Break from reality

Break from reality

A strange thing happened at my house on Monday night. Four people who would not normally be caught dead watching a crap variety TV show did exactly that. While our baby slept in his room, blissfully unaware of the boring depravity on screen, we crowded the couch and watched more than two hours of tap dancing and poorly constructed interviews with grunting Neanderthals and self-promoting slappers.

Our Monday night of Big Brother bullshit was, of course, due to the presence of a guy we all knew to varying degrees. He had somehow made it to the final two, and was on the cusp of winning a lot of money.

Poor Tim. I predicted in the first week he would be the first voted out, with his non-assimilating water drinking and his obvious Newtown ways. But as the other inmates showed their truly horrible true colours, Tim was allowed to come out and prove himself. In the end, as everyone expected, Tim was way too smart to be on Big Brother. He didn’t win. That prize went to a vaguely good-looking set of twins (the Logan Brothers, or Bogans for short). They were like every other guy that’s won Big Brother, but with bigger muscles.

We all really, really wanted Tim to win. And not only because he would have become a rich dude around town. We also wanted him to win so we could have some validation for three months spent watching some of the worst television of our lives. We’ve seen it all, from a guy sexually assaulting a girl with his penis exposed to a different girl repeating the disastrous line I’m homophobic, I’m homophobic.

But Tim didn’t win. Despite a finale in which he cried, he laughed, and he proved himself the rock of the house, he still didn’t win. All of the emotion and carefully stage-managed spin wasn’t enough. Come to think of it, maybe it was too much. During a special, love-song soundtracked clip about his intense love of his self-titled homophobic housemate Kate, he muttered, Look at my cheesiness. Oh God. Oh no. Jesus. Funny, that’s what we were thinking all along.

Anyways, it’s not all bad news. Tim did provide an alternative voice to mainstream Australia. He fought for his own beliefs and didn’t back down, and closed the famous I’m homophobic argument with the only appropriate line: Oh, for fuck’s sake.

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