With that being said let us begin:
20) Faye's sister Jem enters the house (Big Brother 12)
This is the second of my 'relative of a housemate enters the house' updates in this ranking, with BB10's Isaac being the first mentioned in part one, and in many way's the issues with Jem as a housemate were almost identical to that of Isaac when he entered the house. Due to the fact that Jem was a non-auditionee as well as somebody who had little emotional connection to the show was unable and unwilling to embrace the concept in the way that a true applicant would have, and arguably the casting of Jem robbed the place of somebody who would have treated the experience with much more enthusiasm. The other major issue however came with Jem's performance as a housemate itself, although his stay was short you can make the arguement that Isaac did have some fun moments and could have been a bigger character had he of stayed around longer, whereas Jem spent the large majority of her time in the show as a largely dreary and negative presence who helped to stifle a lot of the fun in Big Brother 12 at the time before her emergence as pseudo 'villain of the week' following Anton's eviction. Whilst I do admit to liking some of the complexity in the relatioship between her and Faye I found her entry into the show ultimately pointless, especially considering what she brought as a housemate.
19) The Speidi and Rylan show (Celebrity Big Brother 11)
Now I understand in the television industry that you need to cash in and promote your biggest characters and your biggest names for a reality television series such as Big Brother, but in my eyes the over promotion of this feud ended up crossing this line and ended up descending into saturation, which ultimately came at the expense of the quality of the series as a result. Whilst I did find some elements of the Speidi and Rylan feud interesting, in particular the contrast the differences between British and American interpretations of Reality Television I felt that the feud was simply too over-promoted for it's own good, and came at the expense of an entire cast that ended up being blatantly ignored. Now I know some may argue that the reason Speidi and Rylan were so heavily focused on was because the other housemates weren't doing enough but from the snippets we saw and heard this wasn't the case, Razor and Toadie's discussion over the women which caused the nomination rule break hinted at resentment towards the house females whilst we also saw snippets of Toadie's grievances over the house pecking order, both of which could have been given focus. Instead however production chose to focus on a feud which ended becoming incredibly tedious, drawn out and by the end left me hating both parties involved equally, and in the process ruining what could have been a good series.
18) First night nominations (Big Brother 4)
Now I know that in terms of production Big Brother 4 was a much more innocent time, and that the likelyhood is that twists during those days were likely planned weeks and months before rather then on the fly, but that doesn't hide the fact that this was a poorly thought out idea which ultimately proved to be to the detriment of Big Brother 4 as a series. The idea of having nominations on the first night of the show does sound good on paper, but is ultimately flawed because it leads to the larger and more extravagant personalities on launch night becomming immediate targets without any chance to mellow and integrate themselves into the group, even from launch night it was evident that Anoushka, Federico and Jon were the three biggest personalities and the most potential to be breakout characters, and the fact was we were going to lose one of them after one week (no way was Scott leaving) and in the process do a lot of damage to the series. A show such as Big Brother should do everything it can to keep it's big personalities and yet a twist like this seemed to be designed to intentionally lose them.
17) Billi's nominations are cancelled AFTER nominations have taken place (Big Brother 8)
Now in retrospect this was a good decision which I can support, Charley was a character who pretty much single handedly made Big Brother 8 watchable, whereas Billi would go on to become one of the most annoying and deluded post-show attention seekers that the show has ever had, however from a short term point of view this was a decision which helped to strain the last ounce of credibility from the Big Brother franchise as well as alienate many more viewers. In the aftermath of Shilpa-gate and Emily's ejection production should have been doing everything they could to attempt to try and appease an increasingly cynical audience, and the voting out of Charley, who at that point was the public's enemy at the time, would have gone a long way to do that. Manipulating the process in such a blatant way as this just helped to upset those much needed casual viewers, and in the process dented the ratings and set about a decline in the public perception of the show. Plus it wasn't as obvious at that point that Charley was needed to make the series bearable, and in my eyes the show could have afforded to lose her at this point, especially as someone such as Billi ironically enough had the potential to take up the mantle as the series villain. I do stress this was a good move in retrospect, but undeniable fatally damaged the show's remaining credibility.
16) Fake Week (Big Brother 8)
This twist for me is symbolic of two things; the first being how a good twist can be ruined by incompetent mismanagement and how devoid of focus and erratic the production of Big Brother 8 was. Whilst Fake Week sounded like a good idea it began to fall apart very quickly, firstly actress Thaila Zucchi simply wasn't good enough to pull off her character of fake housemate Pauline, her Australian accent regularly slipped and her stories never matched up, bad enough in any series but with Big Brother 8 being some of the most savvy and cynical housemates in the show's history it was almost fatally flawed from the beginning. Added to this for all the hype and buildup that fake week gave us Thaila's involvement in the show was rather poor, she was regularly given instructions to attempt to stir up the house dynamics and quite simply refused to pull them off, which in the process rendered the whole situation pointless and eventually led to the twist being pulled midway through the week, which in turn led to more questions about the competence and credibility of the show's production team.
