"I sincerely wanted to go."

Rebecca

There were a few realisations in Big Brother, this week. For one, the show realised its new eviction format was a stinker. And, eventually, Rebecca realised she was probably about to be booted. Both did what they could, to try to reconstruct reality as it suited them to. One was probably a little more successful in that, the other. Sorry, Rebecca.

Of course, the irony of Rebecca and Brigette - a short lived duo, this week -  is that part of them disliked the other, immensely. In particular, Rebecca, cleverly sighting the only other girl in the house who posed a serious threat to her pornographic aspirations, took rather harshly to Brigette. But it's funny what being socially threatened does to a young girl with fake breasts.  In the end, the battle to usurp the crown was dismissed by the natural flocking of birds with kindred feathers, and Rebecca and Brigette - who both had shed tears and threatened to leave the house - did a splendid impersonation of Paris and Nicole (during the period where the two actually worked as a team, instead of rivals for the Whore's World Cup). But there can only be one winner of this slot, and it was never really going to be Rebecca, let's face it.

"Why do you always look down on yourself?"

Nathan

What a prophetic couple of days of blogging it turned out to be, when tonight’s episode saw the official conclusion of the Meltdown of The Princess™.The little rich girl did what she had, as she explained, initially warned she would do when faced with crisis: turn into a “Sooky La La”. But she conquered. When her environment didn’t bend to her, as she had known her environment to do, all her life, the Princess was forced with a great step in the Evolution De Brigette. Terri, the Aussie Mum™ du jour (a weathered, walking paradox of a woman who supports Pauline Hanson, but has shown nothing but acceptance to all the young people she has had to navigate), provided a very different parental influence, indeed, than the one Brigette was a product of.

"It's like anything - if you treat it scientifically, you can work out what the best options are for you..."

Carson

On Monday night, I made the terrible mistake of strapping myself in for the new vehicle designed to draw out the career of John Laws’ favourite pillow-biter, Carson Kressley, “How To Look Good Naked”. Perhaps, this should have been named, “What Looks Good On Paper, Doesn’t Always Look So Hot On TV”, because this was nothing more than another concept-driven load of dribble that served only to be mesmerising for the sheer deception at the core of its holier-than-thou façade. It pitched Carson, everybody’s favourite superficial homosexual from five years ago, as – oh, of course – the new figure of Girl Power in the fight against the social body-image crisis of Western women. Out he leaped, onto the streets of New York, proposing… wait for this… “A Perception Revolution”! Oh, darling, how dramatique!

"No, you have to be shallow..."

Rebecca Wilson

Well, with the ratings taking another hit, it looks like Big Brother 2008 has spent some time in front of a drawing board. There was certainly no miracle, tonight; but it was decidedly better television than we endured, last week (that wouldn't take a great deal, it should be noted). Big Mouth felt a tad more sure of itself than last week, also (nice to see Dyer absent); but this show will stay alive for no other reason than its "adult only" content, and in comparison to the show's earlier panel attempt (with the Doug Anthony Allstar), it's a fizzler (and, on top of that, in all fairness, tonight, it was completely overshadowed by the most action-filled primetime we've had in a while). And look what happened to that first attempt, all those years ago. What was it called, again? I don't remember. Enough said.

"It just goes to show - you shouldn't help people..."

Saxon

Sunday night's first "real" eviction is always an important episode for Big Brother. It generally assures a small spike in the ratings, as people tune in, out of curiosity, to see what the eviction action for the year is like. This gives them a great opportunity to win some viewers back to full-time viewing, and so last night was a big night with a lot of pressure on the 2008 series. Its lure was to be an even greater reason to tune in - this year was... here's that word, again... different. And it was, for all intents and purposes. But, sadly, it all went wrong, as the UFO Lover™ emerged amidst a suspense-absent mess.

The new format sees housemates left to vote the evictee out of the house, after Australia has, through default, put three housemates in the "danger zone". This did seem like a strange option, to begin with, considering it robbed the format of one of its prominent nights - nominations. What a bizarre gamble it would be, to do away with a component that had always managed to muster a small ratings spike (and it was small - but it was a spike, nonetheless). Whatever extra punch it gave the Sunday night eviction, it would have to be big enough to outdo the absence of the Monday nominations.

"I don't think you have the brain capacity to understand what I'm saying..."

Bianca

By Friday night, I was pretty much over Big Brother 2008 (maybe you noticed?). Over the weekend, I didn’t give a single thought to the show, and I didn’t come anywhere near this website. My life was infinitely more rewarding. But tonight, I had to return for this year’s first live eviction show, proceeded by a catch-up I dearly hoped would not allocate 90% of screentime to BB hotties in swimwear.

The thing is, it seemed many others were in the same boat – and that’s never a good thing for BB producers when The Eye starts reflecting mass public opinion – and forum boards (and my own inbox) were alight with unhappy customers who had finally started to wonder; “When is this season going to actually begin?”  I have discussed, over the past four days or so, that despite the moderate success of the Corey Worthington advertisement, the show had backed itself into a corner, and with ratings falling, something would have to be done. The tension in the Big Brother camp, by Friday, was visible, most of all, by its sudden PR onslaught; sending Brunero out to bat against the anti-Corey sentiment, as it finally dawned upon the men in nice suits that, uh-oh, maybe Corey Worthington was going to benefit a little more than the actual show was (that’s what you get for dealing with Max Markson, quite frankly). Poor little Big Brother – the rather obvious thing to do was to turn up the switch on the propagandametre of anti-Corey sentiment. It’s there, in the house, after all – it’s not a difficult option to take. But it’s stuck in a co-branding deal that depends very much on Corey’s Redemption™ - a deal that it isn’t going to get out of, lightly. And so, what to do, when there are actually people who are not stupid enough to fall in love with Corey Worthington?

"Oh, that's hot!"

Brigette

Oh, dear. Never mind that quite a lot was said, last night, involving the housemates' developing interdynamics. No, we are not going to be let in on Bianca's admission that she only said she was happy to have Corey in the house, because she didn't want to play into group expectations (and that she is still thoroughly unimpressed he's there). Instead, we are going to watch the BB hotties strut their stuff. And we're not going to see a hell of a lot more.

Interesting, today, was Tim Brunero's press interviews. Tim has been sent out by his new employer - Big Brother - to help with the counter PR, predominantly against the Corey critics. Firstly, he used his own column in Livenews to try to associate the issue of Corey being in Big Brother with left-wing politics. No, really, he did. If you agree that Corey is a case of exploitation, you're disrespecting the "children overboard"! And that's why he's there, of course (partly) - to validate the show with the illusion of intellect and politiics. He's the smart, political one, didn't you know? I'm going to have a chat about Big Brother demography and political ideology, very soon, because it's something BB has used, this year (remember the Howard promos?), and it's an interesting angle. The show looks like it's clearly reaching its first "sag", so I'm going to use that time to discuss other issues, rather than worry about blogging beauty pageants, and the like. So, I'll leave the discussion of politics (including how Brunero functions for this year's rebranding), for later. But keep this in mind - we'll return to this example.