Tonight is the big night on Fox Reality channel’s original series Solitary 2.0’s season finale. If you have not watched the series, the premise is that nine people are locked in separate rooms that are about 8 feet by 8 feet. The contestants are placed through various means of torture, and are slowly weeded out when they hit a red button and give up. During each challenge, they have no idea if they are the first to quit or not. There is a small amount of luck involved. The prize is a relatively nominal $50,000.00. A computer voice named VAL communicates with the contestants. They have no human contact, have no sense of time passing, are deprived of sleep, and deprived of food. The show is far more interesting than you might think.

We pick up with the challenge to pick the second half of the final two. Number 7 is duking it out against Number 3 (they have numbers, not names). Number 7 is a former submariner and Number 3 is a female jazz dj. Unluckily for Number 3, it is a physical challenge involvign assembling a puzzle stool and using it to climb up to put a ball in a long tube. Number 3 cannot keep up, and decides to just take penalty rounds, which involve climbing up and down the step 40-45-50-55 etc. times in two minutes. She makes it up to 70 before she has to give up, leaving Number 7 to duke it out against Number 8, a young male Asian loser who lives in his parents basement.

Number 7 and Number 8 go head to head with some prior challenges to win one hour of sleep. There are three games, with Number 7 taking two, and Number 8 taking one. The loser is forced to listen to an hour of sirens with strobe lights.

The final treatment is medieval. Last year, it was locking the contestants in a tiny box that became tinier and tinier. This year, it involves chains.
My prediction is that Number 7 will win easy. He has been one of the top two contestants the whole run of the series. Number 8 is mentally weak, and I think he will quickly fold. The challenge is that there are three chains arranged more or less like a hammock. There are three rounds, and they must support themselves on the chains for each round. Number 8 won a pillow that he gets to use for the first round, so has little difficulty with it.

Both Number 7 and Number 8 cruise through the first two rounds. For the final round, the middle chain is removed, and the round will last til someone gives up. I wonder if Number 8’s light body weight will give him an insurmountable advantage.

The challenge is agonizing. Number 8 nearly falls off, but then Number 7 does so. Presumably the body weight issue was insurmountable for him (he was in good shape, but clearly had more body mass than Number 8). Number 8 wins, and maybe he will use the money to get an apartment . . . a satisfying conclusion to an interesting game.