Ashalea: When I say she was robbed… mean that shit. She is easily one of if not my favourite housemate this season. It’s honestly crazy how her archetype would be the one I would say producers try to replicate in later seasons (E.g. Christie, Brigitte, Skye, Tilly). But aside from that she was the main person who kept the entertainment in the house. The last two weeks without her really did show and her presence was for sure a loss. To put it quite simple, what I adore about Ashalea is that she’s just herself. There was no putting on an image that the public may like, I mean surely there’s no one who can pull some of the iconic shit she said and make it anywhere near natural as she presented it. The dialogue with Merlin will always go down as something so memorable about this season, “naive means to be a bit clueless”… “I LOVE THAT MOVIE”. Like hello??? Her thinking Big Brother controls the sun coming up and down and quite literally the physics of astronomy. You can’t tell me someone can just preemptively come up with that on the spot. She ultimately was the comedic relief in the house in the most natural of ways.
With all this being said, there were a lot of times in which she was the brunt of some of the flack her other housemates gave her. They complained and nominated her various times for “not doing much around the house” or “not cleaning up and doing housework” when they’re the exact people who let her just get away with it. They expected her to carry her own weight but under the same breath basically treat her like an overgrown child and there I say… infantilise her quite a bit. Like Paul, I did see a strong character in her especially with the whole Monica/Ryan fiasco and came back with some savage one-liners.
Besides Trevor, I personally believe she was a huge contender in winning the entire show. Was Australia ready for another female winner… even someone as young as Ashalea? I don’t know, but there I say she was prematurely evicted and was that to the effect of Bree coming in? Again I can’t say and I surely hope not because I adore both of them and would’ve love to see them both in the final week together. I often questioned why Gretel kept referring to her as a ‘genius’, but I think I figured why. She quickly picked up on the fact that she was fan favourite and towards the end I think it had actually sunken in that she could very well be the one to win the million dollars. Her shock after being evicted was truly sad experience and she deserved more.
Catherine: She is mostly a warm presence, she doesn’t exactly add much entertainment or too much dynamic. But overall a nice person to have in the house. Her main storyline in the first few weeks were about her being a mother and missing her children. She is the first parent so to speak experience that in BBAU and it does open for more budding storylines in that regard. But nonetheless, she is someone who opens up and learns to just have fun. Catherine was just really good at positioning herself in the house and the relationship with the public. I don’t think she’s someone who was going to win, but I also didn’t think she would be an early boot either. How she survived to 5th place does somewhat surprise me. Especially with already established fan-favourites such as; Wesley and Ashalea. I really thought she would’ve gone 2nd to Monica in the double.
Ryan: For someone who in general knowledge is aware of his existence as “Fitzy” who’s a radio host and mainly Australian media personality. It was rather fascinating seeing him and where he started, much similar to Chrissie. I do like him and who he is now as I do tune in and listen to the ‘Fitzy & Wippa’ podcast radio on Spotify sometimes. But aside from that, him on the show was definitely a whole different person and to preface, yes this of course was 18 years ago. However, the things he preached and his rather habitual behaviours were off-putting and disappointing. Much like Blair his go-to storyline was the fact that he never lived with women, in Ryan’s case it was aside from his Mum and Sister. That seemed for the most part to be used as a crutch for the terrible way he often treated the women in the house. Usually I would hear about the footy jock archetype; the typically straight guy who is almost misogynistic by default, has a lot of generally outdated views about society as a whole. But it was slightly bizarre how I in many ways saw that play out in Ryan.
The whole Miriam situation was hard to watch. He’s a major plot point in the blatant transphobia spoken about behind her back whilst being aired out to the entire country. I mean calling a trans woman a ‘bloke’ is just not right on any ground, it doesn’t matter if this was now or 2004. It’s still so wrong. Even if he knew about the show “There’s Something About Miriam”, going around the house referring to her as a he just perpetuates transphobic behaviour to be normalised. About the MLS situation, I can understand the merit of his friends producing shirts to make profit. That being $65,000 to be exact. For the times that Ryan was nominated, do I believe it falls under ‘vote tampering’? Maybe, but what I do know is that Ryan basically was the one who ‘promoted’ the brand and they blew all the money on alcohol and other things and left him nothing.
I will say overall, I did like Ryan when he wasn’t offending women and being an asshole. But I do believe he’s grown a lot from his past and do very much like him now.
Paul: From a nostalgic standpoint of the general public, he was basically vilified as ‘trashy’ or someone people loved to loathe. Being someone who never watched the season in its entirety and only had seen the clip of him and Merlin, I just naturally agreed and thought “yeah he’s pretty shit”. But with that being said, I was truly faulted in more ways than one. I never really understood why Paul was the way he was, but I think now that I’m much older and an adult myself. Paul is someone who delivers many layers of his personality. I truly 100% believe him when he said that he was there for the experience. It’d be safe to say if Paul wasn’t on the season or he was to be an early boot as kinda expected in the season’s early days. It definitely would’ve been a whole completely different show. A show with less entertainment to be exact.
I think it’s very clear that Paul expected that he would only be in the house for roughly a month if that. Because he definitely came in with a lot of heat. He quickly became someone who knew how to get under people’s skin and ‘stir the pot’. Until the fight happened. Now, I’ve already mentioned this writing about Merlin. But I will say that I agree on both sides. They both make points but again it was a case of logic vs. emotion. Which just doesn’t particularly end too well in most cases. I understand the whole legality aspect of being an Australian, but I also understand how living in Australia you tend to feel like you are. I guess the only problem was the way he went about it and for a long time it was a jarring situation to watch. I will say, it did a massive imprint on the history of BBAU and it’s something that will always be remembered.
After all this, he does become regular nominee and somehow survives many evictions with each week gaining a fan base behind him. He’s mostly the leader for the boys and does lose Terri not long after. He also does become the centre of attention when he doesn’t want to participate in the watermelon orb task (he eventually does). I can imagine that it would be frustrating especially by that point they hadn’t lost a task. But as a viewer it is thoroughly entertaining and again purely did it for the experience. Just after he finds out about the secret being the winner takes a million dollars. He does tend to quiet down a bit and that does become a topic of conversation about how he changed, but I think at that point he was comfortable with the people remaining and thought “maybe I could win this”.
Overall, Paul is someone who I massively respect. He handled the Miriam situation so well by just simply asking her instead of making it this huge secrecy. Him wanting to show the Aboriginal flag on the float is really warming especially as someone who is Indigenous myself. Also, I loved that he was upfront and just respected that Miriam was trans and shut down the ‘blokey’ conversation about two women kissing is different to two men. He was just like ‘yeah whatever, I have the same reaction and it’s fine’. But really, Paul is someone who I’m rather surprised isn’t on the cast for BB2022. He would actually thrive massively just because of the pot-stirring, and intelligence.
Haha.
