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Did We Dream Big Brother’s Zingbot 3000? There’s No Other Logical Explanation

Waking up this morning, it was easy to dismiss memories of the previous night’s Big Brother as a bad fever dream. The house wasn’t really invaded by a Gort-like robot called the Zingbot 3000 whose prime directive was to zing the houseguests, right? Sure, this show is consistently inanely cheap and nonsensical: Every challenge has an elaborate children’s-birthday-party-game theme (don’t get hit by a giant paintbrush!), but ultimately just comes down to houseguests standing in one place for a long time while they are sprayed with a giant hose that producers clearly got for a flat rental rate and want to get their money’s worth out of. But putting an intern in a plastic robot suit and having him insult the contestants seemed crazy even by BB standards.

If the Zingbot popped up on Conan O’Brien’s show, it would have been smart-stupid. But there was no “smart” here: Big Brother was much more likely to have taken its inspiration from Family Matters’ Urkel-bot. But, fine, let’s pretend that a Zingbot does have a place here, and that it would be fun to live in a world of insult robots. Even with that leap, the Zingbot falls short: If the Zingbot/intern-forced-to-wear-a-robot-suit has been built with the sole purpose of zinging, why did he only let loose two robozingers? First, he told Lane (watch below) that “They say everything is big in Texas, except your brain,” and later he informed Enzo that for someone who talks about “dropping grenades” so much, he sure bombs in a lot of the challenges. Again, zing. But that was it; the Zingbot spent the rest of his appearance hosting a challenge. If you bought a Zingbot and he spent all day hosting, you would demand your money back.

Of course, false promises are what this inexplicably highly rated season is all about. It features an allegedly brilliant chemist who actually works as a swim coach (because that’s where the real money is?). And then there’s a central “Brigade” alliance that spends all of their time bragging about how they’re masterminding the whole season, when they actually have made no strategic moves, just stood by and watched as oblivious houseguests who don’t realize that they should form any alliances get picked off. Zing!

Did We Dream Big Brother’s Zingbot 3000? There’s No Other Logical Explanation