Big Brother 2 opens with a shot of the new and improved Big Brother house. It’s much, much nicer than last season’s house, which was so ugly it made my eyes bleed tears of vomit. I’m very aesthetically sensitive, people. The place looks extremely Real World, all recessed lighting and earth-toned pillows. Julie Chen says some stuff about the houseguests having no privacy, anywhere, ever, as very dramatic violin music swells in the background. Julie Chen reads her lines like she’s reporting on the war in Bosnia, rather than the wacky hijinks of a bunch of strangers, picked to live in a house and have their lives taped. Oops, wrong show.
So, Julie strides out of the house, wearing what looks like a shiny purple jumpsuit. Sadly, it’s a top and pants. Still ugly, but not nearly as funny as the jumpsuit would have been; I had this entire John Travolta joke worked out. Damn it. Anyway, Julie Chen explains that the houseguests are going to compete for food, luxuries, and power, and, once a week, they’re going to evict “one of their own.” Eventually, she says, there will be only one Survivor. So to speak. She reminds us that the winner gets a cool half mil.
“Who are the twelve people willing to give up their lives, their loved ones and their privacy?” Julie wonders, before telling us that the Big Brother crew showed up at each houseguest’s home mere days ago, to give them the news that they’re about to get a new address! She smiles prissily, and we cut to a montage of houseguests, each finding a large key attached to a tag reading, “Congratulations Houseguest! Welcome to Big Brother 2!” I love how everyone acts all surprised when they see the key, as though the arrival of the camera crew didn’t tip them off.
Krista finds her key on a table in the restaurant where she works. “Oh mah God,” she breathes.
Autumn finds hers on her bed. “Oh meeee God,” she whines, wrinkling up her nose.
Monica finds hers in the fridge. She goes crazy. “Oh, God, noooooooo!” she screams, and grips her skull.
Sheryl flashes the key to her family. Her son jumps up and down like a little girl. Her daughter looks totally mortified.
Justin’s girlfriend kisses him. Actually, considering what we find out about Justin, it’s probably not his girlfriend. He might not even know her name.
Much squealing and jumping up and down from Bunky, Hardy, and Mike, respectively. Mike buys the patrons in his bar a round of martini shots. He’s wearing a visor sideways. What’s up with that?
Will’s fellow physicians manfully shake his hand and punch him on the shoulder. Will is hot.
The other house hottie, Hardy, finishes up his kick-boxing round and tells us that “life is an adventure.” He’s sweating all over the camera.
Krista smiles and claims that she’s “the number-one drama queen.” She’s cute. She looks just like my college roommate.
Will walks around in his white lab coat some more, before sitting down in what looks like a hospital trauma room and explaining that he walks a fine line between confidence and cockiness. I wonder what he does for a living.
More reaction shots from the new housemates. People scream. Kent sits by a swimming pool and smarms that he knows “eleven other people who are going to be in trouble.”
Shannon and her volleyball pose in her front yard. She introduces herself as “the athlete.” Then she puts on a one-shouldered tank top and goes inside her house and makes dinner and tells the camera that the whole world is going to know every time the houseguests (insert coy pause) cook dinner. Yeah, but only if they can be bothered to watch, Shannon.
Kent is still sitting by his pool. “If you want me to, I’d be happy to get on your nerves,” he says. No comment. Well, not yet.
Monica tells us she owns a candy store. “I am Brooklyn,” she says. Um, okay. According to the CBS web site, she also likes to “date football.” I think Monica has a tenuous hold on the English language at best.
The houseguests are told they have, like, ten minutes to pack and then they have to hit the road. Cue ten fascinating minutes of people packing before we cut back to houseguest introductions.
“I’m Autumn, and I’m only good when I’m bad,” Autumn coos, and then gets in her bikini and stands in her swimming pool and strikes a series of sex-pot poses. Someone needs constant attention, I fear.
Bunky stands in his backyard, in front of a rainbow-colored pinwheel, and tells the camera that he’s “triple C: creative, complex and crazy.”
Sheryl poses in her foyer and coos that she’s an experience we’ll never forget. That sounds kind of dirty to me.
