Big Brother 20 – Expect The Unexpected

By starrymag | June 28, 2018

By: Ashlee Dell

 

 

Summer is just around the corner, which means that so is CBS’s “Big Brother.” The 20th season of the best thing in television during the summer premieres with a special 2-night season premiere starting Wednesday, June 27 at 8/7c, hosted by Julie Chen as always. What is there to look forward to this season and why should you watch? Take a look!

 

If you are new to the show, the basic premise is that a group of around sixteen or so people move into a house and must compete in several challenges where the eventual winner in the end goes home with $500,000. Upon moving into the house, houseguests quickly form alliances with other players and they even become pretty strong with a cool name in tow like “The Brigade.” Each week there is a Head of Household (“HOH”) competition where the winner becomes and must nominate two of their houseguests for eviction. That is followed by a Veto competition with the two nominees, the Head of Household and usually four additional randomly-drawn houseguests. The Veto winner has the power to either remove someone from the eviction block or keep nominations the same or can remove themselves if they are one of the people on the block.

 

But that’s not all: The houseguests must all also live together in a house filled with cameras everywhere and you can watch them 24/7 if you subscribe to the Big Brother Live Feeds! In prior seasons the feeds were a separate charge, but it is now included as part of CBS All Access for $5.99/month for the limited commercials plan and $9.99/month for the commercial free plan. There is also a chat in the live feeds where you can talk to other “Big Brother” fans if you so choose. If you cannot afford the Big Brother Live Feeds, this season expects to also continue like previous season of airing Big Brother: After Dark on Pop. “Big Brother” is modeled after the original Netherlands broadcast with the same name and is now a huge hit in the United States as well as in Canada, Australia (although it recently ended) and the UK.

 

Twenty seasons later, Big Brother has become some sort of guilty pleasure every summer for fans everywhere. It even brings people together, with several houseguests dating like Jessica and Cody who are now engaged and even some married like Jeff and Jordan, Brendon and Rachel and Danielle and Dominic. Fun fact, Danielle from Season 8 (with her infamous father “Evel Dick”) met Dominic in Season 13, when they both came back, have recently announced they were expecting! If you’ve been watching the show for many seasons now, or even all twenty, you may have expected there to be an All-Stars theme for Season 20 since there has not been one since Season 7. Sadly, once again, there will be no All-Stars or even any returning players like the last few years, according to Executive Producer Allison Grodner.

 

The 20th season of the crazy CBS reality series still promises an exciting summer. Grodner even promises that Season 20 will go back to the basic format of the show that many fans were looking for after the criticism received for bringing back old players (cough, Paul, cough). Many fans of the show criticized the casting last season because it brought Paul Abrahamian back for a second time and since he was a veteran of the show almost everyone was afraid to ever vote him out. Paul made it to the final two as it came down to being between him and Josh Martinez

 

If there couldn’t be an All Star’s season, we were at least hoping for something similar to the Coaches season of Big Brother 14. That season actually had four successful players that came back not only to compete but to be coaches, including arguably one of the best people to play Big Brother, Dan Gheesling, and was one of the most memorable seasons in recent years.

 

The houseguests competing on BB20 ere recently announced and they are all, in fact, new players. However, that doesn’t mean that other “Big Brother” alumni will occasionally pop in to surprise houseguests, according to Grodner. So, what about this year’s cast? Big Brother 20 includes an entirely new group of 16 people whose ages range from twenty-one to forty. This season includes a flight attendant, a cybersecurity engineer, a stay-at-home mom and more!

 

Let’s see some of the standout houseguests of the season. There’s 30-year-old Kaycee Clark, who is a female pro football player so we’re rooting for her already. There’s Chris “Swaggy” C who is a Day Trader that hates the beach, so he must be from New York. There’s a Vegas entertainer, Rachel Swindler. Meanwhile, there’s Scottie Salton, a 26-year-old who has never been kissed so we’re sure the houseguests are definitely going to try to change that. This season even has a former undercover cop, Steve Arienta, which sounds oddly familiar. He was a lead in the NYPD’s Organized Crime Investigation Division. He could be the next Derrick Levasseur, who somehow found a way to be a smart player despite fifteen prior seasons of people. Although, when Steve was asked about his favorite player he said Mike “Boogie” so maybe not. If this year’s cast remains entirely new, it will be the first season to have a purely new cast since Big Brother 14.

 

The new design of the house every season is always something to look forward to as well. In Julie Chen’s house tour, it looks like this season is all about innovation or in her words, the house is “inspired by the fun, colorful and creative interactive spaces on tech campuses around the globe, with a dynamic touch of innovation in every room.” The living room couch is on a giant platform that rotates and there’s a huge rock climbing wall in it, although we’re not sure what the safety mechanisms in it are or if they can use it unsupervised.

 

In the bedrooms, there’s a wall completely covered in various fidget spinners, like at least a hundred of them. The smart players will be the ones who actually count the number of them since it will probably end up on a question during a competition later on in the season. The kitchen has a four-foot tall gummy bear and it’s not there for the purposes of eating, so it must be for part of a competition later on. The upstairs area that usually has a chess table now has a gaming lounge with foosball to keep the houseguests busy. In the HOH room, the Head of Household can now not just spy on houseguests via video, but now even talk back to them through the intercom system. That’s one good way to scare your fellow houseguests!

 

What’s in store for the actual gameplay? CBS released a preview of what’s to come on the new season. CBS revealed that there would be twists right from the start of the premiere, including a tech-themed twist that would be revealed next week. It looks like the “Big Brother” house is adapting into the tech world today and getting closer and closer to that Disney movie Smart House. There will even be a new tech twist revealed on the third episode on Sunday, July 1 called the “BB App Store.” CBS revealed that America will get a chance to get the Houseguests trending, resulting in power apps or punishments that could crash their game.

 

This year’s cast reminds us a lot of earlier seasons combined into one like a perfect creation by Zingbot. This year’s houseguests are very unique with distinct personalities and several of them seem like they have watched more than one past season, which is more than we can say for some from the most recent seasons. We’re excited to see what’s in store for the houseguests this season. Will we have another Dan, Boogie, Dr. Will, or Derrick in the mix? It’s going to be one long summer to find out.

 

Executive Producer Allison Grodner shared some insight into the new season with another outlet. She confirmed that there would in fact be no returning players this season to keep it a completely new season. What she did say; however, is that this doesn’t mean that former players won’t be making surprise appearances. Grodner also shared that the house has already seen its first kiss. Whether or not that was Scottie, we guess we’ll have to find out together everybody.

 

Don’t miss the two-night Season 20 “Big Brother” on June 27 and June 28 on CBS and you can start being a Big Brother Live Feeder at the end of the West Coast airing of the Thursday, June 28 episode at 1AM EST/10PM PT.