The Sixteenth Houseguest

"The sixteenth houseguest? Production." -Alec, 3/31/13.

The sixteenth houseguest at work

As Big Brother superfans, Alec and Peter understood this concept from day one. In the game of Big Brother, theoretically you're playing against the fifteen people cast to battle head to head in the game of Big Brother, but in reality, you're also competing for the heart of the unseen gods controlling the game. Ask Jessie Godderz in Big Brother US Season 11 about that, or Shelly Moore on Big Brother US Season 13, or Aaron Allard-Morgan from Big Brother UK Season 12. (Okay, Aaron won his series, but more in spite of Production than because of them.) 

Topaz, while topping out the fan favorite rankings at Jokers' Updates, has never been a favorite of Production. Her continued insistence on napping against their direct orders, her ignoring of alarms, her open mouthing off against their interference - all of it served to draw the battle lines, and Production struck this week in the worst way possible.

Poster Doctor Skeuss at Survivor Sucks was at last Thursday's taping and noted an extended production conference before Topaz's eventual victory in the contest. Moments later, as we know, Topaz skated to victory to cheers from her fans, only to have her game destroyed once the feeds went down.

Jokers Reacts

Production enjoyed the chaos of it all, with producer and Marsha the Moose voice Trevor Boris gleefully tweeting as the episode aired, "im guessing a lot of you have never seen a Big Brother from any of the other 46 countries except the US".

And yes, as Peter noted, Topaz didn't have to talk out loud. Or did she?

Topaz isn't a particularly vocal strategist, we saw Arisa encouraging her to talk out loud, and we don't know what else was said. I will be very interested to hear after the show if Topaz claims she was encouraged to openly voice her strategy for the fans. Certainly she had no reason to expect that this Big Brother US-style game would suddenly become a Big Brother UK-style one, and why would she?

It's one thing when BBUK messes with the houseguests by revealing secrets, because ultimately, the power rests in the hands of the audience. On this show, however, there's no way that exposing a player like that won't wreck their game, and Production certainly had to know that going in.

Would they have done the same to Peter if, god forbid, he'd managed to win an actual competition? I can't help but feel like they wouldn't. (Trevor's Marsha the Moose alter ego is a noted Peter fan, of course.) We'll never know, but after years of watching Big Brother in multiple countries, I've just come to expect that Production is manipulating the story they want to tell.

That said, the Chevrolet "Powershift" twists have been uniformly horrible so far in terms of moving the story: Sending Aneal home over the gameless Suzette was a travesty, and this twist has managed to sink the games of lead characters like Gary, Topaz, Alec and Peter, while bolstering bores like Andrew and Jillian.

At this point, I chalk it up to the fact that the Sixteenth Houseguest is a newbie, and still figuring out how to wield the monster that is Big Brother. Given the fact that the ratings aren't going anywhere, they'll have plenty of time to figure out how to manipulate in the future, but for now, we have to wait and see if they can manage to salvage the game and propel the interesting characters and gamers into the finals or not.