Drama kick-starts ‘Big Brother 6’
The summer of scheming has begun.
The sixth season of ‘Big Brother’ premiered last night with more drama and intrigue than ever before. If the secret partner twist, a luxury Head of Household suite and a new two-storey house wasn’t enough, the producers gave the series a healthy boost by including a Head of Household/Food competition and a nomination ceremony in the premiere episode.
Rachel Plencner, the 33-year-old horse breeder, became the first Head of Household on ‘Big Brother 6’ by outlasting the other HouseMates in an endurance challenge. Divided into two teams, the players first competed in a Food Challenge requiring them to stand on enormous surfboards and toss coconuts through the mouth of an idol. The team of Maggie Ausburn, April Lewis, Janelle Pierzina, Howie Gordon, Sarah Hrejsa, Rachel Plencner and James Rhine bested the team of Ashlea Evans, Beau Beasley, Ivette Corredero, Jennifer Vasquez, Kaysar Ridha, Michael Donnellan and Eric Littmann in the Food Challenge. Ashlea’s team are now on the infamous peanut butter and jelly diet for the week.
The Food Challenge immediately splintered the house into alliances. As the winning team competed in a stand-on-the-surf board-as-long-as-you-can endurance competition for the coveted Head of Household crown, the plotting began. Maggie’s team collectively agreed not to nominate or vote each other out for the first week. Confident in their ready-made alliance, most of the competitors bowed out of the challenge leaving Howie Gordon and Rachel Plencner alone to battle it out. It wasn’t much of a battle. Howie made a pact with Rachel and agreed to step down under the pretence of having to go to the bathroom at two hours and 30 minutes in.
When it came to nominations, the Surf Board Alliance held strong as practicing Muslim of Iraqi descent Kaysar Ridha and the flirtatious Ashlea Evans were put up by Rachel for eviction. Rachel claimed that she didn’t have much to go on to make her decision so she nominated the two HouseGuests she had not connected with on a personal level.
Several sub-alliances were also formed when the male HouseGuests discovered there were eight female players and only six men. Eric Littmann, the 36-year-old firefighter cobbled together a male alliance which deliberately left out gay HouseGuest Beau Beasley and Howie Gordon. Eric stated that Beau belonged with the females and he just couldn’t trust Howie.
The Summer of Secrets theme grew even more mysterious with host Julie Chen stating that the teams of players would not be officially revealed until next Thursday’s live eviction broadcast. The 14 contestants are actually seven teams of secret partners from the outside world playing the game as covert duos.
Each team believes they are the only such partnership in the house. As an added stipulation, if one team can keep their secret and end up being the last two people in the house, the winner will win $1,000,000 with the second place finisher winning $250,000. If a twosome does not make it to the final two, the winner will win $500,000.
Showing promo footage of a female HouseGuest finding a secret passage of some sort and perhaps a spy cam, Chen also stated that one secret of the new ‘Big Brother’ house would change the way the game is played forever. The producers have previously stated that the house itself and the HouseGuests too have secrets that will be revealed as the season progresses.
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