15 proper houseguests and one returning player are competing to be the first Head of Household in Big Brother 19 tonight. Here’s a Survivor fan’s recap.
Welcome, everyone, to the second episode of Big Brother 19! I am your resident Survivor fan willing to explore something new with my first-ever season of this side of the CBS reality competition coin. Today, 16 houseguests will compete in the first Head of Household competition of the season, with one player (Kevin) having to drop out in order to secure his $25,000 temptation acquired from last night.
Will romance blossom? Is Cody going to reveal his real age? Just how old is Matt, really? Will anybody understand what cosplay is, other than Ramses? Will the nerds dominate the show early while the jocks crumble early, counter to what I’ve been told every season of this show is? Who is eligible to join Wanda Shirk Cameron Heard as the earliest Big Brother 19 nominees to be evicted?
The fallout
After we got the first episode recap, we learned that all the women voted out Cameron and the men were split between the two women, solidifying just how poor these “superfans” were playing. Paul said what everyone at home was thinking; the house decided to keep a competition beast like Christmas in the game over the scrawnier Cameron. He could have been a Cochran, but Big Brother 19 is such a different type of game than that to keep a strong player in the game.
With a Day 1 vote, the paranoia kicked into high gear, with players either out for vengeance or strategizing. I thought we were in the middle of Big Brother One World, especially with how the women (and Ramses) seemed to be in one camp and the men started to bromance up in a team.
If anything, this is a big disappointment based on what I’ve heard about this show. How many times can the guys dictate the pace of play early in the game time after time again without getting predictable or stale?
And hereeeeeeee comes Nicole
Right off the heels of John Cochran coming into Survivor Game Changers to give the Exile Island player advice from an objective perspective, Big Brother 18 winner Nicole Franzel entered the Big Brother Household. Imagine if Amanda Kimmel joined the cast of Survivor Gabon, and it was Parvati, not Jeff Probst, leading the first Immunity Challenge; that’s how just surreal the handling of past Big Brother players has been so far.
Teams of four (two men, two women) set up to compete in the first Big Brother 19 Head of Household challenge. Each player must retrieve two rotten apples and hit a bell in order to advance to the next stage, with a “moat” crossing require rope passage. A golden apple secures the first player with safety that week while eliminating the team from contention.
Josh took that golden apple, taking Jillian, Kevin and Elena out of safety. Mark beasted through a dislocated finger in order to get the Blue team in, and Cody swung like a monkey to secure passage to the second stage.
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The second part of the first Big Brother 19 HoH competition saw one player from each team place apples on a rickety tree, weighing them properly in order to have all apples on them and have a balanced tree by the time the button is pressed at the far end of the stage. Cody obliterated Paul in this last stage, winning the show’s first Head of Household.
Just like Survivor, showing strength early on may not be to your benefit. Cody has established himself as a threat early on, but doesn’t quite have the social skills necessary yet to vault him beyond safety this week. Remember, HoH can’t compete in the following week, meaning the emotional vitriol coming from his decisions will need to be dealt with carefully. I’m not sure if he can handle it right now.
Garrett returns in the form of Josh
I’ve seen two episodes of this show now, and I’m convinced that I may have witnessed the worst early game that Big Brother has seen in some time. Josh felt like Megan was after him because she let him in on her wishes to get out stronger players than Josh, yet Josh seems to have some higher intuition that she’s secretly plotting against him.
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How does this player, who thinks he’s going to be on the chopping block, handle his social strategy? He calls out Megan on the side in the HoH competition, then follows it up later by calling her out like a babbling baby in public, telling Kevin afterwards he made a scene “to secure his safety” going forward.
This kind of erratic play is reminiscent of Garrett Adelstein from Survivor Cagayan, finding himself in a good position within a group only for him to make “smart decisions” while sounding like a goober. Unlike Garrett, he’s secured safety for another week beyond having a HII, meaning he can’t screw himself over too hard.
Cody the Tribe Leader
The final segment of Big Brother 19 episode 2 was about who Cody wanted to put up for conviction. Mark and Matt seem to be his biggest bros, with Mark and Cody running the show early on. It seems to be a guys trust plus the power women players, with Megan, Alex and Jillian named the first early targets for eviction consideration.
I’m not sure I can get a beat on Cody just yet. He’s quite reserved, almost to the point of anti-social with some players, and has some weirdly strong, staunch ideals. For example, when Megan gives him the “I don’t want to go home” spiel, he seems weirdly offended by the idea that a woman, one who was just called out by another for being a snake publicly, would ask the player in power not to put herself up for conviction.
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After last episode’s non-date interaction with Paul, where he seemed to give no cares for a returning player who could keep him safe, it looks like Cody wants to play a game of two or three. This early into Big Brother 19, though, you need to think about alliances. You can’t blindside backdoor a returning player like Paul off the bat, especially in a season where “Temptations” seem to throw all sorts of twists into the game.
In the end, Cody ended up nominating Jillian first, then Megan second. Cody was blunt in his decision, telling Megan he just doesn’t like her and telling Jillian she’s been set up because of her association with Megan. The way he so clearly set the target on Megan for the house to see could set the pace of game early, or could bite him in the butt as soon as he loses safety.
Final Thoughts
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So far, it looks like Matt is playing the Malcolm Freberg game; strong, sociable, funny, charming and somehow isn’t being targeted by anyone right now. Just two episodes in, I’d peg him for an opportunity to go deep in this game, especially with Cody and Josh playing the Big Brother 19 social game equivalent of J’Tia.
This episode is weird from an editing standpoint, especially considering that live votes week to week remove the possibility of an “edgic” guiding towards who wins the season (because nobody knows yet; it hasn’t happened). We got to see very little perspective from many of the women players outside Megan, Christmas, Alex and Elena, with Dominique, Jessica, Raven and Jillian staying fairly quiet.
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As soon as tonight’s episode airs on the West Coast, the live feeds will flip on and the stream monsters will crawl out to watch the action happen as it goes live. Survivor is all about seeing 72 hours condensed into 42 minutes each week, so the raw, uncensored, unedited gameplay opening up will certainly give me a better perspective of how Big Brother 19 compares to Survivor overall.