I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that this happened to us all. I wish I could change things, but here's the truth of what happened on Big Brother 17 : Austin fingered Liz while they were laying in the HoH bed and it is extremely uncomfortable to watch. There's nothing weird or shady about it, it's clearly two consenting adults having a fun romp in a bed. What makes this sexual escapade unique from other late-night activities, is that it was done in front of cameras for a television show that reaches over 6 million viewers, three nights a week. They've recorded the footage, shown it on the live streams, but will CBS air it on national television?
Sex and reality shows are as common a pair as milk and cereal (even though the people having sex are often as good together as toothpaste and orange juice). In fact, there are many shows that are just about finding love (and sex) on reality television. These reality shows usually use clever editing to hide any explicit activities, and feature some suggestive sounds and unclear movements to imply that something sexual has happened. Will Austin and Liz be lucky enough to avoid having their intimate moments aired for all of America to see?
Luckily for the viewers at home with pure, unburdened eyes, it seems the activities may be too explicit for television. While all of the action occurs under the covers, you can still clearly see the upper half of Liz and Austin (they kept the lights on) in addition to the movement happening underneath the blankets. Big Brother has aired erotic escapades a few times, but seems to prefer when they're just shapeless figures completely under blankets. When David and Amanda of BB4 got intimate, they showed it on television, but with clever editing to convey that sex did occur, without actually showing anything explicit.
In recent seasons, Big Brother has shied away from showing sexual activity on the CBS broadcasts of the show, keeping all of the scandalous events for the live feed viewers. Amanda and McCrae of BB15 were getting sexual more often than many houseguests in the show's history, but the network television broadcasts never showed the two consummating their showmance.
Although sexuality on television is a lot more acceptable that is has been in the past, it seems unlikely that CBS would allow footage of Austin and Liz getting physical on network television. Then again, this is by far the most interesting thing that has happened on Big Brother this past week, and social media would explode if this was featured on TV. On the other hand, can the American people can really handle the secondhand embarrassment of watching this happen on national television and knowing that their families are watching?
Hopefully, Liz and Austin will stop playing the game so hard and get themselves evicted so that they can go canoodling in the jury house as much as they want without having to worry about the entire American public seeing it happen.
For more on this season of Big Brother, check out Bustle's podcast The Diary Room below.
Images: Sonja Flemming/CBS; Giphy
