Big Brother 8 kicked off on Thursday and I couldn’t be more excited. Why? Big Brother is my Survivor. It is my favorite reality show of all time, which you should know by now if you read most of my stuff last summer. I also think it’s the best reality show out there. It’s got wacky games. It’s got beautiful people. It’s got video cameras everywhere. It’s got twists and turns. But most importantly, it’s got mind games. What else do you need?
Danny Cox kicked off our coverage of this year’s summer reality TV event on Thursday. I have got you covered every Sunday. Before we get to tonight’s episode, though, let me give some quick thoughts on the cast and the game so far. Some people are saying that the cast is unusually young this year. That is true. When the oldest member of the cast is 44, but acts like he is 24 that’s always interesting. 11 of 14 cast members are under 30 and quite a few of them are 25 or under. This cast is also pretty attractive. But that’s not a bad thing with this show. Young and beautiful works for this show, because that’s how the game is played. We are supposed to be watching these people all the time. Who wants to watch people that are old and not so attractive?
Honestly, though, beauty doesn’t make you interesting and really these people need to be interesting for us to get behind them and watch this show the entire summer. From what I saw on Thursday they all seem to be pretty interesting for the most part. There does seem to be a few too many people who fill the same roles on the show as others and you can easily get confused on who is who, but it takes more than one day to really evaluate this cast. So lets see how things shake down tonight.
Kail is the first “Head of Household” a.k.a. HOH. There are two twists to this show. One is that there are enemies living in the same house. First, lets go to the two interesting enemies or rivals and then get to the most lame one EVER! Joe and Dustin are both gay and they are ex-lovers. Joe is totally “out there”, while Dustin seems to be more normal. Dick, a 44-year-old bar owner, is living in the house with his estranged daughter, Daniele, who is not even 21 yet. Daniele is a skinny blonde, who seems to have no personality yet. But she is definitely pissed that Dick is in the house with her. Dick seems like an interesting guy, though. Then we get to the two high school cheerleader rivals, Carol and Jessica. Their beef is pretty lame as they hated each other in high school. It’s been five years and from what we were told it’s over nothing. Hopefully, it’s more juicy that just high school b.s. Jessica definitely has the most annoying voice ever and she seems to have a total lack of personality, but we will see.
The second twist is that this year there will be someone the show called “America’s Player”. That person is Eric, who I was sure was a big nerd in high school and one of the other buffer dudes was his bully. That didn’t turn out to be, though, but I was right. He doesn’t seem to be a littler nerdy. Some girls may find him cute as he sorta reminds me of James from Big Brother 6, but I don’t know yet. Anyways everything he does on this show is voted on by America. Eric has to do what we tell him so he can win extra money along the way and hopefully win it all. This could be very interesting or pretty lame, depending on the choices and the votes. We will know soon enough.
To start this episode we recap the enemies twist. Carol and Jessica chat about their nonsense. Dick says that Daniele hasn’t talked to him in two years. Joe and Dustin said that they had feelings for each other, but now it has turned ugly. Daniele immediately goes crying. Jameka and the other girls try to console her. Daniele explains that Dick was never her father growing up. She grew up with her grandparents. Dick was more lika “mean friend” to her. Dick does come in and try to talk things out with her. She tells him that she told everyone that she is 21, when she is really 20. Dick seems to be talking about their relationship in terms of the gameplay. He says he won’t backstab or use her daughter to help him in the game, but he does hope that they last as long as possible in the game.
It also seems that Dustin, Jessica, and Dick could be easy targets soon as the other original 11 people didn’t like the “enemy twist” at all. Joe says that Dustin being her completely throws off his gameplan. He wants Dustin out of the house. Joe seems to be pretty loud and obnoxious. Carol finally admits to Jessica that their feud is stupid and nothing like the other two enemy relationships. Jessica sounds pretty dumb. Carol does think that they can patch things up in secret and use it to their advantage. Jessica is probably not smart enough to go along with that, though, since she doesn’t trust Carol.
Kail gets the key to her HOH room and everyone goes to see what her room looks like. As usual, the room is transformed into her own bedroom with pictures of her family and stuff. Then the most unusual things happens. The video board is displayed with everyone’s picture on it. That’s the one that goes dark when someone gets eliminated. Well Jen FREAKS out and cries about her picture. Apparently it’s the worst picture of her EVer! Now let me just say this. Jen is without the doubt the best looking girl on the show. There are about 5 other girls that are attractive as well, but she has everything going for her. So on a personal and selfish note, I hope she sticks around to the end. But crying over her picture is pretty retarded and I don’t like it one bit as it makes her look weak and self-centered. I was actually hoping that it was part of some kind of strategy, but it seems like she was actually serious. Oh brother, not a good way to start. Hopefully, there will be lots of shots of her in the hot tub for the next few weeks because I don’t know how she will last. It was funny to hear Jessica talk about her outburst, when Jessica seems to have the same personality.
