Requiem for a pirate.

If you haven't been keeping up with this season of Survivor, which with its cast of memorable contestants and over-the-top "Pirates of the Caribbean" feel is perhaps the best of its seven incarnations here in the States, well you just missed a hell of an episode last night. In what turned out to be a literal nail-biter of a show, Rupert (a.k.a. "Sweetums"), mentor to troubled teens and proud skirt wearer, was voted out of the combined Balboa tribe by an alliance led by former Outcast turned alpha male wannabe Burton. To their credit, the producers edited last night's episode for maximum gut-wrenching effect - it began as an encomium to Rupert (who was actually trying to hunt a shark) and the gusto with which he had thrown himself into his surroundings, the aforementioned pirate theme, and playing the game itself both tirelessly and honorably. This is usually a bad sign for the contestant being highlighted, his or her last fifteen minutes in the spotlight before getting the ax, but my wife and I are by now wise to Survivor's use of editorial misdirection at times to keep the show unpredictable, so we hoped against hope that we were being set up, cheering on every crack that seemed to appear in Burton's "secret" coalition, hoping that the slightly unstable Lil, still in her tattered Boy Scout uniform, would break down at the last moment and throw her lot in with Rupert's band of buccaneers. But alas, it was not meant to be - Rupert never got his shark, nor did he survive this week's Tribal Council. Kudos to Burton for clawing his way back from the dead and unseating the one player I and probably most viewers and other contestants thought would definitely make it to the Final Four, if not take it all; but Rupert's pirate soul will be sorely missed.

A happy postscript, however: just as the reality of Rupert's demise was sinking in the news was leaking out that Rupert was not gone forever, but that he will in fact return as the only Season Seven cast member to compete in the next edition of Survivor, which will be an "all-star" competition drawing its players from memorable winners and losers from previous shows. Go Sweetums! But watch your back, as according to casting spoilers you'll have the one and only Richard Hatch - winner of the first Survivor and hands-down still the best player of the game - on your tribe to begin with, although between Hatch's bare ass and Rupert's upskirt antics, I fear it will be that the Survivor editing team that's going to have to have the hardest challenge of all...