Vote for Tim

Sometime tomorrow, I will do something I have never done before, and hope to never do again. I will vote for a reality TV show contestant.

For it is time to stand up and applaud. Big Brother's Tim seems to be in with a good chance to take out the prize as winner of Big Brother 2005. Tim, how I admire thee...

I haven't written much here about my obsession with this season of Big Brother. I could have written a running series of posts on it. I almost wish I had; it has been fascinating to watch. My obsession has attracted its share of mockers, though I've managed to convert a few people along the way. A certain amount of defense is probably necessary, reality television being what it is: I enjoy Big Brother. I am a writer, and thus a voyeur; I am someone who will take any opportunity he can to observe people in their everyday activities. Of course, the action in Big Brother is heightened - but unlike most reality shows, it doesn't seem hopelessly unreal to me. Exagerated, yes, but in a fascinating sensory-deprivation-experiment kind of way.

(A quick tangent - I have to. One of the cross-promoted marketing items in this year's Big Brother has been Herbal Essences Shampoo - "reccomended by the Aspara Spa, a leading spa in Asia". Having watched so many ads for this product, the inevitable question has occurred to me - what the fuck is the Aspara Spa? Who cares if they recommend Herbal Essences Shampoo? Big Brother gives evictees a free trip to the Aspara Spa in Singapore. Most people might accept this, but I do not. A google search for "aspara spa" singapore returns about 369 results. To put this in perspective, a search for "Plup Books" newtown gives 368 results. Anyway, for any advertisers out there, I am quite willing to whore out my business for reasonable sums of money.)

I've always found Big Brother to be a lot more watchable than most reality television shows, but this season in particular I have been obsessed. What has made this season of Big Brother better than previous years has been the choice of people. In the first season, the "nasty" candidates were quickly evicted, leaving a bunch of amiable dullards from middle Australia to bore the shit out of us. Subsequent seasons seemed largely to start with the amiable dullards. The mind-deadening banality of such television quickly drove even me - who can find fascination in the most forgettable eavesdropped train conversations - to turn off the television. This season we got instead a bunch of genuinely complex characters. Take Dean, for instance. A miserable human being, no doubt - but also a somewhat quit-witted, articulate one. Almost everybody this year has had a sort of street-smart cunning, and each (excluding the clearly damaged Rachel, who really seemed unequipped to handle the pressures of the show and the people around her) has had some social gift - each different, and often conflicting - an ability to find a way in a group. I have remained fascinated - most particularly with Big Brother in its purest form, the live streaming Big Brother Up Late, which has prevented me from getting many good nights sleep. It can often be a gruelling show, Up Late - the late-night zit popping sessions, in particular - but has on occasions kept me up until two in the morning, most notably on the jaw-droppingly hedonistic drunken party when Christy was locked in the airlock to prevent her injuring herself, or others, and Glenn dry-humped Geneva in the spa, before moving on to Michelle. That was car crash television at its best, and the edited Up Late highlights didn't do justice.

Amongst this, Tim was an unlikely hero to emerge. For Tim is one of ours - not the usual Aussie bloke, but a Newtown living, UTS journalism guy who seemed like someone I'd hang out with, or meet at a party. A weedy little intellectual left-wing dork. At first, I thought he was a sick joke, put in by the producers as a piss-take on Merlin from last year. (Merlin's courage and political conviction was admirable, but I never wanted him representing me: he was such a snivelling, right-on twat.) In the first weeks, everybody nominated Tim, and he seemed destined for a quick exit. It didn't happen - there were more blatantly appalling people than him - and he scraped through the first week or two. Then, in some strange dominant ape ritual, he started getting picked on by the boys. More or less beaten up on a daily basis. Big Brother called him into the diary room, asked him if he felt he was being bullied, needed help. He declared he could handle it. "I've experienced real bullying," he said. "This isn't it."

And using his mind, and skills no doubt developed from high school, he somehow subverted it. Without aggression, or anything overt - through a triumph of integrity, he took on those who were being truly nasty to him, and befriended those who were simply going along with the group. Physically, he transformed himself through daily work into something not quite so physically pathetic. Finally, he took on his chief tormentor Dean, in a verbal battle instigated by Dean, and kicked his ass in a way that was glorious to watch.

Integrity is the word that comes to mind - in his own way, in a show that seems designed to destroy any pretense of personal integrity, he has kept his. And I want him to win, I really do. I have my doubts, though he must now be the favourite, though we are down to the last two - Greg, the typical Big Brother winner - Amiable, male, "Aussie" - and the unlikely Newtown intellectual weed. And I think we must vote for him, those who "know" him, because I don't see the teenage girls doing it, and I don't see middle Australia doing it. Of course he doesn't deserve the prize money - nobody does, just for being popular on a reality television show - but he almost does. Has has, at least, earned my admiration, and tomorrow, for Tim, Southern Star/Endemol will get a buck or so from me.

posted by Nicholas @ 8:52 PM