I have surprised myself here but out of who is left she may well be my favourite too.

I agree.

People appear to think it's down to Bear's antics - it's not. It's the producers who decide what we'll watch. I think they've had it wrong for the past few series (Channel 4 too!)

What they think we want to watch are showmances and arguments. Personally I don't. I prefer the interraction between HMs, unlikely friendships, the wind ups (mostly the blokes doing this to each other in a silly way, not a harmful one) and getting to know the HMs - I only recognised 2 of them.

Initially and even up until Friday, a great portion of HLs was Lewis and Marnie.....with him talking twaddle to her....and her gazing at him. Not Bear.

True about the edits .

But Bear, easy to forget now, prior to Heavy D (should be named SideKick) leaving, ground them down with the anger and stress . He has influenced their experience in the house and destroyed the series.
Marnie and Lewis were allowed to be shown as they were sympathetic to Bear, therefore not the target of his aggression, and provided the only entertainment ( as you describe above)
The others were too stressed to say anything . The only fun etc ( shown on LF) was when he was not with them and alone .
( Like with Marnie and the banana -Bear nowhere to be seen)

Too stressed. Marnie and the banana was a ONE OFF. So what would have been the sum total of the other 28 HL episodes and the BOTS episodes?

Ricky was given an opportunity for AT and something to be in his "best bits", but he refused to eat the egg.

Bear provokes responses from the others. Look at his silly and pointless thing with eggs. It is the response or non-response of the others that puts it in the HLs. The other day it got Rene and Frankie off their backsides in response. Take the Balloon task, without Bear it would have just been Marnie and Saira discussing whose balloons to burst. With him there was all the palaver of Renee and co shutting themselves away.

I find drinking eggs , throwing eggs ,etc beyond infantile

The others have had moments on the LF we get to indicate that a lot more is going on that we are shown ( obviously) but the majority of the time the camera time even then is focussed on Bear - and he does spend a lot of the time doing NOTHING as he doesn't really engage with anybody , except Marnie now that Lewis has left.

The people he does "engage" with are always props to his show .
There is very little human interaction which is why I watch the show

Exactly.

Even if you had all totally docile fence-sitters and radar dodgers (instead of the 50% we have in there now), BB would do what they usually do - create divides and cause arguments and resentment. The show has never been the civilised 'celebs-on-holiday' fairyland that some posters are craving.

The only difference this series is that Bear and Heavy D have done most of their work for them.

It just shows you why voters should have got rid of Lewis much earlier.
We were given opportunities before but wasted them. Now that Lewis is out the nature of the HL shows have changed. Getting Lewis out was the key to changing the dynamics.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with one of my issues.

No housemate should be the task, it's not up to them to fabricate animosity or anything else in the house, that's the job of the production team.
They hired Stephen for a reason and when he started doing the job he's being paid for they obviously thought 'we've struck gold here, show it all!'
But what they've shown is intentional, generated arguments and conflicts which simply don't ring true. Like I said, Renee's usually just going through the motions with Stephen which is why it was refreshing to see a genuine reaction from her in relation to Sam.

As Pam said, Stephen's presence in the house affected all of their behaviours, some chose to 'approach' his antagonising behaviour (Renee), some colluded (Lewis, Colin) but the majority shutdown and avoided, quietly venting their frustrations to each other.

It is only now, that the threat is diminished that people are actually starting to show their personalities.

We could have seen some great rivalry between Renee and Sam as just one example and it is such a shame we've had to endure the bear show which has been fake animosity from day one.

No one wants to deal with the drunk on the bus or the rebellious, obstreperous toddler in the supermarket.

Like I said, we could have had sooooo much more from this series if Stephen had never entered.

The same sort of thing was said on here about Sam Fox on I'm a Celeb, but it's all wishful thinking. Katie Price was accused of hogging the limelight then.

The point is he was such an oppressive force in there that people didn't want to stick their heads above the parapet. Consequently all we got was footage of bad behaviour, people reacting to that bad behaviour and people moaning about the bad behaviour.

Repeat, ad nauseum.

At least last night we had some genuine interactions, some genuine reactions and some genuine discussions. All of which were more interesting than anything we've been shown for weeks.

The producers needs to seriously reassess their priorities and what makes a good television show. Headlines and "drama" aren't everything.

I think the big shift came after Heavy D left : Lewis was also Bear's puppet but was too self-involved and involved with Marnie to fully participate in aggression required to subdue or irritate the the HMs.
Once Chloe left - it left Bear a bit exposed :Heavy D was now back in the fold and was cynically used by Bear to do his (Bear's) heavy lifting .

I have said for some time that Aubrey is a good game player whilst staying friends with the majority of them. A very clever girl! But she lost it when she gobbed in Bears drink and sandwich. It was so disgusting why would somebody want her to win after that. She might be in the final but will probably be the first out on Friday!

It does seem as if this one incident has cost her any chance of winning. I wonder how she'd be fairing if she hadn't done that.

Is this the same Lewis who looked liked having 3 fights at least?

Finally! It's happened! To me! Right infront! Of my face! And I just! Cannot hide it!

Alright Cece

Of course minute after minute of bear in the garden gazing into space or talking to himself Is so entertaining

it was good we needed a break

I have said for some time that Aubrey is a good game player whilst staying friends with the majority of them. A very clever girl! But she lost it when she gobbed in Bears drink and sandwich. It was so disgusting why would somebody want her to win after that. She might be in the final but will probably be the first out on Friday!

I think she would have been in the top 3 had she not had the spitting incident!