"Survivor" Remix Boots Silas, Bush

Making good on his promise to shake things up, Survivor: Africa's diabolical producer pulled a Samburu switcheroo on Thursday night's episode, as tribe members were forced to change teams--and schemer Silas Gaither found himself all alone in Boran-ville without his lethargic alliance.

By a 5-1 vote, the 23-year-old pretty-boy bartender from Tennessee (aka the latter-day Jerri) became the first victim of a Survivor: Africa remix, in which three members from each team ended up swapping colors. After receiving word of an unknown "quest," each tribe picked three people to participate (Kelly, Lex and Tom from Boran, and Frank, Teresa and Silas from Samburu), only to be greeted with disturbing news.

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"The game of Survivor is always changing, and it's about to change again," host Jeff Probst told the stunned contestants, just before sending Kelly, Lex and Tom to Samburu, and Frank, Teresa and Silas to Boran.

The news was a shocker for the oldster-shunning crew in Samburu--and even more shocking for the former Boran members who arrived to find their camp a mess, as the tribe had little firewood or drinkable water.

"It looked like a bunch of lazy people had been running the camp," Lex said. "It was obvious these people were napping all day."

Over at Boran, Silas' once-dominant alliance was now shattered, and his new tribe members weren't interested in putting up with his shenanigans. The group, figuring a tribal merger was near, decided to throw the immunity challenge. And soon, Gaither was a goner.

"The twists of the game were amazing," Silas said in his final words. "I kind of had my cards lined up the way I wanted them going into the merge, but I was with the two people that we were about to kick off, and I just couldn't recover from it. I was a threat to Ethan and the rest of the group."

CBS, meanwhile, wasn't about to let anything interrupt Thursday night's Survivor surprise--not even a speech by President Bush. With November sweeps in full swing, both the network and its rival NBC opted not to air Bush's latest address on the war on terrorism.

But ABC--whose only programming sacrifice was an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?--decided to air the speech, joining cable networks CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox News.

"Given that the White House did not request time on the network, we thought it was sufficient to cover the event on our cable networks," an NBC News spokeswoman told the Associated Press, after the Peacock net decided to air its resurgent Friends as scheduled, featuring another guest appearance by Sean Penn.

Viewers didn't seem to mind the Bush-less programming. Friends still topped Survivor at 8 p.m., drawing 24.2 million viewers. Meanwhile, CBS' reality adventure narrowed the gap, pulling in 20.6 million viewers--making it Survivor's most-watched episode since the season premiere.

(UPDATED at 2:15 p.m. PT)