Another finale for Kimmel

Kalispell's favorite player could win $1 million tonight

Amanda Kimmel is to be feared because she's too damn likable.

That's what her fellow "Survivor" contestants think.

For the second straight season, former Kalispell resident Kimmel has made it to the final four players left on television's "Survivor" game.

It's a game of athleticism, mental chess-playing, skullduggery and luck.

And with the season finale to be broadcast at 7 p.m. today, popularity becomes a major factor.

No player wants to be the second-best-liked in a final vote.

So Kimmel, 23, is a likely target for the other three players gunning for the game's $1 million prize.

During the past two broadcasts, Kimmel's head was on the show's chopping block.

Both times, she had to perform some jiu-jitsulike blindsiding to narrowly dodge the ax.

"Amanda's the proverbial cat and always lands on her feet," said her stepfather, Larry Small.

Larry and Kimmel's mother, Peggy Small, own and operate Aqua Soothe Colon Therapy just north of Kalispell.

They are now in New York City, waiting for their daughter to participate in today's three-hour "Survivor" finale on CBS.

Also this evening, a CBS crew will film crowd reactions at Red's Wines and Blues as the show unfolds on a projection screen. Kimmel was a waitress there.

Kimmel moved across Montana as a child because of Larry and Peggy Small's jobs.

The family lived in Whitefish for about six months in 1996 and 1997, where she attended Whitefish Central School as a seventh-grader. Her family settled in Kalispell after she graduated from Billings West High School.

She moved to this area in 2003 and worked at Red's Wines and Blues and Herberger's. The 6-footer also became a hiking guide and a model who in 2005 was named Miss Montana USA.

Kimmel is now an aspiring fashion designer living in Los Angeles. She recently received a bit role in a movie called "The Reef" and is putting together a swimsuit calendar.

Meanwhile, she applied three times to be on "Survivor" - succeeding the third time in 2007 to be on "Survivor: China."

Here are some key points to know about "Survivor:"

From 16 to 20 people are stranded in an isolated area. They play physical and mental games to determine who is immune from being voted off.

Meanwhile, individuals are picked to be sent to an even more isolated "Exile Island," where each starves and cannot scheme with others. But the "exiled" player also can hunt for a hidden "immunity idol" that can be used at that person's discretion at any "tribal council," during which contestants vote each other off - typically because of alliances or threats to the majority.

Finally, the remaining three players have to plead to the seven people who had been voted off about why they should win the $1 million. This is where a finalist wants to compete against less-popular contestants.

The final vote is broadcast live in a studio. The rest is filmed months earlier so that episodes and story lines can be edited. Contestants are under strict contractual obligations not to reveal anything that happened before the appropriate episode had been broadcast.

For the China game, Kimmel studied DVDs of previous "Survivor" seasons, and determined that she would be quiet and friendly - letting someone else in her alliance take the public heat for the inevitable double-crossing.

That is out-of-character for the typically outgoing Kimmel, who enjoys being the center of attention and is a cutthroat board game player.

This strategy enabled Kimmel to become one of the three finalists in China.

But she received only one of the seven votes cast for the winner. The voters slammed Kimmel for putting on a good-girl front while letting one of her allies take the public heat for their joint double-crosses.

Kimmel thinks she lost because she was too tired during the final pleading before the seven voters - making a half-hearted, unfocused case for her to win.

Kimmel already figured she had lost before the "Survivor: China" finale was broadcast Dec. 16.

That's because the show's producers asked her last fall - about a week after she left China - whether she would be willing to play again for this spring's show to be set on Micronesia. She thought they would not have asked her if she had won the China contest.

Kimmel has a drive to win, her parents said. And now, she better understood the game's nuances. If she became a finalist again, she would concentrate hard on her pleas to the seven people voting for a winner.

As the 39-day Micronesia contest began filming in October, Kimmel recycled her strategy - be nice, low-key and work hard.

"Let the wolves kill each other off, and see what's left," Peggy Small said.

Kimmel flew under the radar for most Micronesia episodes.

But things got dicey for Kimmel in the May 1 broadcast.

At this time, there was an alliance of five women, including Kimmel - plus odd-man-out Erik Riechenbach, a naive, 22-year-old Michigan college student.

Riechenbach won immunity for the tribal council vote-off. That meant the five women had to turn on one another.

Three women plus Riechenbach targeted Kimmel because they thought she would be the most-liked by the seven ousted players who vote for the winner. Kimmel's only ally was Parvati Shallow, a 25-year-old boxer from California.

But earlier in the episode, Kimmel volunteered to be sent to Exile Island - forgoing chances to eat extra food, visit with her 21-year-old aspiring actress sister, Katrina, who is a Flathead High graduate, or to bond and scheme with the rest.

The episode was edited to show her digging where she thought the immunity idol was buried, but did not show whether she found it.

Kimmel told the other contestants that she did not find the immunity idol. All except Shallow told Kimmel that she would be voted off because of her popularity with the finale's prospective voters.

Her mother watched the episode unfold, but "I never ever thought: 'She's toast.'"

Kimmel did find the immunity idol and played it in the tribal council - negating the four votes against her. She and Shallow voted off Alexis Jones, a 24-year-old motivational speaker from California.

Fast-forward to last Thursday's episode.

Riechenbach won the immunity contest again. Again, the women told Kimmel that she would be voted out because of her likability

"It doesn't make sense for anyone to take her to the final three," 32-year-old Californian personal trainer Natale Bolton told the show's camera.

Then feminine wiles surfaced.

What if Riechenbach could be guilted into giving his immunity necklace to Shallow?

The four women - three including Kimmel in skimpy bikinis - worked on Riechenbach.

Individually, they told him: He wasn't popular enough to win a final-three vote. He needed to prove his likability. He could prove he was a cool dude by giving his immunity to Shallow.

"I can manipulate his mind," Shallow told the show's camera.

The Smalls watched their daughter and the other women twist Riechenbach around their little fingers.

"I guess it takes a girl to be smart enough to pull something like that off," said Larry Small as he described how Kimmel could get her way by using "her big lower lip like this" in a girly pout.

Peggy Small added: "She does that well. She's an actress. Don't play poker with Amanda."

Riechenbach give up immunity to Shallow and was voted off 4-1.

That leaves Kimmel competing in today's finale against:

. Shallow, her closest ally, but who also has double-crossed in the past.

. Bolton, the bitchiest of the remaining four who has done her share of betrayals. Several episodes ago, she giggled and gloated about "cleaning my teeth with his jugular" about a contestant she helped to blindside.

. Cirie Fields, a 37-year-old nurse from Connecticut, who originally allied herself with Shallow and Kimmel. But she also has a record of double-crosses, including voting against Kimmel in the May 1 episode and being ready to vote her off Thursday prior to Riechenbach self-destructing.

Peggy Small said: "She'll kick it into high gear here."