GreatSaltLuke

Will someone please explain BB After Dark to me? Do they just show what is being shown live on the feeds for an hour? If so, what do they do if someone starts singing or talking about the DR or something where they have to cut off the feed? As I remember from last season, they tell the HGs when they will be on BB After Dark so that they are all together and chatting and playing to the camera but I mostly watch the feeds for the strategy talk and stuff.

Personally, forcing them to eat slop is one of my least favorite aspects of the show and I never understood it even back win it was PB&J instead. It's hard for me to understand why HGs would be more entertaining when they are eating that crap, feeling like crap, and just laying around in bed because they don't have the energy to get up. I want to see well-fed, lively HGs with the energy to move around, have entertaining conversations, rough-housing, stuff like that. Give them alcohol, not slop. Starving the contestants makes sense on Survivor where it is entertaining to have hungry contestants because it motivates them to go out into the wilderness and search for food. I think HGs should live in relative luxury in BB because that will motivate them to play that much harder to keep themselves in the game. Why make them suffer so that they want to go home? They should want desperately to be there. People that don't really care if they are about to be evicted because they are so sick of being miserable are not entertaining.

Haha I was also thinking that! Anyways, he doesn't seem like he will get along with anyone especially well if he doesn't even like hanging out with girly girls. He seems kind of annoying to me and I don't understand why some gay guys have to speak in such a high pitch. I could see him going far though, like Ragan, because he does seem to have some smarts for the game and knows the value of secret alliances.

I just watched her full interview and I think she is going to be very entertaining. She's cute, seems feisty as hell, isn't afraid to be a villain, wants to give people a good season and is going to try to quit smoking on the show. She's gonna bring the drama for sure! I might be rooting for her but I want to see more first.

I see her being a bit polarizing in the house and coming on a bit too strong, which is usually a bad thing. It's also a red flag to me when they say their strategy is to just be themselves. I predict an early exit. I also dislike HGs that are there to promote things rather than just play the game.

She seems like a sweetheart and I like nurses too. My first impression is that she could stay under the radar and go pretty far in the game but would probably be dumped near the end for being too likeable to take to the jury if the finalists have any brains. I fail to see how telling people she is a kindergarten teacher instead of a nurse has any point. I don't feel like either profession makes someone more or less of a target in the game or makes someone more or less worthy to get jury votes. It's not like she is a lawyer or psychologist, which can be threatening.

I heard there will be a Pandora's Box near the end of the game that will bring Brenchel back into the house with one of them as the mentor and one of them as the mentee.

Hmmm... those legs look like they belong to (from left to right) Dan, Britney, Mike "Boogie" and Janelle. Perhaps the rumors are true.

I didn't get the email but I think that if you were to choose the four most popular players on the list, those would arguably be the four most popular so it makes sense they would use them for promotional purposes.

Network TV is all about cost-cutting. If they have the option then they are going to pay two people to each monitor two cameras showing two angles of the same scene rather than have to pay four people to monitor four cameras. Sucks but it's true. In a perfect world, they would show every single camera in the house at all times. THAT would be awesome but they are way to cheap for that.

That doesn't prove anything. It would take about 2 seconds to photoshop that together. Plus it is unlikely that Janelle would be one of them, given her circumstances and even more unlikely that Dr. Will would be returning. Even if it was real, they could just be showing random pictures of who could return. And Superpass wouldn't know who the returning HGs are unless CBS told them.

I'm not going to officially judge this twist until I've seen it in action but the concept of it still sounds bizarre to me. I still don't understand what incentive a mentee has to care what their mentor wants them to do. Are they really going to form alliances with certain people just because that's who the mentor chose to be their team? What if the mentees rebel and decide they don't care about the mentors and are going to play the game for themselves so the mentors just sit around pointlessly. Or even worse, what if everyone follows their mentor and form into obvious alliances for the whole game, removing any kind of backstabbing or shifting loyalties that make this show so fun to watch? I'm pretty skeptical about this. That said, I think Dan would of course be an excellent mentor and so would Ragan, who was practically a mentor in BB12, analyzing the game to death and instructing people about the best moves for them to make. I'd like to see Enzo again just because he cracks me up but he would probably make an awful mentor.

