Cookie Monster

Alright, I'll cut to the chase. Today's lesson is on a certain tv-show involving a set of random people who get locked in a house under heavy surveillence for a pre-determined amount of time. Yes, it's Big Brother. Ironically, my original topic (now deleted out of sheer boredom) was on all things Orwellian, but an entirely accidental glimpse of Big Brother 9 made me change my plan.

Yes, Big Brother is on it's 9th series, and is swiftly going even more downhill than ever (though how that is possible after the Celebrity BB with George Galloway and Pete Burns, I don't know). If you track the housemates from the first series to the current, you'll notice soon enough that suddenly the contestants became bizzarre, including transvestites, asylum seekers and tourettes sufferers. Obviously, this was Channel 4's idea to get more views, and sadly, it seems to have worked.
A lot of the time the 'excitement' comes from arguments and romance (presumably because a large chunk of BB's viewer's are unable to get excitement from their everyday lives), not from the contestants themselves. Or so I thought, until I saw Kathreya during the current series:



Remind you of anyone?



Clearly Channel 4 have lowered their standards- this is nothing short of freakish. If Kathreya were only blue and hairy, she'd be the most accurate impersonator of Cookie Monster known to man. What kind of normal person's dream is it to- and I quote BB 9's website here- "travel the world and taste cookies in every country"? I kid you not.
Another sample from her massive repertoire designed to brutally rape the human existance include- (on her shape) "If you love jacket potato you will love me", and of course, her "Happy House" song, which I simply refuse to put up here, so you'll have to go hunting for it.

I feel that, all joking aside, Channel 4 are becoming a bit too discriminatory now when it comes to picking housemates. Big Brother used to be popular because it forced a group of normal, average human beings who had never met before to interact under observation- this clearly has changed. Now, it appears that contestants are picked because they will make "good tv" because of their quirky and downright weird behaviour or less than average appearence- for example, Darnell, the albino, or the ever present "token gay guy" in almost all series, who is often camper than a row of tents (see Dennis). If BB is feeling particularly racist, it might throw in the odd ethnic minority for viewers to laugh at innocently.

Am I being scathing? I don't think so. If you look at the housemates, you will often notice that the "different" ones are deliberately stirred up by events and activities, which I think is rather cruel. Then again, maybe it is the fashion for all reality TV shows to be cruel and unforgiving to those who are the most unstable- for example, in shows such as I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. Maybe it's time everyone woke up and realised how unfair these shows are, before we all start watching Japanese game shows.