At 6:10 on a Tuesday morning, I stood in a plywood booth behind Stage 4 and asked a twenty-four-year-old to pull a rope.
"Rinse clock ready?" I said.
"Rinse clock ready," said Petey Dunleavy. He had a stopwatch in one hand and a folded towel over his forearm, like a waiter at a restaurant that served only weather. "Towel Department standing by."
"Batch three hundred. Pour temperature seventy-one degrees. Tester, Ginny Ellsworth, age thirty-three, consenting and caffeinated."
"Noted for the book."
"Pull."
He pulled. Four gallons of green came down from the bucket rig with the sound of a very large pudding changing its mind. Then I stood there and counted, because that is the job.
The job, if you have ever watched Bucket Night on the Delmont Network at nine o'clock on Thursdays, is mine. I am the practical effects producer. That is the title on my door. The title everyone actually uses is the one Petey wrote on masking tape underneath it, which says HEAD OF GUNGE.
"Notes," I said.
Petey uncapped a pen. "Go."
"Cool on contact, not cold. Weight is right. It lands like a hug from someone who means it."
I lifted one arm and watched how it slid. "Drip rate is too slow. It'll hang off the podium for a full commercial break."
"Grade?"
"B-minus. Smells like a lime that went to college."
He wrote all of that down in the batch book. The batch book is a three-ring binder with a cracked green spine, and it holds every recipe this show has ever used. Three hundred of them, now. Each one has a date, an ingredient list, a pour temperature, a rinse time, and one signature in the tester column.
Every signature in that column is mine.
Here is the rule, and I have kept it for six seasons. Nothing goes on a contestant that has not gone on me first.
Not a new color. Not a new thickener. Not a new scent, even one called Cucumber Breeze from a lab that swears nothing changed.
The lab is always wrong. The lab once sent me a "neutral" fragrance that smelled exactly like a dentist's office.
That was Batch 212. In the book it has a single note in the margin, underlined twice. The Lemon Incident. Never again.
People ask me about the Lemon Incident. I do not discuss it.
"You know other shows have a guy for this," Petey said, handing me the towel. "A dunk guy. They pay him per bucket."
"Other shows have a guy who doesn't care if it stings."
"Has it ever stung?"
"Not since I started standing under it." I stepped out of the booth into the hose bay. "Rinse clock."
He clicked the stopwatch. I worked through it the way every contestant would. Hair first, then the face, then the hands. The water ran green, then pale green, then clear.
"Three minutes, fifty-one," Petey said.
"Too long. We need under three."
"For what?"
"For Monty," I said. "If the reset runs long, he starts talking. If he starts talking, we're here until midnight."
Bucket Night is a quiz show for grown-ups. Four adults play trivia for money over three rounds. Whoever wins the last round reaches the Bucket.
The Bucket is a choice, and it is always a choice. The winner stands at a gold podium with two buttons.
The gray button says BANK. Press it and you leave with your money, dry and dignified, to polite applause.
The green button says BUCKET. Press it, and your winnings double. Then four gallons of something come down on you from twelve feet up.
In nine seasons, sixty-eight percent of winners have pressed green. Our studio audience counts down from five every time.
Our contestants sign two waivers, watch a safety video, and meet me in person before taping. I tell them what is in the bucket, because I made it. I tell them it is safe, because I have stood under it.
Then Monty Ambler, our host, asks the question.
Monty is fifty-eight and has hosted every episode of Bucket Night since the pilot. He has a voice like a game-show podium would have if it could talk.
He also says every number as if it were a prize. Not some numbers. Every number.
"Ginny!" he said that morning, coming through the stage door at seven with a coffee. "You're green! What time did you get here?"
"Six."
"Six! Six o'clock in the morning!"
"Ten after."
"Ten after six!" The coffee lifted, as if the audience might cheer. "And the verdict?"
"Hangs too long. I'll cut the thickener."