Speaking of dirty, Will stands naked in his closet. He holds out an orange ruffled tuxedo top, and grins. “I’m the world’s leading authority on bad seventies clothes,” he says. I’m in love with him.
Bunky’s husband and friends watch him pack.
Krista loads a suitcase full of cigarettes, which totally explains her man voice.
“I plan by episode five, there’ll be a girl washing my clothes,” Will smirks. What happened to our love, Will? You’re dead to me now.
More packing.
Mike leans back in a booth at this bar and admits that he likes “chilling with the lay-dies.” I crack up at this despite myself. Mike’s a bit old for this routine, but at least he’s kind of amusing.
Nicole holds her cat by her professional stove (I mean, she’s standing to her professional stove; she isn’t, like, holding the kitty over a lit burner, or something) and purrs that we’re either going to love her or hate her.
Justin stands on his balcony. He tells us he’s “Justin Credible, and Justin Case you didn’t know, now you do.” Justin is Joey Tribbiani.
Ten more minutes of packing, then a hundred years of houseguests calling their friends and relatives to tell them that they’re going on CBS’s other reality show. Hugs are exchanged. People jump in their cars and drive away.
It’s ChenTime. She says something about the houseguests having nothing in common except courage or some shit before explaining the house’s sleeping arrangements. Basically, there are, like, three good beds (including a waterbed), a couple of halfway decent beds, and several cots. There’s also, for one incredibly unlucky houseguest, a sleeping bag on the floor. One of the bedrooms, Julie Chen says, “is the size of a large closet.” The other two bedrooms are separated only by a Plexiglas wall. I don’t get why the Plexiglas wall is a big deal. It’s not like the houseguests have all this privacy, anyway. How much of a difference does one glass wall make? Whatever. Julie then tells the camera, with the seriousness of Walter Cronkite announcing the assassination of JFK, that there is one private bedroom in the house, complete with a locked door. She smirks that she’ll explain that later.
They let the houseguests into the front yard, which is, of course, not actually a yard at all, but part of the CBS soundstage. Julie Chen tells them that they can’t talk to each other until they’re actually inside the house. Everyone looks pretty stoked. Julie chatters about some more stuff, but nobody listens to her because they’re all checking each other out. Blah blah summer-long-power-struggle blah blah half a million dollars. Julie tells the houseguests that they’re about to enter a world with no phones, no television, no Internet access, and no music. Kill me now. Seriously. Can they at least read a book, or something?
The houseguests enter the house in three randomly chosen groups of four. Julie advises them to get inside, pick a bed, and stay by it. They have sixty seconds to find a bed before the group is allowed inside.
Nicole, Hardy, Shannon, and Monica are the first group. They race inside and straight to the bedrooms. Monica scores the waterbed, and Hardy gets the primo queen-sized bed in the other room. The group manages to get the mediocre beds, and the final group is more or less screwed; Autumn, for example, lands a cot. No one is more screwed than Kent, though, who ends up with the sleeping bag. Once inside, everyone starts screaming and talking at the same time. It’s like the first day at summer camp. There’s a lot of hugging and squealing of “girl!” In an interview, Autumn admits that the first thing she did was “check out the dudes, scope out the competition for the girls.” Immediately, she leaps on Hardy’s bed and throws her leg over his and kisses his cheek.
Shannon gets in the shower and looks up at the camera posted above the showerhead. Do they really use that? I mean, are they actually filmed in the shower? Dude, is this VoyeurDorm or something? She wanders back to the bedrooms and pronounces the pad “sweet.” Everyone else is talking at the same time, and I have no idea what anyone is saying.
Then Nicole bosses everyone into the living room and sits them in a circle and makes everyone share their names and professions and whatnot. “Nicole was all, I am lion, hear me roar,” Shannon says. Looked more like “I am bossy, vote me off” to me. Not that getting to know each other is a bad idea; Nicole just comes off as pushy and obnoxious when she suggests it.
