So if your bus is pulling up to your stop and you’re listening to Girls Aloud on your NotAniPod (I had Bon Iver AND Fleet Foxes on just before I swear! At the same time! Double indie goodness!) and you’re walknig down the aisle towards the doors and then your fingers fumble and you drop your ticket on the floor?

Probably best not to get so carried away by the music that you do a full on stripper ass-roll dip to pick it up again, because that is what you would do on your own, as you are actually on a bus full of other human beings, who may well find this hilarious.

Truly we are through the bottom of the barrel.

This is what you get when you go Happy House. Sure you get a final filled with (mostly, kind of) nice people, but you also get housemates who reach the very end with no highlights. What’s Rachel’s “Best Bits” clip? Being really really nice? What are we going to put up for Darnell? His head under a blanket whining that he ith not a monthtah? What the fuck are we going to put up for Mohamed, given that all he’s done is shovel food in his gob, play the martyr and be spat on? I don’t really like Mo, but having spit dribbling down your face as a “highlight of your stay in the house” is a bit much.

“So quick!” obviously thought the producers! “Let’s come up with something for Mo to do! Let’s have a Diary Room moment, so when he finishes 5th in the final we can pretend that it was worthwhile having him in the house in the first place! LET’S MAKE IT ABOUT HIS SHOES! IT’LL BE HIRARIOUS!!!!!!!!(remember that?!)”

So last night we got three diary rooms about Mo’s shoes. First Mo was missing his shoes, because his suitcase is still confiscated. Then Mo offers to swap TWO WHOLE BELTS for his shoes (!!!!). Then Mo GETS SOME SHOES THAT AREN’T HIS SHOES! THEYR’E FUNNY SHOES! LOL!

It was kind of a desperate grab for lol that fell flat on its face. Past Big Brother legendary comedy Diary Room moments, like Victor calling himself the ghetto V.I.P who will leave you R.I.P (before asking for some milk), or Nadia’s “ladygarden”, or Lea and Aisleyne doing impressions of each other, or mild-mannered Cameron threatening to rip open Lisa’s throat and piss through the hole (or whatever that was) have come about organically, as part of an understanding between a facilative Big Brother and a witty housemate.

Not Big Brother practically beating a housemate with a stick yelling “BE MORE FUNNY!” and the housemate responding with the dim light of recognition that this is a “comedy moment” but with no more idea of what to do with it than an Amish with a Blackberry. Instead Mo’s reaction was just to laugh. The really forced harsh laughter that hurts your throat. MO’S THE LIFE OF THE PARTY! MO KNOWS FUNNY!

Unfortunately Mo does not know funny. Mo thinks cross-dressing is funny. Mo thinks Eddie Murphy is funny. Mo thinks Kat is funny, and Mikey spewing up Brussels is funny, and Rex abusing Rachel is funny. Please Big Brother, never again put humour in the hands of someone quite so out of touch with the most basic notions of comedy…

In other house news: Fuck Darnell being an ugly black albino with a temper… SARA’S TWENTY-SEVEN OH MY GOD SHE HAS IT SO MUCH HARDER WITH SEX! ; Nicole and Rex continued to make Fred & Rosemary West look functional because hey, at least they LIKED each other ; Dale apparently knows immediately when he looks at things if he’ll be able to do them or not. Jen would beg to differ

Oh Judd Apatow. Superbad truly was a false dawn.

So here we are again, with yet another Judd Apatow film constructed seemingly out of a whole series of SNL sketches. Walk Hard is basically a pastiche of “Walk The Line” - the story of a poor country boy whose brother dies at a young age, and then becomes a huge country star, with drug problems and the love of a fellow country star causing him drama along the way. John C Reilly takes the league, which is a phrase I never thought I’d be typing in my lifetime, and is supported her from The Office, him from Mean Girls, him from Anchorman, her from Knocked Up (not net her, THAT one, from the beginning, the network executive, that one), and him from N0M83R5 or whatever the shit that’s called. Also I think I might recognise his mother from somewhere. I think she might have been a shift lawyer on Law & Order.

