happy little rodents

Pet of the season, and apparently our feed blocker are two guinea pigs.

They're awfully cute, and possibly more interesting than the HGs.  We'll see.  And they've what we've got for now.  A lot of people have pointed out that the feeds will probably kick in at midnight eastern b/c of ShowtimeTime.  The big question is, will we already be down two hamsters?

Nothing hugely exciting in the premiere.  Never is.  Here's what we know:

16 HGs, competing as pairs.  HOH is HsOH, aka "Power Couple."  Pairs are nom'ed as a unit, and kicked as a unit.  There was no discussion about the end game....will they split at some point or will the prize be doubled?  CBS probably hasn't decided yet.  Especially since the writer's strike ended today and that just might have an effect.

2 sets of people have prior relationships.  Jen and Ryan are currently dating, knew they'd both be in the house, and have some undisclosed motivation for playing together, though they're not soulmated in the game, and keeping their relationship secret.  Sharon and Jacob are "exes" and weren't expecting to see each other.  They've been soulmated for the game and she's not happy about it.  They broke up b/c he cheated on her, and he seems to want her back and is less unhappy about their pairing.

The immediate problem couple was Sheila and Adam.  She's a 45 year old "former model" single-mom, etc. etc.  She was not happy with being soulmated with him...and was pretty rude about it.  He joked with her a bit (called her "ma" a few times, which really pissed her off) but after she insulted him about 5 times, he acknowledged he wasn't super thrilled with the match either.  They're almost this year's Dick and Jen.  She complained about his smoking, he said her breath stinks.

The HOH/PC comp. was reasonably good.  One partner was dangled from a harness and had to hold the other one over a bed.  Drop the partner and you're out.  Halfway through, Julie gave them an interesting temptation.  For once it wasn't drop out of the comp. for money.  It was "grab a pillow off the bed using only your hands, and without falling" and if you win the comp. you get the money.  One of them stuck the pillow her mouth after picking it up, and I thought Julie was about to cry foul, but if she did it was cut.  I'm also pretty sure that wasn't the couple that ended up winning.

There was some negotiation at the end and Jen and Parker, who had a 10K pillow, were thrown the comp by Natalie and Matt with a promise of safety.  According to Julie, the HOH/PC gets to evict a pair straight-away.  It sounded like no noms, no POV, no voting.  Just do not pass GO, do not collect $200, see ya.  If that was really the deal we should be down to 14 hamsters when the feeds kick in.

Jen mentioned Shelia and Adam, and Parker mentioned Ryan and Allison as possible targets. Jen, of course, needs to keep Ryan.  And this is BB so I'm betting the editors misled us.

After staring at the feeds for about 10 minutes (and proving that I do have a serious problem) I think I can tell the guinea pigs apart.  I'm guessing the HGs will name them at some point, but for my part I've decided they're called George and Skippy.