A Guide to the Hit Reality Series Big Brother Prior to Summer of Sabatoge

Big Brother followed the idea of the reality series that became very popular with the hit reality series Survivor. There are similarities in the two shows, but there also are several differences. The biggest difference is that the houseguests live in a house and in most cases get food and done have to rough it the way survivor does. There is access to a hot tub and other comforts like that. It is similar in that you can make alliances and break them in addition to backstabbing people. The main difference is that you have much less control over your own destiny in Big Brother than in Survivor. Your every move just about is watched by cameras in Big Brother hence the name. I will get to some examples later, but this is one reason they may be losing viewers. Big Brother is also on three days per week instead of the one time that Survivor is on. To sum it up if people from survivor competed on Big Brother they would probably consider it paradise, but many people from Big Brother would not make it on Survivor. The theme of Survivor is to "outwit, outplay, outlast" as the main strategy while on Big Brother it is "expect the unexpected" and it really does describe it. Big Brother is hosted by the lovely slightly mature Julie Chen. In Big Brother the key to the house each houseguest is given represents their "life in the game" kind of like the torches do in Survivor.

The amount of contestants will slightly very from season to season. They are selected in the same way as most of the reality shows are cast. They have an open casting call in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Orlando. Here people come out and basically tell a group of panelists why they should be chosen for big brother. Often video tapes are also sent in for the same reason. When they had a survivor all star the fans voted on who they wanted back in the house.

The basics of the game are currently rather simple until you pull various twists into it. Previously fans decided who to vote out of the game, but in the second season the houseguests (as they are called) themselves were responsible for voting houseguests out. Each week there is competition for Head of Household. The winner then typically puts two people on the block for eviction from the house. The remaining houseguests then vote for whom they want to stay and the HOH only votes in the event of a tie.

There are typically twists in each season of Big Brother. Some of things occur later in the game, but I thought I would go over some of the ones that typically happen at the outset of the game that can make things rather interesting for the houseguests. One of the more interesting ones occurred during Big Brother 4 called the X factor. Big brother had a big X in the living room and all the house guests were not really aware of what it was supposed to mean. The first group was in the house like a day and then the next group came in. The next group to enter were several people who used to be in relationships with some of the people already in the house. This played a part in game strategy as many did not like their ex. A couple of the relationships were sort of cordial though.

Another good twist pulled was during season 5 when they had project DNA. This had two parts two it. It was told that two of the houseguests were related but unaware of it. It turned out to be runner-up Cowboy and his sister Nakomis who shared the same father. I am not really sure how to describe their relationship, but they did seem to get reasonably close. She did show him a picture of their father, which he had never known what he looked like and let him keep it. There was actually a second twist to project DNA in which two sisters named Natalie and Adria were identical twin sisters and took turns switching into and out of the house. This was finally revealed after a few evictions.

One of the more interesting twist themes was the Couples them. Here each houseguest was paired with what Julie Chen said was their perfect match. They were supposed to sleep (not sexually) together. They also would be nominated together and if evicted be evicted together. A couple arguments between the couples break out as there is one couple outside of the house who came into the house and were paired with others. This was supposed to be a twist but both those in the outside relationship decided to tell their house partner and eventually the whole house knew. Ryan was actually was the season runner-up. I knew this could not last very long and in a surprise after couple was evicted and as they were leaving and they were told there would be another vote by the rest of the Houseguests now playing, voting, and being evicted as individuals to see which one of the couple would stay. Some of the alliances did stay based on the way the couples were paired for the most part.

The Head of Household in Big Brother is the top position during the week. You get your own private room, some comforts from home like junk food, and a letter from home and are safe from eviction for the week (most of the time). You also have to put up two houseguests for eviction and vote in the event of a tie. If someone vetoes one of your nominations you need to pick a replacement. Julie always announces that that "the person evicted will have a few moments to gather their belongings and say their goodbyes". Sometimes it's civil others people go out cussing people out. They then go out and get interviewed by Julie Chen. The remaining quests also record a message to each of those evicted while they are in the Diary Room and some are shown to the person. Some are really harsh and others are nice depending on the relationship the person giving the message had with the person evicted.

There is a competition for each Head of Household. Some of these can be physical, but most are more mental challenges. Later in the game they can have phases two them. The final HOH is usually three parts with the winner of the first phase facing the winner of the second phase and the two losers in the first phase facing off in the second phase. Unlike immunity in Survivor, the HOH in Big Brother almost always is a target the following week especially if someone who was nominated gets HOH or a close ally of theirs.