Basically what I’m saying is that this isn’t a star vehicle. Except for the CAMEOS! From ACTUAL MUSICIANS like Jack White and Eddie Vedder and Lyle Lovett and Ghost Faced Killer and…erm…Jewel. And from acting stars like Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman and Justin Long (all playing The Beatles in the only time in history when I would consider a Beatles theme orgy) all making hilarious guest appearances. AND LOOK! IT’S FRANKIE MUNIZ! MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE! AS BUDDY HOLLY! THIS FILM CANNOT FAIL!

And if that makes the film sound like an episodic series of hit and miss sketches relying primarily on “HEY LOOK! IT’S HIM!” appeal then I’m glad I’m being so accurate in my sketching. Basically this is a series of 60’s/70’s themed music sketches, some of which work (The Beatles, the Dylan pastiche, “you’ll never make it!”, “YOU DON’T WANT NO PART OF THIS SHIT!”), and an awful lot of which don’t (pretty much anything from the last half hour. Oh and the random penis - just no). It’s not really a film, so much as a mildly amusing way to pass 90 minutes.

Basically a superior Epic Movie.

The first female HOH initiates a reign of intense terror upon the house. WHY THE FUCK CAN’T EVERYONE JUST BE NICE TO EACH-FUCKING-OTHER?

Rewarded for her juicy teacher brains, Rachel found herself in a position of power and authority. Where she would have to make decisions, upset people, and exert a bit of overt authority, rather the covert authority of sitting down with Kat every night and hashing out who they were going to make be the Final Six. So what area did Rachel choose to exert her dominance over? Which region of the house did she make a hot button topic worthy of debate and falling out with everyone over?

The washing-up.

Apparently washing dishes up is too oenrous a task for Kat, Mikey and Nicole to have to complete on their own. They need Rachel’s help. Never mind that Housemates from Hell have always carried the burden of washing up solely on Lis… their backs without much complaint, when Rachel’s best friend, her charity project and Rex’s Precious Princess girlfriend got put in charge, Rachel demanded that the entire house chip in. Fuck Heaven. Fuck luxury. Housemates from Hell wouldn’t have to suffer at all.

Understandably heavenly housemates were pissed off about this. They didn’t toil and scrape and smack their brains with sticks until grey matter oozed out their ears in order to recite the alphabet backwards, so that they couldn’t avoid the fruits of Heaven that some of them had been waiting three bloody weeks to attain. Because Rachel’s heaven isn’t a paradise, it’s a socialist kindergarten collective where everyone helps their fellow man and Rachel schemes with the intensity of Mata Hari to thwart the fascist overlords of Big Brother in order to…do some washing up.

In between this and her ripping wheeze involving cigarette lighters, her refusing to have a little bit of a brussels sporuts fight, and her insistence that everybody be lovely in the brightest shiniest, everything’s going to come up awesome for everybody voice that she likes to use when she wants people to pay attention to her, the United States Of Rachel Rice is just abuot the most boring country in the world.

Fuck, it makes CANADA look exciting.

In other house news : Mikey ate all the sprouts, and then sicked them back up again, and then ate them again, and then sicked them abck up again, and then he emptied them over his own head ; some day a girl will TOTALLY fall in love with Darnell. She WILL. HONEST! ; Rex went for a poo, putting a heavy strain on his relationship with Nicole.

After a weekend including two long train journeys with only my iPod and a newspaper for company and a Summer Heights High marathon, I now have the following two songs stuck in my ehad on a loop :

It’s kind of disconcerting. Although I guess there are some similarities in theme…

Yes, this has been going so long that a letter from home means something.

Ah the “letters from home” segment. Always guaranteed to bring a etar to the eye, a lump to the throat, and a finger to the “change channel” button as the sentimentality slowly and surely starts to get too much.

