[Macie Lightfoot]

I'm late to the party but my two cents on The Helen Wood Thing:

I get why Charley and Helen are comparable at face value but eh. Charley's immature and narcissistic hotheaded and a fame***** while Helen's bitter and nasty who has petty feuds with anyone and everyone around her. And, like, what reflects worse on Helen than the fact that her main rival in the house was closer in age to her son than to her? Charley benefits from the fact that her arguments were either hilarious (Billi, Chanelle) or righteous (Gerry, Ziggy) or both. There are catchphrases and quotables and so many iconic moments surrounding Charley. Helen was just incredibly basic (karl's Sallie Axl comparisons are spot on) and her arguments were suffocating and sanctimonious. If you said something to her face, she'd turn it around and put words in your mouth. If you said something about her in the DR, she'd twist what you said and shout WELL THAT'S WHAT I HEARD because she's so damn insecure and interprets anything that can be seen as a personal attack as one, assuming the worst of everyone but the best of herself. The difference between Helen and Charley is the difference between drama (which in and of itself is not automatically entertaining) and entertainment.

As for other reasons why BB15 was goddamn atrocious and why I don't care for Helen at all, I think her presence was a huge damper on the series. Helen is an early boot character, there's no denying that. If she stayed her time and followed Pauline in the eviction order (or even preceded her, entirely possibly) and we only had to deal with her for two or three weeks, I might even be able to appreciate her ironically for her short-lived belligerence like I can with Alexandra De-Gale. Like, she would've been in and out just like that and things would've moved on. Instead, we were stuck with her for much longer than anyone would've bargained for and she reigned over the house like a tyrant, fully expecting everyone to ingratiate themselves with her and her clique of dickish boys because, again, that's how Helen's mind operates. Everyone's wrong except for her. The notion of "power trip" is absurd because there was no power up for grabs. Pauline was the architect of everything by giving Helen the pass to the final, and once she was evicted the power shifted as thus. Everyone's social standing in the house was based on their relationship with Helen and there was no room for social mobility without compromising your own beliefs.

I guess that's about it. There are plenty of others factors I could discuss about why BB15 was so awful, including the poor production team and the ****ing unimaginative casting, but that's for another lengthy post. BB15 was ****ing garbage.