Big Brother 8 - 9/13/2007 episode

First of all, I think it hysterically ironic that an idea from George Orwell's paranoid novel of doom and gloom, "1984", is being used as the title of a very successful reality show, and the whole concept of having your thoughts censored is turned upside down by having cameras everywhere so that your every thought and action is seen by all, and there's nowhere to hide. It's the classical turned popular. Love it.

It's the fault of a friend at work that I started watching this show. It's only on in the summer and runs three nights a week - Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. With that kind of load, I would *only* be watching it during summer because that's a lot of time to commit to, but in summer, when everything else is on reruns, it's not a big deal. In summer of 2005, it turned out that I had pneumonia (no fun, btw), so I was house-ridden for about 2 weeks. Since my brain was mostly busy trying to get my lungs to breathe through the liquid, there wasn't room for much more thinking. Books were difficult to concentrate on, as was any television that required too much thought. Really stupid TV was too dumb for even my overworked brain to withstand. So having heard about Big Brother from the friend, and having run across it while flipping channels, I stopped to watch. It was fairly late in the season already, but it was still interesting enough to keep my attention, but nothing too hard to figure as far as plot was concerned. Perfect.

I've been watching the show since, and I think most of the reason I enjoy it (as well as other reality shows like Survivor) is because of my everpresent interest in psychology and sociology. I like to watch people behave around other people in particular circumstances - it's basically treating people as lab rats. As long as I don't have to be subjected to them myself, they can be amazingly interesting to watch.

So tonight, they were down to final 3 - Dick, Daniele and Zach. I don't care for Zach, and I still like Dick and Daniele, though I know a lot of people hate them, so I was *thrilled* when Dick was the final Head of Household. No question from there that he'd be taking Daniele with him and kicking Zach off to go to the jury house.

It's going to be incredibly funny to watch the jury house when Zach shows up and as they decide whether to give the $500,000 prize to Dick or Daniele. Pretty much all of the people in the jury house can't stand either of them, so to watch them have to decide which one to award the grand prize to should be great TV. Odds are probably good that Daniele will win it since Dick attacked so many of the people on the jury. But you never know.