Survivor has returned to Africa for the first time since the franchise's third season, way back in the fall of 2001. Most fans regarded that as one of the game's weaker editions, due to a barren, unattractive setting and a boring endgame. This time, however, the location is Gabon in west-central Africa, which at least has the advantage of being green. By the end of last night's premiere, the players were catching fish on the lake, and it looked like your basic Survivor setup.

An occasional issue on the show is that it often takes several weeks to figure out who's who, especially if the game is so one-sided that tribal dynamics in the more successful tribe are rarely explored. But Thursday's gala 120-minute premiere went a long way towards putting viewers on a first name basis with the 18 (now 16) Gabon Survivors. True, not everyone stood out -- apparently there's a person named Kelly on Kota, by far the more successful of the two tribes. But we already have a fair idea of how the politics are developing in Kota, which is welcome considering that the tribe doesn't look like it's going to be losing members any time soon.

The tribe that lost both Immunity Challenges, Fang, was basically doomed from the word go, and it appears that nothing short of a massive and quick lineup switch can save it. The game began with the two "elders" in the cast, 61 year-old Gillian and 57 year-old Bob, being asked to choose the first player on their tribe, with the chosen player then making the following pick. Choosing teams in Survivor isn't rocket surgery: given the physical nature of most challenges, it makes sense to pick athletic-looking young men first and foremost. Gillian's first pick was Crystal, which was defensible (unbeknownst to the others, she's a former Olympic gold medalist in track) if not ideal. But Crystal then turned around and chose Susie, a marshmallow-bodied hairdresser who at 47 is the only woman in the game other than Gillian who is over 30. The tribe eventually got a little male muscle (and actually ended up with one more man than Kota), but the early picks put Fang in a giant hole. The tribe immediately lost its first challenge, a race up a hill for an extra bag of food.

Gillian had something of a home continent advantage, as she was born in Johannesburg. But her lack of any physical prowess and her overall eccentricity (which included claiming she knows "the African word for fierce" and inviting her tribe mates to examine elephant dung to see if anything edible survived the trip) made her a marked woman from the outset, especially for Randy, a cynical wedding videographer who has already mastered one key skill of the game: flaying everyone privately while remaining reasonably affable publicly. As the dysfunction raged, Randy said he's embarking on "Operation Let Other People Crash and Burn." He could go far.

Also a part of Fang was Ken, a wispy looking student/professional gamer who actually admitted on the show that he hasn't kissed a girl since high school. He bonded with a painfully skinny young woman named Michelle over the gift of a tasty termite, and it didn't take long for him to imagine he had made a connection: "Being here in Gabon with a girl you're attracted to is a very special moment in life," he said. Unfortunately for Ken, Michelle proved to be about as ineffective as a player as you'll ever see in the game. Whining about being the last pick for her tribe, complaining about the cold in a tropical country, referring to the rest of her tribe as "retarded," and waiting until Tribal Council to accuse everyone else of slacking on the Immunity Challenge was tantamount to game suicide; and it was Michelle and not Gillian who ended up leaving first.

While at Tribal Council, Jeff Probst suggested leadership was the problem at Fang, so GC, probably the most athletic man in the tribe, half-heartedly agreed to assume the mantle, one that he quickly shrugged off once it became clear that he had no followers. Fang made a slightly more competitive go of it at their second Immunity Challenge, but their loss finally spelled the end of the line for Gillian, who can now parse animal poop to her heart's content. Things look bad for Fang, but the tribe was shown jury-rigging a fishing apparatus using the rims of Randy's glasses as a hook, perhaps a sign that there's still a spark of life over there.

Kota is still one big happy family, befitting their winners' status. Of course, that doesn't mean the game isn't being played. The quartet of Marcus, Charlie, Corinne, and Jacquie seems solid (Marcus compared his alliance to layers of an onion), and they intend to pull in Bob to give themselves a majority of five once they finally lose and have to shed a player. Something going on at Kota that we've rarely seen on Survivor, or any reality show for that matter, is the obvious crush that Charlie has on Marcus, who has made it clear he's not in the mood to reciprocate but isn't discouraging the attention either. As for Bob, the wiry physics teacher from Maine (complete with Downeast accent) looks a good deal more formidable than most players his age: handy both in camp and challenges. The only potential source of friction at Kota so far is the self-important Ace, but he'll be tolerated as long as the tribe continues to win.

The one new twist in the game involves "Exile Island," which is less an island than a more remote part of the same wilderness area where everyone else is located. Players will have a choice of taking relative comfort (by which I think they just mean shelter from the elements) or getting a clue to the location of an individual Immunity Idol. Dan, the first Fang player sent to the (cough) island by Kota, chose the clue, which told him to look across the lake to a "sandy crater." Dan took this to mean that he should look in the lake itself. I told you Fang has some issues.

So Kota looks to be riding high. Yet, tables can turn when you least expect it. After her tribe's last win, Jacquie said, "I don't envision us losing ever," which could foreshadow either utter dominance or the beginning of the end of the good times.

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