Why are all-star reality shows so disappointing?

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They’re correct, but what they’re really doing in those moments is performing for the cameras and the audience. Therein lies yet another problem with the all-star season: the participants are entirely too aware of the audience’s reaction to them because they’ve done this before.

In his diary room segments, Will seems to be performing bad stand-up comedy, complete with exaggerated gestures and pauses where the home audience should laugh. He also plays to his “evil” persona at every chance he gets. In five years, all he could come up with was the same exact shtick?

That awareness of the audience’s reception seems to have paralyzed Kaysar Ridha, who remains one of the game’s most popular players ever. He smartly figured out the twist last season (that everyone was competing in secret pairs) and then used his power as Head of Household to cause the house’s dominant alliance to implode. The irony is that, after that moment, he ran out of game. Voted back in by the audience twice now, he’s twice squandered that opportunity, being nice instead of playing the game. Thus, he’s now been evicted from the house three times, and admitted when he was voted out last week that he “was a little burnt out” and is “just not cut out for this game.”

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For the most part, it was a major tactical error on behalf of the show’s producers to change nothing and expect drama and intrigue to follow. If anything, “Big Brother 7” will hopefully kill the idea of all-star versions of popular competitive reality shows. “Survivor” tried it and ended up with what host Jeff Probst called the “worst season I’ve ever had.”

When two unbelievably talented tennis stars battle on the court or two world-class boxers fight in a ring, the result is frequently compelling as the best of the best challenge one another. But those sporting events last for a few hours, not three months. In addition, they’re not reality TV shows, which by definition are supposed to entertain while documenting whatever is going on. And successful quasi-all-star series such as “The Real World/Road Rules Challenge” use alumni, but constantly change the game, and change up the cast enough to keep things interesting and fresh.

Capturing the magic of a past experience by duplicating it generally doesn’t work. There’s something about discovery and newness that makes those moments especially thrilling, and makes photocopies of them seem all the more lifeless. Such is the case with “Big Brother 7.” Watching the game’s former villains stroke their fake mustaches while the former heroes sit idly by and decompose is just depressing, and ruins the memories of any fun viewers have had with “Big Brother” during the past six summers.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

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