She starts. “I’m Nicole, and I’m married,” she says, like she expects all the men to fall on their swords in despair at this news. Bunky tells the group that he’s married, but he doesn’t mention that he’s married to a man. In an interview, he whispers conspiratorially that he’s walking a line between staying in the closet and not technically lying. Mike is . He says that his friends call him “Mike Boogie,” and he’s thirty. I so want to hate Mike, but I just can’t. He doesn’t take himself seriously enough for me to hate him. Hardy tells the group that he lives in Miami. He’s such a bohunk. Autumn confesses, in an interview, that she loves him. We know, Autumn. She’s also finagled a seat right to him. Autumn tells the group that she’s a single mom with a four-year-old. In her one-on-one, Krista tells the camera that “Hardy is sent from heaven.” We get it. Ladies love cool Hardy. Back in The Circle Of Houseguests, Monica tells the group she’s been thirty for the last fifteen years. Everyone laughs. In addition to owning her own candy store, Monica prepares women to go from welfare to work. Dude, I can’t make fun of that! Seriously, how cool is it to own your own candy store? ["It would be even cooler if you knew someone who owned her own candy store, and therefore I need to get myself introduced to Monica somehow." -- Sars]
In an interview, Mike explains that he doesn’t think Monica or Nicole is playing the game very well. They’re acting “real,” he says, like they’re still in the audition process. So, Mike’s harmless class-clown schtick is a put-on, and part of a larger plan, huh? That’s actually kind of smart, provided he can keep it up.
Back over at The Getting To Know You extravaganza, Sheryl tells the group that she has two kids, and she’s not going to tell anyone how old they are. Will looks over at her lasciviously. “Sherry, any way you look at it, is hot. And I hope her 17-year-old son isn’t watching, because I’m kind of embarrassed that I think his mom is hot,” he admits in an interview. I know that Sheryl is the one who loves Dr. Laura, and yet I do not hate her yet. She’s sort of sassy. , it’s Justin’s turn. He tells the houseguests that he doesn’t have any kids he “takes credit for.” What in the name of God is wrong with his teeth? He’s got, like, this one giant snaggletooth that sticks out when he talks. It’s very distracting. In an interview, Nicole, wearing too-young-for-her pigtails, snips that Justin is too crude. What’s up with her eyebrows? They’re all black and drawn in, and they scare me. Justin, in his own interview, admits that Nicole “turns him off big-time.”
Back to The Never-Ending Circle Of Getting To Know You. Nicole makes some noise about being worried about “taking a shit, and taking out her tampon,” on TV. Who’s crude, now? Behind her, Kent makes a face. He hates the youngsters today! He says some boring stuff to the crowd about his kids, before admitting that he doesn’t wear a wedding ring because his wife “won’t let him.” I’m so sure. This bonding exercise will never end. It’s Krista’s turn. She’s 28, with either an eleven-year-old or eleven-month-old daughter? I’m not sure which; her Jodie-Foster-in-Nell accent is too strong. She’s cute, though. Finally, it’s my ex-boyfriend Will’s turn. When he announces that he’s a doctor, Shannon shoots him this blatant “hey, a hot doctor,” look that totally cracks me up. He tells the group that he deferred going to medical school for a year so he could attend law school and business school. So, is he a lawyer, too, or did he just take a year of law school, and then a few business classes? Because law school is three years, and business school is, what, two, also? That’s five years, unless he got a simultaneous MBA/JD, which is possible. I know it takes four years of medical school before you even start your residency. So, how old is Will? I guess it works out mathematically. I’m just saying that I don’t think Will could possibly have all three degrees. Also, dude, focus. Everyone in the house is all amazed by his giant brain. Shannon finally gets her turn. She says she’s an “independent contractor,” doing everything from modeling to real estate. She admits that she doesn’t want to go to an office every day. Sing it, sister. In an interview, Nicole says she doesn’t like Shannon. In her interview, Shannon says she doesn’t like Nicole. Cat fight! Nicole makes some noise about how they should all get naked now and just get it over with, and everyone laughs, but no one takes off a stitch. Then they all give themselves a round of applause.
