He burns socks, pours out canteens, threatens, cajoles, insults, pouts and has a healthy sense of his own importance. But in person, at least when he’s not burning your socks, Russell Hantz “is a charmer,” Diane Powell says.

And if he can charm Diane, whose daughter, Natalie White,  Russell’s ally and rival in this past season’s “Survivor: Samoa,” he can charm anyone. Which is not to say that she doesn’t also think he’s manipulative, scheming and perhaps exactly the snake he claims he’s not. But Diane, like the rest of us, can’t wait to see what he’ll get up to when pitted against his fellow “Survivor” snakes on tonight’s premiere of  ”Survivor: Heroes Vs. Villains” on CBS.

“From what I saw, he’s pretty street smart. I think he’s going to be just as conniving this time,” Diane says. “He wants to win the million dollars. (The other players) don’t know what he’s like (because this season filmed while last season was being shown), but those other folks are out to win a million dollars, too. I think he is going to be just as strong, but I don’t know that he will have learned his lesson. There’s something he did right, or he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did.”

Russell got as far as the finale, with Natalie, a sweet former pharmaceutical rep from Arkansas, and Mick, a doctor who didn’t get one vote. He was also the star of the season, both because of his scheming and inventive game play, and because the producers showed him so much they almost edited out a whole guy, Brett. The lesson Russell never learned last season is that it’s not enough to lie and cajole your way to the end. You also have to get people to vote to hand you a million dollars. Russell couldn’t quite get there, but Natalie, who became Russell’s emissary to the previously unstoppable Galu tribe, after their Foa Foa tribe lost all the early challenges, stayed just enough above the fray.

And although Russell still maintains he was robbed, part of playing the game is getting the money. And, as host Jeff Probst told him after Russell offered Natalie cash to sell him the title of Sole Survivor, he got beat by one of the very girls he called dumb.

The reason I’m talking to Natalie’s mom, who is a registered nurse and a staff educator, is because she works with my mom, also a nurse and an instructor at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have always been curious about how it feels to watch your kid, your wife or your boss being shown on TV in an edited context that might have nothing to do with the person you know. So at Christmas, my mom offered to get Diane on the phone for me, and after more than a month of  phone tag, I finally got her just in time for “Heroes and Villains.”

“That was my baby up there. You never want to see people be mean to your daughter,” says Diane, who never been a faithful “Survivor” fan before Natalie applied. She’s honest that at first, “I was not for her going, because I knew that she would have to quit her job and be gone seven weeks, and with everybody cutting back in this job market, I was concerned about her getting another job. I mean, what were the chances of her winning a million dollars?”

We know now, of course, that the chances were pretty good. But Diane was also concerned that Natalie, “a picky eater” and a small person, might develop health issues. First season winner Richard Hatch has said he came onto the show with weight to lose because he knew that with the scant amount of food probably available, he would drop a few pounds, and that if he wasn’t already gaunt, he’d be fine. Natalie, on the other hand, was a skinny girl to begin with, and her mother wasn’t encouraged.

“I was thinking about her finances, and her health, the more practical things. She’s not an outdoors person, and she’s always liked home. She’s never been away from home that long,” Diane says. “I knew it was gonna be tough on her, but once she made the decision to go, we supported her and prayed for her every day. We had a sense of peace that the Lord was gonna take care of her.”

Former reality stars shown in a less than positive light often complain that they were edited wrong, but Diane says that Natalie, once the cameras started showing her, came across pretty much accurately, if not initially more quiet – “She may have been quieter because she was not in familiar surroundings and was scoping everything out,” Diane says. “She was getting to know people, seeing how all this would pay out and thinking about what her strategy would be.”

Natalie’s strategy turned out to be a winning one – make yourself invaluable to a power player (Russell) for as long as possible, letting him do a lot of the dirty work, but also make your own friendships. Be seen working hard, but not be so visible when you’re working against people that might be hanging around long enough to turn on you.

There’s some debate still – and Russell is leading it – that Natalie merely rode his coattails and was handed the money by people so jealous and defeated that they couldn’t stand to give it to Russell. And he has a point. But I always thought it came back to what Erik – whose ouster Natalie engineered – said in his cryptic but emotional final Tribal Council speech. However Natalie got within shouting distance of a million dollars, she obviously did something right, because she got there. Her social game was excellent, and I believe that, and Russell’s failure to grasp that he needed a social game, took her all the way.

“When Natalie made it to the merge, I thought she had a good chance of winning,” Diane says. “I didn’t want to be too hopeful. I was more concerned — and this is as a mother — about her health. I saw her losing the weight, and since I’ve been a nurse almost 34 years, I saw the medical aspect. Poor little Foa Foa couldn’t win any challenges, but when (they merged) and they voted Erik off, they drew strength from each other.”

And one of the strongest, of course, was Russell, who from the beginning took control of his Foa Foa tribe and of the game. He made alliances with pretty much everyone, while lying about it and about his background (we know he wasn’t a Katrina survivor, for instance, and that he had quite a  bit of money already). But to his credit, he was one of the only players who never forgot he was playing a game. While Diane says she was charmed by him when they met at the finale, she thinks his real character may have shown through after Natalie won.

“His behavior…well, he really thought he had won. He didn’t act very nice,” she says. “And then he did those interviews with her the next day and he was kind of mean to her…(When he tried to buy the title from Natalie) I was surprised he would ask such a question. We don’t know what it was really like out there, but the jury did, and they’re the ones who voted for her. So they say she deserved it. She didn’t go out there for seven weeks and suffer all the rain and lose all that weight and go through the mental agony to give somebody that title.”

It remains to be seen if Russell’s successful this time. Natalie, meanwhile, is looking for a job, doing some speaking engagements, and flew to L.A. to do some spots for “Survivor.” Her mother says that she believes that if approached, Natalie would do another season. And this time it would be fine with her – “She knows what to do now,” says Diane, whose co-workers at the hospital threw her a big party, with fake tropical decor and all. “It turned out to be fun for the whole family.”