Let’s Fix Big Brother

Regular readers know of my love for CBS’ Big Brother, a reality series airing every summer (and one ill-fated spring season) in which twelve “houseguests” are forced to live together in a house wired with something like eleventy billion little cameras. They have no contact with the outside world, no TV, no newspaper, no internet. Just each other, the cameras, their wireless microphones, and a game in which one of them will win $500,000.

Watching season 11 (airing this summer), it occurred to me that I’ve been watching this show for close to ten years. Yikes. I skipped the first season, when the viewers at home actually voted on their picks to leave the house each week; by season two, that power was exclusively in the hands of the guests themselves, making it a more Survivor-esque competition against warring personalities, brain powers, and athletic abilities.

Since then, I have loved the show—I love that I have a tasty mindless treat to look forward to every summer, when all my other favorite shows are usually on repeats. I love the compressed editing schedule that gives the producers as little time as possible to take reality and manufacture it into “reality,” although they still manage to manufacture plenty. I love that it’s almost completely about the game; there’s no exotic foreign locale, no race-to-the-finish around the globe, no dumb job to occupy the hours not spent drinking and fucking. For shitty TV, it’s remarkably pure.

I think it needs some work, though, as it faces its 12th season next summer, and growing competition from other reality competition shows. I doubt CBS or the show’s production company will be interested in making any changes whatsoever since it does just good enough in the ratings as it is, and is insanely cheap to produce, but here’s a few ideas.

Big Brother 10: Finally, Another Old Dude!

The cast for this summer’s Big Brother 10 has been revealed, and much to my surprise, they’ve FINALLY returned to their more diverse casting strategy…including an actual OLD PERSON.

Allison Grodner tells us the houseguests range from a 22 year-old bodybuilder to Jerry, a 75 year-old great-grandfather whose wife was just diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Some of my favorite BB contestants have been older folks, so this is a wonderful development. As expected, I’ll be there July 13 with bells on.

In other news, MY ASS WILL NOT STOP EXPLODING.

Teh Funny: “They’ll Believe Me, Citizen!”

Being an occasional recurring feature in which I share bits of video that make me laugh to beat the band. I have a bunch of ideas for this–just need to track down the videos on YouTube. Maybe I’ll set them up to post over the next few days/weeks on their own so that I can pretend to be updating my blog while I’m actually doing bullshit work.

Here’s Jay Thomas sharing his legendary “Lone Ranger story” with David Letterman.

Big Brother 9: “Air quotes”

After a stumblingly awkward early season where the whole “couples” gimmick did way more harm than good, Big Brother 9 has settled back into the dependable rhythm of backstabbing, plotting, and strategery that has become its trademark.

Trouble is, I think the damage has already been done–the show’s typical dynamic wasn’t able to churn to life until they did away with the couples bullshit, so it still feels anemic, like some idiot’s home game version of the show. That’s not totally the producer’s fault, for coming up with a lame gimmick; it’s also the casting director’s fault, for letting this collection of losers into the house in the first place.

It’s not that losers can’t make fine contestants on Big Brother, or any reality show. There is a long, storied tradition of losers becoming perfectly acceptable reality contestants; the career of Jonny Fairplay is just one testament to that.

These people aren’t just losers; they’re boring, dense losers. Which means there’s precious little in the way of interesting gameplay happening–oh sure, Ryan and Joshuah have some secret alliance, and I guess it’s serving them well, but then there’s idiotic big-mouths like Sheila, or her “partner” Adam, who apparently doesn’t work for a non-profit helping what he called “retards” and what the rest of us know as “children afflicted with autism.”

He’s got to be one of the most physically repugnant people ever to appear on television. That picture’s flattering, trust me. He’s got creepy freaky bug eyes and a face that twists into a fun house mirror version of death itself whenever he gets animated. Bleargh.

I have a feeling that once some of the remaining detritus is evacuated from the house–people like Sheila, Adam, and Natalie (how creepy is she???)–maybe we’ll get a real game going, with the final five. Ryan, Shannon, Joshuah, James, and Chelsia all seem just smart enough to be good at Big Brother. Heck, some of the poor couple folk who didn’t get a chance to stick around might have been good at it too, but the producer’s shitty gimmick pushed them out the door too early.

Regardless, this summer’s regular season can’t get here fast enough. Please, Big Brother, no couples this time!

Big Brother 9: “But first…”

The legions of devoted shut-in and convicts who flock to Pop Geek each morning for the latest reality show reviews and grey-area illegal music must be shocked–shocked, I tell you!–that I’ve not yet written about Big Brother 9, or Big Brother: Till Death Do You Part.

Believe it or not, it took me about a week to get caught up on the season, and then it’s taken me about a week to digest a sad, simple fact: This season of Big Brother is honestly…not that good.

Big Brother 9: It begins…

Zap2It has your first look at the cast and twist of Big Brother 9, premiering on CBS next Tuesday.

Kudos to houseguest Natalie, who has finally shattered prime-time television’s grotesque bias against bikini baristas. Fight the power, sister!

I’ve felt for a long time that reality shows need to return to the more diverse casting that made them so popular in the first place. Looking at the cast for BB9, it seems that dream is way over–only one cast mate over 30, a mere sprinkling of people of color, and everyone’s basically single and horny.

