(13 July) I have a feeling that one of Lauren and Becky - and their definite personalities, often attractive, often not so - is heading towards winning BB. They both can act disarmingly well in roles beyond themselves. Not that I particularly like either of them!
The avant garde music that Conor elicited from his megaphone was an interesting highlight last night. But I still hope he goes tonight.
All in all it has not been an inspiring bunch of people this season compared to some previous ones, if 'inspiring' is not too strong a word to ever use about this programme! Unless they have new HMs, I can't see that changing.
I am finding the 'warden' task bitty and unsatisfying. Like the HMs themselves. And Sara Long-Legs does not seem to 'grow' as a character at all...
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Marion wrote HERE: "However, Sara was funny trying not to weep in the 'no cry' task. The shoogling in her chair and stamping of her feet when her MUm sent her love was comical. Then Ashleigh's 'no sound' task was very satisfying. She had about six rule breaks for squawking when 'rocks', and what looked like dead fish and birds, rained down on her head."
Yes, richly typical BB task outcomes. More natural than staged.
I agree that Shievonne was very engaging in her interview. In fact a natural TV star in the making, and maybe she will still make it. Pity this didn't shine out in the House.
And also agree that Conor will now be insufferable and I have severe doubts about his inner stability (despite what his mother and sister said as character witnesses)... Still I enjoyed the megaphone music more than Marion appeared to do! It synergised with Friday 13th and the First Night of the Proms that clashed with BB on another TV channel. Good job that with two brains inside my head, I can be in two places at once. Still I may miss BB tonight. Because sometimes I am nowhere.
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Marion Arnott wrote: "The meanness of Ashley, Becky, Carline and Conor was shown in their appropriation of the alcohol that BB deleivered to the house."
Ashley and Carline? Are they new HMs I've not yet noticed?
The scream task had one great spin-off, however: Marianne being able to post Munch's Scream on this thread.
I saw that painting in real life in Oslo a few years ago.
Another bitty show. The wine-pilfering will run and run.
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Marion wrote:
"Why is this ape still in the house? [...]
Caroline was at her whispering best - [...]
However, Ashleigh seems to have recognised something about Luke at last. In conversation with Conor, she remarked that in the photos, Luke's eyes looked like black holes, all screwed up. Yes, Ashleigh, dead black shark's eyes to go with his shark's grin."
Ape? Or gorilla? (and I echo the question!)
Susurrating Caroline continues to bundle herself bigger towards Becky's shape in some unconscious mimicry and fleshy masochism.
You are right, Marion, a better evening. And, indeed, by osmosis, Ashleigh seems to have already 'heard' what Luke S said about her during his own Carolingian self-puffing and hero-making calendarisation...
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Indeed, Becky as well as Lauren was very funny in the 'ugly' team - and I think I mentioned before that these two are potential winners for their gamesmanship and ability to act and throw themselves about.
I got the impression towards the end of the programme that at least two HMs were either genuinely cracking up into madness or pretending to do so for Pinteresque dramatic effect - Deana and Caroline.
Thought Conor looked good as the Sheriff. One of his better nights.
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(18 July) I am sure this programme can be fully enjoyed only through the eyes of Marion. That's why millions are tuning into her reports, I guess. A ho-down, a ho-up of a report, again and again, day after day. Thanks.
The discrete Becky-boob weigh-in was something to put in the Kinga annals of BB.
Jade returns even larger than life. RIP.
And Caroline is something smothering, and placating is almost always playacting. A moving mountain of towel as a theatrical aside.
I reckon they nominated Lauren because they think she is going to win.
Luke A to go on Friday, I say!!!
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Marion wrote: "Caroline also took her insecurities to BB. She broke down in there, gasping and squeaking apologies which were practically inaudible because she had dropped into that ghastly little Violet Elizabeth Botts voice she uses when she's in trouble. Distinctly audible were 'Weally weally weally sowwy, weally weally intended no harm, weally weally ...million times better with Luke A and Lauren next week. And she weally weally hates herself."
