Ah, summertime. That time of year when it’s way too hot to go outside, so what better diversion than CBS’ perennial “social experiment” Big Brother to while away the hours? This year’s sixteenth edition brought some new changes to the game, and one big change for the viewers at home — this is the first season the show is being broadcast in high def! Reportedly three years in the making, the house is full of more cameras than ever, giving us some new things to see. I have to say, the house looks fantastic in HD.

After last year’s extremely controversial cast, the producers seem to have picked a group this year that’s a bit more fun … although some racist, homophobic tweets discovered from House Guest Caleb prior to the show’s premiere have thrown a little bit of a dark cloud over him, making viewers wonder when and if that side of him will come out on the live feeds. The rest of the House Guests seem to be quirky and almost lovable (for now) with outspoken, blue-haired feminist Joey, mom of three Brittany, nerdy super fan Christine, dopey underwear model Cody, faux surfer dude Hayden, bow tie-wearing minister Jocasta, Gomer Pyle’s long-lost cousin Donny, and pink-haired Frankie, who wastes no time in reminding us (but not his fellow House Guests) that he’s Ariana Grande’s brother, in the mix.

The game has also been shaken up a bit this season. The premiere took place in two parts with eight House Guests being introduced on night one, and a second group of eight joining them on night two (although we’re not sure how much time had passed in real time before the second group joined but the house already looked “lived in” by the time they arrived). The big bombshell dropped on the second group was that there was already an HoH in charge … and there would also be a second one from the new group. And each H0H would nominate two House Guests! This “twist” will probably go away in a few weeks as most twists do.

A new competition has also been added called Battle of the Block, in which the four nominees fight to get themselves off the block. Whichever pair of nominees wins is safe and the HoH who nominated them is de-throned. The first Battle of the Block featured Paola (aka Pao Pao) & Donny (nominated by Caleb, the second HoH) and Brittany and Victoria (nominated by first HoH Frankie, Ariana Grande’s brother). It seemed to be a simple task: each nominee sat on a swing (the amazing set looked like something out of The Great Gatsby with everyone in 1920s gowns and tuxes) and had to swing towards each other transferring water from a fountain to a large martini glass, passing the liquid to the other nominee’s glass, and that nominee had to dump the liquid into a large vase filled with plastic balls. The first team to get enough liquid into the vase and have one ball fall out won. Sounds simple enough, especially if you’ve ever been a child and played on swings. Pao Pao obviously has not had that life experience (see picture above).

Her miserable performance secured her and Donny’s place on the block and de-throned Frankie in the process, making him eligible for eviction as well should one of the nominees win PoV and save themselves. Frankie made sure to form a tight alliance with Caleb, and then found himself as part of an all-guy alliance with Devin, Caleb, Cody, Derrick and Zach, The Bomb Squad. Devin had already formed an alliance with Donny, The Double D’s, but he’s already trashed that … unbeknownst to Donny.

But a week in the house has already driven some of the House Guests insane. According to Wednesday’s show (July 2) it was Day 6 in the house. Nicole, who looked like this year’s Aaryn but thankfully has a personality 180 degrees away from her, is convinced there is someone else in the house with them. Specifically … a ghost. In one of the funniest moments ever on Big Brother, Nicole was convinced something was touching her and was freaking out her bestie Christine, leading them to both come shrieking out of their dark bedroom, startling their bewildered House Guests in the kitchen. Christine is rethinking her alliance.

The craziest of the crazies is Devin, the devoted dad who said in his intro piece that he’s hoping to hook up with some of the ladies in the house. Nice message for your daughter, dude! Anyway, Devin seems like a nice guy even if he is a little full of himself. He looks good and he knows it. But he’s turning into someone who makes the House Guests want to sleep with one eye open. A minute after forming The Bomb Squad, Devin practically ran to Amber and Christine to tell them about the guy alliance and make them honorary members! Without telling the rest of his alliance! And he’s convinced his former alliance member Donny is a deep cover military expert putting on a good old boy act (he’s not). Even in a moment of real sincerity from Donny, Devin thought he was giving an Oscar-worthy performance … until he changed his mind and felt the sincerity was real leading to some emotional turmoil for Devin. The only thing that’s certain now is that Devin’s wild theories and mood swings have put a giant target on his back. But there is a bigger target in the house right now.

And that would be Joey. Joey (rightly) assumed there was an all-guy alliance in the house (minus Donny and Hayden, for some reason) and tried to rally the girls to form an alliance. Of course, two of the girls she approached are honorary Bomb Squad members and they refused to commit to any alliance. Which I found strange. None of the girls in the house wanted to form an alliance with Joey. I’m usually against anyone forming an alliance week one because those often turn out to be misguided (Devin and Donny) or just fall apart quickly (the first eight in the house formed The Crazy Eights and the four girls made a side alliance, El Cuatro — neither of those seem to have stuck), but it had to be obvious that there was a guy alliance that the girls would want to combat — even if two of them were with the guys. Everyone has side alliances!

It’s a bit maddening that the girls don’t seem to be interested in protecting their best interests, and Joey was ratted out for her efforts, confronted by Caleb Godfather style, and promptly made the replacement nominee when “super soldier” Donny won PoV and removed himself from the block. Tonight is the first live eviction and it seems pretty clear Joey is the first out … despite the fact that she was the first House Guest chosen by viewers to be part of the top secret three-person Team America (Fuck YEAH!), another BB twist that has imploded before it ever began. Hopefully the first week was just a sample of the crazy entertainment to come over the next three months and the house won’t descend into the awfulness that marred BB 15.

Big Brother started two weeks early this year as the fifteenth season premiered on CBS on June 26. The show normally debuts the week after July 4th, so the fans are getting some extra time to spend with their favorite hamsters this summer … but will this cast of characters even be worth the three days a week in primetime, 7 nights a week on Big Brother After Dark (now on TVGN, which unlike Showtime Too, has to mercilessly edit the audio feeds making entire conversations sometimes unintelligible), and 24/7 on the live feeds?

I would have said yes, probably, after watching the first episode but by the fourth episode of the season, the first live eviction, my feelings on the show and this cast in particular have changed drastically. Perhaps it’s a sign of an aging show (similar to what Survivor has gone through), but it seems the casting process now is to find beautiful, vapid people who are less interested in the game than they are in being on TV and having a “showmance.” Yeah, it’s now become a hookup show. I started watching Big Brother with the third season, and they had some terrific people with a wide range of personalities and life experience: Marcellas Reynolds, Amy Crews, Chiara Jude, Danielle Reyes, Eric Ouellette, Jason Guy and Gerry Lancaster immediately come to mind as the standouts of that season, with age ranges from 23 to 51! This season’s cast members range in age from 22 to 37.

And now, some of the younger ones are showing their maturity level … at least to the people watching the live feeds. CBS and producer Allison Grodner go to great lengths to make sure what we see in primetime is a carefully crafted, non-offensive game show featuring the “real” personalities of the House Guests. But anyone watching the live feeds knows that what CBS creates for network viewing is more fantasy than reality. It was tough to stomach Thursday’s episode in which Aaryn was portrayed as the innocent, angelic blonde with a cute crush on surfer dude David after hearing the horrible things she’s been saying. In fact, at this point Aaryn, David, Kaitlin, GinaMarie, Jeremy, Amanda and Spencer have all shocked viewers with their racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments.

Aaryn’s been the worst of the bunch so far with such gems as “be careful what you say in the dark; you might not be able to see that bitch,” (about Candice, the single black female in the house), “No one’s gonna vote for whoever that queer puts up,” about gay HG Andy, and “Shut up. Go make some fucking rice,” to Asian HG Helen. Nice. But it doesn’t stop there. GinaMarie has chimed in that Helen “should be kissing our ass and serving us some fucking rice,” and “you know two blacks stick together. They’re like tokens” (referring to Candice and Howard, the one black male in the house). David, who was thankfully the first one evicted, said that the sheets smelled bad because of “black Candice.” Amanda called Andy “Faggoty Ann” and Spencer called him “Kermit the fag.” Spencer also praised Hitler’s speaking abilities and said the medical torture by the Nazi doctors was beneficial. Jeremy simply thinks of women as nothing but sex objects and has called some of them in the house “c–ts.”

As the fans, and now the media, have caught on to what’s being said by the House Guests, CBS’ response has been the same as it was in the past when other House Guests behaved badly, like “America’s Sweetheart” Jeff Schroeder, who went on an anti-gay rant during his season. CBS’ reaction to that was to cast him on Big Brother a second time, as well as The Amazing Race, and gave him a show online in which he interviewed the evicted House Guests. This season he was given the job of interviewing the HGs before they went into the house. I suppose by that measure Aaryn will be the head of programming at CBS by the time this season is over. She’s going to need the job, however, because karma has already bitten her in the ass, and she doesn’t even know it! Her employer Zephyr Talent, a modeling agency in Texas, has dropped her from their roster after her comments. GinaMarie is also oblivious to the fact that her employer, East Coast USA Pageants, Inc., has also fired her because in her position of being a role model to young girls, they actually found her comments to be not something they want her protegés to look up to.