15) The White Room (Big Brother 13)
Now I'll admit the payoff to the white room was in my opinion fantastic television, but my god what a slog we had to go through to get to it. Even though I am somebody who considers Big Brother 13 to be one of the better Big Brother series I cannot deny that the White Room episodes are some of the worst in the franchise's history. The first issue with the twist stems from the casting choices for the white room twist, it should have been obvious based on the first 8 weeks of the show that Conor, Luke S and Sara weren't the most interesting housemates of the series, and yet they were being trusted to carry show for a weeks worth of television, and quite simply as a result the television question ended up as incredibly tedious. The other major issue stems from the decision to incorporate the show's prize money as part of the twist, had the twist involved a separate £50,000 the backlash may not have been as great as it was, but because of the way that this twist was set up an undeserving housemate was going to be rewarded with half of the winner's prize money in spite of doing very little to earn it, especially comparative to the winner. The twist may have sounded good on paper, and the tension in it's climax was fantastic, but it was riddled with injustices and unfairness which proved isolating to the show's audience.
14) Rex's girlfriend Nicole enters the house (Big Brother 9)
The third and final 'relative enters the house' twist on this list, and by far the one which was the most infuriating. In my eyes the decision to enter Nicole into the show had two main flaws which proved to be detrimental to BB9 as a series; the first stemmed from Nicole herself, whilst Jem had been relatively annoying and dreary Nicole in comparison was just plain infuriating, threatening to quit on multiple occasion and bringing the house's ethos down with continual whining and tantrums whenever she failed to get her way, and once again made the viewing public question production's abilities by placing someone into the show who had zero interest in being there. The second major stemmed on the impact that Nicole's entry had on Rex, who was quickly establishing himself as a lovable rogue villain character with an increasing fan base, placing Nicole into the house completely stifled Rex's momentum and practically derailed him as a housemate. Placing Nicole into the house achieve little in the way of entertainment and harmed the show's best character, not a good decision whatsoever.
13) John is given a free pass to the final on the first night (Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack)
Being a largely unwatched E4 spinoff series maybe I should go a bit easy on Celebrity Hijack, but that does not for me hide the fact that the show's opening night twist was deeply unfair cast a cloud over what was a rather overlooked BB outing. Whilst I do admit that the Matt Lucas designed launch night twist was very entertaining, and helped give rise to other secret earpiece launch night tasks used by Channel 5, the reward which came for John as a result of it, namely a free pass to the final, was excessive and gave John a massively unfair advantage over the others. Whilst other housemates were forced to engage with the stresses of the Big Brother nomination and voting pressures John was free to sit back and coast to the finale with little trouble, added to this the launch night twist was also unfair as it gave John a major pedestal over the others in terms of exposure and prominence, and arguably proved to be the major factor in his largely underwhelming victory.
12) Emily is ejected as an over-reaction to Shilpa-gate (Big Brother 8)
Now I understand that Channel 4 needed to be seen as zero tolerance when it came to racism following Shilpa-gate, but this in my eyes was a major over-reaction which proved to be more detrimental to Channel 4 then it did beneficial. The major issue with this was simply that in context what Emily said to Charley was not worthy of an ejection from the house,especially not one in the middle of the night, in my eyes the situation could have easily been dealt with behind doors without getting out to the media, as well as this Emily was up for eviction that week and would have very likely gone that week anyway, so the long term damage that the incident may have caused wouldn't have taken place. By ejecting Emily Channel 4 inflicted more unneeded attention onto themselves and further damaged the public perception of the show. The fact that more people complained about Emily being ejected rather then the racial slur itself is telling of how badly Channel 4 misjudged this incident.
11) Shahbaz is allowed to compete despite his poor mental health (Big Brother 7)
Whilst I do accept that Shahbaz was one of the main reasons why Big Brother 7's first week was so action packed and drama filled I have to admit to feeling uncomfortable with Channel's handling of him as a housemate. Even from the outset it was obvious that Shahbaz was not mentally strong enough to handle to pressures of being within the Big Brother environment, and it was in my eyes completely irresponsible of production to place a contestant that was so obviously mentally weak into an environment like that, and as a result made people question in much more detail the ethics of Big Brother as a franchise, especially when you also take into account the mental disorders of Nikki Grahame, Lea Walker and Sam Brodie also. I do respect Channel 4 for realising their mistake and pulling Shahbaz from the programme, but the fact the remains that he should have never been allowed in their in the first place.
So there are another10 disastrous decisions at the hands of the Big Brother production team, but what do I consider to be the 10 worst ever? Stay tuned to this blog to find out.
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