Big Brother 2024 spoilers follow.
Just imagine this next bit is being said with the heavy emphasis of Marcus Bentley's Geordie accent, ringing in omnipresent voiceover: Big Brother… is back.
The ITV reality-show reboot is here for seconds this winter and in week two, we have a new batch of eviction nominees: Ali, Daze, Lily and Martha somewhat unfairly tacked on to spice things up.
The battle-lines are being drawn amidst the ghastly rainbow furniture, but as a viewer, disappointment has come early this year. Not only is it a women-only slate on the chopping block this week, but it consists of those with the biggest – and, crucially, most watchable – personalities.
Izaaz pointed out that all the housemates facing the public vote are women, with Martha adding that the three nominated through the normal process are all "really strong characters".
Ali, Daze and Lily had the most nominations from their fellow housemates, during a one-by-one march to the Diary Room that stretched interminably during a pretty humdrum episode, but which we were told took in excess of a mind-boggling five (FIVE!) hours to film.
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So if they didn't want to leave the house because of the undercurrent of sexism in there, this interminable rigmarole might have pushed any normal sentient being out the double doors to greet AJ and Will anyway.
Anyway, the reasoning for nominating our initial trio ranged from the hilarious – Lily because she "picks her nose and eats it" – to the utterly lame – Daze because she was a "different person" in the task and "threw a tantrum". Yawn.
The parade of reasonings and justifications culminated in Marcello's particularly egregious entries. Shock of all shocks, he went for Ali and Daze. The former so he can make a "bad joke" without fear of reprove.
(As an aside, in a week where elsewhere in the world of light entertainment, we've had fallout from supposed jokes on Strictly and an old Gregg Wallace show, we might want to consider retiring "it was just a joke" entirely.)
Then Marcello decided it was Daze's time to go because she has "negative views" and has "got to be right" in a debate, but he just wants a "nice conversation".
This last bit gets to the nub of why these nominations hinder the show on a pure watch-ability basis. Most of the housemates look to slim down the Big Brother population in a way that will create a frictionless existence for those remaining.
But from this batch of nominations, Lily is the only one who understood the real name of the game. She made her decision based on who has been the biggest dullard and later says it's down to similarly "boring people" in the house that she's facing the public vote. Too right.
This is the central issue with how Big Brother goes about deciding which faces will pop up on the app's eviction tab. While the housemates want an easy route to the prize money, we at home want good television and the characters required of both potentialities do not overlap.
Last year, that was how someone like Tom made it so far along, while housemates like Farida and Hallie were out early doors. Pot-stirrers, who are great TV, are divisive and binned off over boring, safe contenders again and again on reality shows.
The way women fare feeds into this, since Big Brother is a place where societal dynamics are magnified. It should come as no real surprise vocal women like Lily are described as "too much" and "too loud" – terminology that almost makes you nostalgic for old-fashioned in-your-face sexism, instead of the veiled variety – while Daze fairly doesn't feel people let her get to the end of a sentence.
Ali finally hit the nail on the head at the end of Monday's episode, telling Big Brother that she knows exactly how she would have been safe from eviction and then clamps her lips together.
That might be true in the Big Brother house, but in reality, who would rather watch Thomas do his best impersonation of a statue than see Lily put her hands into oven mitts and pretend she's a T-rex? Unfortunately, the process of nominations mean that the vote we're given just isn't so simple.
Big Brother airs on ITV2 and ITVX from Sunday to Friday, followed each night by Big Brother: Late & Live.
Read more Big Brother news on our dedicated homepage
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
