Reality TV Thoughts

Big Brother’s production team is no stranger to adding twists into their game that range from completely pointless to season-killers. Just two years ago, we saw Big Brother 25, a season with a dynamic and fluid pre-jury section, lose all of its momentum due to Zombie Week– an entire week where almost nothing happens, created purely to extend the runtime of the season, all for Cameron (who had been creepy toward the women in the house) to return to the game. Luckily for Zombie Week, it has been bested in the worst twist category by the White Locust, a twist that unceremoniously took out the star of the show up to that point– Rachel Reilly– through a single competition without a single vote cast. The White Locust is is now undoubtedly the worst twist Big Brother production has ever concocted and a stain on what could have been a top 5 Big Brother season. The only reason the season was not immediately killed in a similar fashion to Big Brother 25 is because Vince and Morgan put on a show, turning the typically stale endgame into a soap opera with their endless drama about what to do with all their HOH reigns. It also does not hurt that despite production’s attempts to replicate The Challenge with how many competitions they dumped onto the cast this season, Ashley Hollis, the player who maneuvered the social and strategic aspects of the game the best (only winning two competitions throughout the way!), won the entire game.

Before the season premiere, vibes in the Big Brother community were off. BB27 was the first season to abandon the 50% BIPOC diversity mandate established in 2021 (although diversity was definitely still higher than pre-mandate) and it was announced that live feeds would be off until after the 7/12 Sunday episode, meaning we would miss most of the crucial first days inside the house. The premiere was rather unremarkable, with the only things of note being Vince winning the first HOH, Rachel entering the game, and Zach winning a $10,000 secret power. Heading into the Sunday episode, I was extremely pessimistic of the editor’s ability to accurately depict what had happened in those first days, given their tendency to shield problematic figures and behaviors in the past and overall poor ability to depict events accurately. So, I was pleasantly surprised that the episode was entertaining the whole way through. Not without faults though, as the overblown reaction to Ashley’s infamous ‘Showergate’ incident gave me war flashbacks of the ostracization of Taylor Hale. Luckily, it did not turn out to be anything like that, even if some of the other houseguests’ conversations about Ashley raised some eyebrows. The rest of week 1 was a solid start for the season. Ashley wins a clutch veto after being the initial target, Kelley begins her role as perpetual pawn, and a fight between Rachel and Zae occurs the night before eviction day. We also see the return of the BB26 A.I Arena, now the BB Blockbuster, quite possibly the best received twist since the Power of Veto was introduced in BB3. Personally, I was initially excited to see the Blockbuster, as I believe it does help keep intrigue throughout the entire week, helping the three day stretch between the Veto meeting and eviction feel more interesting. However, like most good things, the BB Blockbuster dragged on way too long (final 6, seriously?!), to the point that when it finally ended, I felt way less positively about it. Week 1 ends rather poetically, with Kelley winning her first Blockbuster, sealing Zae’s fate, funnily enough Vince’s worst case scenario, which is something that Vince brings on himself time and time again. Zae is the perfect first boot for this season, a jock without much game ability (using ChatGPT for game advice, really?) bested by Rachel Reilly.

After week 1, the rest of the pre-jury phase provided plenty of entertaining, satisfying, and iconic moments. However, one thing became clear: almost every houseguest was awful at the game. In week 2, Jimmy was forced to nominate five people, culminating in him targeting someone that would have been a number for his side in Amy. Week 3 began Lauren’s reputation as indecisive and too passive, choosing Adrian as a replacement nominee over Ashley, despite Adrian being a loyal ally for her, after days of both sides of the house trying to control her, resulting in Adrian’s eviction. Then Mickey and Zach, two of the early frontrunners made catastrophically bad mistakes. Mickey stole Rylie’s HOH reign in week 4, then proceeded not to target him or his grossmance partner, Katherine. Sidenote, that relationship was so disturbing that it had the BB community united in hating Rylie for his controlling and manipulative tendencies. Instead, after the house target Keanu won the veto, she was convinced by Morgan that she should target their close ally, Jimmy, instead! After doing just that and going on a power trip, Mickey was not able to recover and became herself the house target until her exit right before the beginning of the jury phase. Then, Zach, who had everything necessary to run the game, chose not to use his get out of jail free card in his $10,000 secret veto after Ava nominated him in week 5, the main reason being that he did not want to give her the money, even if he claims otherwise. After Keanu won the Blockbuster that week, Vince and Zach were left on the chopping block, and Zach’s own potential showmance, Lauren, and apparent closest ally, Morgan, chose to evict him!

