‘Is Big Brother real mum?’

‘Mmmm. Well sort of. They are real people who all live in a house together. But it’s an unreal type of situation.’

‘So is it make believe?’

‘Yes, kind of. While they’re not acting as such, they don’t really know each other yet they live together. And Big Brother makes them do things, like these Friday Night Games, so we can watch it on telly.’

‘Oh.’

‘So I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Apart from the Games, all they really do is talk about each other because there’s not much else to do and that’s not how people normally carry on when they live together.’

Yes, I still continue to watch Big Brother even though I know it’s quite contrived because of housemate choice and what’s shown on the daily show.

I have noticed recently when Gretel’s interviewed recent evictees on stage that she mentions Hayley and Andrew a lot and not in a positive way. I can’t remember verbatim, but she’s said things like they’ve got a huge advantage in the house. I don’t think she really likes them very much and this is unusual for Gretel because she comes across as unbiased (mostly). Although having said that she struggled with interviewing Michael last year becaue he didn’t like the way he’d been portrayed on the show and stuck to his guns, and she couldn’t interview Merlin three years ago because of his refusal to talk to highlight his free the refugees protest.

So last night I saw the beginning of the eviction show and saw Hayley and Andrew in the diary room being told that because of their advantage in being a couple, one of them will have to go. Of course it’s an advantage being a couple but it’s also a disadvantage because housemates can use this against them to nominate them and similarly people can vote to evict based on their coupledom.

Behind Big Brother have written about the ‘Suss Hayley eviction‘ and the bias against Hayley on the official Big Brother website. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the show’s production to see what really goes on.

The winners of Big Brother in 2005 were essentially a couple, being twins, and they obviously weren’t disliked or picked on because they were a couple. One of them won the show which I guess could be interpreted as they had an advantage which ultimately helped them win.

Hayley will be leaving the show tonight and Andrew is up for nomination thanks to Demet but I don’t think he will be evicted this week. Perhaps Rebecca will be as Emma has so far managed to escape eviction so must be pretty popular.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that this year’s Big Brother is more like that other reality show, Survivor, in that Big Brother contestants have an opportunity to discuss tactics while they are in the rewards room. There is also another similarly to Survivor in that whoever wins Friday Night Games effectively wins immunity for themself or for a mate therefore potentially changing who is evicted that week as happened this week when Demet was evicted because Andrew nominated her.

I guess I’ll stick out Big Brother this year and maybe glimpse it next year if it’s still on, but perhaps for my 7pm veg out in front of the telly viewing I’ll stick with Home and Away.

Being the tragic Big Brother addict that I am I tuned in last night to watch the Golden Key special. Did I mention I’m also an optimist? You’ll see why soon.

Great, I thought, there’s all sorts of people here who ALL have a chance of getting into the house. There’s people older than 25, there’s overweight people, there’s actual real looking people here. But of course out of the 100 or so (some of the 100 were already whittled away because of psych and police testing) five were chosen, one of which would go into the house.

Surprise surprise, out of the five were three young blonde women, one young brunette woman and one guy. So absolutely no deviation from all the other existing housemates.

As Gretel kept calling out the numbers - was that to try and make it appear as though they were choosing numbers out of a hat - my optimism faded more and more with the ‘choices’ that came up onto the stage.

Come on I’m thinking, what about that woman who would so obviously stir the pot. She looked interesting. But no, was she a bit too old and a bit too fat for what Big Brother was looking for.

Please, how stupid do they think we are? As per a mailbag summary on Behind Big Brother, people are disillusioned with the choices of housemates. How many years do the audience need to say that they want to see ‘real’ people in the house. Real, different, people. Not your young, mostly gorgeous crew. Where’s the Chrissies’ or Sarah Maries’ or even Timmys’ of years gone by?

It’s been nearly a week since I wrote about Big Brother and I watched the daily show update and the Full House episode last night. Of course there were a few twists and turns which I will talk about here.

This year Big Brother has removed the three point twist. In more recent years whoever won the Friday night games had the power to remove three points from someone who was nominated. This has been scrapped this year and in its place the people in the rewards room can discuss who they want to nominate.

It appears Big Brother is becoming a bit more like Survivor and it will add some interest to Big Brother I think. I’m not a real Survivor fan or regular watcher but that show would be a lot less interesting if the contestents couldn’t form alliances, discuss who they want out, and completely lie to each other about who they would vote out each time. The new twist in Big Brother isn’t quite the same because it’s only the two people in the rewards room (while they’re actually in the rewards room) who can discuss nominations but it will add some interest.

If the reward room occupants are clever about it, particularly in the weeks to come when there are less people to vote for, they can wield some power between themselves to get people nominated. As Emma said on the weekend, she’s more interested at the moment in nominating people she doesn’t really like, like Kate, rather than thinking strategically about it yet.

To the White Room. The four occupants had been in there for six days and Big Brother obviously doesn’t want them hanging around for too long so he decided to give them incentive to leave. The incentive being money starting at $500. Nobody accepted this, so he went up to $750. I thought that we’d be there all night as he kept upping the money, but no, Cruz pressed the big red buzzer to get out. I think the White Room torture had got to him, because I could see that Big Brother would keep going up until one of them folded. Gretel Killeen even said as much.

After he left Kara starting uncontrollably sobbing. It was driving me nuts that she wouldn’t stop and I wasn’t even in the same room as her. If I was one of the other two people left in there, a slap on the face might have stopped her hysteria.

