Big Brother 15: Week 6- Armageddon Off My Screen

Big Brother 15: Week 6 Assessment- Armageddon Off My Screen

Are you still watching everyone? Can’t blame you if you aren’t.

We have survived Armageddon week in Big Brother 15 this week, and by the rate things have been going I could have done with sending most of the house and the production team up on a rocket to try and blow up an asteroid, as a combination of their own behaviours had led to more frustration and annoyance then anyone watching a television show should be victim to. This week in many ways can be considered symbolic of Big Brother 15 on a whole; the drama and the scandal certainly has been plentiful, you can’t exactly call a week where four contestants have gone as being dull after all, but the whole scenario has been tainted with such a degree of disappointment, contrivance and arrogance from the production team that the entire situation has left a very sour taste in my mouth and left me at times questioning the value of watching the show, a sad thing for a long-term fan such as myself to say, but an opinion which has begun to be uttered more vocally by many die-hard fans within the community.

I will begin by addressing the key factor which links a lot of the reasons for this downturn in series perception, namely the Armageddon twist. We have become used to the fact that Channel 5 are some of the masters of advertising hyperbole, often making ridiculous exaggerations over house twists and casting decisions which ultimately just leave the viewer greatly under whelmed, and in my view it is the Armageddon twist which symbolises this more so then anything, turning what was hyped to us as one of the most explosive weeks in Big Brother history into nothing more then a glorified advertising campaign for the new Planet of the Apes film, something which can only be redeemed by the fact that the ‘Apes together strong’ motif continually uttered during the adverts is a perfect anecdote for Helen’s side of the house. Everything about the setup seemed not only underwhelming compared to the speculation which the show had created for itself but at the same time it also led to a degree of desperation and contrivance from the producers to make up for the fact that their hysteria failed to live up to expectations, the casting promises of boyfriends and enemies of housemates for example was replaced instead by three of the most tedious contestants that the show has had, not so much in them being particularly dull people but in that they all represented character types which have by now just become stale in the channel 5 era.

This is most clearly represented in my view by Bianca’s short stay in the house this week, from the view of production I do understand the reasons why Bianca was cast on paper, she was confrontational, obnoxious and was certainly going to ruffle some feathers in the show, but everything about her was done with such an air of desperation and contrivance on her part that any sort of benefit she did bring to the show was automatically nullified, I see her eviction this week, notably in a vote to save designed specifically to save characters such as herself, as an representation of the publics tiredness of the increasing desperation of Big Brother housemates as much as a protest against Bianca herself as a person, although that in itself is something that would require a completely separate article to itself. In terms of the other new housemates however there is a similar air of been there, done that with the characters chosen. Pav seems pleasant enough, and it is refreshing to have another Sikh housemate represented in the show (joining Siavash in that regard) but there is very little else about him which stands out as interesting and original, we’ve seen so many other male housemates obnoxiously state their intelligence and how they will be able to manipulate the house only to slip into a sea of dreariness and fail to live up to their expectations, and Pav is no different in this regard, he certainly talked the talk with alluding to the prospect of nominating Stephen this week, but when push came to shove he bottled out and settled for people-pleasing, a role which is all he’ll succeed in as a housemate. Meanwhile the casting of Zoe is just plain bizarre for me on so many levels, yes she is bubbly enough and a refreshing change from the innate negativity from the rest of the house, but I can’t honestly fathom the reasons why she is there in the first place, I know that the line between Celebrity and Civilian versions of Big Brother has become increasingly blurred since Channel 5 took over, but in my view Zoe is justified enough to lock herself into any celebrity version, and added to that I also perplexed because I don’t on paper see much way which she is going to progress the show’s storyline forward, even with Bianca as much as I disliked her I knew she would serve a purpose for the show in a way which right now I’m struggling to see with Zoe, I certainly think she will do well, maybe even win if the cards fall into place, but it is certainly a strange call her casting.

But now we get to the stuff which had everyone wound up this week, and I mean really wound up. I know Big Brother fans on the whole have a tendency to go over-the-top with many of their grievances with the show, but in this situation I will whole-heartedly agree with them about everything. This week has been a mess of twists and obnoxious production behaviour all designed to orchestrate and demean Danielle and to orchestrate her departure from the show, the desperation from production to do so being one of petulance and immaturity which should be well below a supposedly responsible broadcaster such as Channel 5. I understand that Danielle did have a lot of baggage coming into the show that the production team would have disliked, especially in her presentation of herself as a prudish figure in complete contrast with that, but her treatment in the show drifted into victimisation, and I felt the way that the show went so gung-ho on her was very unsettling. But the thing was though as a viewer I liked her a housemate, yes she was contrived and as false as they come but at the same time she was so bad at attempting to keep up her good catholic girl charade that I found her entertaining with it, she served her purpose in the show as comedy value and to be honest I found it disappointing that she went, especially in such a contrived manner at the hands of the production team.

The worst thing about the whole situation for me however wasn’t so much the twist itself, although I agree it was bad, it was what the twist represented in terms of the relationship between the production in the show and the viewer. Making this a week which has all but exclusively been chosen by the housemates (allegedly) is symbolic to me of the contempt that the Big Brother production team has for its audience. We all know that there is a need in reality television in recent years for there to be a need for storylines in the show, and when done right I agree that they can help improve a series on the whole, but at the same time the viewer should always be the one who has the final say in which direction the storyline goes in through their eviction votes, and that say this week was thrown out of our hands in my opinion because production frankly did not trust the viewer to make the decision that production would want for it’s storyline to progress. This for me is a cardinal sin in the television industry, especially on a show so reliant on a strong relationship with the public to generate voting revenue and to keep the show going in the first place, don’t get me wrong I am one of the first to disagree with the public and their choices of winners, but at the same time I also accept that this was the decision of the majority of the voting public and in my eyes the show should act in the same manner rather then having a tantrum over it and taking away the voter’s right as a punishment, in the television industry the aim should always be to give the viewer what they want, not to have a tantrum when what the public want isn’t the same as what you the producers want. The whole situation stunk of production’s contempt for the audience, and the show should find itself very relieved that there are a lot of fans sticking by the show through brand loyalty only, and even those die-hards are left questioning their loyalty to the show.

What makes the whole thing worse though in my eyes is the direction that production wants to show to go down if they had their way, something which has been demonstrated further this week though their twists and tasks designed to ostracise particular housemates at the expense of others, namely by helping to enable Helen’s harem in the house whilst condemning the group outsiders, culminating in the orchestrated boot of Danielle by the end of the week. There has been a definite aim from Channel 5 to try and push the show towards more of a scripted Reality audience, and Helen’s group in my view is representative of the direction that show ultimately wants to favour, but the fact of the matter is that the audience don’t want this from their show, they have spoken vocally on social media and internet forums about their dislike for Helen, the tedium of Stephen and Kimberly’s relationship whilst at the same time been very supportive of the outsiders of the group, demonstrated by the fact that the likes of Chris, Ashleigh and Christopher are polling so highly online. Production should be going out of their way to appease the viewer for their choices, understand the reasons why the public feel this way about their favourites and learn from this to help improve the show in the future, but as mentioned before there is this head-in-the-sand thought pattern from production which refuses to let them see the show in this way and instead persist with their aim for The Only Way Is Elstree. It’s almost akin to George Lucas learning of how hated Jar Jar Binks was in Star Wars and deciding that the viewer was wrong for thinking this way and giving him more airtime for the sequel. It’s a flawed approach which demonstrates contempt for the viewer, and will eventually come back to haunt Channel 5 if they keep it up, because trust me, once the old school viewers leave they will not be replaced.

Oh, and Marlon went this week as well.