Survivor 3: Skirts stomp shirts

Girls’ time!

(By the way, obvious spoiler alert re last night’s “Survivor”).

Just when it seemed like this season was going to go straight down the tubes with all the macho men beating up the defenseless women, the show’s producers remembered something — oh, yeah, women have brains! Men don’t! Let’s capitalize on that!

So out came a memory challenge — varied items are lined up in a row, the challenge is to reconstruct the order — and the girls whomped the guys 5-0. And that even includes apparent airhead Kat who beat the appropriately nicknamed Troyzan after about 73 tries.

So the girls ended up with fishing gear and a canoe, which they then used to spear three fish that would look small in a 10-gallon aquarium. But hey, they’ve got the momentum, right?

You bet, because at the immunity challenge, even though the guys make mincemeat of the girls during the physical part — people stagger around blindfolded trying to untie puzzle pieces — when it comes to putting the puzzle together, the girls again use their noggins — by cheating!

Or, er, by being observant. Since the guys got their puzzle pieces together a lot faster than the girls, comedian Bill already had much of said puzzle assembled when Sabrina started putting hers together. But since it was the same puzzle, she and the other girls just looked at what he had already done and copied it. Then Sabrina sprinted ahead with the last piece while Bill, who had done most of the actual work, looked like an idiot.

All of a sudden the women’s team that was all fangs and nails for one another the previous week was just the biggest group of bestest friends ever.

So back the guys trudge to camp, where Colton the gay Republican — and I have nothing against gays — again proves he’s the designated evil guy for the season. For no apparent reason he refers to Bill as “ghetto trash,” then he starts what seems like a plainly racially motivated campaign to vote Bill off.

His allies, though, respond with a big, huh? They wisely prefer to eliminate the obnoxious Matt, a guy so dumb he has built an alliance of four people on a team of nine. Pretty sure five is still bigger than four, Matt. And so the season’s first self-proclaimed alpha dog is sent packing.

Meanwhile, though, Colton proves just how bad a player he is at tribal council by a) announcing he has the immunity idol and b) he’s going to play it. And then he doesn’t play it! Wow, what a trickster. Can anyone possibly stand up to such a subtle, devious mind?

Well, yes, actually, pretty much anyone, even Kat. The guy is so toast and he doesn’t even know it. On the other hand, you have to have a Colton around to keep things fun. For a while, anyway.