Rant #90: Big Brother, Big Bore

CBS’s Big Brother--my annual summer guilty pleasure—ended on Tuesday night. The winner of this year’s fly-on-the-wall show was Jordan Lloyd, a pretty southern waitress, who outlasted Tae-Kwan-Do champion Natalie Martinez in a 5-2 vote. Graphic designer Kevin Campbell came in third.

Although I had much anticipation for the show when it premiered in July (Rant #44, July 15), at least for me, the show kind of fizzled as the summer wore on.

I didn’t really find any interesting character on this year’s edition, with the exception of Shima (I don’t know her last name nor do I know if I spelled her first name correctly), the contestant who became unruly and ended up getting kicked off the show.

Otherwise, you had all of your usual types: the pretty girls, the handsome guys, the contestants with great bodies, the gay guy, the tattooed woman, etc.

Again, there was nothing too special about this show this time around.

I actually wanted Campbell, who is openly gay, to win, because I think he was the best player in this very thin lot. He lost a Head of Household competition late in the game, and it cost him.

And to add insult to injury, Julie Chen, the host of this long-running show, was pregnant throughout its entirety, and her garish outfits completely took away any of the buzz that her appearances used to have. In fact, due to her pregnancy, to me, she is no longer “the skinniest woman in America.”

The eventual winner was a nice enough person indeed, and she was fairly pretty. She is also the first female contestant, as far as I know, to actually bare herself on Big Brother’s companion late-night show on Showtime. There has been something of an unwritten rule that this no-holds-barred addendum to the CBS show would not show any female skin, and all the females during the past three years have covered themselves up in anticipation that the cameras would roll regardless on the Showtime show.

Well, Jordan either forgot about this rule or didn’t care, and occasionally she showed all on the Showtime show, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps on purpose. These pictures and videos are all over the Web, but you will have to find them, I really don’t have an interest in seeing them, although naked breasts are never a bad thing.

So, a new season of this money-maker for CBS is currently being cast. If you have three months to spare, try out for the show. I wish I both had the time to spare and was half my age—I would go for it.