The first day of “Big Brother” is like the first day of school: So many people to meet, so many candy colored hallways to explore! And Julie Chen is there as if the teacher who has stayed too long, promising so much, delivering so little.
Her script this year was a 3×5 card that said twisted, but by that she didn’t mean people acted antisocial or kinky behind the scenes. It only meant that there would be twists in the game. There always are certain twists every season to keep the houseguests on their toes but these twists are more along the line of unraveling the game they have created over 15 seasons.
In a one hour season start Wednesday — the first of a “two night premiere event,” we are told — we don’t get to hear all the twists or even get to meet all the houseguests. But the part we do know after Wednesday’s show is that there will be two Heads of Household, at least this week, and one of them will be gone after a week (we didn’t learn how). And no HoH is safe from eviction.
There’s a fan voting component too — three houseguests will be selected online to do viewer bidding. One has already been chosen before the first show was even on (we didn’t learn who). Two others will be voted on soon.
So much of the premiere had to do with getting to know the first eight people let into the house (who presumably have an unfair advantage with viewer voting). Already the first eight decided to form their own early arrival alliance, which, as soon as they dimly call it Crazy 8s, there’s a hashtag for it printed on the screen.
Within the eight, a fiery DJ from New York (by way of Connecticut), Paola Shea, introduces the idea of an all-woman alliance. Two of the other three women — a blue haired makeup artist from Seattle named Joey Van Pelt and Amber, a model from Knoxville identified as an esthetician — are enthusiastic about it. But the fourth, a funny, bespectacled nursing grad named Nicole Franzel from rural Michigan, wasn’t so sure (but kept her doubts to herself).
The odd man out would seem to be Donny Thompson, the long-bearded, 42-year-old school groundskeeper who “doesn’t have fancy britches.” but both Nicole and the athletic single dad Devin Shepherd want to have an alliance with him, and the latter gets there first. The two men shake.
Of the others, girls are drooling over Cody Calafiore, a 23-year-old soccer player from New Jersey with an awfully kissy dad; also drooling over him is the pink haired Frankie Grande, a Broadway dancer turned instructor whose main claim to fame is being pop star Adriana Grande’s brother. Because he incessantly films himself flitting about, he’s also identified as a YouTube Personality.
Skinny gay guys are a threat out of the box, following Andy Herren’s win last summer, and already Frankie is ahead, winning the season’s first Head of Household challenge — another overwrought, under-considered task with all manner of unnecessary staging. Mostly they had to stay on a revolving platform and while it looked as if Amber might have won it, she jumped at the last minute rightfully wary of what being HoH might entail with all this uncertainty.
We only got a glimpse of the final eight, who will be unveiled Thursday at the end of the episode: another couple country dudes, one ex-military, a cop who passes for a college student, a mom, an orthodox woman in a bikini, a surfer dude with a degree, a guy who professes to lie, and one who loves nudity.
“Big Brother: After Dark” and the live feed all get rolling after Thursday’s episode ends. The first eviction won’t be until July 3. Then this will go on three nights a week for three months.