Have now finished BB5 and just straight to the point, I loved it. It has aged the best of the first five seasons I've watched so far and I truly believe if this went to air today it would rate. The change of casting to sexy singles was a massive hit in my eyes, it allowed for the housemates to be more carefree with their behaviour as they mainly have themselves to worry about and also more showmances which did cause more drama when necessary. The cast was pretty amazing, everyone did contribute and everyone had an impact in some way. Multiple people hogged the screen time and I don't think too many people were overshadowed. I appreciate the show just embracing Big Brother's tarnished reputation to some degree and flipping off BB critics by making uncut more and more full-on despite the public upset. The house design was cool too, I liked the addition of more rooms and it did start to look more like what I know a Big Brother house to look like.
This season is so much faster-paced than its predecessors. From week 1 there are relationships forming, drama brewing and chaos erupting between almost everyone. As a 21-year-old it is fun to watch other 20-year-olds get drunk and have fun which makes it easy to relate to a lot of the conversations and happenings within the house. The alcohol intake seemed to increase and so did my enjoyment. It's just overall a lot of fun. The tasks were better and everything internal about the series assisted in its fast pacing. Uncut was the main thing I enjoyed, it was so raunchy compared to BB2-4 so it was a lot more fun thanks to Christie and Vesna. Most of the housemates on this I would say are pretty much drunk, horny bogans. And a lot of the housemates remind me of people I know in my everyday life (which is a bit of an insult given I just called them all bogans) so it was very easy to warm to the cast.
Friday night live also makes its debut and I do like it. For people my age the first thing a lot of us think of when we think Big Brother is Friday Night Live. And yes whilst that is probably not an ideal thing to hear associated with Big Brother, it does make me happy to know there is an element of the TEN version that is still remembered by younger people. Bree and Fitzy I feel do work well with Mike, I think the three of them have chemistry on camera and it just works. I wouldn't hate the idea of the hosts alternating between past housemates throughout the season if this was done today but yeah, they just work so I can see why they stuck with the three of them from beginning to end. FNL does make it hard on a binge as it's essentially adding almost 80 minutes of extra content right before eviction, nominations and uncut. So on a binge, it's a bunch of 20 minute daily shows followed by hours of live specials and repeat 14 times.
The three-point twist is interesting, it does allow for louder characters to have the chance to survive and does increase the risk of nominations and broadens it to more than just the three loudest characters, but it rarely had much of an effect as people are going to just be evicted when they're going to be evicted. If the audience hates you, you're gonna get voted out regardless of when you face eviction. I also think it would have been better if the housemates didn't know the initial nominees and if the FNL winner was told the nominees in private in the DR and then the entire house just hears the new nominees without knowing what changed. The fines system was pretty funny, Vesna had some hilarious reactions to them and it did create some form of conflict and had an impact on how they behaved, but it also led to a lot of cop-out nominations which I see as a flaw due to production obviously wanting to push housemates to nominate people on personal levels rather than cop out reasons. And the twin twist just flopped on its own. Given how identical Greg and David AREN'T, they were never gonna pass anyway but it ended up working pretty well in their favour as they were rarely nominated and they could pretty much just coast as far as they could. Off the top of my head, I think they happen to hold the Australian record of longest time spent without facing a public vote, not being up for the vote until Day 72. So yeah, the twin twist flopped compared to the BBUS5 attempt.
There are elements of the season I however do not particularly like, the liar's eviction and twin eviction were just excuses for a live show to me. I've already spoken about the lying about relationship situation, it was unnecessary and if production truly did care that much about it then the two would have been ejected and Dean would have not been allowed into the house. Interviewing the housemates about it in the diary room when they already know who it was just screamed staged to me. And like I said before, the Twin twist was just a waste of time when the twins are still counted as one. Evicting a twin just ended up being redundant and probably assisted in vote campaigning. In all honesty, as well evicting one of the twins in the same week as a double hurt the pacing of the last three weeks due to having three of the more confrontational figures all leave in the matter of half a week.
Now onto my biggest issue with the season which is the bloating of the season to 100 days. I am not opposed to a 100 day season but I am also not opposed to the show being shortened as well to approx 10-11 weeks. The last three weeks were just super boring to watch, it ended up taking me a week to watch them. The storylines are all over by that point and the ending is pretty much determined from there, and when Big Brother has to get them to perform a play, that just goes to show how desperate they are for content. The show didn't need to go on for that long but I do understand that they did it for shock value and I guess in terms of live viewing it is fun to have the show air for as long as it can. I do think it was silly however to evict the housemates so quickly towards the end. Why bloat the season to just have five for the final three weeks? The double could have been delayed so much longer and a final three would have been so much better with Vesna potentially winning.
But I did genuinely enjoy this rewatch a lot. I would go as far as to say it is probably my favourite season? I think it's aged really well in terms of how watchable it is and the cast is just really fun. Gretel is also really great, she isn't too aggressive even with most of the men. Just like last season, she is just really assertive to the audience but who cares. I like to see her stand her ground and also develop on this Jeff Probst type level of passion for the show. She really did work her ass off and you can tell how much effort she put into this even off-camera, they don't make hosts like her anymore. So whilst the end result is not perfect and the last few weeks are slow, I do think this season is really strong. To me, it looks like this is where BB seems to shift to a strictly younger audience as opposed to the everyday Australian target that the first season tried to aim itself at. But in a realistic sense, BB will always be a show that is mainly watched by younger viewers whether anyone wants to accept that or not, that is just how it realistically is and it is how the show has had to and in future will have to produce itself around for the most part. It is at this point in the rewatch starting to feel like a different show with a big focus on in-house drama, over-dramatised storylines and one-dimensional edits of contestants rather than showing them as complex characters talking about their lives. So whilst I do have some faults with BB5 they are pretty nit-picky and overall the series is really strong, and if there is anyone here reading unsure if they should rewatch a season I would recommend this one, despite the fact the season is unlikely to be represented in BB2022.
Housemate thoughts incoming!
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