BB in Meltdown??

That's live telly for you!

Peter Briffa agrees with you.

*BB's Day of Gloom

*This series really is going out with a whimper.

*BB is like a referee who is out of his depth losing control of a big game.

In the long and distinguished history of Big Brother, yesterday was one of its darkest.

To think it all started so promisingly, when Keeva flounced out! It was predictable, so predictable indeed, that even I predicted it, but finally, after what seems like years but was in actual fact less than six weeks of sour-faced bitching, the miserable, if beautiful, Irish lady has left the building!

It happened at one o'clock, just in time to help everybody enjoy a nice lunch.

   

In contrast to Shabby, Keeva did get to say her goodbyes before her exit, and so a dull grey cloud of gloom has been lifted from the BB house. Only JJ seemed upset, disappearing off to the nest for a cry.
And then it all started to go wrong. In the first place, this messed the nominations up something royal. It was going to be Keev versus Rachel. When Leo Sayer walked out on the morning of the eviction it went on ahead, but then there were more than two up. Rachel on her own wouldn't really be fair, would it?

So BB did the next best thing, and put the next least popular housemates according to the nominations up. Only it didn't. If it had that would have meant JJ would have been up, along with Corin and Rachel.

But we can't have the golden boy up now, can we? That would spoil the JJ/Josie lurve that BB appears to believe is engrossing the nation. So Keeley got done for discussing nominations. By telling Steve that she would never nominate him, her votes, one of which was for JJ, got binned.

No banning of the hot water for the housemates this time. This time BB has got serious. Clearly, BB were fed up with her. She'd had the conversation eighteen hours earlier and been allowed to nominate. Nothing had been made of it. Then Keeva decides to quit, and BB decides it better punish her, after all.

Which means it's Rachel versus Corin versus Keeley.

How fair is that?

But that's just the beginning of BB's Day of Gloom. Then came the Save and Replace Task fiasco. It's taken eleven seasons for BB to change the nominations process, and it seems that no one has tested this week's, a task which involved our plucky threesome dressing as spiders and trying to climb out of a bath. Keeley tried, fell, twisted her ankle, and had to be carted off to the diary room. She's now in hospital.

S & R therefore got cancelled, and so it really is Rachel versus Corin versus Keeley. But that's assuming Keeley returns. She hasn't got much incentive, given that she's 33-1 to win. And she knows she's not being helped by BB. Latecomers have it bad at the best of times, and that her nominations got cancelled after she made them will have told her how little she is valued. Is there any point in returning, with your foot wrapped in plaster, just so that you can have the honour of hobbling out of the Big Brother House to a chorus of boos and a one minute interview with Davina in which she gets told how bossy she is and asked if she really fancied Steve?

Also, being a latecomer, Keeley will have watched the show and realised how little the interviews mean now. Instead of being the highpoint of the week, and the bit where we get to feel we have seen the "real housemate" beneath the caricature that was broadcast, we're usually little the wiser. They're too short, too rushed, and the evictee has little time to express themselves.


Keeley will know this. And on this Friday, it will surely be shorter than ever as Keeva will presumably also get interviewed. Shabby got hers, didn't she?

This series really is going out with a whimper. There is a reason institutions have rules, and there is a reason that the best run institutions keep to them. It's totalitarian regimes that have rules and only apply them selectively.

But BB is like a referee who is out of his depth losing control of a big game. There have been lots of niggles from the start, and he hasn't shown enough yellow cards. Then, in the final minute, there's a late tackle, and the ref has had enough so he shows a red. The tackle was no worse than the one that opened the game, but the ref has simply had enough.

Keeley's punishment, compared to what happened to Ben and the like, is ridiculously over the top and has everything to do with BB's convenience and little to do with justice.

And so we're lumbered with JJ for another week.

I have two more observations: before the S & R both Rachel and Keeley had said that if they won they'd pick JJ as their replacements. Why they are allowed to discuss this, but not allowed to discuss nominations is a bizarre anomaly. In any case, its another rule that isn't always applied. Shabby got punished for doing precisely the same thing.

And Caoimhe's departure may well not have happened if S & R didn't exist. If she knew she was up against Rachel, she'd have taken it on the chin. But having to go through a performance of trying to win it, and therefore staying another week would have lost her what little remained of her moral high ground. And if she hadn't tried, she would have known that would surely have sealed it for her on Friday.

So we can chalk that one up to BB as well.

Great article. Who is he?

The Kitten: ...Peter Briffa http://bit.ly/cL3YKv

Quote from phil edgar jones on ds what feckin planet is he on?
Hello all you lovely whinge bags.
Just to remind you:
It's a show with real people in it. Real people are chaotic - so some things in the show are planned, but sometimes you are reacting to events. The team here handled things really well over the past few days. Of course we don't want people to leave the show but it sometimes happens.

I think this is a good series with great housemates - really interesting people whose relationships ebb and flow. I also think the tasks have been really good and that our task team are doing a brilliant job averaging 2 tasks a day.

Topper Robson Joined: 26 Jan 09
Replies: 421 21 Jul 10 16:52   
Quote from phil edgar jones on ds what feckin planet is he on?
Hello all you lovely whinge bags.
Just to remind you:
It's a show with real people in it. Real people are chaotic - so some things in the show are planned, but sometimes you are reacting to events. The team here handled things really well over the past few days. Of course we don't want people to leave the show but it sometimes happens.

I think this is a good series with great housemates - really interesting people whose relationships ebb and flow. I also think the tasks have been really good and that our task team are doing a brilliant job averaging 2 tasks a day. 


Sounds like a man with an axe over his head.