With the utter lack of television shows that capture my attention anymore, I was surfing through hulu.com one day last week and came across a show I’d never heard of before.  It’s on Fox (which explains a lot right there LOL) and fortunately for me, they had the entire season there for me to check out.

So I watched the 1st episode.  The premise is this:  You take 9 people and you lock them into a room (called pods), with NOTHING.  You control everything. Food, water, light, dark, sleep, comfort, noise, temperature.  EVERYTHING. They have no contact with another human.   You put them through very physical, very emotional, rather demeaning tasks, in an effort to break them down (and build them back up again, they state).  You attempt to force them to quit by hitting a red button.  You subject them to extreme exhaustion, pain, and mentally challenging puzzles, games, tasks. Week by week, one person is eliminated by virtue of being the 1st one to quit a given task or “treatment”. 

Oh, and the host?  A computer named VAL who taunts them.

Sounds awful, right?

Oh, and the final prize? Only $50,000.  By reality tv standards, that’s certainly not a ton of money.  So WHY do they do it?

I don’t know – but I’ve watched 7 episodes and will definitely tune in again today to see the next. 

So far, they’ve been subjected to having to rip the meat off dead goats with their bare hands, attach “body clips” to their bodies – 40 of them!!! – and of course, then take them off – enclose themselves in coffins they had to build themselves, drink and sniff horrible things, oh and then! force themselves to eat the most malt balls, licorice sticks, cookies, etc. LOL

So torturous!