"Wonderful. Don't let it near me."
This is the other rule on Bucket Night. In nine seasons, nothing has ever touched Monty Ambler. He stands four feet to the left of the drop zone, behind a plexiglass panel that the crew calls the Monty Wall. When the bucket tips, he raises both arms like a man welcoming a ship.
"Not the hair," he said, patting it. It is silver and has its own humidity forecast. "Never the hair."
At nine, the whole staff crowded into the production office for a meeting nobody had scheduled.
There were twenty-two of us. Writers, the trivia department, the two women who run contestant booking, the audience coordinator.
Edda Cormier from Standards and Practices sat in the corner with her laptop. Edda is sixty-one and has reviewed every episode of every show on the Delmont lot for nineteen years. She reads important things aloud, slowly, for the record.
"An email," she said, "from the Network. Subject line: 'Welcome Preston.' Body: 'Please welcome Preston Bexley, our new Vice President of Prime-Time Brand.'"
"What's Prime-Time Brand?" Petey whispered.
"I don't know," I said. "It sounds like a cereal."
The door opened, and Preston Bexley walked in.
He was thirty-seven, and he looked like a man who had been ironed and then shaken out carefully. He wore a charcoal suit. He carried a tablet in a leather sleeve. In his other hand, he held a lint roller.
He did not put the lint roller down. He did not explain it. He stood at the front of the room and rolled it once along his sleeve, though there was nothing on his sleeve.
"Good morning," he said. "I've watched every season of Bucket Night over the past two weeks."
"All nine?" said Monty. "Nine seasons! A hundred and seventeen episodes!"
"All nine." Preston did not smile. "It's a strong show. The quiz is excellent, the ratings are steady, the format is beloved."
We waited. In television, a compliment is just the first slide.
"And I've come over from our scripted drama division," he said, "where my job was making shows feel elevated. That's my job here, too."
He touched his tablet. A word appeared on the screen behind him. It was one word, in a thin gray font.
STICKY.
"When I asked our research team to describe Bucket Night," Preston said, "this is the word that came up most. Advertisers say sticky. Our brand survey says sticky."
He rolled the lint roller once down his other sleeve. "I'd like us to be less sticky."
Edda typed something. Monty looked at me. Twenty-two people looked at me.
I had green under one fingernail. I put my hand in my pocket.
He asked to speak to me afterward. He did not say it like a request.
His new office still had the last executive's motivational poster on the wall. It showed a rowing team and the word UNITY. Preston had turned it to face the wall.
"You're the gunge producer," he said.
"Practical effects producer."
"It says Head of Gunge on your door."
"That's a nickname."
"It's laminated."
Petey had laminated it. I made a note to talk to Petey.
Preston opened a folder. "I've read your budget lines. You test every recipe yourself."
"Every one. Three hundred batches."
"Why?"
It was a fair question, and I had a fair answer.
"Because a lab sheet tells you a substance is safe. It doesn't tell you it gets in your ears. It doesn't tell you it smells like a dentist's office under studio lights. I want to know before a contestant knows."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he took a sheet of paper from the folder and slid it across the desk.
It was a vendor quote. The letterhead said CUMULUS EFFECTS.
Below that, in a pale blue font, it said CloudBurst™ Luxury Finishing Foam. Clean. Weightless. Elevated.
"We'll be trialing an alternative," he said. "Starting next taping."
"Foam."
"Certified foam. Factory tested. Their lab is excellent."
"Labs are always excellent," I said. "Until Batch 212."
He did not ask what Batch 212 was. He just set the lint roller on top of my batch book, which I had carried in out of habit. He set it there neatly, like a paperweight.
"One more thing, Ms. Ellsworth," he said. "The foam doesn't need to be tested on you."
"Everything gets tested on me."
"Not anymore," said Preston Bexley. "Effective immediately."
Up next: Clean. Weightless. Elevated.
Continue to Part 2 →