As I mentioned the HOH nominates two houseguests for eviction. They have a wheel with keys of all of the houseguests in the house. The HOH pulls the first key and that person is safe and then they pull the next persons. Then that person pulls one until so forth until two people do not have keys. In Big Brother keys are equal to a lit torch in Big Brother.

After the nomination ceremony there is a Veto competition. The competition has changed in various ways. Sometimes the whole house would play and then just some people could. Now the two players nominated and the HOH play and pick three random players to also play. There is still the occasional everyone plays veto especially later in the game. This power allows the holder to Veto one of the nominees and take them off the block. The person who had the Veto also could not be named as a replacement. The way the Veto has been used has changed a bit over the course of the game. In early seasons you only could get a regular Veto. Here the holder could only save one of the nominees, but if they were a nominee they could not save themselves but could the other nominee if they chose to. In season three the Golden Veto was introduced were you could save yourself.

During the game they often have food competitions to see how the house eats. These can either be team against teams or the whole house playing together to see what they will get for the week. Some of these are physical, some are mental, and some are a combination of both. Initially if you were on the losing team or did not win the house food for a certain day you were on peanut Butter and Jelly. With this diet you could just eat bread and condiments along with peanut butter and jelly. Big Brother decided to be jerks though and went to slop. I am not sure what is in it. It appears to be some type of oatmeal like substance with some other stuff in it. If you are on slop there are some other things you can eat with it. I recall Julie Chen saying that you also can eat protein powder if you are on slop. Typically one of these competitions per year involves eating something disgusting like on survivor. Off hand haggish, chocolate covered snake and snail salad were some of the items they had to eat. Usually it is not as gross as the stuff they need to eat on Survivor.

The game also will have some luxury competitions were you can win things like a BBQ for the house or something fun like that. Some of these also offer the chance to get out of the house. One guest got to go to the MTV music awards once, another got to go to the set of Two and a Half Men. This can be won or America can make a choice on assigning this to someone. Usually the person has to win it, but some people have gotten some pretty good stuff assigned by America through America's Choice.

America's Choice gives the armchair players a chance to get involved in the game. Usually this is when America can pick a player to get something. This can be a letter or call home or something of that nature. They have also given players special powers in the game (ill get into this in a minute). One season had America's Player. This person was basically given tasks by America and got a certain amount of money for completing the task. It was kind of funny but can get serious as America can have the person lobby the HOH to nominate someone or lobby to get them evicted. This is one of those things that I think is kind of bull and really takes away from the game by taking it out of the hands of how a player plays the game.

At the end of the game when all is said and done they have a jury award the prizes to the winner. In the first couple seasons the Jury was not secluded, but now they are and can't watch the game. They just get highlight tapes from the newest jury member and have to go by what people say. They basically discuss things amongst themselves about who they think should win. At the reunion all the houseguests come back and the ones on the Jury get to ask questions of the final two. They then make a vote by putting a key in the same block used for nominations. When the voting is over the keys are pulled out and the name on them means a vote for the winner.

Big Brother has had a variety of controversies over the course of the show. It seems to me that quite a bit of these have been caused by Big brother. The best way to describe some of these controversies and unexpected events have been censored to an extent even on feeds that people pay money to watch on Big Brother like Big Brother After Dark. The America's player was controversial because America voted on what the player did including how to vote and getting people nominated or evicted. In various examples the target of America was not really who the player would have targeted. I think this really was not fair to the players in the house because some had an extra obstacle to overcome were as the player helped other people by not targeting them. I am going to call complete bull on that one. It did make it interesting, but I don't think they should have been used to nominate or evict people.

The biggest controversy probably occurred during Big Brother 11 when there was this special power known as "the wizard power". This power was voted to houseguest Jeff by America and had nothing to do with talent or playing the game. This power alone is one reason I don't watch the show as much. Basically what it allowed him to do was overthrow the HOH and remove both of the people they nominated and replace them with two of their own. Jeff took Lydia and Russell off the block and instead put Jesse and Natalie on the block. Personally I thought it was a punk move. It was the only way that Jeff could beat Jesse. Jeff also got to fly under the radar for a bit because initially the house was broken into clicks and since Jeff was in the athlete click he could not be nominated anytime they won. The other athletes also realized Jeff was aligned with other people and probably could not have gotten rid of him. This resulted in Jesse getting evicted from the house for the second time based on relations with how America played things. Personally I don't think he got a fair shake and that the Wizard power really took away from Chima winning HOH when the other HOH could nominate someone. Jordan would end up winning the game and I personally think she was the sorriest winner and least deserving that I can think of. I doubt she would have won without Jesse falling victim to the wizard power. She basically rode Jeff's coattails and was not much of a player so she did not get targeted. I was very surprised that she won unanimously. She seemed nice and I am sure she is a good person, but I think this is why people don't watch Big Brother as much. Jesse was gracious though. He said that it was a good play on the part of Jeff.

