Big Brother - Summer 2012

Continued from HERE
Copied and pasted from the discussion with Marion HERE

[Adam Kelly, Arron Lowe, Ashleigh Hughes, Benedict Garret, CarolineWharram, Chris James, Conor McIntyre, Deana Uppal, Lauren Carre, Luke Anderson, Luke Scrase, Lydia Louisa, Sara McLean, Scott Mason, Shievonne Robinson, Victoria Eisermann] [Later: Becky Hannon]

Hey, I've just realised it's started tonight!!! I'll have to catch up - hoping that Marion does her usual aide memoire. Seriously, I may not have much time this season to watch it regularly.
I've just had a quick look. They all seem like model men and women of a similar age (all good looking) out to get a career in show business. A bit of a talent show rather than the old-fashioned Big Brother...
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I saw some of last night. A crowd of people growing on me. Some interesting individuals. I hope we're not going to have Shilpa Shetty type trouble surrounding Deana! A charming woman. Not sure about my fellow Essex-mate, though (Ashleigh?). Quite like Lydia's eventual attitude to her nomination. Hopes she doesn't go.
The usual sex talk gets a bit boring, though. And was that someone with a sock tattooed to his foot and calf? i.e a real tattoo looking as if it is a sock!? Seems a symbol for our times.
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I got fed up with the Luke A's 'backstory'. Loved the way Chris brought his chipmunk voice into the sexual spectrum vis a vis this backstory. I couldn't concentrate at all well last night, because I think there are too many people and I get confused. I shall hopefully come into my own once the population has reached ten.
Who is the one with the tattooed sock? I've forgotten. I really think this 'sock' is a symbol for our times and for this population of shuttling counters on the ludo board of mock-celebrity amid theatrically projected intention and misintention.
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There was a storm outside making the eviction's process within the studio. Later there was another storm - a sudden squawking tornado - now inside the House itself. Becky Hannon. Only 19 but looks like an unwrinkled middle-ager. The hot tub overflowed when her first action was getting into it. But that fulsome gushing was caused by the tornado's lamina flows rather than the water's meniscus displacement. Mustn't be ungallant.
Victoria was rather engaging in her interview. A sad loss.
Lauren is developing as a character....an interesting face.
Must take a closer look at Caroline...I hadn't really noticed her before her tub-side chat with the Becky-in-eruption-eructation.
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Yes, Chris entered my radar with an accreting splurge like (the title is an ink blot) by Gahan Wilson - for all the reasons Marion gives HERE. This show is shaping up with grotesque promise. Not sure I can stand the pace!
(I'm not sure why - but I think Caroline is one for my radar to watch out for.)
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(11 June) I've been spending all day wondering what to add to Marion's wonderful report of last night's programme. The housemates are promising a classic BB season, and my worst fears on day one are not being borne out. Worst fears about humanity however are being borne out by this series, but in the interests of a case study constructively derived from Reality TV. Best hopes don't always give us best food for thought ... about life, the universe, everything.
LATER: Well, tonight's episode provides an interesting psychological dilemma or conundrum regarding Becky's special mission via-a-vis Deana, and her reaction, and then Becky's counter-reaction. The ladies here are quite complex, as is Sara (with her Royalism and her under-the blanket chat with Becky, although this has vibes of the school playground) and Lydia claiming she is "being fed to a pack of wolves like a slab of meat". I'm sure there are hidden depths to Caroline, too - but we are never allowed see her to test this theory out. And Lauren is interesting, too, with a vague pouting 'clown' face that resonates with Caroline's.
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Marion wrote HERE: ... His stiff gelled hair looks as if his brains are seeping through his skull - Thanks for the apt description of Scott, Marion.
Day by day, we are ever being entrammelled by the collective guile and naivety of this whole group. I can't believe Becky is only 19. That bit about the moon, wasn't she talking about mooning rather than being a moon.
Benedict: his talk of 'pleasuring' in the bath and the way he said it to camera plus his whole persona and backstory - he is the only real sore thumb. The sooner he goes the better.
But of the two up for nomination, I prefer Arron to go.
And we got a better view of Caroline last night. She is a half-garbled throwaway line in the collectivity but often throwaway lines are important.
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One of the best BB tasks ever - the prevent-yourself-laughing-or-grinning task in the face of clowns (both funny and Shievonnesque) - stilted and pie-chucking ... and in face of the natural tendency for mankind to laugh or grin when amused, emabrrassed, scared and simply 'at sea' in life's interactions. They even had the real Keith Harris and Orville turn up to ignite laughter.
The HMs were like Frankenstein's monsters trying (and often failing) to mould their faces by gyrning or gawping or yawning towards a serious expression without their fragile humanity also cracking - cracking in mirth and/or the general entrropy of self-made monsters. Arron's costumes he was made to wear by BB were just one ingredient in this thought-provoking as well as hilarious task.  And Caroline's and Benedict's imperviously straight faces.
If one takes Chris at face value, he is out of his depth on the show - cracking up in a way that is painful to watch - and he should go tomorrow for his own sake.
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(15 June) Marion wrote: In the end, he came across as a multifaith atheist.
Well, however much we dislike the persona presented on BB by Benedict, he has created a new term in the Philosophy of Religion! Breaking new ground even on Google! Thanks, Marion.
Chris and Caroline are interesting characters, and I agree that the latter showed her dark side yesterday, but there is something attractively intractable or inscrutable about her - and her hair.