You can’t talk about the pre-jury phase without talking about Rachel Reilly. She is integral to how this entire phase plays out and was playing her best game yet! She was a huge character and presence on the live feeds and her on-again-off-again frenemy situation with Keanu was fascinating. And her week 6 HOH reign will go down in history as one of the best of all time! It came in clutch too, as by that point, over half of the house was after her. She initially targeted the trio of Vince, Morgan, and Mickey after realizing they were the loudest voices against her, powerful nominations that shook up the game. Yet, the best was yet to come, as after Lauren won the iconic OTEV competition, Rachel spent days trying to convince her not to use the veto. Yet, after painstakingly going back and forth on a decision, Lauren decided she had to save Vince, despite him being the most safe out of the three nominees if it came to a vote. In a Hail Mary, Rachel told Lauren she would put up her close ally Rylie as the replacement if she saved Vince, but Lauren foolishly thought she was bluffing and used to veto anyways, leading to the Oklahoma creep sitting on the nomination seats. Unfortunately, it seemed that Rylie was unlikely to be evicted in any Blockbuster scenario. The only glimmer of hope was if he sat against Morgan. At this point, Vince and Morgan’s relationship was ramping up, thanks to Zach’s eviction pulling them closer together. Furthermore, despite Morgan and Rachel’s previous spats and Rachel nominating Morgan, it seems she had a change of heart and wanted to fix her relationship with Rachel. Knowing this, Ashley and Will talked Morgan into creating the Judges alliance, with them three plus Vince and Rachel. However, the Judges were still only three out of five votes needed if Morgan was still sitting up for eviction against Rylie by Thursday night. They would have to rely on the main target, Mickey, winning the Blockbuster and then Ava, who talked of targeting Morgan during her HOH reign, somehow voting to keep her. Everyone else was a locked vote to keep Rylie. It seemed so implausible, that I gave up hope. Even Vince backtracked and was thinking about keeping Rylie. Yet, on eviction night, a miracle happened. Mickey won the Blockbuster, a carnival game of who could roll their ball down a narrow pathway the furthest within three minutes, seemingly because both Morgan and Rylie misunderstood the rules. Then, despite her erratic tendencies, she indeed voted to keep Morgan. Vince and Ava convened minutes before the vote and, miraculously, agreed to evict Rylie. With Ashley and Will’s locked in votes, it was a 5-4 vote to get Rylie out, leaving half of the house blindsided going into the iconic wall camp. The final two pre-jury weeks see Rachel somehow survive a second Vince HOH reign by the skin of her teeth after house target Mickey won the veto. Vince nominates Katherine instead of Rachel, who was then evicted after Kelley’s third blockbuster win, her run on the show sadly overshadowed by the Rylie situation. Then, Keanu wins HOH and gets revenge on Vince for all of his betrayals by nominating him against Morgan and Mickey only to regret it immediately after. Morgan begins her competition streak with her first veto win, leading to Ashley being the replacement and a chaotic Ashley and Rachel vs. Keanu fight. Mickey is finally taken out to cap everything off, a core personality for the pre-jury that provided plenty of entertainment with her terrible gameplay.

