Irena: I did like Irena she was a pretty strong first evictee. She was fun in the beginning and was interested when getting into hijinks with Carlo and the others. But she did become annoying with the arguing with Big Brother about the nominations talk, just own it and accept the consequence. When she went on about wanting to stage a mass walk out it became a bit irritating and she became more annoying than enjoyable to watch.
Jaime: I have almost nothing to say about Jaime. He was literally never shown. He lied about being bi and then Saxon says he felt uncomfortable at times with him. He had half his hair dyed blonde at the front. That’s really it. Re-reading my write up I take back that everyone is three-dimensional, Jaime was not. Congrats to him on getting $10,000.
Carlo: Now Carlo is interesting. He was funny at times, but I mean he’s clearly unsanitary. I’ve heard from where he went into the house with an STI, which makes his dirty habits a lot more health cautious than they normally would. I think he went too early, I would have liked for him to stay in the house for the merge but I can’t say I wanted him to last too much longer. His hatred of Belinda is something I don’t fully understand, but I guess it is what it is.
Leah: I really liked her and I wish she stayed longer than what she did and I’m happy that her eviction was at least one of the closer ones of the season. It would be hard being a younger person that wants to be treated the same as her peers only to be not taken too seriously. But at the same time, it’s blatant that she was hard to live with. A person doesn’t wrack up 30+ nomination points in 3 weeks for being an unproblematic housemate. I found her humorous and she really started to mature after a few weeks had passed and she became comfortable. Although the series doesn’t really need her to remain interesting, I would have preferred she stayed longer over Belinda.
Belinda: Belinda is probably the first housemate I have seen who genuinely did not get along with the cast as a whole and was the hardest one socially to live with. I don’t personally get what it is about her that the square house people + Ben hated so much as to me she came across as really nice and fine. I won’t ever really know as I’m watching this 18 years later with no uplate or feeds, but I don’t really get it. It was yet so apparent she struggled in there. She was nominated every week and Carlo proper ignored her on his way out of after his eviction. I felt sorry for her at first but as the cast shrunk, she didn’t really offer me anything once Carlo was gone. The whole belindagate scenario was uncomfortable in general. The fact that a person was murdered for simply being gay is a scary thought even though it was almost 20 years ago. The whole thing is just not nice to hear. The Square housemates seemed to completely resent her after she confessed about it to them, which I don’t see what about this is her fault. I don’t blame her for leaving as how could she physically be okay with the thought of staying with people who genuinely hate her for another two whole months.
Ben: I actually really enjoyed his pot stirring behaviour and main character energy. He starts off seeming like he’ll be annoying and then blows up to being even worse than what you’d expect him to be. He is clearly a very controlling dominating person who likes to be in control and also likes to be right. He was bored and decided to stir people for no reason, why would I not like to watch that happen. There’s no way he survives any eviction at that point in the season anyway, with his behaviour he was going to be evicted there. I found it kind of funny how everyone kept saying “he’s playing the game” and whenever I hear these old school housemates say this I just cringe. What is “playing the game” in this version. And by that, I mean what do they actually mean when they say it, because most of the time it just sounds like a cliché. How is acting polarising playing the game where it does nothing but guarantee you won’t win.
By watching 2001 and 2002 you should naturally presume the audience is going to award the win to the least problematic person. So, in what world is Ben being problematic playing the game? It makes zero sense to me and I feel like people say it just to say it. Another thing I’ve never understood is how nominating your biggest threat is a strategically optimal? For instance, if you think Reggie is a threat why nominate her when being a threat means the audience likes her. Why are you bothering to nominate someone who the audience won’t vote out and why risk yourself being nominated against them when you are saying you don’t think they will be evicted. Unless, someone’s thinking is that if they nominate the favourite, they will crack under pressure and the audience will turn on them? But unless I hear a valid reason for that I’m just going to look at the person nominating as if they are an idiot who is looking for a cop out nomination reason.
Overall, Ben was a fun character and is the first to experience the wrath of Gretel Killeen and her biased style of interviewing, yet he handles it quite well. Once Ben leaves the narrative of the season does take a turn and the dynamics of the house really do shift. His love/hate relationship with Reggie is one of my guilty favourites.
Claire: She sleeps a lot. Is that kind of all I have to say? Possibly. She has that one bad week where she breaks down because of nominating. I was happy she left when she did as I didn’t want to have a total of 8 big characters all leave in a row. It was nice to lose a dud earlyish.
Joanne: Here we have someone who I actually really did like. Joanne was nice, dynamic, well spoken, intelligent and fascinating to watch. Her eviction is really the first to begin the boring stretch of remaining episodes due to her storyline being so focused on numerous other housemates. She starts off as the token girl next door who everyone seems to get along with and casually flirts with some of the guys. She is focused on being the sex symbol of the series and she seems to be okay with that. Once the houses merge, she forms bonds with Vincent and Saxon on top of the one she has with Patrick and that’s where this whole fiasco starts. She literally had the boys eating out of the palm of her hand and if this was a strategic version of the show she’d probably thrive. She’s almost like a pseudo BBUS Janelle or a Parvati from survivor US. I could just see her doing extremely well in a strategic version of the show. I don’t think poorly of her for what she did as I have said previously, she’s a young girl who was in a house full of people she got along with, so what she chose to do was her decision. I can’t say I’d actively try to make the same choices but what do I know? Like I mentioned earlier I still think regardless of the Patrick birthday incident in the spa she goes anyway. ANYONE of the others nominated against Daniel and Reggie go that week, there’s no way any of them survive. The 86% to evict is more of a reflection of who the audience would have preferred to go rather than it being perceived that 86% of the audience didn’t like her.