ChenTime! It’s the first challenge of Big Brother 2. The winners get a week’s worth of fresh groceries. The losers eat PB and J for a week. The way Chen explains the challenge makes it sound like some people could be eating chicken piccata and ice cream cones, while other people eat peanut butter sandwiches, but that is not the case. The houseguests have to work together to get the food, and if they succeed, everyone gets to enjoy it. It’s also the easiest challenge ever. After the houseguests kiss Julie’s ass for a bit (“Julie’s hot,” one of the men says when she makes her appearance), she sends them into the back yard, where a “brand new 2001 Buick Rendezvous” is parked on the basketball court. The Rendezvous is so the Pontiac Aztek of summer 2001, except it’s not as ugly. The houseguests have to load several bags of groceries into the car, and then they all have to climb in. And they have to sit, packed in there with the all doors shut, for an entire minute. One stinking minute. This is cake. And it takes the houseguests about two seconds to load the car and climb in. Shannon manages to land on Will’s lap and grins like the cat that ate the canary. Inside the car, everyone talks at the same time, and I have no idea who’s talking about what. Once the clock is up, Julie Chen tells them that whomever can stay in the car the longest gets to take it home. No bathroom breaks, no sleeping. In an interview, Autumn whines that she’s a single mother with no car. She really wants the Buick, she says. “We got mad groceries, man,” Justin murmurs, mostly to himself. Nicole tells everyone that they ought to make a pact that whoever walks away with the car is the first person voted out of the house. Her suggestion doesn’t go over really well (everyone sort of shoots her a dirty look), but people start piling out of the car anyway. Eventually, everyone but Kent, Autumn, and Sheryl trots inside and starts unpacking the groceries
Inside the house, Hardy tells Mike that “people might feel adversely about” the person who wins the car. Mike’s all “exactly,” but he’s thinking, “Huh?” In an interview, Autumn says that Sheryl is a compassionate person, and that Sheryl knew Autumn needed the car more than she did. Indeed, Sheryl does get out of the car. In an interview, she says that she knows Autumn needs the car, and that Kent’s wife demanded that he get her a car, so she decided to leave it to the two of them. She’s probably also sick of Autumn’s pity party.
After the groceries are all unpacked, some of the houseguests wander out to check on Kent and Autumn. Monica tries to offer Kent her waterbed in exchange for giving Autumn the car. No go. Justin maws on an apple, and establishes that Kent’s wife already has a car. But Kent will not budge. And, you know, Kent is an ass, but this is a game. It might have been good strategy for him to give Autumn the car so as to rack up some brownie points with the other houseguests, but if Autumn wants that car, she ought to just stick it out. So, Kent calls Justin “man,” like, fifty times, and then Justin walks over to Autumn and sticks his head in the window and tells her that Kent’s going to wait it out, and she needs to think about how much she really wants the car. Autumn and Kent sit there. Kent mentions the luxury tax Autumn would have to pay if she won the car. Then he tells her that they’re missing out on the party inside, and implies that people are already making alliances.
Inside, Hardy is taking off his shirt. Minutes later, Autumn gives up and runs, almost crying, out of the car. It’s been an hour and a half. An hour and a half. Ninety minutes. God, what a wuss. Here in Los Angeles, the local “alternative” radio station gave away a new Volkswagen Beetle to someone who managed to stay in the Bug with five other people for a full week. A week! Kent says if Autumn wanted the car that much, she shouldn’t have gotten out. Autumn cries to the camera that Kent isn’t very compassionate. Yeah, but why should Kent give her the car? He just met her. Dry your tears, Autumn, because these people don’t owe you shit.
Now that the drama of the car contest is over, the houseguests get into their jammies and sit outside and play spin the bottle/truth or dare. Kent stupidly sits the game out. Dude, have you never watched Survivor? The outsider always gets voted off first. Kent’s strategy is very poor, especially if the rest of the cast already thinks he’s a jerk for not giving crybaby Autumn the car. We learn nothing from the truth or dare game, sadly, other than the fact that Justin once slept with three women in one day. Not at the same time, though, he clarifies. Mike drops trou at one point, and slaps his own bare ass. That was exciting. Justin strips to his undies and jumps in the pool, He loves showing off his body. In an interview, Bunky whispers that spin-the-bottle is “scary” for him, and that he doesn’t enjoy being in the closet. In his own interview, Justin and his fang admit that he loves Bunky, but if Bunky hadn’t said that he was married, Justin would “have suspicions.” Bunky repeats that no one asked if he had a wife, or a marriage license. I’m not really sure why Bunky’s keeping his sexuality secret. Is he trying to smoke out all the homophobes?
