By Buzz Byrne
When BIG BROTHER debuted on CBS in the summer of 2000, it was promoted as a social experiment that eliminated the stresses of work and family and forced a small group of people to deal with each other by being locked in house for close to three months. The show was on six nights a week, and a professional therapist was employed to watch the HouseGuests carefully to gauge their mental state as they forged their way through this new, mini-society. After about three weeks of this, I’m pretty sure not even the HouseGuests’ immediate families were still watching. Everybody hated it. So, the network tinkered and made changes. Each season the show evolved. Mostly, they made it racier.
This season, there isn’t one person with a gray hair. I’m sure every guy at the BIG BROTHER auditions is asked to take off his shirt. What is that, hair? Flab? I’m sorry, PIRATE MASTER auditions are down the hall. Next! The show is now for those of us who can’t get enough of the REAL WORLD/ROAD RULES CHALLENGE; it is tight-bodied meatheads looking to stab one another in the back as quickly as possible. For the life of me, I can’t explain it, but every summer I watch this dumb show.
Season 4 of BIG BROTHER featured a number of former lovers unwittingly picked as HouseGuests. Season 5 was the DNA project, where two HouseGuests discovered they were brother and sister. Season 6 featured a set of identical twins switching place over the course of the show. This season has six people who just plain hate each other. (I predict Season 9 will be called BIG BROTHER 9: SUMMER OF SNUFF.) The three couples that hate each other are an estranged father and daughter, two high school rivals (“She owed me $5!” Seriously, that’s what it seems to be over), and two men who used to be a couple. This couple, Dustin and Joe, have moved this season into the stratosphere in the first episode. Dustin says cattily of Joe, “He has enormous nipples.” And, he does. Joe says of Dustin that he gave him gonorrhea.
Yep.
That is simply Hall of Fame material right there. Forty two minutes in, and Joe comes hard with the VD smackdown. This is going to be the dumbest season yet, and I am beyond excited. There are 51 cameras and 74 microphones in that house, waiting to pick up every snarky, diabolical and stupid thing said and done so we can sit and watch and feel wonderfully above it as these loons turn each other inside out for half a million bucks and, most importantly, the chance to be on TV.
Nothing in this life is more important than being recognized by strangers for your stint on reality TV. Nothing.
One other twist — not quite as exciting as gonorrhea — is something called America’s Player. One HouseGuest has to do what the bloggers and texters tell him to (voting, nominating, flirting with someone). When he completes these tasks, he gets cash. This player is Eric. He’s got more than a little Jerry Lewis/Ed Grimley in him, and if there isn’t some concerted effort by America to make Eric’s first task to catch gonorrhea, well, I don’t know where America’s head is at.
The next best standout is Jen, the nanny from Beverly Hills. She was spotted wearing a shirt that read “Jenuine.” I am hoping that everything with her is “Jen”-ified. I hope she strives to one day be a world-renowned Jeneticist. I hope there is a written history test as one of the challenges, and she answers “Jeneral MacArthur.” In order to not be stricken like Joe, Dustin and hopefully Eric, I bet she uses TroJens.
This is going to be best summer ever!