Category: The Arts/Media

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Define “second place” in The Glass House

In the Olympics, it means you get a silver medal because you weren’t quite fast enough or your score wasn’t quite high enough to win the gold medal in your event. In the Glass House, well, “second place” depends on your interpretation.

At the end of the final episode, there will be a single person who wins $250,000. The ultimate victory. The person who could buy him or herself a lot of gold medals because $250K is a lot of money. The runner-up on the final episode… I don’t know whether it’ll depend on audience participation, but the runner-up won’t get as many votes or won’t have as much support or something and the result will be the same as it is for all of the non-winners: they get jack squat.

Except for Steph. She’d been voted team captain two weeks in a row, so when the show offered “bribe money” for someone to give up their place in the house, she knew she’d be likely to take it—no one else knew exactly how popular they were (or were not, in most cases). Thus, when the numbers started climbing higher, the temptation became greater. When the number reached $37,600, Steph decided it was time to go. The likelihood of her winning the $250,000 was microscopic, so it was her best option. As she pointed out as they lowered her down the tube, “That’s more than five of you will be getting.”

So that’s it. Steph has left the Glass House, but she took home $37,600 and will eventually be taking a trip to Vegas as well. Maybe she didn’t last until the final episode, but if you’re talking money, what she got from the show could buy her a lot of silver medals.

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One won in The Glass House

Well, technically, Andrea hasn’t won yet, but the fact that she came out of Limbo instead of Joy pretty much seals it. Fortunately, I don’t feel too bad about that fact anymore. Without giving away any details (I don’t have that many to begin with), Steph left the house voluntarily yesterday. The producers were offering everyone bribe money to leave, so she took it and was replaced by someone who’d been previously eliminated to fill her spot.

She wasn’t very popular with the viewers and thus not very likely to win the $250K. However, she left the house on her own terms, she got the bribe money plus she’d already won a trip to Las Vegas with tickets to see Celine Dion. All things considered, when Steph gets home, I think the only disappointment will be when she sees the show’s Nielsen ratings.

Oh, and here’s an “It’s Over!” blog post from Team Steph, too.

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Everyone vs. One in The Glass House

Yes, I wrote that title correctly. Normally, the concept would be something like “one vs. everyone”, but The Glass House is in an interesting situation. WARNING: This entry contains some spoilers, so if you don’t want to know what the final results of tonight’s episode will be, come back and read this when the show is over. Continue reading “Everyone vs. One in The Glass House”

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You think The Glass House is really that bad?

People all over the Internet are ranting about this show, saying it’s the worst reality TV show that’s ever been produced. I would beg to differ, but I don’t need to beg on this point. They’re wrong and I’ll tell you why.

I’d like to introduce Exhibit A, which was on the air for exactly one episode: “Who’s Your Daddy?” The only reason I know about its existence is because one of the guys working on Beauty and the Geek had just finished working on that show. He thought it was kind of sweet and touching, but that’s what happens when you work behind the scenes. So what ended up on the screen?

I may be off a little on the specifics—it’s only been over seven years since I heard about it—but the premise was that some girl who’d been adopted as a child was put in a mansion with a bunch of older guys. During the course of the show, she had to figure out which of them was her biological father. Seriously. That was the premise.

The reason I think it was on TV for an episode is because I remember coming home from the mansion and learning the title of our show was “Beauty and the Geek” (it was “Working Title” until they put us in seclusion). That play on words plus the fact that “Who’s Your Daddy?” did so poorly… I figured we’d probably get canned after one episode, too. Thankfully, I was wrong, but that’s beside the point.

My point is that The Glass House is not the worst reality TV show that’s ever been produced. Just because it’s the worst you’ve seen doesn’t make it the worst altogether. If you don’t believe me, here’s Exhibit B: a blog entry about a movie called “Wildfire: The Arabian Heart”. Most of you haven’t heard of it before, right? It’s actually the second review that I wrote about it and has links to websites like Blockbuster and IMDB.com, where plenty of other people talk about how it’s the worst movie that’s ever been produced. Go ahead, read through the comments a little and I’ll let you decide whether it sounds better or worse than Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. And with that, I rest my case.

