'Big Brother' is back

by Stephen Thompson Welcome! It was the week when the face of Axios reporter Jonathan Swan launched a thousand memes. It was the week when Comedy Central announced the return of Ren & Stimpy — minus its embattled creator. And it was the week when backlash to Ellen DeGeneres spawned … still more backlashes. Let's get to it.   Opening Argument: It Wouldn’t Be Summertime Without The Weird, Soothing Disappointment Of Big Brother The long-running CBS reality show Big Brother has been known for many things in its roughly 20 years of existence — including, most unfortunately, a series of controversies and incidents involving racism, misleading editing, and misleading editing of racism. But its delayed return on Wednesday night did provide a strange measure of comfort: Even as a worldwide pandemic has upended virtually every facet of life, we’re still getting an opportunity to spend our 21st consecutive summer with this silly, stupid, intermittently rewarding show. The concept of Big Brother may be simple — 16 “houseguests” move into a house that monitors their every move, then proceed to pick each other off one-by-one until, after several months of tears and scheming, a winner is chosen — but its execution is comically byzantine. Each week, there’s a competition to determine a “head of household” who nominates players for eviction, and then there’s another competition that can result in a nomination being “vetoed,” and sometimes there are extra competitions for various powers and punishments. But mostly? Folks sit around with little to do but talk, flirt, conspire, sunbathe, work out, and succumb to a potent cocktail of pettiness, boredom, and paranoia. Big Brother has a way of piling up in your DVR queue — it airs for an hour or more, three nights a week — but when you catch up on it, it’s a perfect time-filler for those who’ve got a lot of mindless work to do. Following along requires between 20 and 50 percent of your attention, so if you’ve got a lot of papers to sort or email to delete, you’re more likely than most to welcome Big Brother back. It’s got the soothing rhythms of reality TV, the periodic energy surge of sports, and the once-in-a-while thrill of watching jerks get pantsed on TV. The new season of Big Brother — whose 2020 debut followed months of speculation about how a cast could be assembled, tested for COVID-19, and safely quarantined — is the show’s first full-fledged All Stars season since 2006, when the winner unironically went by the name “Mike Boogie.” (Side note: That season played out like a real-life In the Company of Men and Mike Boogie can cram it.) The newly assembled all-star cast is premised on the idea that the returning players all have “something to prove,” though several of them have already won and others dominated their respective seasons, only to fall just short of victory. A few have barely gotten to play — including the immensely likable David Alexander, who was first out last summer — while others, like Janelle Pierzina and Nicole Franzel, have logged a craaaaazy number of days inside the Big Brother house. In all, this is exactly the sort of mixed bag longtime fans might expect. Though I haven’t scoured social media to be sure, I can’t imagine that the Big Brother fan community had been howling for the return of Season 10 runner-up Memphis Garrett or irksome Season 12 catchphrase-spewer Enzo Palumbo, but I’m always happy to see appealing players like Nicole Anthony and Da’Vonne Rogers return to the game. It’s a more diverse cast than most, it’s got a few genuine surprises like the wild-card return of Season 6’s Kaysar Ridha, and it’s naturally an older group than usual, with everyone between the ages of 25 and 42. (Most are married, which should reduce the show’s usual fixation on “showmances,” and many have kids.) Hosted, as always, by the robotic-but-familiar Julie Chen Moonves, Wednesday’s season premiere didn’t leave a ton of room for optimism, as the show struggled to get into a rhythm in the absence of a studio audience. Producers’ insistence on presenting the premiere live also meant the proceedings felt flabbier than usual, with a series of competitions that seemed both interminable (even in a summer of pandemic-fueled boredom, no one should have to endure that many table mazes) and unfair (they obviously and inexplicably made the challenge far more difficult for the cast’s women). And the first head of household, as so often happens, was bestowed upon a Boring Buff Dude, who will doubtless spend the next week conspiring with other Boring Buff Dudes to vote out one of the show’s pleasant and nonthreatening underdogs. But then there were weirdly marvelous moments, like the one in the episode’s introduction wherein Big Brother announcer Clayton Halsey enthusiastically intoned, “It’s a house like no other — isolated from the outside world!” I mean, come on. Where else are you going to find summertime entertainment with that little self-awareness? I can’t wait to settle in, expect the unexpected, yell “Previously!” at the start of each episode, become disillusioned with how the season plays out, and grudgingly tune in for the finale while complaining bitterly about the outcome. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend In a few weeks, we’re planning to cover the much-loved Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend Of Korra. Now might be a good time to catch up on the shows if you haven’t already: Avatar is on Netflix, while The Legend Of Korra is on CBS All Access (and getting added to Netflix on August 14). If you’ve got questions about either show that you want us to tackle, let us know at pchh@npr.org. A few recommendations from a busy and fruitful week at NPR Music: On Thursday, we announced the latest winner of our Tiny Desk Contest. Past winners have gone on to become enormously successful — Tank and the Bangas received a Best New Artist nomination at this year’s Grammys, while Fantastic Negrito has two Grammys on his mantel — and we’ve got even-higher-than-usual hopes for Linda Diaz, whose “Green Tea Ice Cream” is a glorious assemblage of late-summer R&B vibes. She’s so great, and I can’t wait for you to hear her if you haven’t already. A remarkable team put together a brand-new playlist called The South Got Something To Say — our canon of Southern rap. It kicks off with 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny,” which is an opening salvo if ever you’ve heard one. Missy Elliott! Outkast! Master P! The whole thing runs 100 songs deep, and we’re so proud of it. He sounds nothing at all like our Southern rap canon, but singer-songwriter Phil Elverum has made a string of wrenchingly sad, impossibly beautiful albums following the death of his wife, musician and artist Geneviève Castrée, in 2016. Most have been recorded under the name Mount Eerie, but Elverum’s latest takes the name of his long-dormant project The Microphones. An album called The Microphones In 2020 is out today, and it takes the form of one expansive and lovely 44-minute track. I’m a huge Elverum fan, and the guy who got me into his music — NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich — just published a lengthy and rewarding interview with Elverum for NPR Music.   What We Did This Week Disney In the aftermath of last week’s 10th-anniversary live event — which you can watch here! — several of us embarked on much-needed vacations. (I can’t wait to see Linda and Jessica’s slide presentations documenting their voyages from their desks to their couches!) But we’ve still kept busy. On our Wednesday show, I sat down with pals Kiana Fitzgerald and Soraya Nadia McDonald to discuss Beyoncé’s new film on Disney+, Black Is King. On our Friday show, Soraya returned to talk to Linda and Taylor Crumpton about Starz’s P-Valley. Before taking off for vacation, Linda wrote about I’ll Be Gone In The Dark and An American Pickle in separate pieces for the NPR website. Glen wrote about Star Trek: Lower Decks — which we’re discussing on the show in a couple weeks! — for the NPR website. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Soraya: Racial progress in fields such as book publishing (like Lisa Lucas getting a VP job at Penguin Random House) and theater (as seen in the We See You, White American Theater movement) Taylor: Alabama rapper Flo Milli’s new mixtape (Ho, Why Is You Here?) and the increasing abundance of women’s voices in hip-hop Linda: Alex Winter’s HBO documentary Showbiz Kids What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy