Enda didn’t do a whole heck of a lot during her season on “Survivor,” other than stick close to Coach and try not to get voted off. But her brief speech during Final Tribal Council, as seen on last night’s finale, might as well be bronzed on a plaque above every future tribe’s camp, along with the head of whoever decided “Redemption Island” was a good idea.

Basically, she said this: Why are you sitting around mortally offended by people who outwitted, outplayed and outlasted you, through the use of secrets, obsfucation and sometimes out and out lies, when you signed up for a game when those are the unwritten rules? If you were a better liar, you might be up there about to win a million dollars, too, so being mad at them is dumb. You WISH you were that good at lying - I believe the kinder word she used was “duping” – so taking this so personally makes you look like a boxer who stepped into the ring and wondered why that mean man was hitting him.

In other words: Don’t hate the “Survivor” players. Hate the “Survivor” game. And if you do, don’t play it.

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A Rhode Island judge is refusing to grant free legal counsel to help the winner of the first season of the CBS reality show “Survivor” appeal a nine-month prison sentence.

Judge William Smith on Thursday rejected 50-year-old Richard Hatch’s request for a court-appointed attorney to help him fight the sentence handed down in March for violating the terms of his supervised release by failing to settle his tax bill.

Hatch, of Newport, spent more than three years in prison for not paying taxes on his $1 million “Survivor” winnings. He was released in 2009 and ordered to refile his 2000 and 2001 taxes and pay what he owed. Smith ruled he never did and returned him to prison.

Hatch, who claims he is “destitute,” is scheduled to be released in December.

The jailed winner of the first season of “Survivor” is fighting for a court-appointed lawyer to help him with an appeal on his probation violation.

Filings in U.S. District Court in Providence, R.I., made public last week show Richard Hatch believes he should be given free legal representation.

The 50-year-old Newport resident is in a federal prison in West Virginia. He was ordered back behind bars in March for nine months for failing to pay taxes on his $1 million winnings from the CBS reality show.

Hatch is appealing that decision to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Lincoln Almond is recommending Hatch be denied free legal counsel. He says the appeal is not “taken in good faith.”

I’ve written about “Survivor” and its weird hold on me before like an unhealthy romantic relationship, and as I read about the new twists and casting news for its upcoming season, premiering Sept. 14, I am considering a break-up. Again. Now, it might be one of those yo-yo breakups where I show back up again. But right now, I’m pondering packing up “Survivor”‘s stuff and asking it to call Tyrone to tell him come on, just like Erykah Badu did.

Here’s my basic issue: The show keeps relying on stunt casting, like returning players (we’ll find out who they are later) and someone who bears the same last name as one of “Survivor”‘s second-favorite repeat offender/fame hooker. And while I know it’s all about ratings, those twists are not only unfair to the other contestants, but cheapen things for the true fans, too. Read on. Am I wrong?

- Returning players have an unfair advantage: A lot of game shows have celebrity editions, where those famous folks give their winnings to charity. That seems fair to me, because we assume that those people don’t need the money. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to make it this way. Reality TV changed all that, mostly because reality stars are on these shows to make money, or book “Playboy” or their next reality show. Thus, we have “Bachelor Pad,” which besides the tackiness, I have no real problems with, because they’re all in the same fame whoring boat.

Not so much on “Survivor,” where the new returning players, much like Russell Hantz, Rob Mariano and others before them, are playing with newbies for the same money. It’s ghastly – under any normal circumstance, anyone who has played a mentally and physically challenging game like that would have some sort of advantage. But last year’s vets are so identified with the game, particularly eventual winner Mariano, that the other players got all awestruck and relied on them as leaders (Note to future Survivors: Your job is not to help someone else win a million dollars. If all you do is help them, you can’t help you. For real.) They’re professional Survivors, basically. They could list that under “profession.”

We have no idea who the returning players are, but the rumor is that it’s Ben “Coach” Wade and Ozzy Lusth, both previous repeaters who are arguably polarizing (Coach was a freak the first time, and a puppy who got his fanboy head chopped off by Rob the second time; Ozzy’s just sort of a playa). And that sucks, because once again, these new Survivors don’t have the opportunity to just focus on the game and what these new strangers are up to. They have to deal with the cult of personality that the stars represent. And that’s an extra game. Ozzy is a great competitor physically, or at least he used to be, and Coach…well, you can’t predict anything about that kook, can you? All I know is that they’ve got an advantage, and if these new folks don’t get rid of them IMMEDIATELY,  then they’re idiots. Ask Rob’s tribemates from last season if they’d have done that. (Another note: Don’t fake the funk just to vote someone out, like Russell’s tribe last year. You can’t win everything. The minute you lose, one of those jokers gotta go.)

2) Russell’s Nephew: Can’t you imagine poor host/Russell fan club prez Jeff Probst mulling this season  in the confines of the air-conditioned palace where he must live when the Survivors are a bug buffet? Russell has vowed not to come back, and you can’t call him the greatest player ever since he’s never won once in three tries (Well, you could. But you’d look stupid). So, you invite his 19-year-old nephew Brandon. Unless you’re gonna fan wank all over him and bring his uncle up all the time, why bother? And for all of you readers who think I’m obsessed with Russell – If they stop bringing him up, I’ll stop writing about him. But don’t keep him in my face and not expect me to write about him. He’s a great player. But he’s helped the producers hurt my show.

3) “Redemption Island”: I kinda thought that last year, the whole point of “RI” was to make sure that Russell or Rob, should they have been voted off, had another shot back into the game. But they’re doing it again. I sort of liked it at first, because of the domination of Matt for so much of the season. But the big problem is that players like Matt, particularly if they hang out for so long on “RI,” don’t have the chance to get to know the rest of the tribe, to become “one of us” or to understand the politics. They have a target on their back immediately, and it’s predictable that if they win their way back, they’re gonna be the first ones out again. That’s not a lot of fun.

I have not yet decided whether or not I’ll be blogging “Survivor” every week if I decide to watch it - this is going to be a busy fall and I don’t know if I have the time. What do you think about the changes? And the things that never change?

Could this be the dark horse?

The answer, I’m afraid, is no. And that’s why this has been one of the most boring seasons of “Survivor” in a while. Why won’t any of these former Ometepes think about the endgame and wonder why they’ve decided that it’s just Rob’s destiny to win? It’s a million dollars, people! A million! Do you have a million dollars to spare so that you can just arbitrarily give it to a guy who thinks you’re stupid? It’s just too much.

The big finale comes up on Sunday, and I barely care – These players have been so singularly unimpressive under Rob’s sway, although my sister, with whom I have a post-”Survivor” chat every week, believes that half the problem was the initial make-up of the teams. Most of the younger, fitter people were with Ometepe, with Rob, while the older folks were with Russell on Zapatera. Maybe since Rob was one of the older people on his tribe except for Phillip, who disqualified himself by being a loon, he commanded authority. And because he’s a smooth talker and has experience from his three previous times on this show, he knows how to get to people.

I hope that Rob wins, and that this ends his time on “Survivor” because I’m sick of the repeats. He has an advantage, having not only played this game four times now, but with so many combinations of people that he can predict the behavior. And as predicted, he’s dealing with a groupof weenies so numb to any sort of gameplay that they’ve decided that they have no choice but to let him win. Idiots.

Unless whoever wins at Redemption is compelling. We don’t know how many people are in the finals, but if it’s three and it’s Rob, Phillip and Grant, Grant wins. Rob is polarizing and I can’t imagine that the people who were his puppets are going to be as malleable after he cut their strings. He does deserve it, as he’s the only player not on Redemption Island who is actually playing.

But we’ll see.

A judge in Rhode Island has denied reality TV star Richard Hatch’s bail request pending an appeal of a nine-month prison sentence for failing to pay taxes on the $1 million he won on the first season of the hit show “Survivor.”

Hatch, who is being held in Brooklyn, N.Y., spent over three years in prison for tax evasion. Released in 2009, he was ordered to refile his 2000 and 2001 taxes and pay what he owed. A judge in March ruled he never did and returned him to prison.

