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Honolulu Lite
I'M one of the few people in the country who will confess to watching reality programs like "Survivor" and "Big Brother." ‘Big Bro’ is
really a big boreSomething like 50 million people watched the final episode of "Survivor," but it's impossible to find a soul who will admit to watching it.
I actually liked "Survivor" because the castaways were nasty and completely isolated on an island with only 200 or 300 television production people. "Big Brother," on the other hand, is to television what oatmeal is to fine cuisine: flat and tasteless. And not tasteless in an entertaining way, like a bunch of bathroom jokes. Tasteless as in lacking any flavor at all.
But I still watch because "Big Brother" is exploring the high country of bad television. It asks: How bad will TV get before people stop watching? Can a show with absolutely no entertainment value draw an audience? Will people sit on couches and watch people sit on couches?
So far, the answers seem to be yes. Because even though "Big Brother" is a big bore, people are still watching.
Each week, the show gets worse as any house member with a shred of personality is voted out. It looked like there were going to be fireworks between the militant Black Panther guy and the one-legged white cracker. But the viewers voted out the Black Panther, so the mini race war was out.
We were left with the stripper and the beauty queen, who we hoped would get into a cat fight in the tiny swimming pool. But then the stripper was voted out. What were they thinking? Now there is absolutely no one on the show anyone would want to see naked. And what's the point of having video cameras filming everyone's every move when there's no one attractive to get naked?
THE only person left in the house with a hint of personality was a kooky girl who dyed her hair shocking colors. I know, dyeing hair usually doesn't pass for personality, but we were down to the dregs. Then the viewers kicked HER out.
Now we're left with the one-legged cracker, some kind of diplomat lady who works at the United Nations whose pulse never rises above 56, the beauty queen who forsook seeing her mother in order to meet with a Hollywood sleazeball for two minutes, an Asian medical student whose pulse never rises above 55-1/2, a fat haole father (the type whose kids usually leave home at 16 to get away from) and some other guy so nondescript that he disappears when standing against a wall.
Worse yet, all these people get along.
So let's see why "Survivor" was a hit and "Big Brother" sucks:
"Survivor": nasty cast, exotic location, rats for dinner, nice-looking almost naked people (Rich not included), interesting competition.
"Big Brother": comatose cast, boring set, Rice-A-Roni for dinner, no strippers and inane competitions (a dance marathon!).
Nothing could be more boring than a dance marathon. In the movie "They Shoot Horses Don't They," the only thing that made the dance marathon interesting was that someone got killed in the end. Maybe someone should chuck some firearms over the wall into the "Big Brother" yard. I'm not suggesting that cast members start killing each other, but if something isn't done fast, I'm afraid viewers are going to start taking their own lives.
If producers could find a way to show nothing but a test pattern and still sell ads, they'd do it. Unfortunately, "Big Brother" shows that they're almost there.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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