Ground Control to Major Tom: It's Solitary Confinement Time on #BB15!

Today's Power of Veto competition involved punishments, always a fun change of pace this early in the season. We don't seem to have any crazy costumes, although Aaryn will be enjoying a change of hair, and Helen has a curfew.

More interestingly, Judd will be in solitary confinement for 24 hours in the cockpit lounge.

"How do I flush this toilet?" -actual Judd quote

Judd's game is starting to change up, as in the last twenty-four hours we've seen him moving away from the Goof Troop alliance (McRae/Amanda/Andy) and towards a possible new affiliation with Kaitlin/Spencer/GinaMarie in the wee hours of the morning. He's also contemplating the fact that this is the first-ever Big Brother season to boot three guys in a row right out of the gate, and wants a girl out this week. Judd has a lot to think about, and now he'll have time to think it over.

Solitary confinement is historically a game changer in Big Brother. Players in the house are constantly bombarded with social simulation, sleeping in rooms full of activity while gaming their days away. Cutting off human contact for a day has had interesting results in the past.

Let's review:

Big Brother 7: Danielle's Decline

Big Brother 7's Danielle Reyes took the first solitary confinement punishment that I can recall in the game, trying to solidify her Legion of Doom alliance during her Head of Household reign. Unfortunately for her, the alliance lost the competition, with Chilltown famously gobbling up prizes and hanging her out to dry.

This marked the start of Danielle's downfall in the game. For 24 hours she paced and muttered, and after she emerged, she was never the same. A legend in her own right during Season 3, Danielle crashed and burned after her solitary confinement in Season 7, culminating in her crazed doorbell-ringing meltdown on the Head of Household landing (earning her the nickname "Ding Dong Dani").

Big Brother 12: Hayden's Rise

In the first few weeks of Big Brother 12, future winner Hayden Moss seemed to be in a pickle, bouncing between his secret showmance with Kristen, a secret alliance with Kristen and Andrew, and his role as "The Animal" in The Brigade. It wasn't clear initially which direction he would go, especially because he hid each secret alliance from the other side, wisely waiting to see which would triumph.

All of this threatened to destroy his game when his alliance with Kristen and Andrew blew up noisily the night of Andrew's eviction, as Andrew called out the secret showmance, and Rachel played right into the chaos in the wake of her HOH win, targeting Kristen and Hayden to split up the showmance. Hayden initially seemed shaken and visibly upset for the first time in the game.

After Britney won the Veto competition, it became clear that he had no future with Kristen in the game. But at the same time, Hayden's strong position in the house was clear that night for maybe the first time, as the house rallied around him to keep him entertained, constantly keeping vigil at his door in alternate shifts. Kristen spent hours crying quietly in front of his door, but Hayden was more interested in his short visits with the Brigade, and in shoring up his allegiance to them. He was rarely alone, and during that time seemed to be most concerned with rattling off his resume to the live feed cameras, pleading for a job.

By the time Hayden emerged from solitary confinement, he was all-Brigade, all the time, and ready to start on the path that would lead him to one of the most solid and predictable victories in Big Brother history. 

Big Brother 13: Shelly's Flip

Shelly Moore didn't seem to be in much trouble when she landed in solitary confinement. She was in a dominant alliance with Jeff, Jordan, Rachel, Brendon and Adam, and while Head of Household Dani Donato had nominated her alongside Adam and Adam won the Veto, Brendon was clearly the target, leaving Shelly in little danger. Shelly even voluntarily took the punishment, since it was combined with a phone call home to her daughter, adorable game analyst Josie. 

 So it was no wonder that few of the houseguests felt the need to keep Shelly company - her punishment was really a reward, after all. But in the late hours of the evening, HOH Dani came to sit by the door, keeping Shelly company for a long stretch of time and reassuring her, despite having nominated her for eviction.

When Shelly chose to flip shortly after this and join Dani's team to help oust Jeff, the night of solitary confinement was cited as one of the things that convinced her that she could trust Dani. The fact that Dani chose to reach out and comfort Shelly in her isolation wound up playing a huge role in shifting the power in the game in the final stretch, leading to some of the most memorable eviction night drama ever in the history of Big Brother.

Big Brother 14: Dan's Resurrection

Do I even need to cover this one? Dan Gheesling's day in solitary confinement last year allowed him to create one of the most amazing and complex manipulations in Big Brother history, as he lay silently for hours in the hypnotic Have Not room listening to horrid music and gobbling a sheet cake, while plotting how to get out of what seemed to be the certain demise of his game.

Dan later went on to detail his thinking process in depth. Dan's Funeral was a virtuoso performance, transforming Dan from imminent game death to one of the most amazing and unexpected veto saves we've ever seen in this game. He would never have been able to come up with such a complex strategy out in the house, where his thoughts would have constantly been interrupted with the conversations and drama of the house.

Of all the solitary confinement sagas, Dan's remains the most striking achievement. 

Big Brother 15: Judd's ?

So what do the next 24 hours hold for quiet, anxiety-ridden, quippy HOH Judd? He's sitting fine in the game, but now is the time to start thinking ahead for the long stretch. Will his paranoia get the best of him, or will the lack of social interaction allow him to focus on what he needs to do next in the game?

One interesting thing to note - Hayden, Shelly and Dan were all confined to the various Have Not rooms in their respective seasons, while only Dani Reyes was confined in the lounge by the bathroom, which will be Judd's prison for the next day. (This is because there are already Have Nots assigned to the room for the week - there were no Have Nots the weeks that Hayden, Shelly and Dan all were confined.) Doesn't bode well for our Tennesseean Head of Household, since only Dani's game was negatively rather than positively affected by solitary confinement. 

Stay tuned - the one thing we know is that this has the potential to be an intense psychological game changer for Judd, one way or another. 

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.