Going into the jury phase, the game was wide open and practically everyone was being targeted by at least one other person. Of course production had to blow all of that up though. Everyone goes to the backyard shortly after Mickey’s eviction to find out from the Mastermind (a ridiculous inclusion to the season) that one of them will be leaving in the next hour, not through vote, but through the Hamster Wheel competition from the BB Reindeer Games. It was great there, because that spinoff was meant to be about competitions, but not here! Ava wins a weird shuffleboard competition to decide the first person to play in the hamster wheel. Frustratingly, she picks Vince for some reason, despite the two openly targeting each other! She also has a heel turn from being ride or die with Rachel to completely trashing her. As much as Ava’s gameplay is frustrating from here on out, it is unfair to scapegoat her for Rachel’s untimely exit. All blame should be placed on production for ever thinking this was a good idea. Nobody should ever be taken out of Big Brother without a proper vote and eviction (unless it’s an expulsion or quit), but especially not the star of your season! By doing that, you risk leaving so many unresolved plots and storylines because they were never properly evicted! In Rachel’s case, her frenemies storyline with Keanu is cut short, the Judges lose one of their core members, and the person whose eviction would have been a potentially game winning move for someone is taken out by a carnival game! To make matters worse, after Rachel’s eviction, it is revealed the person with the fastest time in the hamster wheel will become the new HOH. Only three people (Vince, Morgan, Lauren) even completed that competition in the first place! You are completely screwing over Kelley, Keanu, Ashley, and Will, who never even got a chance to compete! That week was the low point of the season. Morale not only within the community, but in the house as well, was at a low point. It seemed no one wanted to play if they could just be taken out by a single competition. Lauren nominated Morgan, Ashley, and Will, with a plan to backdoor Keanu, but almost no one cared anymore. After Morgan wins her second veto, Keanu is backdoored, but wins the Blockbuster, which is still here for some reason. That leaves Ashley and Will, who had played the best social-strategic games up to that point, on the block, even though they never even got to compete in the HOH competition! Ashley had successfully managed to flip the vote on Will though, and in a 3-2 vote, Will, who had captured the heart of most of the community for just being a rare genuine, kind man on Big Brother, was unjustly taken out with an injured knee.

The game sped up significantly during the jury phase, with two evictions every week leading up to the finale. This was a welcome change, as most Big Brother seasons unfortunately fall off in terms of entertainment during the last weeks of the game. The change prevented the season from ever losing the steam that it had during the pre-jury phase despite production’s best attempts to do so with the White Locust. We also have to give credit to the remaining cast members for an entertaining endgame, as heading into week 10, the remaining houseguests, even Lauren, put on a show for double eviction week. Vince wins his third HOH to start off the week, although it was practically Morgan’s HOH given how the week plays out. He betrays Keanu for the millionth, but not final, time by placing him on the chopping block alongside Kelley and Ava. Morgan wins the veto yet again and somehow forces Vince’s hand to nominate Lauren as a replacement, despite his hatred for Ashley, the only other viable replacement nominee. Even worse for Vince, Morgan has almost no reason to even use the veto in the first place, with her reasoning being that she needed Vince to prove to her that he would pick her over Lauren. Vince’s game completely unravels here, as despite wanting to take Lauren to the final 2 over Morgan, he for some reason agrees to nominate Lauren, despite a very real possibility she gets voted out. Morgan takes Ava down from the block with the veto, resulting in a weird little dance from Ava, and Lauren is nominated as planned, despite Lauren’s pleading with Vince that this was a horrific move. Immediately after the veto, more drama ensues between Vince and Morgan, with Vince pissed that she “forced” him to nominate Lauren and Morgan agreeing to not vote Lauren out. Coming into double eviction night, the vote was wide open and every nominee had a chance of going home. Lauren beats out the Blockbuster queen and king, Kelley and Keanu, in the final Blockbuster, ending their reign of terror once and for all. At the first eviction of the night, Lauren and Ava vote to evict Keanu because of their newly established trio with Kelley, while Morgan and Ashley vote to evict Kelley, sensing the threat of that trio. Vince is forced to break the tie (first one since BB24!) and evicts the person who was once his closest ally, Kelley. Kelley somehow immediately becomes way more likeable than she was inside the game after being evicted, having some choice words for Vince and a genuinely charismatic exit interview. Morgan wins her first HOH during the double eviction and sets her sights on Lauren, with Keanu as a backup target. However, Keanu wins veto, sealing Lauren’s fate, as Ashley and Keanu, scorned due to Lauren’s betrayal of him during the final 8, evict Lauren, who had won a Blockbuster not even 30 minutes prior. A great end to the week that rejuvenated the season after the disaster at the White Locust. And Zingbot was great too!