That really stood out as a Nikki 'who is she?' confessional moment but in a different form. Didn't quite come off, but stood out and expunged near all else for me last night. Thanks goodness again for Marion's incisive eye.
Several people now seem to be wearing those one-piece snowtime pajamas that Arron once wore. Arron? That seems an age away now.
Sara is straight-talking, indeed, but lacks a 'who is she?' moment so far - and, in a funny way, so is Ashleigh straight-talking. Essex straight-talking in her case. No faux-mance for her. The land is flat in Essex and clear-sighted. The coasts with endless horizons, sometimes empty, sometimes full of hidden wisdom that one can bring to those horizons.
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Did I actually hear Becky make the schoolyard joke that was around when I was young in the early 1950s? CONSTANTINOPLE is a long word - can you spell it?
There have been racial vibes in the house since this season started, I sense. Usually unspoken, often subtle, often unproven. The Curryhouse-gate incident is just one of them. The Shilpa Shetty incident casts its shadow every year on BB mores.
I wonder if the HMs realise they are going to miss the London Olympics? Is that why they often seem so sad.
Caroline acts as if she is about to divest herself from the mountain-of-towelling and dive in the archetypal Olympic pool. A catharsis not dissimilar to a body-and-soul baptism.
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Last night, I was both surprised and disappointed that Lauren was evicted instead of Luke A. It will be the programme's loss. She did however lead Adam on a bit, what they call a P****-teaser in polite circles. Her interview was very professional. She may have far to go.
Sara starred, meanwhile, with her lie detector test. Sadly, she is not a star who can be starred, though, other than by her looks. There is also a strange steely British supremacy undercurrent to her character that may appeal to some viewers and not to others.
Meanwhile, I did not cross my legs to test out Becky's p**** theory...
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I was wondering if Becky and Caroline were not so much laughing off the actual thought of close-to-hand sex acts of any sort within the BB House, but more a subconscious or conscious homophobic form of such a thought? To go alongside some HMs' subconscious or (partially concealed) conscious racism. A sad emblem for our times. Unspoken fears and antipathies pent up within an ostensible 'politically correct' society. And sometimes spoken rather than unspoken within closed social groups outside the House. Then breaking out of that pent up state during long hot summers...
I was cheering on Luke A via-a-vis Becky. I was astonished that Ashleigh broke his confidences, but having read Marion's report maybe I shouldn't have been. And indeed Luke A expected such an outcome? He is rewarding us for having been saved from eviction!
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(23 July) Scott talking like someone in Coronation Street and Sara dressed as a baby doll Queen Elizabeth II were the highlights.
Caroline and the Fish-Eye was a trauma and a half.
I felt sorry for Ashleigh. Hers was the only letter task that depended on overcoming a reflex or a glitch like a hiccough - i.e a lifetime of swearing between every other word. She was BOUND to fail.
I saw a trailer of Conor feeling sorry for Deana about her lack of a letter, but I can't recall seeing the incident in 'real-time' playback. Was it shown?
Becky has become a stranded form of an emotional sea-mammal. Excusable, though, when you're only 19.
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Marion wrote: "There wasn't a lot going on tonight and so I have only a few observations:"
Well, you could have fooled me! Another fulsome and generous supply of reported items. What would we do without Marion?
Ashleigh is rather buxom for her slender frame, I noted last night. The only item I can think to add.
Oh, and yes, Caroline's stern rabbit mouth when she tries to be serious. Not only casting aspersions but also then disowning them.
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Marion wrote: "I'd rather look at Deana's, or even Adam's, than Becky's."
And talking of melons, I didn't get that game with the elastic bands, either, Marion. Until one of them spectacularly exploded. The nature of melons had previously escaped me.
I hope I don't hear a similar splatting noise when Luke S is in the vicinity.
And the fact that Becky was not nominated at all for eviction is something that religions are made of. An impossiblity.
Double eviction this week: Conor and Caroline!
Ashleigh or Deana or Scott eventually to win overall.
