It is time once again for another season of Big Brother. Seeing as this is the first episode and all, there’s not a whole lot of previous events to comment on so let’s get right into the recap.
Big Brother All-Stars begins with Julie welcoming us followed by a video giving us a brief look at the house while the announcer gives everyone a quick rundown of the rules of Big Brother.
Julie ushers the 20 potential All-Stars into the front yard. She welcomes them and announces that instead of the top three men and top three women getting into the house, the top four vote getters of each gender will be allowed into the house, bringing the total up to 14 houseguests. The keys of the 14 chosen individuals are currently residing in the nomination ceremony box.
Not wasting any time, Julie pulls out the keys (in no particular order) of the top four female vote getters. Those women are Janelle, Erika, Nakomis (now with pink hair) and Diane.
The four women are the first allowed into the house and they quickly set about exploring. Nakomis, in a Diary Room comment, says that she felt out of place as the other three are ‘girly girls’. We also get a DR comment from Diane telling us that she doesn’t think Erika deserved to be an All-Star as she didn’t really do anything (I must say I agree with Diane. I certainly wasn’t expecting Erika to crack the top four amongst the women).
Next Julie reveals the four men who have been voting into the house. She pulls the keys of Howie, Kaysar, James, Jase. No real surprises in this group though I expected that Will would have easily gotten into the top four.
As the 4 guys go into the house, Jase comments on the large numbers of Big Brother 6 people who have gotten into the house. Meanwhile, Kaysar makes some early predictions of BB6 domination and Howie just enjoys all the ‘boobies’.
After a commercial break, Julie briefly converses with the remaining potential houseguests before revealing the final six people to make it into BB7. The final group consists of Will, Danielle, Marcellas (who is so excited to get in that he runs over and hugs Julie), Alison, Mike Boogie and Chicken George.
Once all 14 houseguests have entered the house, we get a segment of the entire group together for the first time. The running theme of this segment is how a lot of people are pretending to be happy to meet or reunite while they bitch about each other in the DR.
Will and Mike also start talking strategy almost immediately and when they go upstairs to continue plotting, James calls them out on their alliance, referring to them as Batman and Robin in the DR. Will and Mike’s biggest concern is to get rid of Kaysar. They don’t seem to view him as much of a threat; but rather feel he is overrated (so it’s odd they are so concerned with getting rid of him).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that George busts out a painfully unfunny rap at one point, while Mike and Will pretend to be amused.
Next up we get the first Head of Household competition of the season. Unlike previous years, two people share the HoH title (along with the associated rewards and responsibilities) this year. Notably, if the two HoHs are unable to agree on the two people they wish to put up for nomination, then they lose their status as HoHs and they themselves become the two nominees.
The houseguests play a game called Falling Stars. They are divided into two groups; one group stands on pedestals on a rotating platform while the people from the other group take turns swinging a large ‘asteroid’ at them. Once it is down to one person, the groups switch and repeat the process. The two survivors are the first two HoHs.
As the guys take off their shirts in preparation to play the game, we get a DR comment from Diane about the hotness of many of the guys. She says she’s not about to fall for one of them though; joking about how she could never fall in love with a guy on national TV.
Howie is the first person eliminated, followed by Mike, Erika and James. This brings us down to a final three of Will, Jase and Marcellas. Will (who in a somewhat amusing bit jumps up on the asteroid as it swings by and then attempts to land back on the pedestal when it swings back) goes out next leaving us with two. Marcellas is quickly knocked out as well and Jase wins. Unlike many of the others, Jase has no problem winning the first HoH competition reasoning that he just has to be sure to make the other HoH look worse than him.
The two groups switch positions and the process begins all over again. Nakomis is the first to go. Then Will then takes out Kaysar as the rivalry between the two continues to build. James eliminates Diane next, telling us in the DR that his only concern was to make sure he didn’t eliminated Janelle. Jase, on the other hand, wants to eliminate Janelle but accidentally knocks Alison out instead. Chicken George is the next to go with Erika’s throw not only knocking him off the pedestal but causing him to fall on his ass and come very close to cracking his head on his pedestal in the process.
We are down to Janelle and Danielle and Howie is next to throw the asteroid. Howie, not surprisingly opts to knock off Danielle and ‘Jedi Janey’ gets the win.
As Jase and Janelle get keys we get worried DR comments from Alison and Will. Danielle, for her part, is more focused on possible strategies they could and should employ.
