Big Brother 2 tried to avoid the boredom of the first series. But in doing so, what kind of trash have they brought into our living rooms? Already it seems that Jerry Springer's ghost haunts this household of horror.
Big Brother 2 is now well under way and what have we discovered about the twelve interesting and hip people who are currently locked in a camera-filled house in Hollywood, California?
Here's a small taste of what we've learned in five days' time: One player (Mike) loves talking in rap (he must think in rap too) and used to live in a pornographic movie studio. The outrage he expressed at finding porno actors doing it in his bed seemed less than genuine. Another (Will) claims to be a doctor but doesn't know his own blood type. One more houseguest (Autumn) stayed in bed all day claiming to be sick of the backstabbing and lying (what was she thinking of?) and threatened to walk out, but then changed her mind. What a surprise. One houseguest used racial epithets (nothing new there: the last person to do that on Big Brother won $500,000) behind a minority's back. And most of the houseguests cannot have a conversation without using the F-word.
No, Jerry Springer is nowhere to be found, but his ghost is haunting the earth-toned furniture. The new director of the show, someone by the name of Shapiro, could have taken lessons from him. Besides the seedy revelations, the houseguests are running around trying to understand the opaque rules of a game show that seems different every day. The challenges are so complicated that there's no time to even show a real conversation on the one-hour shows which air Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
One dude is a simpering muscle man who never wears his shirt and everyone seems to think he is straight (Hardy) while the admittedly gay character named Bunky never wears a shirt either but he could be taken for a carpet. He's so hirsute and a prime candidate to be a posterchild for electrolysis. In fact, none of the guys seem to wear shirts, are they monkeys? You'd think so by the way they have been acting. While BB1 never showed guys just being guys in the locker room, these guys can't be anything but boors. The doctor entertained everyone by telling frat party stories heavily laden with upchucking detail and the humiliation of overweight sorority girls. Justin, Will and Mike decide they are going to try to get Shannon (who brought 30 bikinis with her) for a sex party in the storage room with all three of them. They talk at length about who they are going to kick out of the house because they aren't 'cool.' Get real, ape men! You are not too cool yourselves.
What was wrong with the show last year? Apparently, all the people were normal, that's what was wrong! So the producers decided to drag a magnet through the gutter and see what kind of tinny garbage came up along with it. The garbage they found could keep talk shows going for weeks. I'm just waiting for a blubbery fat man to burst up through the hot tub bubbles and spray whip cream all over himself and have his sister's husband lick it off. Yes, it's almost that bad. At this rate, the next Big Brother will be populated with six people weighing 500 lbs each and six people who just got out of jail. Fun!
The one guy over 35 looks like a reject from the local golf club whose raspy tobacco voice will not quit. It's always in the background, like the sound of elevator gears in your apartment building or a disquieting metallic pinging sound in the motor of your car. All this, and he has nothing to say except what kind of comedy show host he would be, what his sexual endowment is like, how horribly immoral America has become, and all manner of other idiotic rubbish which bears no repeating. The clouds of smoke wafting above the Big Brother house these days reveal the moribund truth: this is trash America: white, black, or in between, it is trash pure and simple.
Nothing rises above this garbage level. No, there is no representative from the United Nations this year. There are no uplifting stories of the struggle against cancer and overcoming handicaps. There are no genuine intelligent criticisms of society's foibles as in the insightful analysis of the drug industry which was carefully excised from last year's television show but enjoyed by the internet live feed audience. There is no angry black man challenging the white houseguests patience and notions. We were idiotic last year not to realize that all these things -- genuine reality stuff, it must be said -- were a television aberration. Reality TV? Isn't that an oxymoron or something? The producers saw the light and gave us the average mediocre crap that is on every other channel. Bravo!
O'Sean Aeighlans currently lives in Boston where he works in the financial services industry.
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