As you can imagine Chima was extremely ticked off about this and I think she had every right to be. Basically she won HOH but did not get to enjoy the fruits of her win like very other HOH winner this season. She took off her microphone and refused to put it back on. Someone actually gave her a new microphone and she threw it in the tub. She decided to throw it in the hot tub. Apparently the rules of Big Brother are that you have to wear the mic at all times and you are not supposed to damage them. Chima also was talking about all the BS from the Wizard power because getting rid of Jesse took someone from her alliance and the two people she nominated would have given someone not in her alliance the boot. The Big Brother voice came over and asked her to go to the Diary Room (were they vote and the other houseguests can't hear them) and she refused. They this woman who was one of the main producers came over the speaker and told her to come there. Chima claims she quit, but Big Brother claims she was expelled and forfeited the $10,000 money that all contestants get. If I were her and she could I would have sued because that could have cost her the 500k grand prize with that wizard power crap. As I mentioned there are people who pay for live feeds into the house and every time the other houseguests started to discuss the Chima incident the cameras cut away. This leads me to believe their was more to the story than the show was letting on.

The revolving Door was not much of a controversy but still a controversy. Here someone who gets voted out ends up coming back into the house. I recall this happening three times and all of them were a bit screwed up. I don't know if that really cost anyone anything, but I thought it took away from the skill of the game. In Big Brother 9 this idiot with pink hair named James was voted back in after being voted out minutes before. One of the prettiest but dizziest women in the house ever named Natalie voted for him to come back and he was not in the alliance she was in and there was someone else they could vote for who was in the alliance who had previously been voted out instead of James and this would help him. Suffice to say Natalie and James were the final two in the HOH competition and she agreed to give up after both of them were exhausted. She made James promise not to put her up or her soul mate in the house Matt as she had the hots for him. The shady cat broke his work and put him up and he was evicted. She was ticked and finally got that hippie out of there.

During project DNA there was a set of twins in the house named Adria and Natalie. As I mentioned they switched in and out of the house and basically told the other what was going on while the other was not in the house. This was finally revealed later and both twins were then in the game. I think it was screwed up in that once again it screwed up the numbers in the alliance. I am not sure how, but the Four Horsemen still had the final two and winner. This was pretty good I thought and I was really surprised to see it not going completely against the Four Horsemen.

Ok I do realize that is 2010, but I think Big Brother gets ridiculous about promoting the homosexual lifestyle. Every episode of Big Brother seems to have a token gay person or two in it. One episode even had a lesbian and homosexual in it. I think that is kind of overkill. I do realize that there are gay people in the world and I could the occasional gay person in it, but not every single season. During one season there was a twist were there were three people initially hiding in the Big Brother HOH bedroom. The other houseguests were told that three people are in the house that have had a previous relationship the houseguests. One gay guy just burst out to the rest of the house that if it is "My boyfriend he is a total jerk and gave me gonorrhea". The first thing that I thought of was that if I was there I would have said "Your boyfriend? You know you are a guy right?". Also during the couples twist when people played the game as a couple for part of the game there was a gay couple of course.

The game has also had some expulsions. One of them was already discussed by me in how Chima was upset and ended up being expelled from the house. Typically it involves breaking rules. The big one is threatening harm to others in a serious way. You can get in someone's face, but if you get physical they will usually result in you getting the boot. I have not seen anyone get their tail handed to them. I am surprised by that at times.

There are various alliances that form during the games. Some of them get colorful names unlike Survivor where the only names used are tribe names. There were three that really caught my attention during the various seasons that I watched and in all the cases a member of the alliance won the game. The first of these was The Four Horsemen during Big Brother 5 consisting of winner Drew, runner up Cowboy, Scott and Jase who was the leader. This included four pretty much jock types. One guy was pretty much the brains; there was another who was all brawn but an idiot, a pretty boy and a wannabe cowboy. Two member of this alliance made it to the final two in the form of the pretty boy and the wannabe cowboy. The members of the alliance were actually pretty comical.

