Throughout the evening, Jessica is acting quiet rude, compared to the others towards Ben. When Ben is talking about his academic past, Jessica responds with paralinguistic features like gasps. And when Ben says “So, I failed my exams five times”, Jessica responds with “You think you’d know how to pass after the fourth attempt”. This suggests that Jessica is insulting him, as well as her exaggerated reaction with her gasps. This shows rudeness towards Ben that the other contestants are hardly showing.
Also, Jessica stands out among the other contestants, from the beginning. First of all, when meeting the other contestants, she asks “What do you do?” and “What are you studying” and acts like she is genuinely interested by using back-channel features. However, this is just so she is asked about herself, which she replies with “Well, it’s a secret, I’m not gonna tell anybody until my night”. This suggests she wants to be the centre of attention and make the others curious about what she might do as living. And later on during the night, when Ben and Derek were having a discussion, Jessica completely changes the topic, similar to an interruption and says, “I was in the audience on the David Letterman show...” and she goes on to say what celebrities were on there. As the viewers already know she is celebrity obsessed, it also shows that she wants to be in control of a conversation. And she wants everyone’s focus to be on her, which makes her stand out compared to the others, for example she is less polite.
Care-Anne, throughout the dinner party, is trying to make everyone happy at the same time. This can be shown in the conversation about Ben failing his exams, when she says, “Ben you didn’t fail your parents”, shows she is being kind and sympathetic. And later, when Jessica starts to appear rude to Ben, Cara-Anne says “or at least find a way to cheat, for goodness sake”, so she turned the situation in to a joke and lightens the mood. Also, during the dessert, Care-Anne used a paralinguistic feature of scrunching up her face when she tried the dessert. However, she was not seen by Ben and therefore did not offend him but at the same time made the others laugh. She was acting friendly towards Ben, but at the same time is not going against Derek and Jessica, as a result, she is pleasing everyone.
The interaction between the contestants at Jessica’s dinner party is more informal than at Ben’s party. Ben impatiently asks Jessica, “Can you please finally tell us what it is you actually do for a living”, which shows some level of politeness has gone. However, Jessica still wants her guests to play the guessing game which causes the contestants to use paralinguistic features like tapping fingers, overlapping and informal sentences. This shows everyone is more relaxed with each other, and they’re not afraid to express themselves, as they have gotten to know one another better. Therefore, the discussion between contestants is much less organised and formal.
Throughout Jessica’s dinner party, Ben seems to be troubling Jessica at some points. Such as when he asks Jessica, “Can you please finally tell us what it is you actually do for a living?” he says it as command, disguised as a question and stresses ‘finally’ and ‘actually’. He also doesn’t want to play Jessica’s guessing game and when guessing Jessica’s occupation he says, “Tax accountant”. This portrays him being sarcastic, contradicting Jessica’s personality and proves that Ben is not being enthusiastic and respecting Jessica on her night. And later on he also challenges Jessica teaching, causing Jessica to go against Ben and prove him wrong, which shows Ben wanted to see Jessica struggling on her night, possibly for pay back for her attitude at Ben’s dinner party. So, Ben is acting quite odd and troublesome towards Jessica throughout the night.
During Ben and Jessica’s discussion, Jessica wins against Ben. Ben started the talk, by putting Jessica on the spot and questioning her teaching methods. However by the end of their discussion, Ben says, “Yeah, it’s not erm often that I sort of admit that I am wrong but erm I think you made quite a compelling case and er maybe I was a bit quick to judge sorry.” This shows that Jessica was able to take control in the discussion, and stand up against Ben. And also throughout the conversation, Ben uses more fillers and hesitates more, as at the end it seems he is embarrassed to have been mistaken. Therefore, it confirms that Jessica was infarct able to argue back to Ben and as a result, succeed by having Ben apologise.
Cara-Anne tries to side with guests, as during Jessica’s night she sides with Jessica a lot. In the middle of Jessica and Ben arguing, Cara-Anne steps in, in support of Jessica, “English is not all about books” and later on replies to Ben with, “Not at all, you’re just winding her up”, overlapping Jessica. It is shown that Cara-Anne steps into the conversation, to stop it becoming a proper argument, and kind of shows Ben to calm down. After Ben apologises, she says, “Well done Ben”, as if to say thanks for listening to me and not making the mood too tense. So, again she was trying to make everyone happy, but sided with Jessica, to genuinely please Jessica.
The final dinner party is hosted by Care-Anne and she is trying very hard to be an amusing host. When greeting her guests she uses nick names and greets everyone informally, “Hii Ducky, aaah Derek”, “Heyy, Jessie B”, as well as giving out compliments such as, “you’re looking brilliant”. This proves that Cara-Anne wants everyone to be relaxed and have fun, as she is being a friendly host. For her dinner party, she has a dress code of ‘Country Gent’ and later on plays ‘the toilet roll game’ with her guests. Therefore, she is trying to be entertaining and a bit different to the other contestants, hoping everyone will have a good time.
During the night, Cara has been put on the spot or been embarrassed by the other guests on several occasions. Such as when, Ben asked for red wine with the Venison during the main course, and she replies with, “I kinda thought that was but I’ve got beer for you.” So, she had mistakenly thought she had red wine which is traditionally served with venison as well as offering beer with it instead, which Ben replies with, “Oh no this is fine.” Ben has realised her mistakes, but managed not to embarrass her even more, by not carrying on the conversation. Later on however, Cara-Anne is talking to Jessica about how Jessica wouldn’t normal eat Venison and says, “Having given it a shot Jess, what do you think still too poignant...” And mistakenly uses the wrong word, which Derek and Jessica catch on upon, and laugh at her without telling her what she did wrong. Later on Ben makes her realise that she meant ‘Pungent’ instead of ‘Poignant’, which means a sense of sadness or regret, Cara-Anne laughs at herself to make it seem as if she isn’t bothered over her silly mistake. So, even though she was embarrassed a few times, she tried to hide it and be a good host.
Ben isn’t fitting in well at some points during the night, compared to the other contestants. First of all, he arrives the evening not dressed up, which seems like he spoilt the mood, as he has made no effort and says, “I’ve totally let you down with my outfit but...”.He doesn’t carry of his sentence, like a false start, as he’s quite embarrassed, realising he’s the odd one out. And compared to the others, he’s not having much fun and doesn’t laugh once during the night, which makes him not fit in as much with the others.
Throughout, Cara-Anne’s dinner party, everyone mostly got on quite well with each other. At the end, Cara-Anne even says, “Can I make a suggestion this time next year we do this”, using hedging as she’s unsure of what the others will think. However, Jessica replies, “That would be quite nice I’d be up for that would be great fun that’s a really good plan”. This shows that the evening went quite well, as the mood was much more happy and amusing, and contestants didn’t really argue or take sides as much as the previous nights. Even though there were some awkward moments through the night, overall everyone seemed to have enjoyed themselves and got on well with each other.
Throughout the episode and the different dinner parties, there was a contrast of a lot of different personalities and interactions. The Interaction at the start of the episode was very formal and they were acting very friendly, as they were getting to know one another. By the second night, all the contestants were more conformable to speak their mind and show what they were really like. And even thought there were a few arguments and disagreements between the contestants, by the end of it, some of them were very friendly and at the last dinner party, the interaction was very sociable and happy.