The final 5 round starts off with an endurance competition that barely lasts over an hour, with Ava and Ashley dropping early and Keanu losing to Vince in embarrassing fashion. With his fourth HOH, Vince finally decides it is time to cut Keanu, who somehow still trusted him after all of his betrayals. Ava and Keanu are nominated, with the Judges somehow becoming a completely real alliance despite how absurd it seemed early on. Morgan wins her fourth veto, sealing Keanu’s fate. The vote is some sort of voodoo doll ritual in which both Ashley and Morgan stab Keanu’s voodoo doll to evict him. And so ends Keanu’s legendary run. Despite his terrible gameplay and reads on the house, he was a genuinely nice underdog who had managed to scrape by through veto and Blockbuster wins, turning him into the easy fan favorite of the season. That’s not the end of the week, as a two day final four round is next, with Morgan winning the HOH and final veto, giving her full control over the week. With Morgan set on a Judges strong mindset, Ava has no chance and merely tries a weak attack on Vince to save herself to no avail. Ava’s run on the season is one that starts out with her being seen as an authentic and lovable person, only for many to lose respect for her once it became clear she was only playing for the $50,000 America’s Favorite Houseguest prize. A disappointing end to what could have been a great run.

Heading into the finale, Morgan was the clear frontrunner, the most likely to win the final HOH competition and the biggest jury threat. With Vince likely to take Morgan to the end as well, it seemed like the only way Morgan would lose was if Ashley won the final HOH and cut her. But Ashley hadn’t won a competition since week 1, so that would never happen, right? Well, Morgan won the first part of the final HOH as expected, leaving Vince and Ashley to battle it out in part 2. Most including myself expected Vince to win this part and Ashley to be locked out of the final part of the HOH competition. However, somehow, Vince had one of the most colossal challenge mistakes and meltdowns in part 2, allowing Ashley to come from behind and win part 2, giving her a fighting chance. Even better, Ashley had somehow managed to convince Morgan that her best move was to cut her closest ally Vince and take her to the final 2, meaning Ashley went from likely 3rd place to guaranteed final 2. Morgan and Vince continued their late-night soap operas until the final day of the feeds, with Vince slowly realizing there was a chance Morgan would not even take him to the final 2 after everything he did to prove his loyalty. Those late nights caught up to Morgan, as Ashley easily won part 3 of the final HOH competition. Ashley gauged that Morgan was the biggest jury threat and cut her at the final 3, leaving the final 2 of Vince and Ashley. An absolutely insane final 2 by the way, considering how the game first started. Vince literally got laughed at by the jury as Ashley gave convincing answers. With her jury speech, Ashley articulated her gameplay well, how she lowered her threat level by playing dumb and was like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, sweeping the jury in a somewhat controversial 6-1 vote and victory.

The final 3 all played drastically different games. Morgan was the prototypical big threat that would easily sweep a jury vote against most players, but who could not keep their threat level hidden and was cut right before the end. Vince had all of the tools to run the game. He had allies who were undyingly loyal to him like Keanu and had all of the HOH reigns needed to build his resume and run the game. Unfortunately for him, he made the wrong moves at almost every opportunity and pissed almost everyone on the jury off, ensuring it would be nearly impossible for him to ever win a jury vote. Ashley was never out in front as the biggest threat or best player, in fact, it was the opposite. Many players inside the house and even fans online never saw her as a serious contender to win the game. In truth, though, Ashley’s game is one of subtle social and strategic moves that would help her get all the way to the end despite a lack of competition skills. She built relationships with people like Morgan, Rachel, and Mickey, who were willing to advocate for her to make sure she was safe. She helped create the Judges, which would be instrumental to her survival throughout the jury phase. Because of her purposefully lowering her threat level, no one ever thought to target her with their HOH reigns. People like Kelley, Keanu, and Ava went from disliking her to happily voting for her to win the whole game. She was playing behind the scenes the whole game to insulate herself as her allies were out in front getting blood on their hands for her.

Let it be known, Big Brother 27 was a great season, but not because production actually knows how to run their own show. The houseguests made this season great. They made the most out of the poor hand production dealt out, like keeping the Blockbuster until the final 6 and the White Locust, delivering an unpredictable and drama-filled season. The future of Big Brother is still concerning, though. Production clearly learned nothing from their mistakes this season, as they are considering bringing back the White Locust twist for future seasons due to the massive success of this season. But they may not be so lucky next time, and the White Locust might actually become a season-killer.