We learn that Dick is a “name dropper”. Daniele thinks her dad says he knows all of these famous people to make other people think he has connections. It’s pretty funny to hear him say all these names and the reactions from everyone he says them to. Meanwhile, Amber starts her crying session. But this one is actually legit. Amber has a young daughter that she takes care of by herself, so she really wants to win the money for her daughter and her mother. Note to Amber, though, $25,000 is not a lot of money. Dustin seems to be on her side and maybe Carol as well.
We get our first talk of alliances this season. Mike wants to align himself with Kail. He only wants one person. But Kail wants 4 people. She thinks Zach and Nick would be good choices. It should be mentioned that Zach and Mike look too much alike. Zach is done, though, and so is Nick. So it seems like this alliance will be called “Mrs. Robinson and Her Three Sons”. HA! Um, but Kail has already lied to everyone when she didn’t tell them what she really did. I don’t think that alliance will last. It has potential, but it’s not very intersting. So I hope it doesn’t last.
Time for the first food competition! The cast gets into two teams, red and blue. The red team consists of Dick, Mike, Dustin, Kail, Carol, Amber, and Jen. The blue team consists of Nick, Zach, Joe, Eric, Jessica, Jameka, and Daniele. Jessica confirms that she is dumb by saying that they had a cheer of “Go Blue!”, because they were the blue team. Also, by stating that this was the team of “Big Hair” vs. “Big Bodies”. Good lord.
The competition goes like this. THey have to butter up their teammates and whichever teams transfer the most butter into their buckets will win food for the week. The losing team will get eat to “slop”, which made its debut last summer in Big Brother All-Stars. I bet they miss the days of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Joe says he can’t be rubbing butter off of Nick’s body, because he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Jen doesn’t want Dick to rub anything off of her. This is one nasty competition, but it’s all fun and games. OKay, funny montage of the night goes to the slow-motion Baywatch montage with everyone covered in butter. Joe says that the red team had the advantage her, because Amber has a lot of hair and she used that to transfer a lot of butter over. So Jessica was right, but she still sounded dumb about it. The final result is 37 pounds of butter for the blue team to 76 pounds for the red team! Red wins!
Joe thinks true colors will show after everyone eating slop for a week. Jameka thinks slop will taste like oatmeal. HA! Jessica says that it’s very “oatey”, but it’s no oatmeal. It’s evil they say. Joe and Dustin continue their heated arguments. Joe blames Dustin for cheating and giving him a STD. Dustin really thinks that if they continue to fight they both will be targets, because no one wants to hear them yell at each other all the time.
Daniele and Dick talk alliances now. He thinks they should work with each other in the game. Daniele tells Dick to relax more, because he is coming on too strong. Daniele actually may go along with them helping each other get far in the game. They may not have a relationship outside of the house, but for now they seem to be willing to help each other.
Kail has to nominate two people for eviction. She brings in Mike to talk about choices. It’s hard being the first one to nominate people. She suggests Joe, since is a strong competitor but we don’t know yet. We have to go to “America’s Player” and America’s first choice for Eric. Eric is not afraid to make fun of himself. He says he is using his humor to his advantage. Dustin thinks Eric is a fun guy. America has to decide “to whom should Eric pour his heart out?”. That means which person in the house should he tell a sad story to about his past. Um, yeah, this seems pretty lame. My first thought would be Kail, since she is HOH but I don’t know if she would let him into her “circle of trust”. So maybe one of the other girls like Jameka or Amber or Dustin would better. Really it probably won’t make a difference in the game, so this one is pretty pointless. But vote away America!
Time for the “nomination ceremony”! There is Jen’s crappy photo. Kail says she wants to do it the fair way, but no one seems to know what that means exactly. Jen, Dick, and Joe think they are not safe. Nick thinks he is safe. Kail says this is hard since no one has done anything wrong yet. Dustin, Dick, and Jessica are safe this week. Kail then pulls the first key and it belongs to Eric. Eric pulls Joe. Joe pulls Zach. Zach pulls Daniele. Daniele pulls Jen. Jen pulls Mike. Mike pulls Jameka. Jameka finally pulls Nick. So that means Carol and Amber are the first ones to go up!
Kail says she picked Amber and Carol, since they were the first ones out of the HOH competition. She thinks that is fair. Of course, Amber did just help her win food for the week so that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Carol is not that angry since someone has to go first. Jessica is excited that Carol could be going out before she has to kick her out or something. Dustin was disappointed that Joe wasn’t nominated. Amber can’t believe that Kail nominated her since they are both mothers. Kail says there are more reasons to why she put those two up, but she doesn’t say them. I’m not buying them as it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But maybe Kail is smarter than she appears. Tuesday we will see if Amber or Carol can save themselves from eviction with the “Power of Veto”!
