John Milton, the poet best known for writing Paradise Lost came up with that line in his poem Lycidas. (Three cheers for a liberal arts education!) And it’s true, too—there were shipwrecks throughout the episode.
SHIPWRECK: “She needs to step up her game and suck it up and be friends with us or she’s out.” Everyone clear the room, Kristina’s ego is… THAR SHE BLOWS!
The results of the geeks’ makeovers will play a huge role in the upcoming challenge? How? They had no say in what happened to their hair (both head and body), the producers gave them the clothes they wore during their soap opera scenes… seriously, the guys could have come through the “makeover curtain” wearing baby clothes and sucking on a pacifier and it wouldn’t have affected the challenge at all! Huge role, my ass…
Greggy, the purpose of the show isn’t to become a piece of meat—it’s to teach you how to get pieces of meat to throw themselves at your feet.
SHIPWRECK: “Just like they have this and want me to pick it? These, they want you to pick. These are your temptations. These little booby-traps planted along these whole freaking store.” They’re like little depth charges. Get too close and BOOM! Everything within fifty yards of you, including the store (a.k.a., the mansion patio), goes up in flames!
Did anyone see the clothes the geeks picked out anywhere on the racks while they were shopping?
Okay, Joe, have a seat for a minute. We need to talk. This is Beauty and the Geek. There has been a makeover session every season. You should have expected something like this. Sure, your usual clothes may be appropriate to your personal locale—a cowboy hat and boots fit right in when you enter a country bar—but this is filmed in Los Angeles. They don’t do country. Well, except for that shirt Chris was wearing the day of the challenge, but that’s beside the point! What they do is make people like us wear clothes we’d avoid looking at in the high-end stores lest their appearance burn holes in our retinas. It’s something you gotta suck up and deal with, buddy.
The clothes are a costume. Just like Tommy said, all the producers did was play with your hair and make you wear a new outfit. No plastic surgery, no mind-altering substances… it’s just a look. Even if you go completely bald all over (which hopefully wouldn’t involve waxing) and only get to wear a set of white scrubs or something, that’s still Joe standing there looking really naked. And probably pretty cold without all that hair to keep you warm. You don’t have to like or appreciate what L.A. considers fashionable—just play along until you get to go home and start wearing real clothes again. (If it’s any consolation, I still like my plaid button-downs that I can throw over a t-shirt. Hey, screw fashion, I still like ’em!)
I wish I couldn’t believe that the producers would whore themselves out to the point of making a movie like Prom Night an essential part of the plot, but I can.
SHIPWRECK: Apparently, Kristina didn’t learn anything about preparation for challenges after the Beauty vs. Geek talent show. Gotta talk, gotta make compromises ahead of time or everything goes in the shitter and you look really stupid. Speaking of looks, all Jason needed was a white collar and some cuffs for his transformation into a Chippendale’s dancer to be complete!
“I can’t do this!”
“Why not?!”
“… Because I’m gay.”
“No, you’re not!”
“I’m not? … Okay, you’re right, I’m not gay. I just find you ugly, repulsive and disgusting and wanted to let you down easy.”
SHIPWRECK: “ARRRRRR!!! If I hadn’t smashed me ship against the rocks, I’d still have that Cara wench in me clutches!” If you watch The Young and the Restless and a character actually does get abducted by pirates, please let us know. I wanna see if that dude follows through with his commitment to putting it on the show.
Now think about this for a moment: Cara’s boyfriend stole a motorcycle and faked his own fiery death. He slipped her a drug to give her amnesia. She was abducted by pirates. And this all happened before prom night! In high school! I can only imagine what college will be like…
For his first kiss ever, Matt’s was pretty darn impressive. He moved in, got both hands on her face and everything. HOT.
As for the night on the town, I’m curious. The producers have set up parties for challenges before, brought in random people who didn’t realize that beauties and geeks would be trying to get their phone numbers… did they put together this one as well? If so, did they invite any gay guys for Greggy to flirt with?
And as the rest of the group talks about who should be eliminated, everyone continues to bitch about how Joe’s negativity is bringing them all down. Oh, wait… only the beauties bitch about Joe’s negativity. Does anyone else find this a little odd? Are the geeks less sensitive to the dark energy that permeates throughout the entire mansion? Are the karmic implications of his behavior flying over their heads? Do they just not give a shit? I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t there, but my personal belief is that the girls are bitchy and the geeks think he’s okay. Maybe Joe should try to be a little more upbeat, but that’s no reason to crucify him. Hey, maybe that’s why he wanted to stage a portrayal of Jesus!
SHIPWRECK: This one’s kinda iffy. I mean, I think people are being overly critical of Joe’s costume. They never said what sort of female fashion the guys should aim for and I thought he made a half-decent drunken flapper from the 20’s. And the image would have been made more complete if he dropped about 150 pounds.
