Well we come to part three of our trawl through the worst of all things Big Brother, listing the twists and production choices that production should all out avoid come Big Brother 14, 20 of these twists have proven infuriating enough, so it goes to show how badly mishandled and controversial the top 10 must be. With that being said we shall begin. Brace yourselves people, this is going to be a bumpy ride:
10) The double eviction in week 4 causes Jon and Federico to be evicted on the same night (Big Brother 4)
Now I do understand that Big Brother 4 was a much more innocent time in the franchise's history and the likelihood was that this double eviction was planned weeks and months before the series actually took place, but that cannot defend the fact that this was a terrible production decision which ultimate proved to be the final nail of the Big Brother 4 coffin. Even from an early stage it was obvious that Big Brother 4 was proving to be an underwhelming experience, with Jon and Federico being the only contestants providing anything in the way of entertainment value, Jon through his lovable nerd qualities and Federico through his status as a roguish antagonist who was beginning to build something of a fan base, so the idea of having a double eviction with both facing the public vote was almost show suicide from production, as due to the flaws of vote to evict it would guarantee that at least one of the two (or both as it proved) would be leaving the show, and in the process leave behind a chasm of entertainment which the first few weeks had proven the other housemates could not fill. A double eviction in any other week of BB4 would have been fine, but to have it on a week where your two biggest characters were nominated was simply entertainment suicide.
9) Conor is not removed following 'epilator-gate' (Big Brother 13)
This for me was a disgusting moment, and one that for me should have been dealt with almost immediately, and the fact that production failed to do so in my eyes showed incompetence from production, insane amounts of favouritism towards Conor as well as sending out a terrible message to viewers of the show, were production trying to imply that the threatening of sexual abuse to a woman was an OK act? because that was how it came across to me and many other Big Brother viewers. Had Conor of been a larger and more prominent personality within the show I could have understood Channel 5's reasoning for keeping him around, but the fact was that up until that point Conor was a largely irrelevant and unpleasant figure within the house who was in all reality rather disposable, and his loss wouldn't have made little difference in the story of Big Brother 13 up until that point. The failure to remove Conor ended up leaving a dark cloud over what was a rather good series, and the fact that it was Conor himself who ended up winning £50,000 as part of the controversial White Room twist left us feeling that there was injustice that somebody who had behaved so vilely was being rewarded for his actions.
8) Live Feed is axed (Big Brother 10)
This production decision didn't have much to do with influencing the quality of the overall series,in fact I would go as far as to list Big Brother 10 as one of my favourites, but the cancelling of Live Feed helped to play a massive part in isolating a large amount of Big Brother's casual audience and in turn arguably helped lead to the show's axing by Channel 4. In my eyes as well as the eyes of many others Live Feed is one of the most essential aspects of Big Brother as a franchise, and eliminating it also eliminates one of the main selling point of the show which is the idea of the public having the ability to watch over the contestants at any time. As well as this axing live feed also led to a stagnation of press interest within the show, which in turn led to a lack of interest from the casual audience and as a result dented Big Brother 10's ratings, causing it to become the least watched series of the Channel 4 era.
7) Live Feed is axed... again (The Channel 5 era)
Quite obviously this has much in common with the previous entry, but ranks much higher namely because of the stubbornness of Channel 5 over the issue and the lack of logic in their decision. Channel 5 would have seen that the axing of live feed by Channel 4 for Big Brother 10 led to a significant hit in terms of the ratings, as well as how much the series regained a large amount of lost audience following it's reinstatement for Big Brother 11, so to decide to once again axe this factor of the show, and moreso then that eliminate it entirely, lacked logic and common sense on behalf of Channel 5. As well as this the decision to axe live feed came into conflict with Channel 5's claim that they wanted to incorporate social networking within the show, as the involvement of a live feed within a series would have been beneficial to social networking through buzz generated on Facebook and Twitter respectively. As well as this it generated cynicism against Channel 5 as a broadcaster as it not only went against their claims of interactive live feed coverage but also left the show open to a level of manipulation and distortion unseen previously, as the cover-up of Rylan's departures during CBB11 showed.
6) The all-female launch night (Big Brother 8)
In some ways I can respect this for being one of the few attempts during Channel 4's later era of embracing Big Brother's status as a social experiment, but in spite of that however this twist proved to be a major mistake and one that was unneeded following the negativity of Shilpa-gate. The main reason for this twist being a disaster stemmed from the way it alienated the target audience of the show, Big Brother had known from voting patterns and viewer feedback of how resentful the voting public were to women, and particular more image conscious women which dominated the launch cast, so to have a house full of females isolated the important core audience of the show, added to this was the fact that having a primarily young all female cast also limited the diversity and social intrigue that Big Brother as a franchise thrives on, which further hampered the casual viewer's desire to tune in. The other major issue stemmed from the motive of the all female launch night in the first place, had the twist been played out in a much more psychological way focusing on the incorporation of men into a hostile male environment I feel that the twist had a lot of potential to be engaging and interesting, but instead it's real reasoning was to try and create a shallow squabbling match between the women over Ziggy, which in itself failed.
