Some networks never learn, do they?
One of the television networks here has revived that tired old chestnut, Big Brother, and I am finding myself asking why? I remember the first season and even watched a couple of the episodes, but got tired of it pretty quickly because I couldn’t really see the entertainment in watching a houseful of people lolling around doing not very much. Season Two was more of the same…and then it started to sink.
What I think continued to attract people to sign up for it though, was the sudden shot at instant fame, after a couple of the contestants from the first two seasons ended up falling into lucrative media careers or slots on the popular soap operas. In rushed the hopeful wannabes and it all went downhill from there. I think it was Season Three or Four were where the narcissists started to appear, along with the sleazy types, and before we could say, oh no, not another season of this tripe, it was wiped.
Viewers were tuning out, rating were seriously dropping and the networks that had aired it sensibly decided not to air it again. Good for them! And the insta-fame wannabes moved on to such drivel as Married at First Sight, The Bachelor and it’s trashy spin-offs, and anything else that go their names and faces out there. You’ve probably guessed by now that reality television is not a favourite of mine.
But anyway, one of the networks has decided to revive Big Brother once again, but seriously, I think they’re flogging a dead horse. After the sleaziest of seasons (I forget which one) where viewers actually complained about the overtly trashy sexual behaviour of some of the contestants, it was cleaned up. The next one though was so sanitised that even the most diehard fans of the show stopped watching because they were bored! So what does that tell you? There doesn’t appear to be a middle ground with this show; it’s either too explicitly trashy or it’s too bland, with no in between. People don’t want to see smut, but on the other hand they do?
And that’s the problem with Big Brother. Put a couple of dozen people of mixed sexes, who don’t know each other from a bar of soap, in a house with a large share bathroom, in dormitory style sleeping quarters where strangers will share beds and then give them little else to do, they will soon find their own ways to amuse themselves, and more often than not they will do so at the expense of each other. There will be pettiness, there will be jealousy, there will be bitchiness and eventually there will be downright nastiness.
Okay. so that is sort of the name of the game. Break down all the normal social structures they are used to and air the fallout nationally and this is supposed to be entertaining? Some may still think so, but the number of viewers tuning out of the last couple of seasons should have been the red flag for the makers of this season and the network that opted to show it this time around. Perhaps shouldn’t have because I think it’s going to flop.
But guaranteed every one of those housemates signed themselves up with an agent, to manage their new online social media “careers” as soon as they heard they were Big Brother bound, because that’s what they all do now. Reality TV has become a launchpad for fame-hungry unknowns hoping to become a name and a face off the back of their (often embarrassing) “big break” in reality TV. It has absolutely nothing to do with talent and they won’t automatically become household names (well okay, maybe briefly) no matter how badly they behave in front of the cameras. But they will try.
I won’t bother watching this latest effort to revive Big Brother, despite the promo promising something different this time around (it won’t be) because I’m not into utterly self-focused people behaving badly. I have a feeling not many others will be either. It had its fifteen minutes years ago.
It’s over.