Knowing how these people talk amongst themselves really kills the fun of watching Big Brother. The producers have allegedly made an announcement to the House Guests to stop using racist language in the house, but will a verbal admonishment with no threat of consequences within the game really change the behavior of these people? Does CBS think that this unusual amount of publicity the show is now receiving will actually help the show, which has seen some of its lowest-ever ratings? There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? I have a feeling that if the offensive comments continue — and things could get even worse after this week’s eviction and HoH competition, and the apparent cheating perpetrated by the winner — CBS is going to find itself in more of a publicity nightmare with viewers fleeing the show in droves. I don’t know that I want to spend three more months with these people, and I’m betting negativity surrounding this cast will take its toll on the show. The best suggestion I’ve seen so far: evict the entire cast and start over.

UPDATE: Spencer’s employer is also looking into taking action against him as well. Being a union worker, they may have less options than Aaryn’s or GinaMarie’s but the repercussions of racist rants continue to cause ripples.

UPDATE: In a surprise move, CBS did broadcast a collection of Aaryn’s comments accompanied by reactions from some of her housemates on the July 7th episode.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the final two players of the fourteenth season of Big Brother are undoubtedly two of the best players to play the game. And that was in a season that included four former House Guests, two of whom were previous winners, and some strong physical players as well. Of course, the season had its share of floaters, but overall I would have to say this has been one of the best seasons in years. Why? Let’s start with the twist — four former players enter the house to coach the House Guests of their choosing. With Janelle, Mike “Boogie,” Dan, and Britney in the house, everyone else thought they had a great shot at winning … especially because the coaches were not playing the game. But anyone with a simple grasp of mathematics had to know something was up, because by week three there weren’t going to be enough people left in the house to get the show to September. That’s when the producers pulled the rug out from under the House Guests and the viewers!

Britney called it early on when she assumed that since the coaches all had keyholes next to their pictures on the Memory Wall, that they would be entering the game as players. Turned out she was right, but the coaches had the choice to remain as coaches (with one of them winning $50,000 if they had the winning player on their team) and have already evicted House Guests return. Either way, the game would be re-set and we’d basically be starting all over again. It was a twist that was shocking and maddening, mostly because four players were entering the game that had basically been immune from eviction for several weeks. The other thing I found strange was that most of the House Guests remained loyal to their former coaches, some to their benefit (ahem, Danielle). Only everyone’s favorite nerd had the balls to flip on his coach, and when Ian helped orchestrate the eviction of Boogie, he proved that he truly was a master of the game. Dan may want to take credit for the Quack Pack alliance, but Ian was pulling all of their strings without them knowing it. Which, I think, helped him win $500,000 (and it was a pretty risky move taking Dan to the finale).

Dan, on the other hand, manipulated everyone … and they all knew it. There really was nothing subtle about Dan’s game, brilliant as it was, but when you look someone in the eye, tell them they’re safe, and seal the deal by swearing on your wife/wedding ring/family/Bible only to stab them in the back by gathering the votes to evict them, it’s going to cause some major hard feelings when it comes time to beg for votes at the end. Yes, Dan played everyone to perfection, but he left such animosity in his wake that it would have been a complete shock had he won the grand prize. And he hurt everyone on the jury so badly, that he lost 6 – 1 … and he only got Danielle’s vote because she felt she had to honor her word! I almost feel sorry for her knowing what she’s going to see when she gets home, to see how Dan really manipulated everyone, how he had made final two deals with everyone … and seeing her face when Ian revealed his final two deal with Dan, including holding Dan’s grandfather’s gold crucifix necklace as collateral, had to be one of the greatest moments of clarity for her of the season. The poor girl is going to have some serious trust issues for a while.

But even to the end, Dan was trying to make sure he had the upper hand. He managed to get Ian and Danielle to throw the first part of the HOH competition, and he even thought he could convince Ian to throw the third part. But not even one of the worst performances of “anger” from Danielle — and I really thought Ian had caught on to their game at that point — couldn’t sway Ian. Dan still managed to get to the final two because Ian wanted to honor their deal, but I’m dying to know why Ian felt he couldn’t win against Danielle. I never thought for a minute anyone on the jury felt she really deserved the big prize, and I was right. They felt she played a $50,000 game, but she never would have won against either of the guys. I’m sure Dan must have drilled into his head that Danielle would win over them both, and Dan had to be counting on the jury forgiving and forgetting their hard feelings and admire his game play instead. Ian’s brilliant speech before the vote which revealed just how dirty of a game Dan played, I think, changed a few minds at the last minute and gave him the win. The fact that he still managed to play a good social game with everyone didn’t hurt either.

And speaking of social games, Frank also won the $25,000 fan favorite prize (I thought Ian might have pulled that one off as well since everyone assumed Dan was going to win), and I think it was well deserved. The poor guy tried to play a clean game, he was well-liked by viewers and House Guests alike, and I think his betrayal garnered him a lot of sympathy with the folks at home.

And that’s it for season 14 of Big Brother. I think either Ian or Dan was deserving of the prize, but in the end I think the better man did win.