5) Jayne is punished for persistent rule-breaking by having everybody BUT HER put up for eviction (Big Brother 7)
This for me is a perfect example of production focusing on short term fixes to solutions without thinking about the long term impact that their decisions may have. The decision to punish Jayne in this way was incredibly flawed from both a social context and from an entertainment context was incredibly flawed from the outset. In terms of the former production would have known from Jayne's self orientated behaviour that a punishment such as this was never going to make any impact or influence her behaviour positively, the major grievance however was from an entertainment context however, by punishing Jayne in this way it guaranteed that a much more important and relevant character would be leaving the show in her place, with the likelyhood being that it would be one of Aisleyne or Nikki, both of which had massive fan-bases and were engaged in a major feud with each other. Whilst I do believe Jayne added some much-needed energy into BB7's mediocre middle stages the fact that a major character such as Nikki was sacrificed to protect her was a major misjudgment from production, especially as Jayne never built any kind of fan base and was out anyway the week after.
4) The Halfway House (Big Brother 8)
This was just a farcical mess to watch throughout the week, and was arguably the most painful week of Big Brother that I have ever had the displeasure to have witnessed, particularly from a production point of view. The idea of doing a second 'other house' twist after the failure of Big Brother 7's 'house next door' was in itself a poor decision, but the way in which production chose to continually move both the main housemates and the halfway housemates around with twist after twist to manufacture the ideal result from themselves stemmed of cynicism, blatant manipulation and bias, as well as being incredibly unfair on the halfway housemates who were left with no real chance to prove themselves as housemates. While I may have understood this amount of manipulation for a significantly important character none of the current BB housemates at the time provided us with anything similar to that, BB8 had proven to be a disaster and the idea of five new faces freshening up proceedings over some of the series' deadwood would have been a welcome change, and for production to choose to keep their current crop and dispose of two of the newbies almost immediately made me question just what the point of the whole exercise was. This twist was badly organised, incredibly unfair and ultimately pointless.
3) The Goody family enter the house (Celebrity Big Brother 5)
I know the term 'fatal mistake' is thrown around far too frequently these days, but this is one of the biggest examples of a fatal mistake that I know of from a television context, a decision which ultimately led to the single biggest controversy in UK television history and in my view led to the death of Big Brother as a franchise. Even before 'Shilpa-gate' erupted however the decision to bring the Goody family into the house was riddled with flaws; it was incredibly biased towards Jade and her family as it caused an obvious voting bloc which could control the house proceedings, it damaged the positive and largely highbrow ethos of the CBB5 house at the time and in the process pushing the show incredibly downmarket whilst also partially causing the departures of Donny and Ken, two of the show's biggest characters up until that point. The twist also led to a major over-promotion of the family both on the show and in the show's advertising, shunning the other contestants in the process; Jackiey was attempted to be portrayed as a lovable rogue figure in spite of none of the British public buying into it whilst Jade was given almost Rylan-esque levels of coverage and a golden protaganist edit, and it was Channel 4's insistence with sticking with this edit that led to their reluctance to deal with the bullying of Shilpa which in turn caused the media outcry over her bullying that followed. Even without Shilpagate the Goody family's entry would have made this list, but the fact it caused something as fatally damaging at Shilpa-gate locks it this highly.
2) Despite previously being evicted Nikki is allowed to return to Big Brother 7 with a chance of winning (Big Brother 7)
Now I know that Nikki Grahame is one of the most divisive and controversial contestants ever, as well as one of the biggest personalities the show has ever had, but there cannot be a denial that the decision to allow for her return proved to be one of the most single-handedly damaging moments in the franchise's history. Firstly you have to think about the time that this twist was taking place, Big Brother was
at the time still one of Britain's biggest TV shows and still held somewhat in high
regard from a credibility point of view, but following this twist nobody could truly ever trust the Big Brother franchise in this same manner, be it TV regulators or fans of the show itself, and led to a massive fall in voting revenue as viewers were scared off voting in eviction through fears of a similar stunt taking place. From an entertainment point of
view it was a dud too, as Nikki was too aware of what made herself popular
first time around and attempted to replicate that on her return, making
her tantrums and rants appear very contrived and false, and harming her
popularity in the process. It says a lot when producer Phil Edgar-Jones
considers this twist the worst decision he ever made in his career.
1) The quadruple eviction (Big Brother 11)
It's quite appropriate that the worst BB twist ever should also be the
last BB twist, as it is a tribute to how poor and how manipulated and
badly constructed BB became, it is also a twist which shows my eligibility points clearly, it was poorly planned, it made people
question the integrity of the programme and it was severely detrimental
to the show on an entertainment value. The simple question that needs to be asked was what was the reason for this taking place in the first place? Production had in their hands what could have been one of the greatest Big Brother finales of all time with the strong and obsessive fan bases of Josie, John-James, Corin and Sam Pepper going against each other in an all-out tour de force which would have proven exciting for the viewer as well as generating incredibly amounts of revenue for Channel 4, and yet production for some reason chose to sacrifice this by utilising the double eviction and getting rid of Corin, John-James and Sam Pepper in one clean swoop and in the process give Josie one of the easiest victories ever in one of the most tedious finales of all time, in the process also exposing major favouritism and bias from production. Whilst in retrospect it could be seen as the move which cause Channel 5 to impliment vote to save during their era it came at the cost of what could have been one of the great BB nights, and for that reason I consider it the worst production decision ever.
So that is the list ladies and gents, 30 of Big Brother's worst moments have been scoured and scorned over and Channel 5 now have a checklist of what not to do come Big Brother 14, fingers crossed that we don't see a repeat of any of these and instead enjoy a great series of Big Brother.
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