Later, one of the houseguests asks if anyone is gay. Justin raises his hand. “Full-fledged, man,” he chirps. Everyone laughs. Then Kent reveals his true colors. He looks right into the camera, very seriously, and admits that Justin scared him with “the gay talk.” He sniffs. “I said to him, ‘Justin, I can not imagine that you are gay.’” Inside the house, Justin walks past Kent and casually pats Kent on the ass. Kent jumps and looks at Justin, all freaked out. Heh. I think Justin might be fucking with Kent’s mind. In his “I’m Just Full Of Hate” Interview, Kent leans into the camera and says that homosexuality is “deviant, it’s perverse and it’s the kind of lifestyle that 90 percent of Americans don’t want near their family.” You know what I don’t want near my family? Closed-minded, ignorant homophobes like Kent. Shut up, Kent. Also, nice fake statistics. Outside the house, Kent walks over to Bunky and tells him that he, Kent, just wants to be with people he feels comfortable with. Bunky says carefully that he’s “all about respect.” Kent takes this statement and runs with it. “Yeah! Don’t push it on me,” he says. “It used to be sickos, weirdos and freaks. Now it’s ‘alternative lifestyles.’ Don’t come into my face and tell me it’s normal.” Bunky sort of nods and crosses his arms. I hate Kent. Also, how stupid is he, to unleash his crazy hatred on the first day? While he is under the impression that Bunky is straight, doesn’t he even consider the possibility that Bunky might have gay relatives, or friends, or that Bunky might just flat-out disagree with Kent? Apparently not. Then Kent tells Bunky that he, Kent, is going to hook up with Justin. “What do you mean, ‘hook up’?” Bunky asks, raising his eyebrows. Hee. Kent means he’s going to form an alliance. With Justin? Kent’s a moron. He’s systematically picking the people in the house least likely to want to form any kind of anything with him. Kent tries to get Bunky in on his massively delusional alliance right there in the middle of the yard. Bunky doesn’t say much one way or the other. In an interview, Bunky is all, “[Kent] said he’ll never vote for me, and I’m all, yeah, wait till you find out I’m gay, then you’ll vote for me.” Word, Bunky. , Kent slithers over to Justin and tries to get him to “hook up.” Justin wisely doesn’t agree to anything one way or the other, but he does tell Kent that he needs to try to act “more sympathetic” to the rest of the houseguests. Kent sort of agrees. Could Justin be smarter than he seems? Nah.
Bedtime. Hardy strips down to his Marky Mark-style boxer-briefs, right in front of a drooling Autumn. Um. Yeah. That was pretty impressive. He has a hell of a body. Hardy climbs into bed and hits the lights, and then Autumn jumps into his bed and gets under the covers with him. On the first day! Hardy is all, what the hell? She starts chattering, and he responds in a very, very sleepy voice, but Autumn doesn’t get the hint.
Autumn: Do you mind being affectionate with me?
Hardy: What do you mean, "affectionate"?
Autumn: Like, touching me. Does that bother you?
Hardy: [tersely] Not yet.
Autumn, meet Amaya. Amaya, meet Autumn. I think there are some things you need to discuss. Finally, Hardy makes Autumn go back to her own bed, and then says some stuff about Autumn needing to love herself, or she’ll never, ever learn to love anybody else, and I think he lifted his entire speech from a Madonna song.
Day two. People sort of wander around. The younger men -- and Bunky -- strip their shirts off and lift some weights and show off their abs. Monica and Sheryl and Autumn and Kent watch Hardy jump rope. Monica says that she loves her body, and then kisses each of her biceps. That totally cracked me up.
Later, Will, Justin, and Hardy hit the pool. I think the cameraman is in love with Hardy, because we get about twelve loving shots of his abs. Shannon strips down to her bikini and joins them. Her voice-over tells us that other women feel threatened by her, and she gets along better with guys. I hate girls who refuse to get along with other women, and then blame those women for it. I feel like they’ve bought into some kind of self-loathing “women are catty backstabbers” kind of rhetoric. Trust me, I have a lot of male friends, but I have a ton of girlfriends, too, and I think Shannon might be pleasantly surprised if she ever stopped thinking that all the other girls are jealous of her fake boobies. Oops, did I say that?
