Big Brother: "Reality Check"
The First 5 Weeks
-Wayne Keehner, Contributor
Ok America! Now that I introduced you to the concept of Big Brother in my previous article, now we can get into the actual game play of this season. If you haven't read the introduction and history article you should go back and read it. Or don't! I have very little influence and authority on most things.
This season started off fairly normal as we were introduced to 16 new houseguests from across America. Blue Kim a brand strategist from NY, Bowie Jane Ball a DJ from LA, America Lopez a medical receptionist from NY, Cameron Hardin a stay at home dad from Georgia, Cory Wurtenberger a college student from Florida, Felicia Cannon a real estate agent from Georgia, Izzy Gleicher a flutist from NY, Jag Bains a trucking owner from Washington, Jared Fields an exterminator from Connecticut, Matt Klotz a deaf Olympic swimmer (Gold medalist) from Louisiana, Mecole Hayes a political consultant from MD, Red Utley a salesman from Tennessee, Hisam Goueli a physician from Washington, Reilly Smedley a bartender from Tennessee, Kirsten Elwin a biologist from Texas, and finally (Or we thought) Luke Valentine an illustrator from Florida.
One of the big "Twists" this year is that the house was physically (as well as competitively ) going to be divided into 4 unique themed sections that would make up the Big Brother "Multiverse" ( The Comicverse, Humiliverse, Scaryverse and Scrambleverse.) Instead of normally competing in an opening competition to decide who the Head of Household was and who would have the power in week 1, they competed in 4 separate competitions and the loser of each was put in jeopardy of being eliminated. It is only after those competitions in which Jared, Kirsten, Felicia and Cory were losers that the house would meet a surprise final 17th participant, Cirie Fields a surgical director from South Carolina. Oh yeah, and she happens to be a 4 time Survivor competitor. Also (check out the last name) She happens to be the mother of Jared Fields. While the other houseguests immediately recognize her from Survivor fame, only Izzy, who happens to be a Cirie superfan and apparently social media stalker knows that Jared is her son. She quickly pulls Jared and Cirie aside and lets them both know, that she knows...... (And the plot thickens)
**Warning... From this point forward this article will contain outcome spoilers of competitions as well as eviction and twist results from the start of the season all the way to the VETO competition that occurred on Wednesday September 6th. This article will be more of a hard detail catch up, with a few of my thoughts and reactions sprinkled in. So if you are not caught up, please proceed with caution.**
Week1: The first HOH competition was a balance beam competition won by Reilly. Normally the HOH has to nominate 2 people for eviction but since 4 people (the opening comp losers) were already nominated she got to remove 2 from the block. She removed Jared and Cory, leaving Felicia and Kirsten. The veto comp that week was won by Hisam who decided not to use the power to remove either nominee and Kirsten became the first houseguest evicted by a vote of 13-0.
(Important to note that a lot of alliances were created this week basically dividing the house into 2 basic sides. The "PROFESSORS" alliance: Cirie, Felicia, Red, Hisam, Bowie and Mecole. Then the "handful" alliance which was: Cameron, Jag, Matt, Blue and Reilly. Luke was forcibly removed from the game before the vote for using a racial slur caught on the live feeds. Though those were the 2 largest house dividing alliances a few final 2 deals were made and smaller alliances formed like the "BYE-BYE BITCHES" alliance, which may be the best name ever.)
Week 2: Hisam won the HOH competition and Nominates Reilly and Cameron for elimination. Jag is not able to be nominated due to being sent to the Netherworld as a stipulation from the HOH comp. Hisam also wins the Power of Veto comp (Could he be playing a bit too hard, too fast? Possible foreshadowing.) He not only leaves the nominations the same, but he also outwardly declares Reilly as his target and asks that the entire house band together to get her out! (Oh Sh*t! Not going to lie, that veto meeting was hard to watch!) He gets his way and Reilly is the next houseguest evicted also with a unanimous 12-0 vote.
(Hisam almost shot himself in the foot by how hard he went after Reilly. All the way up until the live eviction the viewers were left with a cliffhanger of whether or not the house could get enough people on board to flip the vote and keep Reilly. Also Hisam really rubbed a bunch of his own alliance the wrong way with how he talks down to them.)
Week 3: In one of those games of chance HOH comps Felicia wins and becomes the new HOH. She nominates Cameron and Jag (The plan is to keep Hisam comfortable, so he doesn't see a backdoor post veto nomination.) Jag wins the power of veto taking himself off the block and Felicia nominates Hisam as the replacement. (YES!! I literally yelled at my tv. She used a line against Hisam that he previously used... "Why take out a knight, when you can take out a KING!") Hisam became the 3rd houseguest voted out also with a unanimous 11-0 vote!
(Not much I can add to this. Hisam was working hard damage control. For a moment I thought he might actually convince the house to keep him, that may have just been creative editing for the show to have that sense of mystery. Also by this time the alliances are all messed up. There are real ones, fake ones, absolute clown shoes! That's why I love this game.)
Week 4: After 18 years the infamous "Pressure cooker" competition returned and after some deal making at the end Cameron wins the HOH. (Important to know that a few showmances are starting to pop up. Jared and Blue which, as we find out later, is really wrong. Also Cory and America, which are super cute and awkward.) Cam and America were final 2 in the comp but Cam promised America and Cory safety if she threw it to him. He nominated Blue and Jag for eviction. Red won the power of veto and kept the nominations the same, (even though there was heavy talk about backdooring Izzy) and by a vote of 10-0 Jag was voted out for eviction.... But wait... there's more! Due to “Americas Vote” Matt was gifted the “Power of invincibility” which allowed him to save any evicted houseguest (including himself) in the next 3 weeks. He chooses to immediately use that power to save Jag, essentially rendering week 4 useless and doing results reset as nobody left the house.
Week 5: Due to the power being used everyone was able to play in the next HOH. Jared ended up winning and nominating Cameron and Red. (Before the nominations he met with both individually and made it seem like each one was the pawn for the other being the target. He also played them against each other by planting loyalty doubt. It was actually a good play from Jared, for once.) In a desperation performance Cameron won the veto comp and took himself off the block. Jag was nominated as his replacement.
(Soo this week the BB live feeds were insane. Apparently, Jared has this physical showmance happening with Blue, yet he has a girlfriend of 7 years back home. The producers are really trying shield the weekly shows from this as they muted Jared saying her name live during eviction and they blocked her HOH letter from being in the room. My "opinion" is that for the casual viewer that don't watch the BB live feeds they are trying to maintain Jareds reputation for the viewers. Those watching the live feeds knows that he talks down to women, is super verbally abusive to Blue and even called America the "R" word. There is widespread social media reaction outrage of why he is still in the house. So far BB has yet to comment. Hopefully something is addressed on the live eviction episode Thursday. It's obvious that the Cirie/ Jared relationship twist is a big deal for this season and they are trying to protect that as much as possible. That being said, rules are rules and it will be interesting to see where the season goes from here both on the weekly episodes and the 24/7 live feeds.
That's all for now. Make sure you tune in to CBS every Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday to see all of the action as it unfolds and join me in the future for another Big Brother "Reality Check." - Keehner Out