Big Brother started two weeks early this year as the fifteenth season premiered on CBS on June 26. The show normally debuts the week after July 4th, so the fans are getting some extra time to spend with their favorite hamsters this summer … but will this cast of characters even be worth the three days a week in primetime, 7 nights a week on Big Brother After Dark (now on TVGN, which unlike Showtime Too, has to mercilessly edit the audio feeds making entire conversations sometimes unintelligible), and 24/7 on the live feeds?

I would have said yes, probably, after watching the first episode but by the fourth episode of the season, the first live eviction, my feelings on the show and this cast in particular have changed drastically. Perhaps it’s a sign of an aging show (similar to what Survivor has gone through), but it seems the casting process now is to find beautiful, vapid people who are less interested in the game than they are in being on TV and having a “showmance.” Yeah, it’s now become a hookup show. I started watching Big Brother with the third season, and they had some terrific people with a wide range of personalities and life experience: Marcellas Reynolds, Amy Crews, Chiara Jude, Danielle Reyes, Eric Ouellette, Jason Guy and Gerry Lancaster immediately come to mind as the standouts of that season, with age ranges from 23 to 51! This season’s cast members range in age from 22 to 37.

And now, some of the younger ones are showing their maturity level … at least to the people watching the live feeds. CBS and producer Allison Grodner go to great lengths to make sure what we see in primetime is a carefully crafted, non-offensive game show featuring the “real” personalities of the House Guests. But anyone watching the live feeds knows that what CBS creates for network viewing is more fantasy than reality. It was tough to stomach Thursday’s episode in which Aaryn was portrayed as the innocent, angelic blonde with a cute crush on surfer dude David after hearing the horrible things she’s been saying. In fact, at this point Aaryn, David, Kaitlin, GinaMarie, Jeremy, Amanda and Spencer have all shocked viewers with their racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments.

Aaryn’s been the worst of the bunch so far with such gems as “be careful what you say in the dark; you might not be able to see that bitch,” (about Candice, the single black female in the house), “No one’s gonna vote for whoever that queer puts up,” about gay HG Andy, and “Shut up. Go make some fucking rice,” to Asian HG Helen. Nice. But it doesn’t stop there. GinaMarie has chimed in that Helen “should be kissing our ass and serving us some fucking rice,” and “you know two blacks stick together. They’re like tokens” (referring to Candice and Howard, the one black male in the house). David, who was thankfully the first one evicted, said that the sheets smelled bad because of “black Candice.” Amanda called Andy “Faggoty Ann” and Spencer called him “Kermit the fag.” Spencer also praised Hitler’s speaking abilities and said the medical torture by the Nazi doctors was beneficial. Jeremy simply thinks of women as nothing but sex objects and has called some of them in the house “c–ts.”

As the fans, and now the media, have caught on to what’s being said by the House Guests, CBS’ response has been the same as it was in the past when other House Guests behaved badly, like “America’s Sweetheart” Jeff Schroeder, who went on an anti-gay rant during his season. CBS’ reaction to that was to cast him on Big Brother a second time, as well as The Amazing Race, and gave him a show online in which he interviewed the evicted House Guests. This season he was given the job of interviewing the HGs before they went into the house. I suppose by that measure Aaryn will be the head of programming at CBS by the time this season is over. She’s going to need the job, however, because karma has already bitten her in the ass, and she doesn’t even know it! Her employer Zephyr Talent, a modeling agency in Texas, has dropped her from their roster after her comments. GinaMarie is also oblivious to the fact that her employer, East Coast USA Pageants, Inc., has also fired her because in her position of being a role model to young girls, they actually found her comments to be not something they want her protegés to look up to.

Knowing how these people talk amongst themselves really kills the fun of watching Big Brother. The producers have allegedly made an announcement to the House Guests to stop using racist language in the house, but will a verbal admonishment with no threat of consequences within the game really change the behavior of these people? Does CBS think that this unusual amount of publicity the show is now receiving will actually help the show, which has seen some of its lowest-ever ratings? There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? I have a feeling that if the offensive comments continue — and things could get even worse after this week’s eviction and HoH competition, and the apparent cheating perpetrated by the winner — CBS is going to find itself in more of a publicity nightmare with viewers fleeing the show in droves. I don’t know that I want to spend three more months with these people, and I’m betting negativity surrounding this cast will take its toll on the show. The best suggestion I’ve seen so far: evict the entire cast and start over.

UPDATE: Spencer’s employer is also looking into taking action against him as well. Being a union worker, they may have less options than Aaryn’s or GinaMarie’s but the repercussions of racist rants continue to cause ripples.

UPDATE: In a surprise move, CBS did broadcast a collection of Aaryn’s comments accompanied by reactions from some of her housemates on the July 7th episode.