So what sort of shipwrecks lie in wait during Episode 6? I dunno, but it feels like I’m taking on water already. (Glub glub glub…)
Okay, I remember Paradise Lost–because I actually kinda liked that one–but “Lycidas” just brought back all kinds of bad memories spending a whole weekend (I kid you not) struggling to “get it” before class on Monday. 😉
I’m a new reader of your blog (I started reading it about 45 minutes before you posted this article). I appreciate having an opinion of someone who’s been on the show before…makes for an interesting viewpoint (confession: I got into BatG during Season 3 :-S…).
So you’re starting to feel like the show is sinking, then? I think so, too. It’s not so much the twists, but the people. I wish they had more “classic” beauties…ones who were more one-dimensional and slightly more…shallow…basically, beauties who could actually learn something from the show. And geeks, too (like Shay’s partner from Sea. 4). That’s just my opinion, though.
I’ll look in here a bit more often. Thanks again for doing this.
Didn’t Matt say that was first time they kissed? Pretty good for not having rehearsed it! 🙂
And Joe… a flapper? I thought he made a much more convincing Daisy Duke… just more trailer-y and trashier.
p.s. I live in LA, and I do country 🙂 Sadly, I’m in the minority 🙁
I must say…I can’t stand Joe. He grates on my nerves with an amazing intensity considering I’ve never actually met the guy. Probably ’cause he reminds me of this guy who used to flirt with me…but that’s another story.
When he first started freaking out about the makeover…wow…I felt that it was the first time I was actually seeing the “real” Joe. My heart broke for him when he admitted he hid behind the cowboy costume.
But I was so disappointed that he didn’t take the opportunity to shed the costume and run with it. I thought he was teetering on that brink but ultimately came down on the side of the old Joe. Had he given the new Joe a try, I don’t know he’d have been chosen for elimination. He would have been the embodiment of a B&tG success story.
Ah well…
FOR THE LAST TIME PEOPLE, this is how it all went down:
–In order to be fair to all teams involved, we drew names from a hat. Tara and I came up as the team with the scarlet letter.
–Joke, our producer who fails at life (no, really — she truely fails at life) didn’t like it, and said we had to stage something more…television-like for our elimination. So much for “reality.”
–Seeing as how we all agreed that the hat draw was binding, the cross-dressing fashion show was the method of determining that. And I figured if I was going to lose anyways…then damnit, I was going to lose BIG! That’s how we roll…go big, or go home.
–And in any event, you try putting your misery on display to all America, and then being acceptable with things. Not as easy as it looks, is it? (Back me up Shawn…please?)
I can’t speak from personal experience—what people saw from me on-screen is pretty much what happened. Scarlet, though… she definitely got the short end of the stick.
She was an absolute sweetheart who I could talk to about all sorts of stuff, but after the editors had their way, it seemed like she was always mean to me and manipulating Chuck and was just a bad person in general. If I was watching the show from her point of view, I would have been pissed.
Come to think of it, Cheryl (the first girl eliminated in Season 1) felt that same way. They made her look really stupid with very few redeeming qualities and she hated the show. Period.
(As a side note, Joe, do I want to know what letter of the alphabet that scarlet letter was?)
Is this really Joe? Or someone pretending to be him?
“FOR THE LAST TIME PEOPLE, this is how it all went down:”
Okaaayyyyy…I didn’t notice a first time, a second time or any other time except for this “LAST” one. If I missed it somewhere on this site, I apologize for the oversight. If not, you aren’t seriously complaining that people at this blog don’t know what you’ve posted/discussed other places, are you?
It sucks that the reality part was tampered with. As a mere viewer, though, I have nothing to go by except what was aired, so my musings were based on what I saw. That’s one of the reasons I love this blog. I enjoy being shown a glimpse behind the curtain…just preferably not in all caps.
As for putting your misery on display…well, it is the 5th season. Surely there was some indication of what might happen along the way. It seems like it would have been different for Shawn since he was in the first season and wouldn’t have had the benefit of watching what happened to others before him.
That said…I would never assume that it was easy – I don’t even think it looks easy. Personally, I have no desire to. I guess I was rooting for your to exorcise your misery so it didn’t haunt you anymore.
No, this is straight-up Cowboy Joe — Accept No Imitations…and, please, post no bills. I can’t even afford my own. (As you can tell, I have no shame. They tampered with my reality — I feel the need to tamper with theirs)
Come to think of it, I do suppose that I have never explained on this blog, or any blog or message board for that matter, about our tampered reality. But, regardless of how you want to say it it, our reality was cut and flipped against how we actually operated. I think this is fodder for another MySpace blog…because between the two episodes, there was a lot of misconcieved reality that took place.
I’ll have to think about what letter that exactly was. It would be easily to make a joke at the expence of certain people, or as a four letter word…but I think I’ll refrain until I can think of a creative joke to insert.