Andy DehnartA producer’s conversation with Big Brother coach turned player Dan in the Diary Room revealed his strategy to the rest of the houseguests, because the audio was broadcast in the house and may even have an impact on tonight’s vote, since it outed Dan’s role in Janelle’s backdoor nomination. Cue the conspiracy theories and/or sighs about the producers’ hamfisted manipulation of their game.
Reality Nation summarizes exactly what happened, although the live feeds were cut off when Dan’s private conversation with the producer was noticed by the other houseguests. Later, Mike Boogie complained about producers “blasting the DR sessions” and Joe confronted Dan by saying, “That’s quite the DR you had this morning there, Dan.” Boogie also said that he heard the producer tell Dan, “so, it’s the silent six,” revealing the alliance that Dan is in. Both times, producers cut the feeds, because they are amazing at hiding their manipulation.
Hamsterwatch elaborates on what this may mean, noting that “something was leaked to some of them that could affect another certain eviction, and that’s beyond wrong.. if a technical problem let them hear a Diary session in the habitat, they knew it and would have stopped the session unless they wanted it to be heard.” She also wrote that “I’ve been saying all week that the only thing that would prevent Janelle from meeting Julie again would be a public outing of Dan’s many dealings and/or a last minute Coup de Pandora.. The Powers That Be went ahead and did both this morning.”
By the way, last night’s episode of Big Brother–which I watched a few minutes of before deleting it, because I think I’m done with this season–tied for the lowest-rated episode in the series’ history (although its 18-49 rating went up 1/10th of a point when final numbers came out). You can perhaps blame that on the women’s volleyball finals on the Olympics last night, which had two American teams battling for gold.
But I think there’s an argument to be made that the series not only disrupted its momentum by unfairly dumping the elimination last week, but also signaled such desperation and disregard for its players and viewers that more people have stopped caring.