Isn't Sara tall? Ostensibly, the younger man's eye candy of this BB season. I can't talk for old men yet! But her slavish Monarchism of the UK kind seems both complex and simple-minded. Which goes back to my idea of this BB Collectivity of Guile and Naivety, not something simply cross-sectioning at times the group piecemeal (i.e. individual 1 (being guileful), individual 2 (being naive)) but often cross-sectioning each discrete individual within the group.
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To add to Marion's report - we saw Benedict struggling against himself naturally defaulting towards being the group's 'Daddy' or alpha male.
In many ways, sorry to see Chris go. He had so much more to give. A self-proclaimed alpha male, but within an imaginary alphabet with only one letter: not omega, but helium.
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Marion wrote: The other day, Benedict established himself as a multi-faith atheist. Tonight he has declared himself a multi-sexual heterosexual. [...]Talk about trying to please all of the people all of the time...
Indeed!
I am grateful for your reports, Marion, not only for their scintillating shafts of wisdom, wit and sharp observation (I mean that genuinely), but also because I often can't hear what the HMs are saying to each other. It may be my TV's sound or my aging ears, but whatver the case, you clear up many mysteries for me, Marion.
I said to watch Caroline even before she said anything on our screens, I think the records will show. Her blood is acid. Her hair an unruly hedge.
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Marion wrote: And it is surely better to aspire to Mr Darcy than Mr Casaubon!
Better Tom Jones than Joseph Andrews? In fact, with my real-time reviewing, I myself have, I fear, the Casaubon Delusion.
Big Brother is today's Gulliver's Travels or Modest Proposal or Rape of the Lock, today's Alexander Pope masquerading as Jonathan Swift and vice versa. We learn so much from BB.
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Hilarious, tonight. Benedict's Cult of Onanism. The expression "getting his point across" was used by the Announcer. And Benedict (with his deadpan face) mentioned to Caroline about trying to get her to see "where he was coming from." Straight up.
Lydia worrying about the group now being seen as part of Benedict's sexual safety-valve evangelism was spot on.
Caroline attempting to eat a fish-eye was another highlight!
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As I said earlier, I agree with Lydia's point of view on Benedict's sexual evangelism. Marion's view, too, spoken later.
Benedict is serious (hilarious in his deadpan seriousness) in trying to acclimatise anyone (who thinks otherwise) that onanism should be a socially acceptable safety-valve ("just like brushing one's teeth," he said) to prevent possible repercussions of forced/unwise actions beyond one's self....and sincerely believes his blatant showiness in the shower will reduce the ostensible self-shame or stigma of such an act. I don't think his theory-in-practice (a theory taken for argument's sake on its own terms) has worked in the context of BB.
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Benedict is indeed a strange cove. His mouth expresses the ultimate passive/aggressive knowingness - with a Chinese Wall beyond which we can only guess at his inner emotions, emotions pulling the strings of his clinical, socially-minded, hard-faced, hard-core porn underpinned by his multi-tentacled heterosexuality and his multifaith atheism and his schoolteacherly postures.
I am at a loss about Lauren's nomination. She seems to be the group's collective-unconscious offering of a sacrificial lamb towards some vaguely disinterested God who has created Benedict almost as a hobby or experiment to while away Eternity.
And, yes, Marion, I prefer BB when the HMs are not allowed to discuss nominations...as was mostly the case in the past.
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(21 June) I have to disagree with Marion. I found the lab-rats task quite boring, especially when compared to the 'non-laughter' task last week. Some good moments that Marion draws out above, though. I go through a phase - at least once in every series - where I think all the HMs are chancers and unreal. But that's life I suppose.
I'm coming round to wanting Lauren to leave this week and the 'interesting' Benedict to stay.
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Marion wrote: Hooray! Nomination talk has been banned!
Fresh from my increasing success with Portugal on the TTA Forum Euro Football thread/sweepstake, I am also pleased that the BB Authorities seem to have read our comments here, Marion, about the HMs' boring nomination-natter.
Lydia is quite a gal. Her weaselly elfin face is sleek and hints at whisker preening as ploys and steely stances fleet through her over-active Machiavellian brain. One to watch. So different from the bushy-tailed Caroline...who seems to be infected by Lauren's understated bird-flu of the spirit.
Becky's inner robot coming to the surface of the puppy-stuffing in prone, frozen moon-walking was another highlight.
Meanwhile, Benedict is shaping up to be the ultimate conspirator, conniver, with that down-turned trapezium mouth in mock passive/aggressivenes to conceal the power of the intellect suppling up its muscles within, emerging now and again like a series of verbal-materialized orcs to defend him against any imaginary inner-robots peeling off sporadically from communal psycho-cages or temporary alliances of other HMs' simple minds and machinations, paradoxically more important now that nomination-natter has been still-birthed in its tracks.
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Re Benedict, I mean all those things, Marion. Obnoxious behaviour. I am sorry I supported him at any stage. I bet the BB/ch.5 were also worried when he took that heavy chair up to the top of the stairs leading out, ready to throw it into the crowd in a violent tantrum...?
I think they should make a film called Caroline's hair...
Her obsequious reaction to Benedict following his diatribe... well, she hasn't got acid in her veins as I thought...or maybe it was some sort of 'scorched earth' strategy with as yet mysterious outcome........building on a new 'tabula rasa' of self??
I'm finding myself rethinking the whole set of people. I don't think I like any of them. Maybe Adam and Deana are OK.
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CONTINUED HERE