C Minus, Big Brother

Mikey fitted up by fixed footage


Yes Zeitgeisters,

I’m watching Big Brother 2006 – and if you don’t like it, you can sit out this blog entry. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Just a quick recap – it’s day 37, the housemates have whittled the million bucks in prize money down to $490,000. Last night Michael was evicted. And for the last two nights it’s been a weird scene at Dreamworld between “Mikey” and Big Sister Gretel.

Mikey doesn’t appear to be real good at sticking to a story. Last night he was talking over the top of Gretel to justify himself and eventually she appeared to get pissed off and just left him hanging. Mikey has seemed, well, quite the loose unit, despite the psychological profile from the usually reliable BB Psych, Carmel Hill. (This is all on the BB website to which I refuse to link).

The thing that sent Mikey further over the edge tonight was the suggestion that he had kissed cowboy David, one of the two gay housemates. Mikey seemed to take this suggestion pretty badly and said he had been misrepresented by the show etc. Coming on the back of his full-on lying for the last three weeks (creating a non-existent son, Reuben etc.) this seemed like more crap.

However, the show ended with the sequence that showed the so-called “kiss” and it turned out to be nothing at all. There was no contact. What there was last night, was a cut from one high angle to another to make it look like Mikey was bi-curious and had planted one on David. In fact, they were very near to each other, but nothing went on. This was reinforced by the earlier bullshit about a “lie risk detector”.

Yeah, yeah, Mr or Ms Non-watcher (who should be on to your second Peter Stuyvesant by now) we’re a bunch of suckers. But it was manufactured damned well. I was talking to a filmmaker today and he was sucked in, too. As a piece of fiction it was very like the sort of thing that George Orwell’s Big Brother got up to in that book 1984.

Tsk, tsk BB. Even though manipulative editing and "storylining" on the run are your stock in trade, you went a too far last night. Loose Unit Mikey was right to call you on it. And the rest of us hate being so easily sucked in.

Elevate the Insignificant
Mr Trivia

I quibble here, but for all those in the BB audience wearing the t-shirt or waving the placard repeating Anna’s quote, “Game On, Moles" then yes – it’s freakin’ wrong! Back to school with the lotta youse, ‘cos you can’t spell “moll”.