TV Recap: Big Brother 10 - Season Premiere

A new season of Big Brother has begun! For BB10 we have 13 new houseguests, none of which know each other. Since tonight’s episode was all about first impressions, that’s probably what I’ll be focusing on for the most part but the episode was not entirely without it’s drama even though the houseguests hadn’t been living together for a full day when things started to get tense. We’ll get to that in a minute though.

First let’s talk about the stand-out players from the season premiere:

Jerry: Jerry’s the resident old guy. He comes off as a sweet old man (proud to have served in the armed forces, loving father, grandfather and great-grandfather) but after winning HoH, he proves to have a few strategic ideas up his sleeve when he uses his position to set up an alliance with Brian. He thinks he can trust Brian because they’re both military men but I’m not so sure Brian will be all that loyal to Jerry if push comes to shove.

Brian: Brian’s a sneaky one. Not only has he agreed to ally with Jerry (although he admitted in the diary room that he’ll be jumping that ship the minute it starts to sink), but he also firmed up an alliance with Dan and Ollie.

Dan: Dan’s a catholic school teacher who seems to have already booked an appointment with his parish priest to confess whatever sins he commits in the house. He seems like a bit of a schemer but that’s not such a bad thing in this game.

Memphis: A self-proclaimed “mixologist” or chef for alcoholics, Memphis won the car in tonight’s food challenge. It’s entirely likely that this will come back to bite him in the ass when he inevitably ends up on the block. Houseguests rarely forget the person who won a big prize.

Renny: Renny’s loud and opinionated. Normally I don’t think less of a person for being this way but she just comes off as annoying and this doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the house. Renny stirred up trouble when she freaked out over the door to the bedroom being locked. After making a huge commotion she then started laughing and for a second, I thought someone set bats loose in the BB house. That’s what the horrible shrieking noise that escaped Renny’s mouth when she laughed sounded like. Bats. She ended up waking Jessie up with her loudness and the two had a mild argument over it.

Jessie: Jessie’s this season’s beefcake. He’s all muscles and this is something that he realizes could pose a threat to the other houseguests. So when it came time for one houseguest to bow out of the food/luxury competition, Jessie volunteered, hoping he could duck his muscular physique under the radar by not competing. Boy was he disappointed when he found out he wouldn’t be eligible to win a mint-condition vintage Camaro or Mustang.

Most of the woman and a couple of the guys sort of faded into the background tonight, which was probably a good thing as it kept them all of the block. Here are the rest of the first impressions:

April: – Her boobs are real. Jerry confirmed this when he accepted her offer to squeeze them over champagne in the first official gathering in the living room.

Libra: Libra has a cool name and three kids. Off the bat she seems likable enough and I’d like to see how she does in the game.

Steven: Steven’s a gay rodeo cowboy. He didn’t tell the houseguests that he’s gay yet. I can’t say that I disagree with this decision as not everyone is open-minded about that sort of thing and he might do better to hold back that information until people have a chance to get to know him better. Then hopefully they won’t hold it against him when it comes to nomination time.

Ollie: Ollie’s the son of a preacher-man. I can’t say for sure if he’s all that religious though and other than agreeing to join an alliance with Brian and Dan, I didn’t really get much of a read on him in this first episode.

Angie: – Angie’s a recently single “Asian-Sensation.”

Keesha: – I have no real opinion of Keesha because we didn’t see much of her tonight. She’s blonde and works at Hooters. I refuse to hold either of those things against her until we get to see more of her in the game.

Michelle: – Michelle comes from a loud, Portuguese family. That’s about all we got from her tonight.

For the food/luxury competition, the houseguests (minus Jessie, who volunteered not to compete) had to pile into two VW beetles suspended upside down from a track. They then had to pull their car along the track and retrieve gas cans. Each time they made it back, someone had to jump out of the car. The first team to get all the gas cans won and whoever was left in the car at the end won their pick of one of two vintage cars. The losing team was put on slop. Renny got stepped on a bit and naturally there were a few disagreements over who should get the car but in the end, Memphis got it and his team gets food for the week. Jerry was on the losing team, which concerned some of the houseguests since he’s 75 years old and might not do well on a diet of BB slop but as it turned out, he ended up winning Head of Household.

This year for the first HoH, the houseguests were asked to vote for who they wanted to be HoH before they even got into the house. They weren’t allowed to vote for themselves. All they had to go on was each others' appearances. Apparently, Jerry being so old worked to his advantage as four people determined that he was less of a threat to them and he won.

In the HoH room, Jerry struck up a deal with Brian and the two decided on who to nominate. Brian wanted to keep his alliance safe but had no problem with Jessie going up. And since Renny’s overly loud nature had already caused some problems in the house, Jerry decided to put her up against Jessie and let the two of them sort out their differences on the block. I have to say, this was a nice change from the usual “Well, I didn’t know who to pick because you’re all so awesome and it’s the first week blah, blah, blah” speech we usually get during the first nomination ceremony of each season. I doubt I’m alone in wanting Renny gone. Sure, she could just be one of those people who gets overly excited when they’re around new people and trying to make friends and it’s clear that the BB producers are having fun by giving her a less than flattering edit but it also seems clear that she rubbed more than a few people the wrong way off the bat.

Can’t wait to see how things turn out this Tuesday night! What did you think of the season premiere of Big Brother? Think it’ll be a good season? Have you picked your favorites yet?

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.