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Exposed in The Glass House

Apparently, I managed to sneak another 30 seconds into my 15 minutes of reality TV fame. The Glass House has a live web feed that runs for a couple hours after the show airs on Mondays, then one hour on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I wasn’t watching it today, so when I got a call from my friend Marie this afternoon, I was completely shocked to hear that I was a topic of conversation during their live broadcast.

A little twist the producers developed for the show is its social media presence. People vote online for different stuff, but there are also a bunch of Twitter hash tags they’re using so you can contact the contestants and/or producers. One of those hash tags is #AskThePlayers—during each live feed, one or two questions are chosen online by the viewers and presented by Ori (a faceless voice that gives instructions, reveals the results of online polling and occasionally drinks during the live feeds… she said so herself).

When #AskThePlayers first started, I tweeted a question about if the contestants could have any super power, what would it be and why? You know, one of those things I didn’t take very seriously, but thought, “What the hell, why not?” As it turned out, the producers took the question more seriously than I did because that was their question today. (If you want to go straight to the question, skip ahead to minute 43. If you want to see a Tom Cruise impersonator who looks kinda like Tom Cruise and kinda like Edward Norton, start from the beginning.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc779nYpOM8&list=UUNPnv5zxz-CXdQITiNkjoLA&index=1&feature=plcp

Ori said the audience was voting on two questions and the first one was mine. After she introduced both, Steph asked what the name from the first one was. I make a point to conceal my identity on Twitter as much as possible, so my username is @shawnbakken. (I think my favorite part of that whole exchange was how Ori did a decent job of pronouncing my name the first time, but when Steph asked her to repeat it, Ori mispronounced “Shawn”. Yep, definitely drinking on the job.)

When Steph realized it was me, she started getting excited, everyone was asking if I was a friend and she told them that I was in Mensa and on Season 1 of Beauty and the Geek. Steph was waving at the camera to say hi, but of course, they still had to tally the results of the online poll. (The consensus of the contestants was to talk about super powers, but those damn audience members…) After a long, quiet moment—very long and very quiet—my username and question popped up on a giant TV screen. Stephanie found it particularly awesome, which made two of us, and eventually all of the girls started saying hi to me on a live web feed. Yep, definitely awesome.

Sad to say, Steph messed up when she gave her answer. The superpower she wanted was telekinesis so she could levitate, move stuff around and… read minds. She wanted to go all “Jean Grey” on it (a character from Marvel Comics also known as Marvel Girl and Phoenix), but Jean Grey’s mental abilities include telepathy, the ability to read minds. Yay for comic books, boo for stumbling over super powers!

Once everyone had answered their questions, a bunch of people said thanks again, the big gay guy said “I love Mensa, too!”, the big black guy said “I’m not gonna flirt with you, but I’ll say ‘What’s up?'”, some of the girls were happy to flirt with me… yep, definitely awesome. And I missed it. Thank God for someone posting the clip on YouTube or I would have been reeeeeeally depressed.

And remember what I said about the social media presence? Earlier tonight, there were two tweets from The Glass House with my name on them: one was a shout-out from Steph; the other was a thank you from Joy, a girl who’s posed in Playboy six times (and was also happy to flirt with me). Lemme tell ya, seeing my name on a live web feed today was a pretty cool thirty seconds of fame, but after reading tweets like theirs, those thirty seconds seem way cooler.
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Addendum: In retrospect, I want to mention something about Erica since her “super power” was to be a tween vampire so she’d have great skin, sparkle in the sunlight, etc. I imagine this elicited one of two responses from home viewers: “She likes Twilight!” or “What kind of a crappy answer is that?” Combining said crappy answer with the stuffed cat that she carries all over the place, she seems like kind of a ditzy blond who isn’t really a threat to anyone on the show, which is exactly what she wants you to think.

According to her bio on The Glass House’s website, Erica graduated from Ohio State with a 4.0 GPA, worked in finance for three years, got good grades in law school before dropping out at the beginning of her second year… she’s a smart girl. Really smart.

Alex said he was going to try to be the most evil reality TV star ever before getting kicked out of the house. Apparently, his interpretation of “evil reality TV star” was to be a major dick to everyone, meaning he should have done some research about reality TV beforehand. No, the best evil people are quiet, work behind the scenes and are very manipulative. Kinda like… what Erica is doing. I’m not trying to say that she’s going to become more malicious over time, just noting that her super power should have been something more like a master of disguise.