The first "reality" tv shows I was aware of, years ago, were Survivor and Big Brother. I believe they were the two that started the fad. Big Brother started in Europe and expanded into America.
Big Brother has evolved into something weird. There are so many restrictions on the players. One of the oddest is the rule against singing. One of the most annoying is the horrible diet they must eat. Most of them spend half their time, or more, on some garbage called slop, purposely designed to be offensive. It is apparently a combination of oatmeal and some very offensive tasting glop. Something out of the Dickens novel Oliver Twist, but much more offensive.
They can't watch tv. They can't have any communication with friends or relatives. They are in the house for something like 3 months. That's a long time. They can be woken up at any hour to do anything. They have pretty much nothing to do all day. It's a weird form of incarceration. And no sex, no privacy. They could have sex if they choose to, but it will be broadcast live to millions. They are probably too inhibited to even give themselves some release.
It seems that every few minutes one of them is being scolded or ordered around by an unseen voice. He will snap at them No singing! Or No talking about what was said in the Diary Room. Or they will be ordered to adjust their microphone. That annoying voice is constantly badgering someone. You don't hear it in the edited prime time broadcasts on CBS but you don't stop hearing it on the late night broadcasts, live, on Showtime.
The cast is usually pretty. They'll have a few male bodybuilders, guys who look like models. The girls are pretty much all model material or close to it. There's plenty of low cut tops to ogle. Boobs boobs boobs.
I'll copy and paste info on this year's cast.
The 13 contestants of "Big Brother 10" are:
Michelle Costa, 28, real estate agent from Cumberland, R.I.
Steven Daigle, 35, geographic consultant from Dallas
April Dowling, 30, finance manager from Higley, Ariz.
Robert "Memphis" Garrett, 25, mixologist and party planner from Los Angeles
Dan Gheesling, 24, high school teacher from Dearborn, Mich.
Jessie Godderz, 22, bodybuilder from Huntington Beach, Calif.
Brian Hart, 27, telecommunication account manager from San Francisco
Gerry MacDonald, 75, retired marketing executive from Magnolia, Texas
Renny Martyn, 53, hair salon owner from Metairie, La.
Bryan Ollie, 27, marketing sales representative from Bloomington, Minn.
Keesha Smith, 29, waitress from Burbank, Calif.
Angie Swindell, 29, pharmaceutical sales representative from Orlando, Fla.
Libra Thompson, 31, human resources representative from Spring, Texas
Michele is the Portuguese girl with the angular face and the very curly dyed hair. She talks like a tomboy and comes from a family with lots of brothers. I find her not so attractive, kind of masculine looking, and I never liked curly hair anyway. She sounds a bit like a truck driver but seems like a good kid.
Steven is the gay guy. He was voted out pretty quick. There's always a gay guy on this show. He kept it under his hat for the most part and wasn't flamboyant about it. He had a colorless personality.
April is a blonde who thinks she's gorgeous but I don't see it. She looks kind of plain and tired to me. She has attracted a lot of hatred from other girls. She is the only girl in the house with a romance going on. She's always in the arms of the only black guy on the show, which makes for a lot of contrast in skin color in one bed. I truly don't understand why she is so vain about her appearance, I just don't see it.
Memphis is a pretty-boy type, eye candy for girls. He keeps a low profile and has a boring personality. He blew up out of all proportion when Gerry called him a womanizer. It was like he had been called a filthy son of a bitch who fucks his own mother. I didn't know that "womanizer" was such an intolerable thing, but it sure was to Memphis. It looked like he wanted to beat the crap out of the old man.
Dan is a high school football coach with an angular face, seems very middle American. Every insult rolls off his back like water off a duck's back. Gerry called him a Judas. Lord does Gerry hate Dan. Dan couldn't care less. He just doesn't react. It's not that he's holding himself back, keeping a lid on his temper. He has no temper. He's happy. He once said that he'd give up his religion rather than tell a lie, and then he proceeded to tell some lies. That's why Gerry hates him, because Dan came on as this holier than thou guy, and then betrayed it. Dan just floats through it all, happy as a clam.
Jessie is a musclehead. A dumb California musclehead. He clashed openly with a number of people immediately. He made enemies from the start. Immature dumb jock. They threw him out of the house after a few weeks. Michelle is still angry about that, and wants to evict everyone who kicked Jessie out. Michelle had a crush on the big dope.
Brian was the mover and shaker and puppet master of the group. He took over immediately, telling people what to do, who to evict. He made promises to most of them, forming alliances left and right. You'd think he was about to go very far in the game, but he didn't count on April and Ollie's romance, which resulted in April leading Ollie around by the nose, which in turn somehow resulted in Ollie betraying his alliance with Brian and getting Brian to be the first person evicted. When Brian was the first to be evicted it was like a chess game where you immediately take the most powerful piece off the board. He was an annoying prick anyway.
Gerry is a 75 year old man, the oldest to ever make the cast of Big Brother. He is always wearing a Marine shirt or some other reference to being a Marine. He's a crusty old guy. He forms pretty intense hatreds. He hates Dan, after really liking him. Dan used to tell him Bible stories. Then Dan lied to him, so that's a betrayal, and Gerry seems to want to dismember Dan. Gerry hates Memphis too, because Memphis blew up at him over the "womanizer" comments Gerry made about him. Gerry is an expert pool player, putting the youngsters to shame.
Renny is the mom of the house. She is a very pretty mom. Turn the clock back 30 years for her, and Renny is the most beautiful girl in the house. Now she's just mom. She's from the New Orleans area and has a colorful personality and accent. I think she's a lot prettier than 'Miss Thang' April.
Ollie is the black guy who is always making out with white little April. He is a churchgoer. He stays under the radar, never lets much personality show, doesn't seem to have much in the first place. He was never nominated for eviction. It's like he isn't even in the game. All he does is agree with April, and agree with everyone else. He had a funny scene when there was a crow cawing at people and it terrified Ollie. He's afraid of birds. He ran away. April smirked at that. To put it in perspective, Ollie is loaded with muscles.
Keesha is the beauty of the house. She's the one Playboy would want as a centerfold. She has that Nordic look. She makes some odd facial expressions, but they just don't have to photograph that. She's been compared to Bridget Bardot. Blonde blue eyed bombshell. One of her t shirts says Keesh Fest on it. I guess that's like Oktoberfest, but with Keesha. When she gets mad she curses a blue streak. She's pretty funny. Half the time when you look at her she has an odd expression on her face and you would think she isn't pretty at all. She clashed with Jessie something awful, and totally stood up to the big musclehead. She has often cursed a blue streak about April, the other blue eyed blonde. It's amazing to me that April once said that Keesha is jealous of her because she's prettier than Keesha. April, what planet are you on? You're a 6 and Keesha is a 10.
Angie is the girl I found most attractive in the house. She has an exotic look to her, and looks intelligent and kind of quiet. She looks bewitching. You can just melt for her. She made a mistake early in the game. She was nice and safe, and everyone in the house was all set to evict puppetmaster Brian, and then Angie decided she kind of liked Brian after all, and tried to sway the house to keep him. That put her on thin ice, and she was soon evicted herself because of it. It was interpreted as a betrayal of the group.
Libra is not a Libra. Why would anyone name a baby Libra if the baby is a Leo? Libra is a married black woman with babies back home. Her husband is white. She's intelligent and very outspoken. She became the puppet master of the group, influencing everyone in their choice of who to evict. When the house polarized into two groups, with Libra as leader of one of them, she became a target when the opposing group came into power, and she was evicted.
With Angie gone, I suppose I'll root for Renny to win first prize, a half million dollars.