Before we get to any strategizing however, it is time to see the new HoH room. The room has an ultra modern feel (like living in the not too distant future) and we see some pictures of Janelle and Jase. This also allows us to see a picture of Jase’s girlfriend and (in his words, “his future stepdaughter”). In the DR, he says that this time around, he’s not playing for himself; he’s playing for them.
Once everyone else has cleared out, Jase and Janelle discuss nominations. There’s clearly not much trust between the two and they seem quite hesitant to even suggest potential nominees. Eventually, Janelle does make a few suggestions but Jase is non-committal.
While the two HoHs may not know what they are going to do yet, Danielle has come up with a plan; she pulls George and Alison aside and discusses it with them. She suggests that they have Jase intentionally disagree with Janelle, putting them both up on the nomination block. And since everyone is worried about the BB6 people, they can use that to get rid of Janelle and weaken that alliance. For some reason, Danielle says if they are going to do this, they’ll have to tell Janelle. In the DR room Alison says she likes that idea but she doesn’t trust Danielle due to the whole “Let’s tell Janelle” thing.
Next Danielle goes into the kitchen and tells James that if Jase refused to agree then Janelle would probably get voted out. Danielle tells James that he should warn Janelle of the danger she is in.
Out in the yard, Allison lets Jase, Diane and Mike in on what Danielle discussed (being sure to assign the credit/blame to Danielle). Jase, in the DR, says he thinks he can trust Alison in getting rid of the BB6 alliance but he is worried about willingly putting himself up on the block.
Jase goes up to the HoH room with the intent of discussing the situation with Janelle only to find that James and Kaysar have beaten him to the punch. He joins the conversation and indicates that he is willing to abandon the rest of the house if they cut him in on the BB6 action (in the DR he lets us know he’s more concerned with them thinking that than his actually joining the alliance however. His main concern right now is to stay in the middle and try to be on everyone’s good side). Janelle is rather upset about Danielle going after her like this so early in the game and she now wants to go after Danielle.
At some later point, Alison once again pushes the idea of disagreeing on the nominations. She admits that she would be hesitant to do it herself for fear of something going wrong. Jase eventually tells Alison that he will disagree with Janelle.
Before the nomination ceremony we get some comments from various houseguests. Some people are worried about what happened. Will thinks that Jase and Janelle would be stupid NOT to nominate him.
Jase and Janelle come to the table, apparently ready to put two people up for nomination. The first key pulled is Marcellas’. From there the keys of Erika, Nakomis, Diane, James, George, Kaysar, Mike and Howie are pulled leaving Will, Danielle and Alison. Alison and Danielle don’t seem to be very optimistic about their chances at this point and when the last key is pulled, it goes to Will. So Danielle and Alison are on the block.
Janelle handles most of the explanations over why they chose who they did. She tells the duo that they were nominated because of how quickly and strongly they started playing the game.
We then get DR reaction comments from the two nominees. Danielle acknowledges that she messed up and got herself into this problem. Alison seems much less understanding and much more focused on her hatred of Janelle.
To close out the episode, we get a final DR comment from Will who, humorously, is insulted that he wasn’t one of the two people to be nominated. He vows to make sure that people see him as more of a threat in the future.
I would say that tonight’s episode was a pretty strong way to start off the BB7. I can see lots of interesting possibilities coming out of the dual HoHs. Though, they could end up making the game more one-sided and predictable if any one alliance gets too powerful (how much of a worry this actually is will probably depend on how far into the game they go before they revert to the single HoH format).
Of the All-Stars there were a few that didn’t really seem to be ‘All-Stars’. Most notably Marcellas (who is most known for making a really, really bad strategic move), Mike (who started out strong but had his alliance wiped out rather quickly in BB2) and Chicken George (nobody in BB1 had a chance to do much in the way of utilizing strategy given the format).
I can understand Marcellas and Mike being selected; Marcellas has lots of animosity with Danielle and Mike provides an obvious ally for Will. George, on the other hand, seems to have been selected solely for his acting like an idiot 90% of the time on BB1. I think Dana would have been a better final pick. She shook up BB4 with her betrayal of the original eight and there was tons of bad blood to be exploited between Dana and Alison.
Even though it’s the very first episode and its way too early to make an effective guess as to who will win Big Brother 7 at this point, I’m going to pick someone anyway. That someone is Diane. I don’t think she’s the best player of the 14 but I think she’s probably the best player who isn’t likely to be perceived as a major threat.
Definitely will be interesting to see how the rest of the season unfolds.
