I have a problem. Despite the fact that I know in my soul that reality television is trash, nevertheless I can't turn myself away from Survivor, the granddaddy of the genre here in America. I was hooked for the first and second seasons, but lost interest somewhere in the middle of the third, and found myself completely turned off by the gimmickry of its later incarnations, such as the changing of the game's rules in midstream. Since I felt that of the reality shows, Survivor was most like a classical game with rules and actual strategizing (especially in the second and third seasons, when prior knowledge of how to win the game became a factor in play), I got extremely pissed off and stopped watching when Jeff Probst and the CBS suits started monkeying with the format to "keep things interesting". All is forgiven however with the current - can it really be the seventh?- season of Survivor, which is set in the Pearl Islands, off the coast of Panama, and in the spirit of the Caribbean has adopted a pirate theme through and through. Frankly, I was surprised to see how much life this show still has in it, from the opening day, when the contestants were thrown overboard without prior notice and forced to barter with the locals in order to acquire their starting equipment, to the increasingly disturbing behavior of Rupert, my favorite castaway this season by far, who seems to have embraced his inner pirate a little too much. In the end however I just like the game. Its clever mix of physical punishment and office politics remains the best of the best in reality programming, and I hope like hell Jeff and Co. don't tweak this one too much, because it's gold, mateys! Arr!