During Big Brother 6 there was an alliance that came to be known as the Friendship Alliance. Julie Chen mentioned that this was one of the less popular alliances that there was in the game. What a bunch of riff raff. I thought they were a pretty pathetic group and most of them would be the types that you would stuff in their lockers in college and take their lunch (if you are that type of know people who are). Like The Four Horsemen two members of The Friendship alliance went to the final two. I am not really sure how either of them got to the finals, but they did. This alliance actually included the two homosexuals the one season there was more than one token gay person.

My favorite unfortunately was also one of the shadiest alliances in Chill Town. This included Mike Boogie and the Evil Dr. Will. They broke up a bunch of friendships in the game by playing people, but it all worked in the end as one went to the final two and won the game. These guys were really comical and made the show interesting to watch. They manipulated people like crazy and both got people to vote their best friends out.

Big Brother has had a couple expulsions over the course of the show. I already discussed the issue with Chima from last season so I won't go into that here. I will say there were cases were people thought other people should have been expelled but were not. Probably the best example of this was during Big Brother 2. Houseguest Justin was expelled from the game. He previously had gotten a warning about violent behavior and destruction of property. The final straw was when he and fellow houseguest Krista were making out and kissing in the kitchen. He had swung a vacuum cleaner at her like he was going to hit her and then asked her "Would you get mad it if I killed you"? He then took a knife and held it to her throat while they kissed. He removed it but then she asked him to put it back. After a confrontation with the shows psychiatrist he was expelled.

During Big Brother 4 X-factor houseguest Scott was expelled after a very violent tirade that including throwing things and swinging objects at people and threats to do harm. Scott also refused to go to the Diary Room when called. He had one of his ex's in the house named Amanda. Originally he wanted to get her out but then was really upset when she ended up being nominated. Big Brother only shows you what they want to, but I do think compared to some people who did not get kicked out what Scott did appeared to be minor.

There have been some winners that I really found interesting and followed. I also thought some of them would end up winning based on the information that I had seen previously. I think these are some of the better winners in my opinion.

Lisa Donahue from Big Brother 3was a pretty good winner I think. In addition to being very attractive she did stick to her alliances and played about as honorable of a game as people play in Big Brother. I think she got a little too dramatic when her showmance (house relationship) got evicted and she kind of was really harsh with the guy named Jerry when he got evicted. In all fairness he was playing the game, but he put Eric up against Lisa. So one of them was destined to leave the House. When they interviewed her a few seasons later she mentioned she was not with Eric and she actually was friends with Jerry.

Dr. Will Kirby (AKA the Evil Dr. Will) is another good winner. He competed in Big Brother 2. He is actually a doctor in that he is a dermatologist. This guy was smooth. He was the kind of guy who could sell sand to an Arab. He got people to go against any common sense in their voting as shown we during Big Brother All-stars he got Janelle to get rid of Marcellas and got Mike Boogie to get Erica to get rid of Danielle. He went as far as sleeping in the same bed with Erica all night (no hanky panky though) to insure Danielle could not get in the room and get her ear. All-Star winner Mike Boogie was in an alliance with Will that was known as Chill town.

Evel Dick Donato from Big Brother 8 was probably my favorite. He was a hard rock style drummer and looked the part with tattoos and piercing all over the place. While I would not want my kids to act or look like him, he did provide much comic relief to the house. His daughter Danielle was in the house with him since Evil Dick was one of the three surprise guests that that had a previous relationship with. He was on the block once against his daughter and tried all kids of stuff at annoying other houseguests in order to insure he would be evicted and not here. He actually was able to keep either one of them from being evicted by slick plays of the game. He came under lots of controversy over his extreme language in the house towards many of the female guests including Jen who had an ongoing feud with him.

When you are not in the show it is hard to say someone does or does not deserve to win. These opinions are based on my opinion based on what I had seen during the various times I had watched Big Brother. Last season's winner Jordan is probably the best example of someone that I can't possible fathom how they managed to win. She really just rode the coattails of Jeff for the vast majority of the game. She did win two head of households and one veto. In fairness she really not perform very well in the competitions and one was basically handed to her by Jeff. She is probably a really nice person but I can't believe she managed to win the game especially the way people should have been ticked at her alliance over that wizard power that destroyed the objectivity of the game.

Overall Big Brother is a fairly good show. I used to enjoy it much more though. I really think that much of the fun has been taken out of it with some of the junk like the wizard power because it keeps people who should win the game from winning at no fault of their own. I might watch it every now and then but not often.

Sources.

Various hours watching Big Brother

www.cbs.com