Big Brother- Week 9 Assessment: Did that just happen?
We are into injury time in this year’s season of Big Brother, the players on the pitch
are drained, the fans in the stadium are growing tiresome but things are
beginning to build towards what could be an exciting climax.
Why am I bringing up all of the football connotations? Well
aside from Big Brother one of my
other big passions is football, and in many ways I cam make comparisons between
Big Brother as a franchise and a
football team; they will frustrate you, more often then not squander potential
and on many an occasion leave you questioning why you put yourself through
supporting them day after day, yet once in a blue moon they manage to pull out
a result so amazing it makes all of that suffering as a fan worthwhile, and in
this week’s eviction the show managed to pull off it’s own version of a 3-0
drumming of Manchester United at Old Trafford, a double eviction which proved
incredibly rewarding on both a personal level and a show level and has helped
to make the series all the more unpredictable as we reach the final minutes.
The first part of the double however wasn’t where the magic
lay, even though it was one which I was satisfied with on a personal level. I always
had my worries about Mark as a housemate even from the early stages of the show
expecting him to be a horrible contrived irritant which would stay in the show
well past his sell-by date, and to a large extent I feel like this came into
fruition, a horribly obnoxious camera who gave me Charlie Drummond vibes in the
way in which he would use his lovable
fun-guy persona to hid a dark and nasty side to his personality, the only
difference however being that Mark’s focus was based on airtime whereas Charlie’s
was through trying to win the show. On the plus side however with Mark I found
it refreshing for a their to be a relationship in Big Brother between two gay
contestants which didn’t have any kind of stigma associated with it or any kind
of audience hysteria, but even in that case Mark came across very poorly in the
relationship, more often then not treating Christopher like dirt and blaming
him for Mark being perceived so poorly. It was very egotistical of him and I’m
glad we managed to get a week without him in the show barring some sort of task
twist, which based on this series I am wholeheartedly expecting.
Where the real joy with this eviction lay however was in the
eviction of Winston, a result which I would probably put up there with the
likes of Kirk and Natalie, Kathreya and Maxwell in terms of great Big Brother
evictions, not so much because of Winston as a person but more down to the way
in which it has helped to blow the show’s endgame wide open. To be honest I don’t
have that much issue with Winston as a housemate, he seemed pleasant enough and
I would put him up in the higher echelons of contestants cast to fill the ‘Essex
lad’ archetype that the show thrives on these days, the issues for me stems
from what he represents as a potential winner of the show, we have seen housemates
similar to Winston end up being strong contenders for the win simply on the
back of being inoffensive and attractive, and with a group demonstrating as
many individual flaws as they do the likelihood is that Winston’s Brian Belo
meets Sam Evans persona would have been an easy default vote to win, and would in
the process be the cherry atop of this poor series.
The thing that surprised me most of all though was the way
in which the Winston eviction came about, I remembered posting on the BBUK
Facebook page after the Thursday highlights show a casual comment along the
lines of ‘wouldn’t it be great if Winston went this week’ not expecting any
psotive responses or any kind of serious take-up of this suggestion, and yet
found more and more people as the day went on sharing this same opinion and
snowballing into the serious campaign that ultimately proved successful. It has
also proven to be the symbolic benchmark for one of the big themes of this years
series; tactical voting. More so then any other year in Big Brother history we
have the voting audience become much more overtly cynical about the voting
process and have begun to abuse the system to bring about results and
consequences which they may not have done so in the Channel 4 era of the show,
Tamara and Matthew’s boots were attempts to send a negative message to Helen
and Ashleigh respectively, Jale and Zoe’s boots designed to save Ashleigh and
Chris and even through to saving Pav in the Armageddon week to make sure that
Bianca went at his expense. This could be held as a sign of a maturity in the
voting audience, but in my opinion it is an indicator of the fact that the
swing of power between the tweens and the housewives has begun to be swung back
towards the latter demographic. For all that people try and imply that Reality
Television is something aimed at the tween audience and those with an impulsive
mobile phone finger it is in my opinion the housewives which hold a large sway
with phone voting then many like to give them credit for, you only need to look
at Christopher Maloney’s success on The X Factor as evidence of that.
The question then becomes who the housewives will look to
favour when they and the tweens make their votes on Friday night. Most of the
bookies will be looking towards Ashleigh as the winner, but part of me feels
that the voters may be a bit hesistant to give her the win when push comes to
shove, Big Brother in the Channel 5 has had many issues with the voter’s
relationships with women and I feel that Ashleigh may go the same way as Deana
and fall short come the end in spite of internet polls and bookies odds saying
otherwise. If Ashleigh is to be this years Deana then in my opinion it will be
Christopher which will prove to be the Luke. A genuinely nice person, prominent
without ever being too overbearing and not carrying as much of the personality
baggage which Ashleigh has had during this series, it’s not the result that
would be most ideal of the potential choices personally, but it is one that I
would happily accept and one which I am quietly confident of happening. I also
have a sneaky suspicion that Ash may surprise many coming into the final vote,
he survived two evictions where he was a dead cert to leave and has since the
vote to win lines opened shown more of a jovial side which will endear him to
the audience, have a look at him to take fourth, and maybe even third depending
on how the week unfolds.
The final whistle is about to be blown on this series and
maybe on the whole what we have seen hasn’t been worth it, but when you nail
your flag to the mast you have to keep it up there.
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