Big Brother is watching them

They may or may not realize it, but the Pinoy Big Brother housemates live and breathe in an artificial environment. When they fall in love, get into each other’s nerves, patch things up 24 hours a day for 100 days, you don’t know if they’re showing their real selves or just projecting an image before the cameras.

When newest "evictee" JB and Say fell in love right before the eyes of televiewers glued to their sets, you don’t know if the feeling is real or limited to the time they spent inside the yellow and blue two-storey house right across ABS-CBN.

What will happen now that JB bid his housemates an emotional goodbye to venture into the real world? Can the two sustain the romance despite the separation? Will they stay true to each other even if JB will meet other girls in the outside world?

Psychiatrist Dr. Randy Misael Sebastian Dellosa himself cannot say for sure. The relationship, he observes, sprang from a whirlwind romance. But love, as we all know, is anything but whirlwind. It slowly blossoms like a well-cultivated flower over time.

But every rule has an exception. And who knows JB and Say may be the exceptions?

Right now, however, the separated lovers are inconsolable. JB says he will miss Say, his third serious girlfriend.

Say, for her part, was visibly devastated when she learned her boyfriend was the next to be evicted after Rico. And her fellow housemates, in a touching show of sympathy, did everything they could to cheer her up.

Fearing that she may volunteer to be evicted just to be with him outside the house, JB warned Say: "Don’t ever do that or I will get angry."

He wants her to last, if not triumph in the 100-day game. And he is confident his girlfriend will remain faithful to him, even as housemate Sam has admitted he has a crush on Say.

Love, however, is just one of the many things JB must attend to, now that he’s out of the house.

Apologizing to the people he hurt with his words and action is one. "When I left the house, I didn’t expect to see such a huge crowd," admits an overwhelmed JB. "They were booing and flashing the thumbs-down sign at me."

Little did he know that he has been hurting other people’s feelings while inside the house. And it just dawned on him that he’s been opening his mouth unnecessarily.

"I let my family and friends down," JB muses. "Now I know that less talk means less mistakes."

The confirmed partygoer has also learned to adjust to different personalities, even if he doesn’t agree with everything they say and do.

This business of starting all over again can be tough. That’s why JB, Rico and future evictees can call on Dr. Randy for advice .

Unlike their Tuesday sessions inside the house, when all they hear is his voice drawing them out of their shell, JB and other evictees now come face to face with the young psychiatrist.

"I prepare them for the real world," Dr. Randy reveals. In JB’s case, the psychiatrist looks for ways to make the newest ABS-CBN contract star (six months) more likable to others. Just how he will do this depends on what JB himself will tell the psychiatrist.

"My role is to facilitate, to let them do the talking," says Dr. Randy. He doesn’t tell them what to do. After all, they’re supposed to have minds of their own as young adults.

Just as he did with Rico and JB, Dr. Randy will also help evictees cope with the price of instant celebrityhood: loss of privacy. Now that they’re outside the house, the lack of privacy is not confined to the Pinoy Big Brother set. As certified public properties, the public exposure covers every move they make in every show ABS-CBN wants them to grace. Gone is the cloak of anonymity they used to wear before they were screened and accepted as housemates.

JB knows this, and has, in fact, been looking forward to becoming an actor. So too, we are sure, are the other housemates, who Dr. Randy himself says have proven that they have exhibitionist tendencies.

Result: a give-and-take relationship between the housemates as public properties and the viewer as voyeur. As irrepressible voyeurs, we Pinoys are all eyes and ears when each housemate steps up to the confessional and pours out his/her feelings to a Big Brother he/she does not see but trusts completely.

"It’s a social lubricant," Dr. Randy analyzes our penchant for delving into other people’s lives. Yes, gossip does gives us something to talk about – in parties, the beauty parlor, family reunions, etc. It keeps conversation rolling merrily along.

As long as this is so, peeking into other people’s lives 24/7, the way ABS-CBN’s Pinoy Big Brother lets us do, will remain a favored pastime and a source of curiosity, whether MTRCB approves of it or not.