I am – Hercules!!

* The promos for this one tell me Russell Swan (dreadlocked attorney Russell, not to be confused with bald oilman Russell) is headed home. Jeff Probst hinted somewhere that rainy, cold Samoa sent two people home without being voted off, and the fat chef from New Orleans already went out this way.

* Probst narrates at the top of the episode: “14 are left; who will be voted off tonight?” As with the episode that saw the departure of the chef, two people will be gone in tonight’s installment?

* Mick the handsome anesthesiologist, wet and shivering, his fingers turned to prunes, admits a pang of envy for cute blonde Ashley, voted off in the previous episode.

*Law student Jaison is having the same issue with shivering. How can these people endure this?

* But the fat oilman does not shiver; he welcomes the wet and cold, claiming it makes him stronger.

* The first act begins with ominous “Lost”-like music, as Swan fishes from the shore, his brow furrowed. Back at Camp Galu, his teammates huddle beneath a tree. We learn it’s been raining five straight days now. Russell Swan’s decision to forego a tarp is looking especially poor.

* Galu is much larger now than Foa Foa, and four Foa Foans have to sit out a luxury challenge designed to fill the winners’ tummies with hot pizza. Foa Foa leader Swan is given the option of sitting out – but if you’ve seen the promos, you know Swan does not sit out this challenge.

* The pizza challenge is a particularly well-devised one. Blindfolded men must push through a course a not-blindfolded teammate, who has been strapped inside a ball-like cage. Even though she’s dizzy and constantly getting rolled upsidedown and sideways, it is the rollee who must tell the blind rollers whether they need to go “left” or “right.” Then the dizzy girl in the ball has to guide her blind teammates as they move a much smaller ball through a table maze.

* The blindfolds make it less apparent at first that something is seriously amiss.

* The episode is not half-over when we bear witness to what I believe is a “Survivor” first, and maybe the most frightening minutes of the series' nearly decade-long history. “It was the scariest moment I’ve ever had on this show,” Probst allows on camera. “Nineteen seasons, I have never been more afraid.” And this is a show that had a contestant fall unconscious and burn his skin off in a campfire (as a weepy future host of “The View” looked on!):

It's one compelling hour of television.

8 p.m. Thursday. CBS.

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