Reality television has always walked the line between genuinely compelling and unrelentingly trashy. For every Survivor that bills itself as the ultimate social experiment there is a Bachelor in Paradise that focuses on, and markets itself with the debaucherous actions of its participants. Perhaps no show straddles the line between complex human narrative and low brow entertainment more than CBS’ Big Brother .





Courtesy of CBS





Premiering in the summer of 2000 and based on the Dutch series of the same name, the American version of

Big Brother

pits contestants against one another in a battle for $500,000. The catch is that all of the drama plays out live on the

Big Brother Live Feeds

. This has in the past led to houseguests being caught saying and doing reprehensible things. In the summer of 2013 this came to a head during the 15th season of the show when several houseguests were shown to harbor racist and otherwise offensive views, which prompted the production team to include a disclaimer before showing viewers the live feeds.

Putting aside the propensity for certain reality contestants to behave poorly, it is my assertion that Big Brother is the most challenging strategy game to navigate. In turn, this makes it the single most entertaining game on television. The show’s potential makes it even more disappointing when producers decide to undermine the integrity of the game for no discernible reason.





Courtesy of CBS





Rules

The basic rules of the show are as follows: each week the players will compete in a competition for the role of Head of Household. The Head of Household or HoH is safe for the week and must nominate two of the losing houseguests for eviction. Once the two players have been selected, the HoH, the nominees, and three players selected by random draw compete in a second competition for the Power of Veto which grants the winner the ability to veto one of the HoH’s nominees. Once the nominees are set, the remaining players will vote for one of the two. The person with the highest number of votes is eliminated and the outgoing HoH will not be able to compete in the following Head of Household competition. About midway though the game the players voted out will become a member of the jury. These 7-9 players, depending on the season, will vote for who they want to win, between the final two contestants.

Courtesy of CBS

The rules in the above paragraph are Big Brother at its most basic and in my opinion its best. Unlike similar games such as Survivor , not only do you have to form a majority alliance, but you have to convince almost everyone that you are on the same page to guarantee your safety regardless of who takes power by becoming HoH. In the end you can’t actually be with everyone and many of those players you betrayed will end up on the jury. So to win you will have to convince the people you stabbed in the back to reward you with half a million dollars. The game itself lasts nearly 100 days and each elimination cycle averages about a week. This allows players who excel at social manipulation enough time to wriggle their way out of a situation that would otherwise lead to their elimination.

So this brings us to Tuesday’s episode of Big Brother, which featured a new twist called the “Camp Director” which grants the player immunity for the first eviction and forces them to send four players into a competition. The person who comes in last will be eliminated within the first couple of days of the game starting. This twist undermines the game itself, and screws over one player for no other reason than to force manufactured drama. They have done this before and each time the show evicts someone on or near night one it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of viewers immediately. When production has the perfect game that creates compelling moments naturally, it remains infinitely perplexing that they insist on a rule change during week one. If the show’s production team could just have faith in their casting process and the rules of the game in general there is enough there to create a compelling show. For whatever reason, they refuse to do that and as such someone who spent countless hours getting on the show and in many cases quit their jobs for this opportunity will be going out of the house almost as quickly as they came in.

Let us know what you think about night one eliminations and please share this blog post with your friends.

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