Tonight, Julie Chen tells us, one of the houseguests will sleep in the private, locked, head-of-household room. The HoH room comes complete with maid service, a completely stocked fridge, and, best of all, privacy. The HoH also gets to choose the two houseguests who are nominated for eviction. The houseguests compete to be HoH using something Julie Chen has dubbed The Big Brother Wheel Of First Impressions, or the BBWOFI. This is how it works: someone spins the BBWOFI, which eventually comes to rest at two attributes, like “bitchiest” or “smelliest.” The spinner then has to call up two housemates who most embody said attributes. Then the rest of the roommates vote for one of the two of them to be HoH. The person who loses this preliminary vote is out of the game. This keeps going until there are only two people left in the game. This game would be way more fun if I could tell what the BBWOFI landed on, ever, and who’s being called up as what, but the editing here is really bad. In an interview, Mike says that the game is designed to cause dissension in the group. Well, yeah. Because the more dissension, the better the reality show. Nicole thinks the competition is just wrong, probably because it only goes to prove that no one likes her. In her interview, Shannon says people already know they have labels, like “the body, the brain, the country sex-pot,” and this game plays into that. The country sex-pot. Heh. Is that Krista? From what I can glean from the screaming and squealing associated with this game, at one point, Autumn is deemed “the smelliest,” and pouts. Hardy is “the vainest,” but he says he “just likes to take care of [him]self.” Nicole gets called up there as “loudest,” and only gets one vote for HoH, which just about kills her. “It was really demeaning,” she sniffs in an interview. “Embarrassing” I could buy, but “demeaning”? It’s not like Will forced her to do his laundry. Bunky calls Kent up as “the bitchiest!” I heart Bunky. Finally, the contestants for HoH get whittled down to Mike and Sheryl. Julie Chen tells them to make a “final statement” about why the houseguests should vote for them, a la Survivor. Sheryl seems to be having a lot of fun. She tells everyone just to vote as they see fit. When it’s Mike’s turn, someone yells that he ought to “old-school rap!” And he does:
Bitchiest, coolest, horniest, vainest
Looking for the best?
Don’t choose me, I ain’t up for the test
I’m happy in my bed
We’ll have a big party.
He might be vain, but he jumps rope, his name is Hardy.
It’s hot out there, we’ll chill in the sun,
Pick me, or her, we’re still gonna have fun.
Thunderous applause. Remember, they don’t have a radio. This is the most music they’ve heard in…okay, two days. Julie Chen nods, like, yo, she’s down with this. Mike’s mad rapping skillz win him HoH. He dances like David Silver in celebration. Julie reminds Mike that he has to choose the two houseguests who will be nominated for eviction on Saturday. Mikes makes a thoughtful face. In an interview, he says that “a very dark reality hit him in the face, that [he] would be responsible for killing the hopes and dreams of one person.” Okay, dramatic much?
Julie Chen sits on a window seat in her special front-yard studio in a new cream suit, and reminds us that Mike will announce the nominations Saturday, the roommates will act all squirrelly in reaction to those nominations on Tuesday, and the eviction will happen, live, on Thursday!
Everyone races inside the special HoH room, where Mike lolls on the bed, surrounded by chicks. The rest of the guys are all, dude. Except Bunky. Justin stands at the foot of the bed and watches the girls stroke Mike’s chest. His lips are moving, like he’s talking to himself. Then, as everyone starts to leave, Justin tugs Mike’s arm and recites a little poem, which I’m sure he was just practicing, unaware that his mouth was actually moving. “My name is Mike Boogie and I’m here to say/I’m the Head of Household, it begins today!” He’s all proud of himself. Mike high-fives him. Aw, that was cute. As the rest of the roommates leave Mike’s room, he worries in a voice-over about whether being HoH will make the rest of the roommates think of him differently. He looks all thoughtful. Is he right? Only time will tell!