile would continue in the contest.

"I thought for sure he wasn't going to get picked," Miles said the next week. "I don't know anything."

While CBS is keenly interested in not spoiling the show's many surprises -- "We keep the secret a secret," Vargas said -- past "Survivor" winner Sandra Diaz-Twine warned that there are spoilers to be found on the Internet. But CBS so far has been successful in keeping the show's winner under wraps.

"If you go to the Web sites, there are all kinds of spoilers on there, but I don't read into all that," said Diaz-Twine, who now lives in Mobile but was a resident of Fort Lewis, Wash., when she won $1 million on "Survivor: Pearl Islands" in December 2003. "When I was watching my show, I read stuff. A lot of people are really big fanatics, and they like to read that stuff."