Yeah, the first hour was boring. But it always is – you have to let the hamsters feel out their cage a little before you can start the experiment.
Me, I think they need to make two basic changes to really make the show a must-watch:
1 – Big Brother needs to be a personage. Not Julie Chen, either, but a big disembodied head with an electronically filtered voice. That way, the hamsters aren’t bonding with their captor, they’re afraid of him/her/it.
2 – Big Brother needs to be one sadistic motherfucker. I’m talking unremitting psychological torture:
[ul][li]At least half of the hamsters must be smokers, and their cigarette ration needs to be abruptly cut off about halfway through the show.[/li][li]Food allowances cut for no reason.[/li][li]Drag each of the hamsters into the confession room one at a time for intense Andy-Sipowicz-style questioning about their criminal records. Repeat over the course of several days, occasionally not questioning certain hamsters. Drop the questioning after nominations are made, then start them up again after the eviction.[/li][li]Interminable, horrible, embarrassing games where the prize is a single argyle sock. At the end, it turns out that each argyle sock is worth $10,000, but this is told only to one hamster, and only after three or four have been “won.” He or she is also told that it doesn’t matter who won the socks, only whether you have them when you leave the house. For extra fun, tell both the most honest Boy Scout type and the most evil bastard, but make the details different (amount of money, number of socks that will be put into play, maximum number per person).[/li][li]Repeat a day, “Groundhog Day” style. During the play of a game, the hamsters make significant changes to the layout of the house and garden. The next day, everything is back the way it was, and the game is played again exactly the same.[/li][li]For two days, Big Brother falls silent. No responses at all, no matter what the hamsters do, even during what should have been a nomination period. Big Brother returns with no explanation of what happened, acting as though the missing days never happened.[/li][li]Head of Household suddenly becomes a horrific ordeal, with sleep deprivation, mandatory cold showers every hour and confinement in the HOH bedroom. But just for two HOHs, and then it goes back to normal.[/li][li]Capricious rule changes to games already in progress.[/li][li]Give the appearance of favoring one member of an alliance to the detriment of his allies.[/li][li]Unexplained power outages, coupled with explosions and sirens in the distance, for about two days, with no explanation from Big Brother.[/li][li]Instead of the nice, polite good-bye walk, four masked bodybuilder types rush in, grab the evictee and drag him out, screaming the entire time.[/li][li]Horrible smells emanating from the walls.[/li][li]Tell the hamsters that one of them is a plant, a la “The Mole.” Then don’t have a plant.[/li][li]Force a re-vote on an eviction. Repeat seven or eight times, then accept the eviction as it was on the first vote.[/li][li]Stuff disappears and reappears constantly. The people who get lousy beds at the beginning magically have their stuff reappear at the good beds, and vice versa.[/li][li]Control the clocks so the morning goes incredibly fast, but the afternoon drags on forever.[/li][/ul]
