The Inflection Point

Big Brother’s 26th season was more promising than most renditions throughout the first few weeks of the CBS staple show. The show, having become strenuously boring and predictable for a good stretch of years, most notably falling in line with the “Me-Too” and cancel culture phase of 2016-2020, plus the struggles of pulling off a season within the COVID-19 pandemic, had brought the once beloved strategic game to a slow churn. The last few seasons have been a refreshing change of pace, with the current 26th season providing similarly incredible drama, intrigue, and hope in just a few days after all 17 houseguests entered the LA house earlier this summer.

Unfortunately, it really wasn’t so. Perhaps of their own doing as well. You see, the game has changed, and similarly to the remarks that the advanced analytics have ruined basketball, making it a three point shooting competition, or similarly ruining baseball making it a game of walks, strikeouts, and homeruns, the old game of Big Brother is truly dead. Better to watch highlights of Michael Jordan if you want to reminiscence.

See I, and others, believed that this season had more to offer than even the past few good seasons, when on just day three we had house flipping, betrayals, all-out yelling, and house meetings within a few days of meeting one another. This was the Big Brother of old, an unabashing take on living in the same house with people for 90 days, unafraid to take and give mental warfare if need be to get through it. The “Me-Too” movement, for the tremendous good it has done outside the House, had completely dociled the game where anything you said or did could be held against you in the theoretical “Big Brother Court”, making it more a game of being nice to everyone, not hurting feelings or stepping on toes, than the original game intended. It’s a cut-throat GAME of lying and deception to win $750,000. While that type of behavior is admirable outside those walls, it was clear that houseguests had blurred the lines between what was game and what was reality. Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.

And while hopes were high for the 26th edition of the show, all those dreams of an entertaining season went out the wayside with the latest eviction of Tucker, perhaps the most entertaining and bombastic player in the last decade of the game.

Not to completely fan-boy out over this guy, in truth he only made it week 6, not even making it to the jury that will start after next week’s eviction. I can’t help but think he could have done that, but instead he chose to play a game way more enjoyable. In a large part, I can’t fully blame Big Brother themselves (although we will get to that). They’ve simply invented the game, laid out the rules, and albeit with a few unique and hit-or-miss twists and new formats throughout the years, it has largely remained the same game. And I get that. Americans like nothing more than a routine, conservative approach. You can’t take out the meat of the meal. Too much change is never good (Have I now blurred the lines between game and reality?)

Really it was the players before Tucker that created the meta of the game. What used to be a game based on number of competitions you could win to stay safe, Dr. Will quickly proved that instead of having to fight every week in competitions, you could rely solely on your social game to take you through. Thus, being aligned with virtually the whole house, it didn’t matter who won or lost each week, because you had your hands in every jar of honey in the house. That strategy was tweaked and improved upon by future players, specifically Dan Gheesling of S10 and S14 (Should have been the first 2 time winner and was almost the reason why I quit the show entirely when he was robbed by a bitter jury, having been played by Gheesling for the entire summer.) Derrick (S16), Tyler (S20, 22) and Taylor (S24) all continued this theory – why prove you can win competitions and make enemies when you can be beloved by all, thus never making yourself a target?

That’s the meta – and I can’t blame houseguests each year for taking this strategy to try and win the $750k. I probably would too if I were to enter tomorrow. But in a house where nobody wants to win, and nobody wants to get blood on their hands, well that’s just a horrible television product.

And that is exactly what Big Brother had become. Until you enter this psycho above. No this man truly played his own game and so much so, in my eyes, he’s the winner of S26. In just six short weeks he won 8 competitions, held 3 live veto meetings calling houseguests out, created and destroyed alliances on a whim, shit-talked and alpha’d two other dudes who thought they could compete on his level, and let’s not forget WON A VETO AND USED IT ON ANOTHER HOUSEGUEST SO HE COULD THEN BEAT HIS ENEMY IN THE FINAL COMPETITION. Completely insane move that had it not worked, would have called for Tucker to be the dumbest HG in the history of BB. Yet it did, and it was fucking excellent TV. Are you learning something Big Brother?

No with Tucker’s gameplay, he was able to deliver us six entertaining as hell weeks. It was never meant to be much more than that, in fact, he probably had already outlived his half-life in the house weeks before. So much of a masterclass, he made the cast around him look fun in relation to his orbit. But alas, with his leave this week, we’ll go back to the weak slog Big Brother has become.

So this is not necessarily to praise Tucker’s gameplay. While certainly the most entertaining (even getting a rare shoutout from the aforementioned Dr. Will) houseguest of the last ten years, it was a fun, bold, yet reckless strategy that would never win him the game in the long run. And that’s where I turn the scope on you Big Brother production. Why is it that the game rewards players who win nothing, do nothing, say nothing, and give zero entertainment value? How can a game format like this incentivize viewers at home to watch? Or people to truly compete, lie, steal, and play the game as it was created? While it is a game, it is also, at the end of the day, entertainment. And with Tucker gone, I find no entertaining value left for the rest of my summer. Maybe it’s time to “Expect the Unexpected” and actually make a real change to the game after all.