Why I love Big Brother...and most reality TV

The cast of Big Brother 18, in all their exploitative glory

After a few years of abstaining from one of my most embarrassing habits, I have relapsed. I have been a faithful watcher of Big Brother 18 for the past 12 weeks, and that’s a fact that maybe two other people knew about me before today. For those unfamiliar with television’s biggest time sink, it’s a much bigger commitment than most TV series require. Big Brother airs 3, sometimes 4, hour-long episodes per week! The fact that anyone (especially 5–6 million average viewers) can keep up with it in today’s crowded landscape of both scripted and reality TV is a minor miracle. I’m convinced most of its viewers are people who can’t be bothered to change the channel from CBS and just get annoyed that they’re not watching some variant of CSI. But I’m over being embarrassed by it, I’ve had too much fun watching it for the last 3 months.

Much of the show’s addictive nature stems from its premise, which is a blend of other reality TV tropes with one unique twist. On a surface level the show works a lot like Survivor, with contestants forced to live together in a house and voting one of their own out each week. The winner receives a $500,000 prize, CBS cheaply fills half of their primetime programming for the summer, everyone has a good time. The real gimmick is that the show happens in real time, rather than being filmed months before airing like most reality shows. The “eviction” ceremonies happen live in special Thursday night episodes, with the other two weekly episodes focusing on competitions that affect the game and other highlights edited together from the week. Devoted fans can even pay a subscription fee to watch streaming 24/7 footage from inside the house on the show’s website. These contestants are ALWAYS on camera, and America is always watching.

This is radically different from how every other reality show works, and is probably the closest any show in the genre has come to being “real”. Sure, there are always rumors of behind-the-scenes producer intervention and what really goes on in those few times per week that the live feeds are shut down. But for the most part the show is immune to the types of heavily edited “storylines” that dominate reality television, simply because it’s hard to make up something that didn’t happen when viewers are watching 95% of the time. If CBS leaves out something important or significantly alters the way events in the house occurred for their edited broadcast of the show, online viewers usually make a big fuss about it on social media. This has happened in several past seasons of the show, especially when involving houseguests making racist, sexist, or homophobic comments that are ignored in the show’s televised broadcasts. 

Rooting for my boy Paul to pull out the win this year

I have a long history with reality TV. It started in the early days of Survivor, which I was as dedicated to as any 10 year old could be, and kept growing through years of exposure to Project Runway, Top Chef, and various other Real Housewives/Bravo franchises. I currently listen to a weekly Bachelor podcast, even though I do not watch The Bachelor or any of its affiliated shows. The genre has always fascinated me, but as I get older I have to question what keeps drawing me back. 

The only answer that makes sense to me is how, as skewed as the portrayal is, all reality TV is at its core trying to represent “America”. The people who go on these shows are (mostly) not trained actors. There’s something inherently interesting about that. As unReal has taught me, they might be in a carefully constructed fantasy but their interactions are no less interesting because of it. 

I’ve returned to Big Brother again and again because it’s possibly the best example of this. Producers don’t have access to an entire season’s worth of footage to construct a story from, so they are forced to let it organically play out week by week. Sometimes that means it’s straight up boring, which is even more fun for me to watch as CBS tries to creatively edit and create interesting drama out of nothing. But usually, the houseguests are plenty interesting (and crazy) on their own. No show on TV, reality or otherwise, offers fans a better look into its creative process than Big Brother. As a TV fan that’s not only exciting and compelling, it’s unique.