Hatch’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment Thursday. He has said there are questions about whether Hatch violated his release terms. Prosecutors said those questions aren’t substantial enough to warrant bail.

The bail denial was filed Thursday in federal court in Providence.

This guy is probably gonna win "Survivor," because he's playing with dummies.

I am not a fan of Russell Hantz, whose over-bearing presence ate up entirely too much time during the last several seasons of “Survivor.” But the one thing you can never say about him is that he didn’t play the game. He lived to play the game. And while he was bullying his way through it, he never, ever forgot that fact. He tried to win every challenge. He tried to dominate every tribe decision. He tried to find every hidden immunity idol – and usually did. Russell did not see the point of being on “Survivor” if you weren’t trying to win “Survivor,” and he never, ever forgot that if you were there, you probably were trying to win it, too. Of course, it made him mad if you weren’t trying to help him win. But that’s another story.

Although he was thwarted three times, twice because he didn’t appreciate the social aspect of the game, Russell went down  fighting. This makes him a whole lot more interesting and compelling as a player than the Ometepe tribe, who seem to be trying to help leader and sworn Russell foe Boston Rob Mariano win. I don’t know why. And as bothersome as I found Russell, I wish he was still in the game, because if he was, he wouldn’t have let his tribe punk out and just get picked off by the Ometepes on Rob’s orders after the merge. He’d have made them fight, made them refuse to let the Ometepes cut them out of the game. And he’d have been all in Rob’s face. He would have been just as overbearing as Rob, but at least he’d have some spark. At least he’d be trying.

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Does that make me crazy? Possibly.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

I’m going to be brief here, because “Survivor”‘s been mostly bring since Rob has taken control of everything and basically told the former Zapotarians that their days are numbered. And that is true, because Julie and her awesome abs of steel were sent packing to Redemption Island, where she will face Mike and an increasingly glum Matt in a duel.

But the most exciting part of the show concerned Phillip and his tighty-pinkies accusing Steve of being a racist because he called Phillip crazy. It happened after Phillip and Andrea asked the former Zapos if they could store their rice in the Zapos’ rice container, saving it attack by the maggots that ruined the rest of the Omatepe’s rice. Steve’s response was the same response that a mean girl gets when she finally asks the girl she’s been torturing for a favor. And that response is “As if.” Phillip freaks out, Steve calls him crazy and Phillip goes ballistic, saying that “crazy” is a code word for the “N” word.

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SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

If you saw the previews from last week, you knew that this was the merge week, and that whoever won the duel on Redemption Island was going back into the game to create some ruckus. That person was Matt, the R.I. veteran with a Bible in his hand, a bandage on his foot and some unresolved feelings about the tribe that voted him off. And now that he’s back in the game, he’s a wild card. Everybody wants him, because he’s the possible lynch pin to surviving the merge.

So what does he do? He opens his big fat yap and tells Rob that he and his only ally, Andrea, were thinking about turning on Rob and Omatepe, their former tribe, until he decided that God didn’t want him to.

Oh, sweet little dummy. God loves you. He doesn’t care who wins “Survivor.” I believe that he just wants you not to do dumb things in His name and blame it on Him. And completely tipping your hand and telling the most powerful person in the game that you’re a big flip-flopper, while throwing your only ally under the bus, is dumb. So dumb. And while it has to be disheartening to go back to Redemption, he did it to himself.

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SPOILERS! SPOILERS1 LA LA LA!

Before we begin, let’s give one last silent clap to Stephanie, who did her best to win the duel against Matt, but just couldn’t pull it off. I resent that Probst let her talk so much at the end, allowing her to do that last-minute head game play. Maybe it’s because she’s the last link to Russell, or maybe it’s because she’s so polarizing on her own. I admired her hustle. But I’m not gonna miss her.

Speaking of people I won’t miss when they’re gone – Phillip. Secret Agent Cray-Cray can’t be voted off this week, because Omatepe won reward and immunity and he’s safe to go ranting about not getting the good crispy rice for another week. His intensity is scary, and if I were on his tribe I’d be sleeping with one eye open. And my good rice clasped tightly in my hand. That’s my rice, fool.

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