Some thoughts on Big Brother

Well, the Big Brother season ended a couple of weeks ago, and what happened was significant enough to warrant a late comment, I think.

One of my major beefs with reality television is that every show and season I've watched has rewarded backstabbing, conniving liars.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've never seen one!  And that soured me to reality shows.  Something about the person I find the biggest jerk winning a million dollars wasn't rewarding to me, and certainly wasn't worth the investment of time to see it happen.

Then a friend convinced me to watch Big Brother.  And now I find myself tempted to try another one.

Spoilers ahead, but it's been long enough I don't even think that warning is necessary.

The final two people were Natalie and Jordan.  Natalie, the youngest person there, a member of the Athlete clique.  Jordan, the pretty yet fairly emptyheaded member of the Popular clique.  Natalie latched on to the early games strongest player, Jesse, and rode his coattails for quite a while.  Jordan latched on to the mid games strongest player, Jeff, and managed to stay completely under the radar.

At the end of the show, some of the eliminated contestants had to vote on who won the money.  And this is where I ended up a very happy fellow.  At the very beginning of the show, Natalie had lied about her age, claiming to be 19 when she was really in her early 20s.  She did this as a way to garner sympathy votes.  As the "jury house" of eliminated contestants got to speaking, it came out that Natalie had lied.  And her former allies became rather irritated with her.  In the end, I think that lie more than anything was the deciding factor in Jordan winning.

And that's why I was so happy.  Jordan had been mostly honest and upfront, sweet and easy to get along with.  I had her pegged to get voted out in the first 4 rounds.  Natalie had a plan, she fooled her fellow contestants from the very beginning, and played your standard reality show underhanded, me-first game.  But Jordan won.  And what seemed to be the biggest factor was a lie told on the first day.

Can reality television have a rewarding payoff?  Can the nice guys finish first?  They did this time.  And that means at least one other show will get my viewership this season.  Let's hope it can happen again.