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Well, I can't beat Marion's account (better than any other account on the whole internet) of the Ashleigh / Luke S 'fraughtmance'.
I'll just make mention of the GIANT slumber bed and its 'midnight feasts with crackly toffee paper' of the distaff soul. A quote I made much earlier on Facebook yesterday from 'Facial Justice' (1960) (the SF novel featuring the Tower of Ely Cathedral) by L.P. Hartley: "Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon."
And those escapades contrasted with Albinoni's Adagio being played by the BB production team as background to an image of Luke A appearing as if he were about to appear in a Federico Fellini film...
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The farrago of the Office games was hard to understand. Surely the others eventually realised Deana and Sara were cheating because they had a secret mission. They do say Hell is Other People. An 'In Camera' Hell must be even more severe.
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Thanks, Marion. What I was trying to remember was being woken up in the middle of the night in midsummer to enact a New Year's Eve party with all its joyous singing etc. A bleary-eyed bizazz that beats any theatrical performance of real dislocation I've ever witnessed.
Marion, are you sure that object that hit Caroline's face - with such subsequent wild playacting injury - was not caused by her own throwing it in the air playfully and failing to catch it? I can't recall it being thrown at her by someone else.
I may not be commenting again till Sunday.
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The Olympic ceremony was interesting, better than I expected, but I didn't notice the giant bed, as I wasn't watching the whole time. The scene leading up to the five rings in the sky reminded me of a Wagner opera.
Meanwhile, Brian was right: the interview was as chaotic as Caroline's hair: symbolic of a negative synergy that (as Marion also says) is a bit worrying with regard to the prospect of her mental health following this experience.
An interesting case-study, not necessarily one that was comfortable to watch. I said early on she was one to watch. It turned out that I was right for the wrong reasons. She'll never be another Nikki.
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Nothing to add to that, Marion. You created a very interesting review of a relatively boring episode.
A quote from Nina Allan's excellent story in TTA's Black Static #29 (which I am real-time reviewing at the moment):
“It is true that I have formed friendships, intellectual and sometimes emotional alliances that lasted a decade or more. But the ending is always the same: a boredom that finally becomes so oppressive that I am driven to fabricate some feud or schism that explodes the relationship apart.”
Life is just a slow-motion version of Big Bother, I'd say.
Or Big Brother is a micro of life's macro.
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Marion wrote: "Sara also decided a few tears shed wouldn't do her cause any harm. She related the tale of how she and her Mother helped a man with nowhere to go by giving him the only thing he asked for - food. She complained about the lack of help for people like him and wept. Cool as cucumber, Deana told her about poverty in India and how she should be glad to live in Britain where the poverty of India is unknown. She said people did not appreciate how lucky they are to live here and that she is proud to be British. This forced Sara into agreeing with her and re-establishing her Unionist and Royalist credentials. Deana took the drama right out of Sara's control and made her look silly. Oh, that Deana is a clever one!"
The box game was OK. But that bit Marion describes above was the most remarkable event, with lots of fleeting emotions over some people's faces, hard to read, inscrutable, but there nevertheless and interpretable in various ways, especially when Deana praised living in England or was it Britain, seemingly giving a right-wing salute as she said it? Ironic or sincere or subconscious or simply misinterpretable? Sara and Ashleigh were particularly inscrutable listening to Deana. Sara's Bernhardt tears returned and, already knowing about her extreme idiosyncratic Royalism, this model makes a very strange mix. Shall I ever fathom these people, as in a all great dramas and literature?
More significantly, can they fathom themselves?
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I wrote a week or so ago: "In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described by Marion above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!"
(31 July) The BB authorities obviously been reading this thread and pinched the idea.
Actually, like Marion, I thought it was a very good task. A lot of home truths shining through the self-theatre.
Sara seems to be growing middle-aged phsyically and mentally as day follows day in the House.
I still think Essex girl Ashleigh is a good bet for the eventual winner.
Deana's 'improvement' speech was well thought out and delivered.
CONTINUED HERE
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