Rant: The Lies of Big Brother

I know I said I was going to steer this blog away from reality TV as no one cares at all about it, but something happened this week that I feel like addressing, as I think it highlights one of the primary problems with the genre (if, in fact, reality TV could be called a genre).

One of my guilty pleasure shows during the summer is Big Brother. Actually, "guilty pleasure" is the wrong choice of words, as I don't actually take any pleasure from watching it. Let me rephrase: One of the shows that I hate but can't stop watching and so continue to follow in order to feed my rage and give me something to yell at three times a week is Big Brother. For those who have never seen it (congratulations), 12-15 people are locked into a house for three months, allowed no contact with the outside world, participate in various competitions, vote one houseguest out each week, and generally act terrible. Part of the reason that Big Brother is so amazing is that the people chosen to be on it are generally some of the worst human beings on the face of the planet. Each season inevitably has at least one racist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive outburst from at least one houseguest, and that's what I want to talk about now.

This week, Jeff Schroeder got into an argument with fellow houseguest Kalia Booker about Harry Potter. Specifically, Jeff had just found out that Dumbledore was gay (a fact revealed by J.K. Rowling after the last book had been published), and he immediately took issue with it, going off on one of the more offensive rants that has ever been heard on the show. He pointed out that Dumbledore "doesn't have any gay tendencies," and then announced that "He's in school with little kids! You don't want to make that guy gay!" Kalia pressed him for clarification, and Jeff went on to say that "I don't think it's the right thing to have a kids' book, and to have the headmaster that's locked away in this magical land, to be gay. That isn't the right kind of writing to do." Kalia (who revealed that her sister was gay), asked Jeff to explain himself, as this is a ridiculous viewpoint to take, at which point Jeff exploded and started cursing her out.

Now, aside from the fact that Jeff's opinion (which seems to be that gay men are pedophiles who should be kept away from little kids) is insane, offensive, and stunningly ignorant, the issue I have is with the way this is going to be presented on TV; or rather, the way it won't be presented on TV. Here's the thing: Jeff is a returning houseguest, and he's considered one of the favourite guests to ever be on the show. He's portrayed as eminently likeable, has an adorable girlfriend (also on the show with him), and is generally someone that you'd want to root for (if you didn't know anything about things like this). See, this rant was captured on the live feeds; it hasn't been aired on one of the prime-time shows, and I can almost guarantee that it won't be. Every time something like this happens, the producers gloss over it; in fact they've edited these arguments in the past to make the bigoted houseguest look like the good guy. In his first season, Jeff got into an argument with another houseguest and ended up yelling that the guy was "a faggot." This argument was aired, because CBS does love drama, but the way it was edited, it made it look like Jeff was the victim, and that he hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, he came away looking like a hero, when in fact he'd revealed himself to his housemates to be an ignorant asshole.

This type of editing skews the entire show for the viewer. Certainly the rest of the house will hear about Jeff's rant, and this will permanently affect the way they feel about him. However, since this won't be shown on TV, we'll be presented with a different story. So far, Kalia has been portrayed as an insufferable bitch; she describes herself as "the real life Carrie from Sex and the City", which made me want to throw the remote through the goddamn TV when I heard it. Jeff, on the other hand, is still being painted as the likeable everyman; in some cases he's almost viewed as a hero. If this fight makes it on TV, I'm almost certain that Kalia will be shown as being the bad guy, as impossible as it might seem. Those of us who only watch the prime-time shows, and not the live feeds (either the 3-hour live show every night on Showtime or the subscription feeds available online), only have what the producers give us to go off of. The only reason I've heard about this is that the story made the rounds of the various entertainment news sites that I follow; if I hadn't read it I'd have gone on liking Jeff, and been confused if and when some of the other houseguests treated him differently. In the past, after a racist rant that was shown on the live feed but was never shown to the prime-time audiences, when reference was made to the argument, it was just confusing to the viewer, as we had no proof of what was being said; someone was being called a bigot, but we'd never seen him acting like a bigot, so it simply made his accuser look crazy, despite the fact that she was 100% correct.

