Up next in our Big Brother All Access Flashback series is Big Brother 6 which aired the summer of 2005 and brought a brand new house along with some of the series’ most memorable Houseguests and the chance for a million dollar reward.
Ahh yes, BB6, easily one of my favorite seasons of Big Brother ever for a lot of reasons, but also one of the most aggravating for several other reasons. Fourteen HGs rolled up to the new house with only six men and eight women after a last minute replacement left the sex-balance uneven. But with this “Summer of Secrets,” anything was possible.
The Season 6 premiere raced through the usual intros and packed more in to a debut episode than any of the previous years. While past years had only introduced the HGs or stopped after the first competition, this time around we saw the intros, learned about the twists, saw a combined food & HoH comp, and even got the first nomination ceremony of the season. It was a busy one.
Big Brother Houseguests that summer included April Lewis, Ashlea Evans, Beau Beasley, Eric Littmann, Howie Gordon, Ivette Corredero, James Rhine, Janelle Pierzina, Jennifer Vasquez, Kaysar Ridha, Maggie Ausburn, Michael Donnellan, Rachel Plencner, and Sarah Hrejsa.
Watching the new HGs race in to the brand new home they soon discovered there was just one bedroom (or was there?) and not even enough beds to go around. Sleeping bags and a cot awaited the unlucky last group which included fan favorite Janelle and led to some early drama when she wanted both a sleeping bag and the cot.
The bedroom space that was one giant area with “nice” beds on one side and less comfortable ones on the other eventually became what we know have with the open, front bedroom and the back bedroom. But what about the other bedroom that we have now? It was a hidden room in Season 6 that was left to be discovered.
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Once the new Big Brother HGs settled in they had their usual meet & greet and while we were getting to know them everyone in there already knew someone else. That season’s casting twist involved bringing in pairs with each duo thinking they were the only pair in the house. While not required to work together, the prize money was doubled to a million if the pair managed to become the Final Two HGs. I guess Evel Dick and Daniele missed their chance! As for which HGs were pairs, Big Brother kept viewers in the dark that first episode.
For the first competition the HGs stripped down to their swim trunks and bikinis for a pool comp. They self-divided and climbed on to a balancing surf board where they had to shoot coconuts in to a basket. The team with the most baskets would win food for the week while the losers were relegated to PB&J. Yep, still no Big Brother slop.
The winning team had the added bonus of getting to compete in an endurance competition to see which of them would become the first Head of Household. James was the first to drop, intentionally, and soon others followed, but it took over two hours before we were down to just Howie and Rachel. Eventually Howie gave in to Rachel who got to be the first HoH to sleep in the all-new HoH suite upstairs.
Nominations weren’t far away and the lines were being drawn. Those seven Houseguests from the food comp’s winning team? They made a deal to stick together for at least that first week which put the other team in their sights. Guys were nervous that they would be targeted with the women’s numbers advantage which set up a plan to block vote there as well.
Rachel soon made her final decisions and loaded up the key wheel before gathering everyone in the kitchen for the ceremony we had watched until this past year when Big Brother introduced the twisty-key display screen for nominations. Keys were handed out and the nominations were revealed to be Ashlea and Kaysar.
So who would end up being evicted first from Big Brother 6? What about those pairs that Big Brother was hiding from us? You’ve got to watch to find out what happened next!
This was a great season with an incredible cast. The drama was intense and the alliances were feuding at full-tilt with the Sovereign Six battling the Nerd Herd, oops, I mean the Friendship. It was anything but a dull summer and once you’ve seen this season you’ll long for such a high-drama dynamic as compared to some of the more recent installments.
Want to watch Big Brother 6 or any of the other past seasons? Every single Big Brother US episode is available online through CBS’s All Access subscription. They’re running a free trial week if you sign-up through one of our links. After that it’s $5.99/month and includes dozens of other CBS shows both new and old classics. All Access will also be the home of Live Feeds for Big Brother 17, so that’s where we’ll be watching the BB17 HGs this summer. Check it out!
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