This year was no exception. Whilst it didn’t quite have a ridiculously overblown moment quite on a par with “the chemo is going well” (heck, even *I* teared up over that one) the sheer levels of sentimentality and endless bloody crying started to get a bit overwhelming from halfway through. We started with the epic love poem from Mario to Lisa, which seemed to cover abuot 5 sides of A4 paper before culminating in one of Mario’s patented “oh ho ho ho, I SO have a sense of humour abuot what a prick I am, a ho ho ho” moments that he’s been gracing BBLB with over the past few weeks, and which never really get any more convincing.

The came Mo, in floods of tears and wailing about how his parents were watching him on tv and were proud of him. That over, we fortunately got the palatte cleanser of Dale’s emotionally stunted letter from home, which somehow managed to spin out “y’alright?” for half a page. Naturally Dale tried to collapse his hat into his own face and wept buckets anyway, but it was still weclome light relief before Stu got a letter from his daughter and everyone collapsed at the pink ink and love hearts and pictures of the moon on it.

Fortunately this was it, surely. Hell housemates were in HELL, surely they wouldn’t get any succour? The torrent of scary embarassing emotion would be over right? Of course not. Rachel got ushered into the Diary Room and told to choose between a letter from her family or letters for Mikey, Nicole and Kat. Naturally Rachel burst into tears and chose the letter for Hell, because she’s decent and it’s what 75% of the housemates would have done in her situation (and, perhaps cynically, I’m sure the letter will be cracked out of storage by the end of the week anyway).

So then the floods of tears migrated out of the Diary Room and back into the house, with Michael getting a solid letter of support, and Kat getting slightly nauseating love-poetry from her “Prince Charming”. It was all a bit much, so I’m glad that Nicole and Rex managed to keep their passions to a minimum when they were re-united on the other side of the fence. Because by that stage the vomit bucket was looming.

Just once I’d like a letter to say “you’ve embaressed yourself - don’t bother darkening our door again”. You’ve got to have the bad to make the good meaningful after all, and it’s not as though some of them wouldn’t warrant a shock to the system like that.

In other house news : Rex was so glad that his VT accurately represented his personality and only talked about his bling ; Sara added a little bit too much pepper to her spicy girl stew and ended up with slut soup ; Lisa headbanged to Whitesnake

Seriously, is there anybody in the whole world who believes that anybody other than Craig is the Mole? Especially as only about 5 people are actually watching this season.

Craig, Mark, Nicole. One of these three is the winner, one is the loser and one of them (dramatic pause) is The Mole. WOO! SPOOKY MUSIC!

This series of The Mole has been a minor disappointment. It was kind of sad to see the self-proclaimed “smartest reality show on tv” come back with an IQ reduced such that it feels like it underwent head trauma at some point since it last aired. When your celebrity editions (starring Dennis Rodman, several underwear models, that kid from Dinotopia and a BALDWIN. TWICE! THE SAME ONE!) shows more intellectual rigour than your regular “Triple Digit IQ” seasons, then there’s problems. Mostly this year has been a case of physical tasks, really basic mental problems with straightforward sabotage opportunities, and “let’s jump off this” reality show challenges. There’s been little of the subtlety, ingenuity, or sheer head-fuckery involved in say, “Anderson’s House Of Fun” or the paintball challenge from series 1.

The contestants have upped the “reality tv behaviour” by a couple of notches as well, with death-threats, spontaneous lute solos, and throwing lemons in peoples faces. If one were concerned about the spirit of the show as being “above” other reality shows then this would no doubt be a concern.

But if you didn’t have these atnics, you wouldn’t have Nicole. The divalicious gynaecologist who seems to have lucked her way into the final despite giving the world’s best impression of a really smart person who finds themselves in a situation where they don’t have a clue. She’s almost certainly remained in the game thus far solely due toa combination of luck, tieing for times on quizzes, and freaking everybody the fuck out by threatening to kill them and sabotaging games in the most obnoxiously obvious manner possible, triggering a whole “is she playing The Mole, or is she the Mole playing someone playing the Mole?” spasm in everybody’s heads.