I guess my point here is simply that I find it offensive that CBS seems to think that we can't be trusted with this sort of information. They're taking what's supposed to be reality TV and trying to give it their own storyline, and when anything happens that doesn't exactly fit their blueprint, they gloss over it or edit it out completely. Personally I think it makes viewing the show a completely different exercise now; rather than just following what happens, I'll be trying to see what (if any) repercussions Jeff will be faced with from his housemates. CBS offered a half-assed statement about the incident, but it's really just to cover their asses in case people complain that this sort of thing appeared on their live broadcast. I'm sure people will complain, but in my opinion, those people are idiots. This is reality TV, folks; these idiots knew what they were signing up for, and if they are ignorant bigots, they should be exposed as such. Part of what makes a show like this interesting is that we are supposed to be seeing what these people are really like, and what they will do after being locked in a house away from everything they know for such a long time. CBS should not be covering up their prejudices, and they certainly shouldn't be telling us a different story simply to maintain the status quo for their "fan favourites." If they're worried about offending people, bleep out the offensive statements, but don't just pretend like this shit never happened. If I wanted to watch a scripted show, I would watch a scripted show; I'm watching reality TV for a reason, and I just wish they'd let me do that.

/Rant. Stay tuned.

Review: Horrible Bosses

As I've mentioned before, writing comedy is really hard. Evidence of this can be found in the dozens of shitty "comedy" movies that Hollywood pumps out every year; movies with rehashed premises telling the same jokes we've heard a hundred times somehow get greenlit and make millions of dollars, because people are goddamn stupid. If you're going to use an idea that's been done before, you have to bring something new to the table, whether that be in putting an entirely new spin on a familiar story or simply by casting the right people in the right roles. Horrible Bosses falls precisely into this category. Yes, the premise is nothing new, but the cast is fantastic, and they manage to keep things fresh for the entire running time. It's certainly not without its faults, but it managed to keep me laughing, which is all I really ask from a movie like this.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day are Nick, Kurt, and Dale, three friends who hate their jobs and decide they need to kill their bosses. Think Strangers on a Train, but more ridiculous. Charlie Day was the entire reason I wanted to see this film, as I'm a huge fan of his work on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (if you're not already watching that show, do yourself a favour and start), and he certainly didn't disappoint. The bosses are played by Kevin Spacey, a psychopath, Colin Farrell, a coked-up asshole, and Jennifer Aniston, a nymphomaniac who inexplicably wants nothing but to have sex with Dale, despite the fact that he's got a voice like a strangled puppy and constantly acts like an idiot throughout the movie. Teaming up with a "murder consultant" named Dean "Motherfucker" Jones (played by Jamie Foxx), they bumble their way through the plot. There are no real surprises in the movie, so director Seth Gordon relies entirely on his cast to get laughs out of the audience, and definitely came through.

As surprising as it is (since I've never seen her in anything that I liked), Jennifer Aniston was the high point of this movie for me. There's something amazing about seeing Rachel from Friends spouting some of the filthiest shit you've ever heard to a stunned Charlie Day, and his reactions are priceless. Sudeikis and Bateman perform about as we've come to expect (with Bateman being the straight man in the movie, and Sudeikis getting the odd laugh here and there, although his inability to resist any woman becomes tiring quickly).

The movie suffers a bit from the fact that there are no surprises; you know exactly where the plot is going and how it's going to get there. Charlie is almost overused; it's like someone realized he was really good at the screamy rants, and so tried to have him do nothing but those. The final act should have been presented in a different order as well; narratively it would have made more sense. These are all minor nitpicks, however, that are quickly forgotten as soon as you think about Charlie dancing in the car while he's supposed to be keeping a lookout, or Colin Farrell (with an amazing combover) saying goodbye to the ladyboy masseuse leaving his house.

Overall, Horrible Bosses could have been better, but it also could have been much, much worse. As it is, the cast saves this movie. If you're a fan of Sunny, you'll like this, and if you're not, then I hate you. Get away from my blog*.

*I'm kidding. Please keep reading.