I just finished my first ever season of Big Brother, and for the most part, I loved it. I jumped into the pool to watch Dee and Devens, but I’m going to stick with the show whether there are former Survivor players on or not. I love the strategy. I love how quickly the house can flip. I even learned to love all the stupid competitions. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to spend the summer.
That being said, that doesn’t mean the game is perfect. I talked to a bunch of Big Brother fans throughout the season about a few of my frustrations, and to my surprise, I discovered many of them agreed with me. They just said they’re used to some of the issues and have accepted that’s just the way it is. Well, as a new fan, I’m not ready to accept those issues. So, let’s talk about a few of the obvious suggestions I have that many other fans have apparently been making for years.
Fix The Timeline During The Endgame
I love how Big Brother is a slow burn. Giving the players multiple days to stew and scheme is what makes the game unique and the live feeds compelling. I’m definitely not advocating for the show to speed things up, but the timeline at the end of the game, at least how it was handled on BB 28, didn’t make any logical sense. It wasn’t a good viewing experience either.
Barrett, Yash, Melody and Dee were all eliminated between Day 73 and Day 80, which brought us from 7 players to 3 players. Then the final three sat in the house without a single elimination until the live finale on Day 87. Why? What’s the point of eliminating four players in such a short amount of time with the Pharaoh's Curse Twist if you have another week to play with?
Most reality shows want the excitement to build throughout the season. For the most part, that happened with Big Brother 28, but unfortunately, the excitement peaked and then steadily dropped off after that wild week with four eliminations. Upcoming seasons should consider spacing those out or simply moving up the finale so the reality competition feels like a slow burn for most of the summer until it concludes with a chaotic and fast-paced final week.
Fix The Confessional Situation
The confessionals on Big Brother are, by a pretty large margin, the worst in the entire reality television space. It’s pretty obvious that producers are coaching the houseguests on exactly what they want them to say, and because of that, so many come off sounding awkward and uncomfortable. Many of them also talk down to the audience in a way that feels almost condescending and offensive, especially during the competitions where we often hear multiple houseguests explain the rules or really obvious basic strategy multiple times.
It’s really frustrating because there are plenty of Big Brother confessionals that are compelling. When the DR just let Mallory, Melody and Yash especially vent out their feelings, we were treated to absolute gold and got a real sense of their personalities. Dee, Devens, Drew and Taylor especially were also very good at talking us through their feelings and dropping in amusing comments throughout the season. Clearly these players had the capacity to deliver good confessionals, which is why it’s so frustrating as a viewer to see those bangers intermixed with ones that felt like bad audition tapes. I don’t know why producers think that’s what viewers are looking for, but every Big Brother fan I’ve spoken to has told me they hate it.
To Sum Up
There are plenty of other suggestions I have or I’ve heard other people share about improving the game. Many fans want to stop sharing the actual vote totals. Many want to get rid of Blockbuster once jury starts or a few episodes earlier than we saw it go this season. (Almost) everyone wants to clean up the atrocious fan behavior on social media. There’s certainly a conversation to be had around advantages and mixed returning player seasons.
I think fans should advocate for the things they want to change and be loud about it. The confessional situation and the endgame timeline, however, are things I think every single fan agrees with, whether they’ve watched one season like me or they’ve been around since the beginning. Let’s clean those obvious changes up, and then we can argue about some of the others.