Other than that the secret relationships were outed. Three people guessed correctly that Andrew and Hayley were the couple but this wasn’t enough to get one of them evicted. As Gretel said, if they keep acting all lovey dovey then it won’t be long before one of them is evicted anyway. They applied as a couple in different cities so must have thought this would be the only way they could get onto the show. People are more desperate to get on Big Brother than I ever dreamed. I still don’t understand why. But then they get on the show and whinge about how hard it is to hide the secret. Doh!

Oh, and for successfully hiding the secret, and therefore passing the task they won $50,000 towards the prize pool. So there is prize money this year.

Lastly, I think TJ is out of control. She’s tried to crack onto Thomas and he’s rejected her advances and she’s just gone psycho about it. Obviously not too many people say no to her. Thomas has made it quite clear he doesn’t want to get involved with anyone in the house and any rational person would leave it at that but she’s constantly at him to chaneg his mind. I think she’ll be up for nomination for sure tonight.

Other nominations? Kate doesn’t seem too popular, and maybe Hayley or Andrew will be up because of the deception thing?

At the beginning of the tumultuous Big Brother tonight two out of six potential housemates are being voted in and surprise surprise, the blonde one is in front at the beginning of the show to get in (if I’m reading the graph right). They’re all telling us what fun they will be in the house and they’ll test all the boundaries. Yes, we’ve heard it all before.

First revelation: the much anticipated relationship. Hayley and the Firefighter (Andrew) are a couple but the rest of the house doesn’t know that. The couple’s high-stakes mission is to keep their relationship a secret. If they succeed they get to remain in the house as a couple. But all the other housemates are given a secret mission to try and find out who the couple is within a week.

The two new housemates are Susannah (surprise surprise) and Zoran and they enter the house.

The plan for the remaining four housemates is for them to go into the white room and they’re all dressed in, you guessed it, white. Of the four, the person who can remain in the white room the longest gets a wildcard entry to become a housemate. Sounds a bit like the final challenge in Survivor. If they want to leave, they can, by pressing the big red button but that will be it. It sounds like a form of torture to me. There is nothing in the room except for four beds and a table and chairs, and the big red button and each other. What fun that will be.

Now for Mr X - Billy - who used to go out with Hayley (the same one with the secret boyfriend in the house). Billy came all the way back from Canada to do this, interrupting a round the world backpacking holiday. Silly fool him. He’s to go into the house and put pressure on Hayley’s and firefighter’s relationship. Oooh, you big meddler Big Brother.

With all this excitement on practically the first night, what else could possibly be in store for us?

Okay I’ll admit it. I’ve been watching Big Brother Australia ever since it started here in Australia seven years ago. I tried to admit last year that I didn’t watch it, but I’ll let you in on a secret. I did. I was fairly disinterested, but strangely compelled to watch it.

Last night I watched the introduction to the new housemates. As I watched the first 12 go in, it struck me how much things have changed since the first few seasons. This year more than ever the housemates are really ‘outgoing’ and looking to have ‘fun’ and they were all pretty much focussed on themselves. I guess they epitomise Generation Y. I’m a Generation X girl myself so don’t really fit the demographic of the housemates, and all or most of the viewers, so there is a generation gap in place.

And as usual they are all youngish and attractive. Even Gretel said, as she was introducing the girls, that ‘it’s another blonde one’. Is this how shallow an Australian audience is, to only want to watch attractive people on television? What about beauty on the inside?

The seemingly most down to earth one was Jamie the self professed nerd although he is still brimming with self-confidence while he’s ‘doing it for the nerds’.

As for the two relationships within the house? I haven’t done any reading around other websites for the rumours, but my pick is that two of the girls are sisters. I saw them sitting next to each other last night and their profiles were almost identical. One was Hayley (the one in the awful blue dress that reminded me too much of the 1980s) and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the other one. She was blonde though. That’s right, they’re nearly all blonde.

No doubt I’ll watch more and get ridiculed for watching it by my friends, but I really don’t care.

I can see that for the next few months I’m going to be glued to the television a bit. This week alone two new series have started here, ‘24′ and ‘Heroes’. Next week ‘Desperate Housewives’ starts again. That’s three nights a week I’ll have shows on that I want to watch and I’d been cutting down quite a bit on my tv viewing. Oh well, it is ratings season and this won’t last.

On Tuesday night I was glued to the screen for two hours watching the ‘New Beginning’ of ‘24′. I must admit that I had lost interest in the last couple of series probably because it was all a bit same-same and there were a couple of really annoying characters - actually I’m thinking of daughter Kim and she was more at the beginning. Also the tv station - you know who you are channel 7 put it on at different times so I just forgot what time to tune in.

I watched ‘24′ again last night and at the end was informed that it would revert to one day a week at bloody 10.30 at night. It was on this week at 8.30. Channel 7 have probably just lost me to this show because I won’t be up at 10.30 watching it and I’ll probably forget to tape it. It shits me that if the ratings are down a tad then they’ll put a show on at a ridiculous time. Viewing numbers could pick up couldn’t they? Well they could have, but not any more because of the late timeslot. Read a ‘24′ recap over at BlogHer.

Failing that ‘Heroes’ has sucked me in. I already cannot wait for the next instalment. I really warmed to the Japanese guy who can teleport himself over the place. He was very enthusiastic and cute. I’m a bit unsure about the webcam stripper’s power, apart from killing people and waking up to not remember doing it, but I’m sure more will be revealed. Otherwise it has the archetypal everything about good and evil that makes a story riveting. And we’ve been given a taste of what the heroes are learning about their powers for. I can’t wait to see how the evil father of the girl who doesn’t get hurt reacts when he finds out about his daughter’s super power, if he doesn’t already know.

And will ‘Desperate Housewives’ pick itself up a bit from last season. The first season was great - quirky and interesting, but last season dragged a bit and I wasn’t as interested. I’ll give it a go though and see what happens.