Big Brother 20 episode 2: Survivor fan recap – Good auras
The first Head of Household competition and their nominations highlighted Big Brother 20’s second half of the two-night premiere.
Earlier this week, Big Brother 20 debuted to a slow crawl, letting us get to know all of the houseguests in a drawn-out immunity competition. The second episode capped off the premiere event, giving viewers three total hours before we got to see the new Head of Household and who they nominated. It’s a far cry from Survivor, especially with their one-hour premieres.
As we started out the episode, we saw the fallout of Swaggy C’s decisions to keep eight of the 16 houseguests immune for the first week in the house. This means that Scottie, Rockstar, Kaycee, Rachel, Haleigh, Faysal, Brett and Swaggy C could not compete in the first Head of Household, leaving Steve, Sam, Bayleigh, Angela, JC, Winston, Tyler and Kaitlyn as the only competitors.
Before the competition even started, we saw Kaitlyn get frustrated with Swaggy over his selections, but seemed to get over it after leading a group meditation session that, somehow, formulated an alliance and even worked over her target of frustration. Too many people believe in the power of crystals and meditation, but it gave an opportunity for bonds to form.
Related Story: Survivor Athletes: Ranking The Best To Play The Game
The first Head of Household competition seemed primed to be better in week four than week one, as it required people to balance across a beam, retrieve a ball, navigate back to the middle platform and place the ball in another player’s tube. Once a player had 10 “deletion dots” in their tube, they were eliminated.
The reason I say it should have been a week four competition is that it forced people who knew each other for a day or two to team up together to take out others based on no personal vendettas at all. Sam made the mistake of splitting deletion dots between Angela and Winston, which both helped give them a reason to team up against her (finishing her off) and to align after the comp.
Steve, the oldest man in the house, found himself falling all over, getting knocked out quickly. The real stars of the competition were Tyler and JC, as the guys were doing everything in their power to stay safe or avoid winning the first HoH. Just like in Survivor, you don’t want to put a huge target on your back, but it’s also good to know that you’re safe for a round of play.
Ultimately, JC played it smart in conceding his HoH chances as Bayleigh and Tyler tossed words at each other in the final steps of the competition. Tyler won the first HoH, which even he knows was a potentially dangerous move. Now he knows he must eliminate people and draw Big Brother 20 battle lines, so he sought to go after the least offensive picks.
Winston led a group of Rachel, Brett, Angela and Kaycee to approach Tyler, pitching the least offensive move of Sam and Steve. However, an opposing alliance of Kaitlyn, then Rockstar, then Swaggy all approached Tyler one by one in the HoH room to pitch taking out a strong threat like Winston or Angela, showing the lack of subtlety as each one of them repeated the same party line.
Just like with Tai talking to Cirie in Survivor Game Changers about Ozzy’s feelings about her, Tyler was able to pick up the real story just like that. It’s clear that Tyler played the surfer bro dude to get through casting despite the show’s best interests, as he’s a superfan that knows how to play the game while playing up his chill persona. I would love to see this archetype play on Survivor.
Related Story: Survivor: Ranking 35 seasons
Eventually, Tyler revealed his nominations to the Big Brother 20 house, choosing Sam and Steve as his first nominees. He argued that they were the first to fall in the competition, thus got the assignments in a game where it’s not fair anybody goes up. Where this show surpasses Survivor is that they double down on their silliness, as Sam’s picture was her as a robot, as part of her week one punishment.
This is where it goes to show just how much production influence affects the Big Brother players over Survivor players. Anybody not named Stacy could argue that they had a relatively fair shot in Survivor. In Big Brother 20, however, Sam has a supreme disadvantage in socializing with a group of strangers because she gained the punishment of being a god damn robot for most of the time.
You can’t be subtle, you can’t take people aside quickly, you can’t whisper to someone without being conspicuous and, most importantly, a robot can’t walk their way up a narrow, spiral staircase up to the HoH room. Sam is so far removed from a fair social game that the only way she can likely stay safe is if she wins a power from the fan-voted BB App Store, which also relies on production interference.
Next: Survivor Winners: Ranking 35 Sole Survivors By Season
We have three more episodes (Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday) before the first official “week” of Big Brother 20 is over. We’ll talk about the Power of Veto competition, more of the gameplay dynamics and the live eviction, then we’ll let Inside the BB House take over for a full season of the show’s coverage.