By Buzz Byrne

I sit before you confused. The only conclusion I can draw about the current state of BIG BROTHER Season 8 is that it has finally crossed into postmodern territory. French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard defined postmodernism when, “The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on...Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?”

Like you, I don’t know what most of that means but to me it feels like I watch BIG BROTHER now and I’m sure someone is having a laugh at my expense and I can’t catch the joke. Nobody is likable. All remaining contestants are sloppy excuses for human beings and yet I watch…three times a week. I realized I’m rooting for a giant meteor to come and wipe out the whole production. And then the meteor will get up and go after the creators and producers who green lit this show along the way. And then the meteor will come and get me.

My last rooting interest was watching Amber fall apart and now she’s gone. She was talking to God, she was having visions and premonitions, and she was swearing on the life of her daughter that she would never swear on the life of her daughter again. It was weird but I could understand it. Amber’s biggest problem is that she is a quitter. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense, really. (If Amber happens across this, pejorative means I’m being a meanie. You’re welcome.) Her defense speech before the live eviction summed up this problem of hers. She stood and told her housemates, “I’ll try not to cry.” And then she cried. I mean she didn’t even try. There was no moment of effort between those words leaving her mouth and the waterworks going full cuckoo tilt.


She has come close to joining the elite group of reality TV whack-o all-stars, but even in that, with all her strengths, she will fall short. She’s not in Aaron’s league from HELL’S KITCHEN who cried and fainted before the challenge began. She’s not on par with Susan from the first season of SURVIVOR whose accent could remove wallpaper. She doesn’t even reach the level of Toni, the bug eyed goof who got herself on PARADISE HOTEL and THE LOVE CRUISE.

Goodbye Amber. It looks like a life full of you asking people what words mean and you not paying attention when they tell you.

As for the rest of it, who knows? Do we root for the Eric/Amber& Dick/Daniele alliance to crumble? Forget it. If it was going to happen, this was the week for it. Do we root for more familial turmoil with the “D”s? Who cares? Dick is a colossal weenie and Daniele probably can’t remember her boyfriend’s name.

Eric and Jessica shared their first kiss and my nausea hasn’t shown signs of fading in the least. Tonight we found out Eric isn’t cheating on some girl back home with Jessica. Whew! We did meet the ex-girlfriend, Cheryl, who admitted to being a little bit jealous. I can’t begin to understand any of this. At first I thought James Brown was right and it is a man’s world but Eric isn’t a man. I don’t even think he’s human. He’s some kind of well groomed rodent/reptile hybrid. The kind with asexual reproduction organs.


Amber and Daniele got to go on a field trip of cross promotion synergy to THE POWER OF TEN, Drew Carey’s new primetime CBS gameshow. I don’t want to spoil it but God decided Amber shouldn’t win more than a grand. And then He kicked her out of the BIG BROTHER house. When Julie asked Amber why she got evicted, Amber told Julie and her hair creature that “No one wants to sit next to me for the final two.” I believe this. Mostly I think it’s because no one wants her to sweat Zoloft or cry Lexapro on them.

And then the most head scratching moment of the two episodes: the HOH competition. Zach, Dick, Daniele and Eric had to transport “Tea” from one pot to another in three ounce cups across a fifty foot platform. Julie and her growling hair told us they would have to walk a total of seven miles to complete the competition. And then, because this wasn’t perverse yet, jets were turned on and the competitors were “showered” with a “golden” hued liquid combination of corn and baby oil.

BIG BROTHER’s segment concepts are clearly derived from pornography, only without the sex. I can’t begin to deconstruct that. What is going on? Who looks at porn and says, “If we got rid of the naked people, we would really have something!”

Either I’ve lost my functors, or I’ll never understand postmodernism. Next week a live double eviction!