Despite a unprecedented for UK TV extension to the season Celebrity Big
Brother (CBB) will sadly come to an end on Wednesday (29/1/14). I guess
this means that this will probably be one of my last posts on the
subject.
On Friday (24/1/14) Linda Nolan was evicted from the show. This was
rapidly dwarfed by events later in the evening when a reunited Casey
Batchelor and Lee Ryan finally achieved sexual satisfaction whilst in
bed together. Exactly what is meant by sexual satisfaction goes a long
way to explaining this particular relationship. By her own admission
Casey has never achieved orgasm through sex with a partner. Therefore it
is likely that she looks on sex more as a way to express love,
affection and companionship rather then out and out lust. As a result
the events in the CBB house seem to have been conspiring to force Casey
back into a relationship with Lee.
Firstly there have been the overt efforts by Jim Davidson to encourage
the two to get together. Partly this has been driven by a desire to
improve the atmosphere in the house by washing away the memory of
Jasmine Waltz who Lee cheated on Casey with. Also Jim comes from the
generation where the idea of an unmarried women doesn't really compute
and Jim has certainly been doing his bit to reduce the number of
unmarried women in the world having been married four times.
Secondly there has been the largely unplanned effects of Jim's massive
and long-running argument with Linda. As I've mentioned this argument
centred around Linda's now dead husband Brian Hudson's conviction for
theft from Jim's mentor Frank Carson. Re-awakening Linda's grief at the
death of her husband this argument created an extremely poisonous
atmosphere in the house leaving all the housemates craving the shelter
of love, affection and companionship. Therefore all the anger and
bitterness in house which Lee's cheating on Casey with Jasmine
contributed to actually ended up making Lee seem more and more
attractive to Casey which in turn made it easier for her to overlook the
fact that he's really not an attractive man.
Although sex guarantees ratings Big Brother seemed unsure as to whether
it wanted to take responsibility for making a couple out of Casey and
Lee. So in Saturday's (25/1/14) grandfather clock task they included a
nasty surprise to drive Casey and Lee apart. Basically this task
involved a secret door disguised as a grandfather clock being placed in
the living room of the house. Every time the 'grandfather clock' chimed
the housemates had to freeze and remain perfectly still while a visitor
from the outside entered the house and wandered around the house. I
think first came Lee's band mates from Blue who started singing one of
their songs just daring Lee to join in with them and fail the task. I
think up next was Ollie Locke's mother and sister who brought the family
dog in with them. The dog proceeded to lick Ollie's face while he tried
to remain perfectly still and fought back tears as his mother and
sister told him how much they loved and missed him.
The real kicker came though when Lee and Casey were enjoying a
post-coital cuddle on the sofas when all of a sudden the clock struck
and in walked Jasmine. Jasmine then put in an utterly fake performance
about how much she was in love with Lee and how angry she was at Casey
for stealing her man. This obviously caused an explosion of emotion in
the house with Casey in floods of tears worrying that her parents would
be ashamed of her (odd for a topless model) while Lee spent the next day
and a half doing that strange thing he does whereby he seems to think
he can change history by repeating over and over again to anyone who
will listen what he thinks history should be. As someone on Twitter
commented it is as if by going without TV for three weeks Lee Ryan has
somehow forgotten that TiVo exists. Casey's tears and Lee's desperate
attempts to self-rationalise his behaviour went on until Lee was finally
and thankfully evicted from the house through the grandfather clock in a
surprise (to the housemates) eviction on Sunday (26/1/14)
Although this made for an hour of TV on Sunday that was so dramatic and
captivating that it succeed in pushing the Grammys off the top of
worldwide Twitter trends I can't help feeling that Jasmine's return to
confront Lee and Casey was a little unnecessary. The main problem was
that it all happened so quickly that the majority of viewers only found
out about it around 15 minutes before the voting closed meaning that
there was little time for it to have any impact on the result. If
Jasmine hadn't re-entered the house and Sunday's eviction actually took
on Monday I think that there was a fair chance that Casey rather then
Lee would have been evicted. While Lee is clearly an idiot I can't help
but feel that after watching her lose all respect for herself by taking
Lee back the viewers in turn would have quickly lost all respect for
Casey meaning that no-one voted to save her. Secondly the confrontation
was so dramatic that coming so close to the end of the show it has
completely killed off activity in the house with everyone too on edge to
do anything.
With the housemates really just sitting around quietly waiting to see
who has won it seems like a good moment for me to talk about who I would
like to see win. Having faced the public vote every week and having
survived every week the out and out favourite is of course Jim Davidson
although I think a lot of his support might disappear now that it is a
vote to win rather then a vote to keep him in the house for as long as
possible. That said I wouldn't be too upset to see Jim win because a lot
of this stuff about him being a racist, a homophobe and a misogynist
seems to me the result of a witch hunt by the liberal elite rather then
having any basis in fact. While Jim has been in CBB the self-proclaimed
guardians of Britain's liberal elite - Channel 4 - have been far too
busy laughing at the poor people in the show "Benefits Streets" while
cashing cheques from the taxpayer.
My actual favourite though is Sam Faiers who has really pleasantly
surprised me by coming across as rather intelligent and actually quite
normal. As I've mentioned before Sam comes from a 'structured reality'
show called "The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE)." This is a show that is so
trashy it aspires to be "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." It also
follows a similar format of pretending to be a fly-on-the-wall
documentary but is actually entirely fake with the people in it
pretending to act as outrageously as possible in order to guarantee
themselves the most time on screen. TOWIE is particularly offensive
because the people in it seem to pride themselves in their own
stupidity. For example former TOWIE cast member Amy Childs has built an
entire career on her breasts and her inability to understand even the
most basic things while fellow cast member Joey Essex recently took
great pride in revealing that he was too stupid to tell the time.
Therefore I was really impressed by the way Sam came into the house and
more or less spent the entire first week asleep which is pretty much
everyone in Britain's reaction to the first week in January. Sam went on
to show real intelligence and emotional depth through the way she
quietly supported Linda during her feud with Jim and acted a general
linchpin/peacemaker within the group. So I think Sam most deserves to
win CBB and there is a hope that victory might go a long way in helping
to rescue her from TOWIE.
(Originally Posted) 18:05 on 28/1/14 (UK date).
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