A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE SHARKS ARE GONNA HAVE THEIR WAY . . . TONIGHT! I believe we can officially refer to the thirteenth season of Survivor as Survivor: West Side Story. Twenty castaways, divided by race into four tribes, and you can meet the new famewhores via this link. Says Probst:

“The idea for this actually came from the criticism that Survivor was not ethnically diverse enough, because for whatever reason, we always have a low number of minority applicants apply to the show. So we set out and said, let’s turn this criticism into creative for the show. And I think it fits in perfectly with what Survivor does, which is, it is a social experiment, and this is adding another layer to that experiment which is taking the show to a completely different level.”

Later, he said, “Our original idea was simply to have the most ethnically diverse group of people on TV. It wasn’t until we got to casting and started noticing this theme of ethnic pride that you’re alluding to that we started thinking, wow, if culture is still playing such a big part in these people’s lives, that’s our idea. Let’s divide them based on ethnicity. So, yes, I think it’s very natural to assume that certain groups are going to have audience members rooting for them simply because they share ethnicity.”

Intrigued, offended, or irrelevant, given that Survivor is up against Office/Earl and Ugly Betty this fall?