Matt Hoffman (BB12) makes a special return today with his thoughts on Big Brother 14’s “Reset” event on Thursday’s live show. Matt doesn’t pull any punches with his reactions to what brought the game back to square one. Read on for Hoffman’s brutal honesty.
Quite a twisted up series of events we had in the Big Brother house last night. Julie tells us that America has voted to give the coaches the option to forego their coaching duties and enter the game as players for the $500,000. Here are the parameters of their decision options, as I understood it…
If any ONE coach hit the “reset button” in the Diary Room
- Every coach is forced to enter the game as a player.
- There is no eviction tonight.
If EVERY SINGLE coach passes on hitting the “reset button”
- Coaches remain coaches.
- Pigs fly.
- Someone gets evicted.
- Hell freezes over.
- Big Brother is going to bring back houseguests that were already kicked out who are probably scorned/angry.
- Big Brother owns the souls of the coaches’ firstborn children.
- The coaches lose their stipend.
- Upon exiting the house, the coaches must live the rest of their lives in captivity on Allison Grodner’s island of misfits reality slaves.
Oh no, coaches – no one made you push that button. But what coach in their right mind (I said “in their right mind”, Boogie) would opt for the whirlwind of cow dung spiraling around Option B??? Of course at least one coach will surely push that poorly-made toy buzzer. And therein is the root of my problem…
…I’m not saying that the voting was “rigged” or that America really didn’t vote in favor of the coaches getting the option to play. Maybe that did happen. I don’t know, and I don’t care. My problem is with the way this was all presented, as well as the unjust ramifications that came with the forced outcome.
If Big Brother wanted the coaches in the game, then they should just own up to their obvious set-ups and say that America voted the coaches into the game. End of story. America voted, and they’re coming in. Why does Big Brother feel the need to patronize the viewing audience with giving the coaches the insane list of parameters that allow them to allegedly “choose” to come back in, when no one behind the scenes OR in the general public can possibly be stupid enough to think that literally EVERY coach would ALL agree to the consequences of not “resetting”?
Oh wait – I know why!…It’s because if the coaches were just told to be in the game with no other parameters, then Big Brother would’ve missed the opportunity to:
1) Deny the viewers of seeing the greatest Big Brother blindside since Season 8’s Dustin.
This point is further punctuated by the fact that the rules stated that if the coaches did NOT enter the game, then someone WOULD be evicted. But if they DID enter the game, then NO ONE would be evicted. Simple mathematics combined with remedial logic and rationality would dictate that (with the number of people left in the game and the number of weeks left until finale) it should have been the other way around! The way the twist worked, you’re either left with 7 players or with 12. If the 7 player option happened, the coaches knew that they’d be bringing back in people that they had already kicked out to fill the house. That would clearly detract them from all not hitting the button, because not everyone is going to want to face people that they have already rallied against to get out. Had the option been reversed (eviction if coaches enter, no eviction if they don’t), then no matter what the coaches chose to do, we’d be left with 12 players or with 11 players – both similarly workable/fair numbers, and MUCH more sensible….but, of course, then we wouldn’t have saved the precious Boogie/Frank 2nd-rate Chilltown alliance that was on its way out the door.
2) Waste Shane’s entire HoH week.
Shane should definitely be more pissed off than anyone about last night’s series of events. All of the work put into the plan to backdoor Frank without him or Boogie knowing (which was awesomely kept secret for the entire week somehow) was a complete waste of both time and strategy.
3) Waste the past four weeks of all of our lives.
If you told me in advance that any show that I watch (no matter how much I like it) was going to start itself over in four weeks, I’d probably just wait four weeks to start watching the show. Just sayin’…
4) Continue in the ever-growing tradition of screwing with inherent game parameters.
“Reset button”? Are you kidding me??? The only “reset button” that should be pushed is to “reset” the Big Brother game back to the early/mid 2000’s when it had some semblance of integrity.
I’m drawing the definitive line in the sand of when things started to get REALLY out of hand with Season 11’s coup d’etat. Season 12 stepped it up a bit with the Diamond Power of Veto that was just handed to me through Producer’s Pandora’s Box. Season 13 went WAY over the top with the twist near the end of the game that basically did nothing other than ensure the safety of two very specific players (Rachel and Jordan). And now we start again in Season 14 with this. I think that Season 13’s offense was a bit worse, but it’s still early this year. Once that coach’s room turns into Pandora’s Box again (like we all know it will), get ready for potential game manipulation like we’ve never seen before!
Although I, personally don’t like twists, I am of the understanding that I am probably in the vocal minority, and that most casual viewers of Big Brother probably enjoy the twists. And I am not at all against twists, in general. I am against twists that pinpoint favoritism to a specific person or group of people.
Big Brother seasons typically have “theme twists” and then “side twists”. Theme twists are the twists that are announced pre-season and that the show is based around. Coaches, Duos, Saboteur, Exes, Couples, etc. Side twists are the little unexpected twists that crop up during the game like America’s Player or Pandora’s Box or just other general surprises that Julie drops on the houseguests during the season. I am 100% all for theme twists. I think that they make each season more self-contained and definable, and it’s fun for the houseguests entering the house to know that something big is coming…
…It’s those side twists that start getting sketchy. And it never used to be that way. Each year things get more and more suspect. “Rigged” is not even the word that I would use as much as “manipulated”. Anyone who has followed me over the past couple years can attest to the fact that I have been a very strong defender of production and the fact that they are making a television show, so there needs to be some leeway granted in many situations. But I’m having a really hard time keeping my faith in the “powers that be” over in the Big Brother world. And truthfully, it makes me sad.
There’s a reason that the ratings for this season are lower than they’ve been in years…and it ain’t the Olympics. Get it together, Big Brother. You’re better than this. You’ve created some of the greatest competition-based television programming in the history of reality TV! You’re not too far down the rabbit hole, and there’s still opportunity to recover and save face. On behalf of myself and all the other fans that have dedicated over a decade of our lives watching (and, in my case, playing) the game … please come back to us, Big Brother. We miss you.