December 14, 2008
Dick Donato, also known as Evel Dick, will soon invade our TV screens. Following his stint on Big Brother, where he was crowned the eighth season winner, the 45-year-old reality TV star has been appearing on TV but only occasionally since he doesn't really have a regular gig. But that might change in the near future.
After Big Brother, it seems that Dick never lost his fan following. He was nominated and won the Realitini for Favorite Reality Performer in the Fox Reality Really Awards for 2007 against Len Goodman, New York, Sanjaya Malakar, comedian Ant, and Christopher Knight and Adrianne Curry. He was also nominated for Best Winner, Favorite Villain, Favorite Potty Mouth, and Best Fight for his confrontation with Jen Johnson.
December 7, 2008
Bryan Ollie and April Dowling will always be remembered for hooking up on Big Brother 10. In fact, they added a whole new level to word “showmance” by having sex almost every single day. At one point, they had “make-up sex” after a lovers' spat and while Ollie pulled some sheets to cover them, you can still get an idea of what these two are doing under, especially when the blankets fell off. What's more, April revealed she wants sex in the morning and night time and declared that Ollie's the best sex she's ever had.
Like most couples that forged their relationship in front of the cameras, April and Ollie also hoped to continue their affair outside the walls of the Big Brother house. Unfortunately, not every reality TV couple has managed to withstand the pressures of the real world. Ollie and April, on the other hand, appear to have remained an item.
November 7, 2008
Really good reality TV hosts are the exception, not the rule. It's no easy job, and it's simply not enough to shepherd a series along without messing up on live TV. A good reality host brings something to the table. Take my man Jeff Probst from Survivor – he is an invaluable resource. He exposes the subtext within the game via pointed interrogations at every tribal council. He's amiable without being a push-over, and he makes real bonds with the contestants. He doesn't allow for nonsense to go unquestioned. But, then you have someone like Julie Chen on Big Brother. She is married to the CBS head honcho Les Moonves. It's not a coincidence that she is the host of Big Brother, which happens to air on CBS. This wouldn't be an issue if Chen were good at her job. But, alas, she is not.
October 28, 2008
There's a moral conundrum I often face when watching a season of reality television. Whether it's Big Brother or Survivor or The Amazing Race, your first inclination is to root for whoever you like the best. You don't root for who you respect. You want those to succeed who you feel some sort of connection with, a person you might want to get a beer with. But, a quandary will occasionally arise: what if the person your rooting for doesn't need the money, and their competitors do. A million dollars (or, in Big Brother's case, $500,000) means different things to different people. For most reality participants, that amount of money is unequivocally life-changing. For a rare few, it's padding. It won't affect their already successful lifestyle. Do we, as an audience, have a moral obligation to root for the person who would most benefit from the prize money? This question once again came to mind when I read a story on TMZ today: former Big Brother winner Mike “Boogie” Malin won around $150,000 in a gambling spree in Las Vegas.
October 24, 2008
Our first How to Improve Big Brother article turned into a war of words. I'm OK with that. These articles are meant to inspire discussion. You never like it to get personal, but Big Brother fans are nothing if not passionate. While No More Slop was a consensus recommendation from the masses as how to make Big Brother a better show, the other ideas were varied and far less communal. The idea with the most amount of votes aside from the slop request involves the jury house. You Big Brother fans want to see more of the jury house. In this regard, I am fully with you. The jury house has always seemed like a wasted opportunity for interesting and game-important coverage. So, let's take a solid gander at the merits and potential perils of more jury house involvement on Big Brother.
October 9, 2008
Last week, we asked BuddyTV readers what one change they would make for Big Brother 11, and the responses came fast and furious. Over the coming weeks and months, we here at BuddyTV will analyze most of your suggestions, and discuss the positives and negatives of each worthy idea. While your opinions were diverse, there was one overwhelming sentiment that arose in the comments section: Big Brother should get rid of slop. It seems that almost no one likes slop. CBS and Big Brother, despite constant fan outcry, haven't made many changes to the slop policy in recent seasons. Why not? Laziness, maybe. Perhaps CBS secretly loves to torture their contestants. Regardless, you readers have had enough.
September 29, 2008
Big Brother 10 is over and done, and now begins the long death march across a normal TV season until the show returns. Big Brother fans are as rabid and tunnel-visioned as any fan base out there. For a significant number of Big Brother fans, it is THE show, the one they obsess over and look forward to, even when its premiere is more than half of a year away. Speculation about another winter edition of Big Brother ended last week when CBS announced that Big Brother 11 would premiere next summer. This is all but etched in stone, barring another catastrophic TV event, like last year's writers' strike that forced Big Brother into the winter. Unfortunately, this means that we have months and months to fill before Big Brother returns. We can't just have zero Big Brother coverage at BuddyTV, correct? So, this is one of the things we're going to do - Let's all have a long-term discussion about what should be changed for Big Brother 11.