Joining Nicole in tonight’s final are Mark - the super intense Soccer and History teacher whose nuclear strength intensity has threatened to scorch my retinas at imes, but who is basically a likeable enough bloke, and Craig, aka the Moliest Mole that ever moled. To be honest I’ve had my eye on Craig from the beginning, because he’s shown the “Mole Personality” - be likeable, be calm, don’t get involved in any drama. But I’ve tended to focus on others (Victoria and Alex mostly) as my suspects because a lot of his sabotage would rest on his being “too fat to function” which probably won’t make for a very satisfying reveal. I do hold out hope that he’s done some truly sneaky stuff as well (as much as these games have allowed scope for it) because otherwise I might give the reunion a miss.

Of course this all rests on my absolute certainty that Craig is the mole, which rests on foundations about as solid as Victoria definitely being the mole, because she totally said “butter us up” before the contestants got buttered up ZOMG HOW WOULD SHE KNOW?! So if Mark somehow is the Mole, I take all this back, and I TOTALLY KNEW ALL ALONG YOU GUYS.

One of the best Highlights Shows in recent memory is swiftly followed by one of the worst.

God, it was almost looking like the introduction of Nicole would lead to some decent drama. After Lisa finally being the one to tell Rex where to get off (albeit by introducing Mario into the occasion, automatically making her slightly ridiculous. Well…slightly more ridiculous) resulted in a slightly frosty tense atmosphere into a house already frayed by the prospect of the eviction, it seemed like, if this stupid ass-backwards twist were to go ahead, then this was the ideal time to carry it off.

And of course it was Lisa losing her shit. After spending the past few weeks affecting not to care that her Italian Stallion was gone, and that she was apart from her daughter, a circuit blew in ehr brain and she punched her way out through a security door, before daring security to come and have a go if they thought they were sufficiently hard. Naturally, the producers saw the potential for continued drama, and assured her that she’d totally be allowed back into the house if she wanted. Which she did, because Lisa is Lisa, and the thought of things happening to her without a camera being there to watch her is probably terrifying.

And so the stage was set for a week of epic drama, with rivaliries, jealousies and Jacobean drama. Except what we got instead was a whole episode of a load of tedious romance pseudo drama over a sodding suitcase. Because Nicole jumped the fence (because the rules totally don’t apply to her, like AT ALL) she didn’t get all ehr clothes and make-up and shit, which is a fate worse than DEATH, so naturally she responded by being moody, sullen and rude all day.

To which her loving boyfriend responded by snapping at her not to turn her back on him, and whinging to Big Brother abuot how the presence of the woman he suppoedly loved was a terrible imposition and nuishment that had been placed upon him.

And this went on for an hour.

With every passing second this twist is gaining ground on “Let’s give Liam 100k for no reason!”. It’s already past “let’s draw straws for nominations this week!”.

In other house news : Rex made the common mistake of overestimating the intelligence of a group of Big Brother housemates ; Lisa found her behaviour apt (a-p-t) ; Rachel became the new Head Of House, so at least I’ll have the itnerest of seeing if she can stake a claim to the victory this week, in between the tedious relationship crap.

To be honest I probably would have preferred Mohamed’s brother…

But anyway, first, Luke is gone. He is evicted. With 37% of the vote no less. He will be around no more. No longer will there be a little corner of Big Brother that will be forever being negative and slagging someone off. Well… at least not with a high-pitched northern accent anyway.

In retrospect Luke was solely and purely a gameplayer. He approached the house as a social challenge and nothing but. Sod the experience, or even really the money, Luke was there for the sheer joy of competition and fighting. And he was alright at the beginning, when he was doing well. He was scrappy, witty, manipulative in an intelligent way, and seemed to be having a whale of a time. But once he started to decline even a little bit he became the biggest sore loser of all time. Once Danrell and Rachel called him out in quick succesion he stopped trying, he moped, he whined, he basically sat in his little enclave all day fuming over how THEY were constantly being chosen over HIM. He was so bored and full of rage against the Universe he even allowed himself to be sucked into a time-wasting showmance with the Coventry Cavewoman just for something to do with his endless numbered days.

