HamsterwatchThe second episode of Big Brother Canada 11 kicked off Thursday with the recap narrator teasing “Mayhem at the Manor,” as well as naming Renee, Ty, JM, and Santina in various recap contexts, which gave an indication that they’d be featured in this episode.
There wasn’t much mayhem, unfortunately.
They picked up the Rough Around the Hedges comp where it left off on the BBCAN11 premiere, with JM and Santina winning by completing their puzzle first, and we learned Renee and Shanaya lost, meaning one of them would be on the block.
After the comp, when chatter about nominations started up, Ty told a group of several of them, “there’s a lot of people here that deserve to be on the block.” What? That’s a pretty bold statement for having just moved in.
There were a number of clips about early alliance feelers being put out. Dan and Jonathan agreed to be “boys” together; Zach and Ty brought Jonathan and Rob into their group, although it seemed Zach/Ty/Jonathan were tighter as a trio, with Rob on the side; and Hope and Santina talked about working together, as did Ty and Kuzie, and Claudia and Renee.
It’s very early days to be calling anyone an alliance yet, but this season could be shaping up to be guys versus girls, at least at this point.
Claudia noticed the guys were getting close and mentioned that not only to a couple of the girls, but she outright asked Zach about his bromance with Ty. Zach acted surprised in the Diary Room about being busted like that, but as I said in my premiere recap, they didn’t seem to be taking precautions to keep it quiet.
A hamster leaves the habitat
In surprising news, executive producer Erin Brock asked them over the house speakers to gather in the living room, where she told them Amal Bashir had left the game.
She said it was for personal reasons and added to respect her privacy, they wouldn’t discuss it or even say why she left, but she said any of them could ask to speak to her [Erin] if they wanted.
Amal’s the one who listed “superfan” as her occupation in her show bio and she looked like she might be a fun hamster, so that was sad news indeed. I wish her well.
Fluff segments included flirting between Shanaya and Rob, and Kuzie saying she thought Ty was cute. And there was something about pickles, which led into an emotional convo about missing their families (already), and Jonathan talking about his 12-year-old son.
Sponsored content (sponcon) included Daniel discovering the former Expedia room had been unlocked and was now the Circle K room. Everyone gathered there to admire the snacks display.
And they held a semi-choreographed fashion show to model their new WINNERS clothes. They didn’t do the weekly HOH Wendy’s meal segment since the HOH comp was finalized later, so expect that on Tuesday’s show.
Dan and Zach asked JM about his thoughts for nominations should he become HOH, and he said if he won, guys would be going up.
That didn’t sit well with Zach, who said something about a “big move.” JM replied (accurately) that it’s only Week 1, there are no big moves yet.
JM and Santina agreed to keep each other safe, whichever of them wins.
Then came Part 2 of the HOH comp, with JM and Santina competing for HOH, and Renee and Shanaya competing to see which of them would be automatically nominated.
All four competed at the same time, and the comp was in two parts. In the first part, they had to collect puzzle pieces to assemble a 3-D statue of last season’s winner Kevin Jacobs wearing a crown.
In the second part, they had to climb a ladder to a platform and arrange chutes to roll a ball into the crown. If the ball fell, they had to climb back down the ladder and start over.
Santina won and became the season’s first Head of Household.
Renee and Shanaya both had trouble with the chutes so they had a lot of restarts and ladder climbing, and the comp dragged on. Eventually Shanaya finished, leaving Renee as the first nominee of the season.
Santina getting her HOH room and goodies, and Wendy’s meal of course, will be on Tuesday’s show, presumably along with nominations. Then Wednesday’s show should be the veto competition, and the first eviction will be next Thursday.
An amusing side note, towards the end of the episode there was a commercial for Global’s morning talk show which said they’d talk to the BB evictee on tomorrow’s show. They must not have gotten the memo that there was no eviction tonight.
Were the first Digital Dailies any good?
But wait, that’s not all! Digital Dailies finally launched tonight, with two and a half hours of feeds-like content from inside the house from Wednesday night, opening with several of them preparing a Hello Fresh meal (sponcon!)
This first DD was also a lot of casual chat in pairs and small groups about what they think of various others, and who they thought Santina might nominate.
JM said he was worried he might go up even though he’d made a safety deal with Santina, and he said he’d call her out if she doesn’t honor that deal. Kuzie was also worried that she might go on the block.
Santina appeared to be working with the guys, which if true, wouldn’t do much to solidify a girls’ alliance that was tentatively forming—something that rarely happens successfully in Big Brother Canada or USA.
Shanaya and Renee also met and agreed they’d do well to stick with the guys, for now.
So the first Digital Daily was a lot longer than I expected, but it had several short ads every 10 minutes or so, which wasn’t encouraging.
It seems they will have some game talk but again, we still don’t know the nominations, and apparently DDs will only be posted Monday thru Friday.
Considering nominations normally happen on Fridays and veto comp on Saturdays—at least, that was the schedule in the past—we might still be in the dark during the long gap between Thursday and Tuesday shows each week. We’ll see.
You can get the links and information for how and where to watch Digital Dailies as well as the episodes that post the morning after they air at Hamsterwatch.com. I’m also keeping my usual Power Status section up to date there, along with tracking comp wins, nominations, advantages/punishments, and prize winnings.