Wednesday, September 19, 2007

NICE GUYS WOULD FINISH LAST, EXCEPT THAT THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY ALLOWED ON THIS SHOW IN THE FIRST PLACE: Big Brother is the lamest long-running reality show in the history of that category (yes, lamer than Road Rules, lamer than the always-makes-me-laugh-dammit-I-admit-it America's Funniest (nee Home) Videos, lamer than that pixellated Euro-recycled nude candid camera thing that the Reality Channel sometimes shows late at night). Maybe it's better in Europe, where they cast it only with pretty people and can show the nudity, but whatever. Over its eight seasons in the US, the show started slow (evicting all interesting people first, then suffering through a sit-down strike), got a little better with a couple of decent casts (Evil Dr. Will is in the reality hall of fame, and the next season had a solid all-around cast willing to wear peanut-butter as clothing), and then got bad again. Way too much time on air (three or four hours a week), way too much Julie Chen (with her content-free pronouncements, push-polling interview style, and plastic surgery hot-dog-and-meatballs nose), way too weak competitions (a quiz show about the show just about every week), and way too dull casting.

This season, the show committed itself to a redemption arc by casting three sets of arch-enemies: high school rivals, ex-boyfriends, and a supposedly (though Internet chatter reveals not-really) estranged father-daughter pair. When half of each of the first two pairs was evicted quickly, the Donatos -- Tommy Lee-wannabe abusive bully Dick and vacuous live-in-boyfriend-cuckolding princess Daniele -- inherited all of the pre-planned narrative. It should not be surprising then, that while the show has been willing to punish people in the past for threatening behavior (banishment of Season 2's Justin for holding a knife to the throat of a consenting paramour, e.g.) or rule-breaking (assigning an eviction vote to Jen this season for a food transgression), it did nothing to punish Dick for, as Television Without Pity has reported, saying pretty graphically that he wanted to perform a particular act upon Jen until she bled to death, repeatedly attempting to burn Jen with a cigarette, or admitting openly that he obtained information from the outside world in violation of the show's rules. It's also not startling that Julie Chen's second interview question to every evictee was, essentially, "Dick's not really that bad, right?" Big Brother wanted to take credit for repairing a relationship -- any relationship -- because our heartstrings were just waiting to be tugged, I guess.

What is startling is that Big Brother's online fans, who collectively cast one of nine votes for the show's winner, actually favored Dick. There are two ways to take this information. As CBS clearly believes, voters might have found Dick's volatility and disgusting habits and liberal use of sodomy-threats endearing and genuinely wanted him to win. In the alternative, voters may have been just screwing with CBS, along the lines of making Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf the World's Most Beautiful Person.

Either way, Big Brother now has a reality-TV record to its credit: Most Loathsome Winner. I guess we get what we deserve, then.

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