At least BB has the good sense to overtly capitalize on that trend with this season’s big twist, which I won’t spoil here, but it’s in the article above if you want to read it.

I can hardly wait to find out who the next breakout reality star of Big Brother will be–could a recap gig on TV Guide Channel or Fox Reality be in the wings for one of these pretty young hopefuls??? Only time will tell, fans!

LET’S GET IT ON CHENBOT

Thank you, WGA!

I support my writerly soul kin laboring in the trenches of Hollywood as much as the next wannabe, but I also am glad they’re still on strike, because it gets us a bonus early season of Big Brother. Coming February 12…huzzah! The power is up for grabs!

(After Evel Dick’s shenanigans last season, my wife pledged never to watch the show again–we’ll see how strong her resolve is when faced with a bleak midwinter TV landscape bereft of the weekly scripted comforts of Lost, The Office, and 30 Rock.)

Later, Viva.

Finally, there is BLOOD IN THE WATER.

The first major cancellation of the 2007-08 TV season has come, and it is…Viva Laughlin, the ill-advised musical thriller thing from CBS and Hugh Jackman.

What ya gotta love, too, is that Mr. Wolverine’s gonna skate away from this horror show unscathed, while he’s just torpedoed the careers of a lot of good talent, both in front of and behind the camera. Or maybe not–doubt anyone actually watched the show anyway, which was of course the problem.

Oddly enough, the skinny around Tinseltown (and yes, that’s the last time I will ever utter that bone-chilling phrase) is that studio heads are actually ANTICIPATING the inevitable WGA strike, because the new TV season is going so bad that they’re viewing it as a “do-over.” This is doubtless just fat white guy bluster, but it’s something else when even the people who make this shit happen admit that it is, in fact, truly shit.

BB8: “Niagra Balls.”

There’s a point each season at which Big Brother becomes absolutely unwatchable. Not just annoying, not merely obnoxious; truly worthless.

I would assume that many viewers feel this way, and that we are united in our blase, half-disgusted knee-jerk viewing of these final weeks of Big Brother 8. Maybe I’m wrong, and there are covens of Donato fans out there who are sitting around their televisions several times a week to cheer on Dick and Daniele, but I don’t think so.

Big Brother 8 hit its unwatchable point last night, with the exit of Jameka and the final cementing of either one or the other Donato (or maybe BOTH) in the final two.

These final fits and starts of Dick’s “strategy,” which seems to have involved him being an absolute asshole to everybody at some point or another, are more eye-rolling than anything else. It’s gone way past the point of “Oh, clever move” and into the “Wow, he really IS just a jerkoff” territory.

His daughter isn’t much better–look up “spoiled brat” in your handy dictionary and you will see her picture, probably without the roots, since she’s clearly needed a bottle of peroxide since day 24.

Then there’s Zach, who is making a fair push to become a late-game hero, but just can’t seem to shake the domination of the Donatos. He’s standing up well to Dick’s verbal attacks, maybe better than any other houseguest has, and yet he JUST CAN’T WIN WHEN HE NEEDS TO.

This is where you cannot fault the Donatos, especially Daniele; they have truly dominated the competitions. Daniele is as far away from Janelle of BB6 and BB All-Stars as one can imagine, in terms of personality and wit, but she does share an uncanny ability to trounce fellow houseguests when her life is on the line.

So now we sit, and wish they’d show more of the jury house, since that’s where all the cool people are hanging out anyway. It seems almost impossible for any worthwhile, decent person to win a Big Brother; inevitably, the biggest dickhead walks away with the money…and the hatred of their fellow houseguests and much of America, to boot.

BB8: “Thanks, God.”

I’m not a particularly religious fella myself, but I’m certainly from the “live and let live” school–as long as you’re not blowing up schools as part of a fatwa or picketing funerals because you think homosexuality caused Hurricane Katrina, you’re okay in my book.

I’m not really sure where “you amuse and annoy the crap out of me with your batshit crazy religious perspective” fits into living and letting live, but that’s where I put Amber.

Instead of accepting the more commonly-held views of the Lord and Savior, such as “Omnipotent yet Largely Detached Superbeing” or “Warm, Cuddly, Benign Force for Good,” Amber seems to prefer a God who is just as obsessed with Big Brother as she is. She really believes he’s controlling the game and trying to communicate with her through its events.

Amber, if God really IS attempting to communicate with you, he will have a more important message than “You will win the Power of Veto.”

Another batshit crazy one is Eric, but in a more annoying way–has there ever been a more spineless, testicle-free dude on a reality show? He’s a master at worming his way out of trouble, there’s no question about that, and that gift makes him a really great BB player.

But dude–why has it taken you WEEKS to make a move on Jessica???

When this experience is over, you will crawl back to NYC and spend the rest of your life being romantically tortured by a heavyset woman with incredibly low self-esteem. That’s a guarantee. Right now, some cheerleader inexplicably finds you attractive enough to provide physical solace. Enjoy it while you can, because it’s going to be a long rest of your life, having to use your incredibly meager charms to woo women instead of having the bonus advantage of being trapped in a confined space with no ability to contact the outside world or speak with anyone you know and/or love.

Man, I wish I could act as a diary room adviser to these freaks. That might be my dream job.