Heroes – episode 23 – finished for us on Wednesday night. If you haven’t seen it don’t read on because there might be spoilers.

As I sat watching it, I felt sadder and sadder with each ad break knowing that the end was closer and closer. It’s not many television shows I’ve enjoyed so much.

I wondered how it would end, would New York blow up and would Nathan Petrelli become President and lead everyone through the hard times? Who would be killed? Would Sylar’s life finally end?

Heroes had it all for me. It had drama, thrills, love, action in the present time, past and future, and I always eagerly anticipated watching it each Wednesday night. I had the chance of getting all the episodes on DVD but declined the opportunity because I wanted to spread it out over the 23 weeks, not watch them all in one weekend and then not have anything to look forward to on Wednesday nights.

So at the end of the last episode when they informed us that the next season would be shown here in a few months I yelled out with glee. I can wait a few months.

So back to the last episode. The belief in me that good will triumph over evil came true. New York did not blow up. Nathan came good in the end by helping Peter out because he was about to blow up. We had been led to believe (in a flashforward) that Nathan went to the bad (self-interest-serving) side and was glad that New York had been decimated so he could become President and ‘help the people through the bad times’.

Hiro finally killed Sylar with his sword, although the scene at the end where they showed the blood near the drain and the drain cover partly off with a cockroach crawling out of it left me wondering if Sylar had disappeared somehow. It remains to be seen in Volume 2.

Even though Sylar was evil, and I almost jumped every time he creeped up on people, I thought he was a great villain. Having the powers that he did made him almost indescructible and luckily he hadn’t killed Claire because otherwise Hiro couldn’t have killed him. As a viewer I almost need a flowchart of who had what power just to keep up.

I like how Peter Petrelli absorbed Jess/Niki’s power to beat up Sylar towards the end. It’s a pity Peter was decimated, or was he as he is indestructible. When the body landed with a thump on the ground at the end I initially thought it was Peter coming back down all healed up but it wasn’t. It was Hiro giving us a taste of what’s to occur in Volume 2.

Heroes back in the 1600s? They said something about generations so is it different generations of our current Heroes? Oooh, there’s so much scope and so much to look forward to when it comes back on television. Do you watch it? What do you think?

When I admit to people that I watch Big Brother, I jokingly say that because I’ve watched Australian Big Brother since it’s inception, I’ve just about enough fodder for a PhD thesis.

I mentioned this the other day at a work lunch and someone thought I was actually doing my doctorate on Big Brother. I did set them straight.

I wonder if someone’s already doing it?

Nearly 20 years I started watching an Australian sketch comedy show called Fast Forward. It introduced me to comedians like Jane Turner and Gina Riley who are now famous for Kath and Kim. When Fast Forward finished, Full Frontal took over with a similar format. One of its, now more well known, comedians was Eric Bana. The show was hilarious, and must see viewing for me and many peers.

Whenever I see a newer Australian sketch comedy I think fondly back to those days because the new shows have a lot to live up to and generally don’t.

The other night I was relaxing in front of the television and my nephew passed through the lounge and told me that he’s been watching Full Frontal sketches on YouTube. He said that I probably used to watch it on television.

It made me realise that because of applications like YouTube, a whole new world has been opened up to people who weren’t around or didn’t have access to rediscover shows like Full Frontal.

This one is Eric Bana doing a parody of a current affairs presenter here at the time called Ray Martin. There’s even a bit of ‘Fabio’ in here.

What was your favourite sketch comedy?

‘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?