Author: Brekkie

Censorship and a failure to communicate with their viewers – customers in the case of premium subscribers – on Tuesday once again resulted in another scandal brewing, this one all around Kate.

The speculation was inevitable and alot of people, including myself, had alot of things to say – though I never for one minute believed that the producers would have set that task if they knew of Kate’s situation, instead focusing my concerns on the failures of the audition process to identify the most traumatic experience in Kate’s life.

However, even though we’ve known for years they have no talent, it now appears that my faith the producers at least had some integrity was completely misguided – and the producers set the task knowing full well about Kate’s tragic loss.

INCOMPETENCE

Alot of the critics have come out saying this is Ten exploiting Kate for ratings gain – but they are giving the producers far too much credit. This is nothing short of incompetence – and for once there is nobody producers can blame other than themselves. Their excuse that Kate told them that she had “dealt with it fully” is pathetic – yes, you may move on – but anyone who has ever lost anyone knows that you can never deal with such a tragedy “fully”.

Someone made probably the biggest mistake in Australian Big Brother history this week – and someone needs to pay the price.

WHITE ROOM

Let’s be honest – I shouldn’t be surprised at their incompetence. As soon as the White Room was unveiled, we knew Big Brother would be the first to crack. However, I still seriously thought they’d have more patience than just nine days.

The first elimination from the White Room was inevitable after a week, and that itself was done well, though surely Cruz should have realised there was far more than $750 to be earned from Big Brother.

Let’s praise Big Brother for one minute for not covering up the threatened mass walkout that occured on Monday – but why did they stop it. It’s not as if they’re short of housemates, so if they were all willing to walk, Big Brother should have let them. It would have been a far more interesting conclusion than the scheduled one on Wednesday – and would probably have been one of the defining moments of the season.

However, the Wednesday night special we got instead has been widely branded the worst special in the show’s history though (considering some we had last year, that says alot). The White Room was supposed to be about endurance and willpower – but it’s conclusion came down to popularity, with the eventual winner decided in the same way as in virtually every other intruder special in the show’s history – though not without a pointless (recycled) showpiece task first to fill a bit of time.

The White Room had the potential to be one of the best ever twists in Australian Big Brother history – but once again the producers have screwed it up and it’ll be pretty much forgotten by the end of the series. The only thing it did do was prove to us once again that the producers really haven’t learned from their mistakes.

MR X

Can Big Brother just finally clear up the situation with Billy – is he a housemate or not, and if not, just boot him out now he’s served his purpose.   There really is no reason to keep it a mystery.

The mods and admin here are all pretty used to being criticised for being critical of Big Brother Australia – and it’s something I at least have seen across the forums and in chat over the first week. I can only speak for myself but I agree with the view that’s it been a pretty decent first week of the show – but the problem is there are no signs that they can sustain it beyond that.

Both BB05 and BB06 got off to a pretty promising start – but within a few weeks began to fall apart – and I’ve seen no reason to believe BB07 will be any different – and actually, in the last couple of days we’ve learnt BB just hasn’t learned from their mistakes.

We begin with relationship twist #3. Although I agree with the view this is the best of the relationship twists, I can’t help but feel the show didn’t need it. Although they could still do better, the line up of housemates alone should be enough to sustain interest during the first week, but obviously producers feel we need to throw in the Hayley and Andrew storyline to keep things flowing – which ultimately causes two problems:

Firstly, week one isn’t Big Brother – it’s the Hayley and Andrew show and virtually every storyline is centered around them. Secondly, if it’s the focus of the show in week one, once the relationship is revealed, the show loses it’s focus – and we just end up with another couple in the house. Think JamKat, but with one year of practice!

The second main twist was voting in two housemates – a simple, but effective twist – though it would have been more effective if the launch had been live so the chosen HMs could have entered at the end of the evening.

However, what was the point in voting in Susannah and Zoran when they are little more than extras in the daily show. Really, we saw more of them in their opening VTs than we have in the last week.

The third twist is the good one – the White Room. It’s easily the best of the three twists – but apart from split-second glimpses, hasn’t even featured in the daily show.

Now, we bought it up when it was revealed that the twist had already been part of the Norway-Sweden version of Big Brother – but that in itself isn’t an issue as long as no one is claiming it’s a “World First”. However, it is an interesting comparison and with the challenge being “last man standing”, it was worthy to note that in the Scandinavian equivalent there were still three remaining after 30 days, resulting in Big Brother having to set a competition to determine the winner.

This is where we hold the producers to account – not only Gretel claiming BB had no idea that the housemates would last so long after just six days, but more importantly Big Brother giving up on probably their best twist of the series after just a week.

That is why I have a problem with Big Brother Australia “borrowing” ideas from other versions around the world – like the revenge room and the twins twist before it, they never follow through the idea to it’s full potential and instead rush them through to an unsatisfactory conclusion, rather than fully embracing them and adding their own twists to the twists to make something truly original.

Enough of the negative, time to say something positive – I love the twists to nominations this year.

At last there seems to be a real reward to winning FNL – allowing the winner and their chosen partner to discuss nominations gives them a tactical edge, though as it’s only two housemates, it’s unlikely it’ll ever seriously affect the nominations result.

I especially love though that they’ve finally dropped the three point twist in favour of something more substantial. Allowing the FNL winner to both save a nominee and name the relationship will not only cause friction amongst enemies when a new nominee is chosen, but ultimately will create friction amongst friends if one of them is chosen over another to be saved from facing eviction.

Finally, the BBUK rumour mill is beginning to swing into action at the moment, though we’re still at the stage where you can pretty much consider all rumours to be untrue – the only thing confirmed is that Russell Brand has left Big Mouth after three years, while psychological show Big Brain has been axed after just a year.

C4 are expected to release some information about BB8 within the next week or so, with at least the new logo and the start date, believed to be around 24th May, set to be confirmed. To keep up to date, check out the International Forum.

We are just hours away from the housemates moving in now – 10 we believe, with a further 2 selected from 8 candidates moving in on Monday – and actually since my last blog, Big Brother has begun to win me over.

The whole environmental thing has been a selling point from the start of BB07 – and that’s a good place to start.  Any responsible organisation – or household for that matter – should now be taking their environmental impact seriously, so it’s good to see the show making the effort into doing something more positive – and perhaps influencing a few viewers along the way.

The best thing about it is it’s nothing more than going back to the shows’ roots.  Limited water supply, vegetable gardens and a back to basics existence were all core to the Big Brother format when it launched across the world – but as each series passes elements of this have been lost along the way, so perhaps taking a step back is exactly what the show needs.

A few on the forums have been concerned that being environmentally friendly won’t be entertaining – but in reality, it’s not really going to feature much in the show.   With Adults Only gone, so are the shower scenes – while they’ll be no more footage of housemates recycling than there was of them throwing out the rubbish.  It’ll just be a part of their daily routine.

The other thing we’ve heard this week which I’m liking is the news they’ll be “launching” with no prizes and that they’ll be no cars for the evictees.  It’s widely expected that as “winning is everything”, Friday Night Live will be used to build up a jackpot for the eventual winner – something we’d assumed was the reason for it’s existence when it launched back in 2005.  

There is also a suggestion that though the eviction prizes are being cut, they may instead be available to be won by the housemates while they are in the house.  Again, this is something I’ve been suggesting for a couple of seasons (it never made sense you get prizes for being evicted!) – but I do hope their green promises aren’t forgotten – cars and flights aren’t exactly known for being environmentally friendly.

The other main rumour is Mr X – and this is the one that concerns me, though perhaps judgement should be reserved until we actually know what it is!

The season hasn’t even started yet but it feels like we’ve already pretty much given up on it and consigned it to the rubbish heap – so for my first blog of BB07 I thought I’d concentrate on the positives.

Then I realised there actually wasn’t any!

Well, except for this place I suppose – Behind Big Brother is probably the best of the best wnen it comes to Big Brother fan sites – but that’s probably because we judge the show for what it really is rather than having an undying loyalty to Gretel and co.

But as for the show itself – well, there must be a serious problem if I can’t think of a single positive to take away from it.

My expectations couldn’t be any lower this year – especially having seen the same tired old promo campaign wheeled out for about the fourth year running.

Even if BB07 gets off to a great start, based on the last few years I wouldn’t expect it to last past the first month before we settle into the same predictable routine.

And if that’s the case – well, it might be best all round it gets off to a bad start so we can see from the beginning what we really should be expecting – promises or no promises.

Brekkie Boy.

P.S. If anyone can comes up with any positives, please join the discussion on the forum