Big Brother is hosting a holly jolly alumni reunion this holiday season, by way of its new spinoff Big Brother Reindeer Games.
Much like the mothership’s truncated celebrity editions, Big Brother Reindeer Games is only spanning a couple of weeks, with six total episodes running from Monday’s premiere through Thursday, Dec. 21. But unlike the celebrity editions, Reindeer Games won’t involve any nominations, house-voted evictions or live broadcasts. Instead, the nine BB veterans returning for the spinoff will compete in a series of daily challenges, with Santa’s Showdown determining who will get eliminated at the end of each episode.
But the competitions do at least take place in the usual Big Brother house, there’s still plenty of whispered scheming going on, and the Diary Room sessions are still a staple — an excellent holiday present for those of us who’ve been missing Britney Haynes’ iconic DR appearances. (This time around, Britney is joined by Cody Calafiore, Nicole Franzel, Frankie Grande, Taylor Hale, Cameron Hardin, Josh Martinez, Xavier Prather and Danielle Reyes.)
Season 11 winner Jordan Lloyd appears in the premiere as one of Santa’s elves and hosts each competition. First up, we have the Naughty and Nice Challenge, which will apparently be the first competition every day. In this one, players must observe a series of clues that hint at the title of a famous Christmas song — but even if multiple houseguests (sorry, lodge guests) name the correct song in the Diary Room, only the first person to do so will win the challenge and earn the Naughty and Nice power. In this case, that’s Britney, who correctly guesses “Up on the Housetop” first and nabs that power: an advantage for herself in the next competition, and a disadvantage for one player that she decides to put on the naughty list. (It’s Cody!)
Ultimately, Britney’s advantage and Cody’s disadvantage are pretty inconsequential at the Jingle Bell Brawl, which requires players to fill up other players’ mailboxes with letters to Santa, then deliver any letters that have been placed in their own mailboxes throughout the competition. The more letters someone receives in their mailbox from fellow lodge guests, the more emphatically they’re getting targeted by the rest of the house. Britney starts with the advantage of one fewer envelope in her mailbox, while Cody starts with one extra — but it’s very evident that Cameron is getting targeted here, with seemingly endless envelopes flowing into his mailbox for the entire competition.
Frankie, meanwhile, proudly announces at the start of the challenge that he’s simply going to put letters in everyone‘s mailbox and not play favorites, which is a strategy that pays off nicely for him. He doesn’t get many letters in his mailbox, so the delivery process takes very little time, and he emerges victorious from the Jingle Bell Brawl. Not only is Frankie now safe from elimination for the day, but he gets to choose which two players will go head to head in the all-important Santa’s Showdown, which will send one person home.
Cameron seems like an obvious pick for the Showdown, given how passionately he was targeted in the Jingle Bell Brawl, so that’s a no-brainer for Frankie. And in her one-on-one chat with Frankie later, Taylor observes that Frankie ought to send Cody into the challenge, as well, given that he’s forever a threat in the Big Brother house — and she’s right! But Frankie and Cody are close outside the house, and they kicked off this premiere by promising to keep each other safe until the end, so Taylor’s sensible pitch falls on deaf ears.
Frankie opts to send Cameron and Xavier into the face-off, in which they need to be the first to complete an elaborate puzzle that reveals an ornate Christmas sweater. There are a lot of pieces in this puzzle — certainly more than in the average Big Brother competition, including some pieces that stack on top of others, instead of interlocking with them — and Cameron and Xavier are evenly matched for a long time. But Xavier eventually pulls ahead, and after tracking down one last piece that had gotten kicked to the side, he completes his sweater puzzle and rings his buzzer, thus eliminating Cameron. But hey, at least Cam’s walking away with a year-long subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club! Though I fear the Clark Griswold reference may have been lost on him.
So, what’d you think of the Reindeer Games premiere?