A positive BB article? Am I seeing things?
Article in full:
We'll admit it. When Big Brother announced its huge Annihilation week, in which the housemates would be in charge of who got sent packing, we weren't convinced.
One of the founding principles of Big Brother is that we, the viewers, get to have our say in who stays and who goes. Hell, the slogan is: "You decide." What kind of ******ery was this?
Well, we hold our hands up. We were wrong. Because Big Brother: Annihilation has been edge-of-the-seat, jaw-dropping, did-that-just-happen television – just like Big Brother in the old days.
It's not even that it's completely gone our way. When the first Annihilation eviction happened, it was Chelsea who got shown the door, and whatever you think about him, he was a classic BB character in his David Brentishness.
But while Chelsea might not have been the first housemate we'd have chosen to go home, what was fascinating was seeing the housemates sitting round the table, talking tactics and deciding who to boot out. Did they want to be honourable? Cut-throat? And how could they keep their reputation with the public intact?
Things have been even more compelling ever since. Take the housemates choosing which of Andy or Jayne – whom they had targeted, thinking they were going to get them out – should win immunity.
It looked like it was going one way – Jayne would be safe – until Jackson stepped up, protected his mate and managed to swing the votes. We're still scratching our heads about how he managed the whole thing, but we're going to be studying it for years to work out how we can be that persuasive.
That's the thing about Annihilation week: it looked like it was all too easily going to become a popularity contest but instead, it's given the underdogs repeated chances to save themselves – and God knows Big Brother fans love an underdog.
We always like seeing the outsiders get one up on the popular kids (it's practically what BB is built on) so watching Andy win his immunity made many fans cheer. And with Jason knowing that he was next for the chopping block, he had no hesitation in stealing £20,000 from the prize fund to ensure his safety, even if it meant he had to pick someone to evict.
Yep, these well-planned tasks have quietly shifted the dynamics in the house – and sometimes in a matter of hours. Jason, so close to the chopping block, suddenly found himself in a position of power and managed to remove Lateysha, one of his biggest threats in the house; something he never would have been able to do in a normal week.
And while Jackson might have been a hero when it came to Andy's immunity, he tumbled in the house's esteem after insisting in a whirl of damage control that he would have split the £20,000 if he'd hit his button fast enough – something that didn't make sense when it was thought about logically. It was down to Evelyn, a housemate flying largely under the radar until now, to step up and give him what for, another huge change in the house dynamic.
People moan that Big Brother has moved far away from its original claim of being a social experiment, but not only has this week been full of drama, it's been psychologically astonishing. Students of conformity should be watching closely, no more so than when the housemates, outraged that Jason had sent Lateysha packing, rounded on him telling him that he should have picked the easy option and sent Jayne home.
In front of Jayne.
With Jayne nodding along.
Of course, Big Brother always warns us to expect the unexpected, but at the moment we don't know what to expect from minute to minute. That's what makes this thrilling, though. With so many of the Big Brother twists and turns trailed in advance – clips, hints from the house, even knowledge of who will be a housemate – it's a completely new experience to watch it with genuinely no idea of what's going to happen.
This week, when we've known there have been evictions, speculation has gone wild. Fans have zoomed into photographs to try to spot which housemates are still there; rascals have been going rogue to incorrectly edit Wikipedia and spark fresh rumours; the odd image released by Big Brother has sparked a whole new round of investigation. And yet, Lateysha's exit last night still felt like a complete shock. We're not sure quite how BB has managed to keep things so under wraps this week, but boy, we're glad they did.
So bravo, Big Brother. It helped that you picked a brilliant bunch of housemates this year, but this week has confounded our expectations, kept us guessing, and made BB complete must-watch telly again. Would we have felt differently if things had gone another way? Probably. Does it matter? Hell no.
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/big-bro...citement-back/
Alex,
DS Article- How Annihilation Brought Excitement Back
Great article
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