I think we don't know what we want. I think we think there's a secret we can discover, a revelation we can see, some knowledge we can glean, from watching someone.

"Big Brother" was such a failure that it's difficult to draw a lesson from it. But I think the failure may not entirely be CBS's fault. Maybe the fault lay with the residents -- and not even them personally, but perhaps their species, at least the American version of it. At this point we are a nation of watchers, entranced with an implacable entertainment industry designed specifically to take us away from reality. Maybe reality TV is an oxymoron. Maybe humans aren't set up, at this point in their development, to be watched.

The nadir of the show came a few weeks ago, when George, the regular-Joe roofer, concocted a somewhat deranged plan to have the remaining cast walk off the show en masse. His reasoning was a bit crazy: He argued that this was the secret way to win the game -- that they were supposed to rise up and lose their chains, though of course he didn't put it that way.

The plot came just at a time when viewers, too, were exasperated with the show. Somehow, beyond George's raving, the other residents could sense something was wrong.

George the ringleader and his followers were patently inspired by received behavior patterns from movies, notably "The Great Escape" and "Chicken Run." But they also seemed to be motivated by a dimly remembered, almost prelapsarian instinct toward rebellion and against dehumanizing treatment. They discussed the plan, built up their courage and staged a flamboyant clasping of hands to seal the mutinous agreement.

The pact lasted barely a day and was a memory by the time a gleeful CBS began airing footage of it. Had the group stuck to their bargain they would have truly made history -- had an entire cast ever walked off a TV show before? It would have given us a taste of what happened after the end of "The Truman Show." The hamsters -- I'm sorry, the humans -- might have become the standard bearers for a nation of Trumans. We don't want to be watched, they could have said. We don't want to be passive. We're a society of couch potatoes reduced to watching a houseful of other couch potatoes in search of something human.

But the plan dissolved. George ended up trying to save his place in the house. (He was bounced soon after.) And the others appealed to the viewers at home to let them live inside their specially created biosphere until the end. Only one of them, Eddie, even admitted that he was interested in the prize money. The rest said they were there for "the experience." They couldn't step out of their roles. It was nice inside the house, they told themselves. They'd made an agreement, they rationalized. There was a game to play, they said, and money was on the line.

George's plan wasn't so crazy, really. But, like many visionaries who are given a sudden piercing insight into reality, he was unable to make it real in the minds of his fellows, and was martyred as a result -- nominated by his onetime acolytes, and then banished by his audience.

There will be more reality TV shows, but they will be ever more baroque, like "Survivor," in order to disguise the fact that they're not about reality at all. "Big Brother" will be remembered as the show that reminded a nation of watchers, suddenly, of what reality, at this point, is about: stasis, boredom, timidity, passivity. We took a look, and changed the channel.

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