In the summer wasteland of derivative reality programs, FOX's "Paradise Hotel" has stood apart as the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. Despite the exotic trappings, accommodating butlers and constant streams of fresh fruit and colorful cocktails, paradise was lost in an instant, replaced by a swamp of hedonism.

Stripped of the elaborate challenges, voting procedures and consistent rules that mark higher-rated reality shows, "Paradise Hotel" has stripped the formula down to its bare essence: If, at the end of the week, nobody wants to share a bed with you, you're cast out of Paradise, a terminal sentence whose Miltonian resonance has probably been lost on all involved.

No orgy of conspiring, bickering and casual hooking up would be complete without characters to polarize regular viewers. "Paradise Hotel" has proudly offered Dave, whose revenge of the nerds ethos has made few friends, and Zach, whose semi-abusive macho bravado allegedly masked a wounded interior, the result of being abandoned at a supermarket by his mother at a young age.

Towering above these lesser reality characters has been Toni Ferrari, a 29-year-old bartender and personal trainer from Chicago. Obsessive viewers of FOX's unscripted programming were quick to recognize Toni's broad shoulders, hair-trigger temper and in-your-face attitude from the short-lived "Love Cruise." In Paradise, Toni's function was simple: Take offense at nearly anything, challenge nearly everybody to fights and wreak general havoc. Love her or hate her, Toni made for great television.

Alas, this past Monday (Aug. 4), Toni was evicted from Paradise. She sacrificed herself so that her "little sister" Amy would be able to get revenge on new guy Keith.

A week later, freshly returned from the unknown location of "Paradise Hotel," Toni caught up with Zap2it.com between interviews. Despite having been delayed for over an hour by Tom Green, and being caught in LA traffic, Toni is surprisingly calm. She even apologizes for cell phone static and traffic noise.

She admits that she had some trepidation about becoming one of reality television's first high-profile repeat offenders.

"It got me a little nervous," she confesses in her perpetually slightly hoarse Chi-Town accent. "But at the same time, I didn't really think about it so much because I'm like, 'Oh my God, I get to away from Chicago. I get to not have to work. I get to live in a luxury resort.' I'm like 'Yeah. Game on. Round 'em up. Let's go. I'm not scared.'"

Game on, indeed.

Perhaps the most indelible moments on "Paradise Hotel" have been the two occasions that Toni called scheming Dave out. With aggressive, catch-phrase-ready taunts (the product of years of watching hockey) she challenged him with "Game on" and "Yahtzee," stopping just short of "You can be a winner in the game of life." The words became a battle cry, but when the battle was actually joined, the oft-scorned geek beat Toni in a spirited bout of mud wrestling.

"If hitting and things like that were involved, I could have taken Dave down," she swears.

Toni's animosity towards her hotel-mate apparently wasn't just a play for the cameras.

"Look at it this way: I didn't know him before the show and I don't need to know him afterwards," she says, placid tone eroding. "If you want to play the game, play the game. Do your alliances. If you start cutting people down, I have a problem with you, because who are you? What makes you so goddamn special? I don't see a whole hell of a lot and I know America doesn't."

Toni also holds a grudge against Charla, the perplexingly introverted girl she tried to mentor in early episodes. Mentioning that decayed relationship draws a spark of resentment.

"Charla, I mean you think I cry a lot, that little girl was crying all the damn time," Toni says. "She cried more than I did and I only cried when people got voted off. I'm so sick of that lower lip crap. Please. What's with that Barbie doll thing? Shut up, Charla with your beaver teeth."

Several days removed from the pressure-cooker of Paradise, Toni has gained a measure of perspective on the heightened emotions that have built over the past two months of isolation.

"Everything's just overdramatic," she concedes. "Once you're in there, you're locked down. Your emotions are magnified by like 1000 percent. It's also tough because you have cameras on you just 24-7, watching your every move, so there's a lot of pressure there. Plus you've got the game to worry about. What rules are going come up? Where are we going next? Who's coming in? How is this going to work? When is this thing going to end?"

Nobody actually knows how the summer in Paradise is going to end. For Toni, though, the game is over. She looks forward to watching upcoming episodes to make sure that Amy survives, but imagines that she was lucky to get out when she did.

"I guess I am a veteran of this," she says. "Money is not as important as my friendships. And walking away, I'm very very blessed. If I probably would have stayed there, I'd have no friends."

After two tours of duty beneath the revealing and watchful eye of surveillance cameras, Toni swears that she's done with reality. Soon she will move out to Los Angeles for a part in an independent movie and what she hopes will be a career in somewhat more legitimate acting.

"I have a big barrier I have to break through," she says. "Hollywood really doesn't think of reality people as anything worth it. They think we're taking away from SAG and from AFTRA and for the most part you have to look at it like maybe we are."

Almost in the same breath as she promises to abandon reality television forever, Toni offers up what she thinks would be the greatest twist in the short history of "Paradise Hotel."

"Just bring me back on a 48-hour pass," she barks. "Don't let me play the game, just let me start calling people out. Oh my God, it would great."

If the show's producers are reading this, there's only one way to interpret Toni's latest challenge: Game on.

"Paradise Hotel" airs Monday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. on FOX, with or without Toni.