And that’s the point when he stopped being fun. And started being the most irritating, spiteful time-suck housemate of all time. And I started wanting him out really really badly.

But then you saw it about a minute after Davina called his name out. The realisation that it was done. That it was over. That he had actually finally lost. And that he was going. And he took it like a man, put on a little comedy show of righteous indignation and departed with a little bit of his dignity scraped back. I still don’t particularly like him, but his approach to the whole thing is far more endearing than Bex screaming blue bloody murder throughout her entire interview last week.

So… Nicole. The new housemate. She’s Rex’s girlfriend. I’m not sure how I can respond to that, except with a load of curse-words.

Do we really need this? At all. She doesn’t seem particularly interesting. I have no desire to see Rex suxking anything’s face. I don’t want an insight into the sort of relationship that I think Rex probably has with his girlfriend, given his general attitude towards women. I don’t want to see the hate-campaign that’ll be sparked against Lisa just because she accidentally said Nicole looked common (mostly to big up to Rex how much more attractive the girl she thought was his girlfriend was). I don’t want to see the fucking Happy House alliance get any larger and more annoying than it already is. I don’t want bloody “Rachel is Jellus” storylines or “Stuart is secretly in love with Nicole” storylines or “Rex is jealous of Nicole talking to Dale” storylines. I secretly want a bit of the bored mercurial Rex who orders 57 tokens on the shopping list and makes his friends bet on who is going to be evicted using their hair as chips.

There is a slim chance something exciting could happen as a result of this. A very fucking slim chance. I live in hope, because the alternative is total show death.

In other house news : I dunno, Rex did somethnig hilarious with tokens or something. I was too busy texting everyone to tell them what a shit twist this is.

A marginally inferior sequal to the original, possibly because of the absence of Myra Hindley FRAHM CHARMANY!

So after Dale’s daring fence-hopping raid the night before, the Big Brother police called everybody in, to try to find out the truth. Who did steal that precious, precious token, thereby depriving the house of the use of hair-straighteners for a day? Who could do such a terrible thing?

The task wasn’t really helped by Dale cracking like an egg within 5 seconds. To be fair, the police knew it was him anyway, but babbling away all “if you pick me it’ll be bad, so bad, so bad for the house, it will, I swear, my family will die if you I lie, it’s bad” like a schizophrenic murderer from a bad episode of Law & Order, desperately trying to convey the message, in Dale’s inarticulate way, that the shopping budget hinged on him not being picked. Of course said inarticulacy tumbled into the ears of Stuart, who clearly can’t read any of the signals Dale’s constantly sends to him, because he’s not currently up to his nuts in his guts. Who then decided that when Dale said “this’ll be bad for the whole house” he meant “this will be bad for ME”.

Whatever Stu. He’s not Rex.

Interviews with Darnell (once again all wearily “yes I KNOW this is ironic given my criminal record, hah dee hah hah”), Maysoon (mentally counting down the seconds until she could piss off home) and Lisa (off screen, because the editors HATE ME) all followed before the coup de grace.

Sara.

Surprisingly.

Rex and Stu had been berating their fellow officers all day for not being rude enough. Not being aggressive enough. Not abusing their powers as pretend policemen enough. So of course Sara got it in the neck, and was made to do a little dance for the policemen because… well Stu could, and Sara’s kind of good-natured and pliable like that.

Which is all very interesting and informative for a psychological perspective really. I know it’s Big Brother and talking up making Sara spin around with her hands on her hand whilst saying she was innocent and knew nothing is such a minor thing but… well go and read what happened in the first few days of the Stanford Prison experiment really. These little glimmers of darkness do occasionally burst through the HAPPY HAPPY HOW frame of Big Brother reference occasionally.

Oh, in the end the cops picked out the right suspects and the house ended up on basic rations. I guess at the end of the day, the police always do get their man. Even if one of those cops is Mo.

In other house news : Robber Sara and Robber Lisa decided to recreate the hit movie Bound ; the safe-cracking task was so interesting it got edited out of Big Brother history and was just left as an expensive prop lying around ; somebody left. May… something or other.