Top Ten Skilled Players: 1. Dr. Will- Amazing player and probably had the best feel for the game of anyone! Knew how to create the impression of someone everyone wants to take to the end to beat yet knew how to work the jury enough to beat anyone. 2. Dan Gheesling- Gotta give credit to the man with the only unanimous win. 3. Evel Dick- A BB mastermind who played a unique strategy to perfection but it's hard to know if he is better than Will since he was given a partner to play with both of his seasons and didn't stay long enough to prove himself his second season. 4. Hayden Moss- He's very underrated; he played the ultimate straight/good guy game, made no enemies, and won quite easily 5. Danielle Reyes- A very cunning strategist who was really the first to utilize the power of a secret alliance; she was screwed over in her first season due to the non-sequestered jury 6. Drew Daniel- Also an underrated player who played an excellent straight game very similar game to Hayden 7. Daniel Donato- Very intelligent BB player who is an excellent manipulator and strategist who has had to live in her father's shadow. Had her attempt to make one of the biggest moves in BB history in her 2nd season succeeded, she might even be considered a better player than her father. 8. Janelle Pierzina- Maybe the most dominant female challenge player of all time, she came very close to winning both her seasons but was seen as too big of a threat to take to the end. 9. Mike "Boogie" Malin- Despite a pretty crappy showing in his first season and really being Dr. Will's sidekick in his 2nd, his social game is quite good and there is something to be said for winning the only all-star season 10. Britney Haynes- This might be controversial since she only got to the final 4 before being the Brigade's final victim but she had excellent social game making everyone believe they could trust her and knew just how to play on people's emotions to stay out of their crosshairs Top Ten Entertaining Players: 1. Evel Dick- It's hard to imagine someone being more entertaining than this guy who plays the game like a puppetmaster! 2. Rachel Reilly- Whether you love to hate her or hate to love her, she is a polarizing player that always brings the drama and raises the entertainment value of the show 3. Jeff Schroeder- I don't consider the guy a great player but his charisma, sense of humor and fiery temper makes him good TV! 4. Dr. Will- It's entertaining just to watch such a masterful player do his thing! 5. Enzo- This guy cracked me up bigtime! I'll never forget his week in the penguin suit! 6. Jase Cowan- You never knew what this guy was going to do next or whether he was crazy or just acting. Either way he was fun to watch. 7. Jordan Lloyd- Okay, I do have a soft spot in my heart for this girl that is a horrible BB player but somehow has one of the most impressive results of any player, even better than Dr. Will. She is so innocent and folksy that she cracks you up without trying and makes you root for her even though she has no business getting far in the game 8. Janelle Pierzina- There is a reason she is a big fan favorite, she is really fun to watch! 9. Alison Irwin- It's hard to imagine how dull BB4 would have been without Alison in the mix. This girl played super dirty, which made her a very fun villian to watch. 10. Shelley Moore- This pathological liar is on this list simply because I'm pretty sure she set the record for number of lies told and one of the most entertaining parts of this last season for me was waiting for this huge tower of lies to come crashing down. It's pretty amazing how long she got away with it.

I guess I jinxed it...

I really hope they reveal everything today and we don't have to wait a week for the mentors to be revealed because that is the big secret. Showing the new contestants along with a 3 second intro really doesn't tell you anything about whether we have a good cast or not.

I really hope they get a new version out before the 12th. I really don't want to have to deal with the crappy standard viewer.

One thing I'd like to point out is that while everyone is complaining about returning players, last season was the first season since BB7 to have them as contestants in the game. Returning players have been much more prevalent in Survivor, which next season will have had them for four of the last six seasons. What I don't like is half-assed all-star seasons. All-star seasons are great if done only once every 4 or 5 years but mixing all-stars and new players is just silly and handicaps any of the new players from becoming BB stars because all the attention and editing is focused on the familiar players. Why can't they just do a new cast this season and do all-stars for BB15?

Just watched Rumor Control on Superpass with Rachel and Danielle. What a mess! Rachel was supposedly on vacation in Costa Rica with Brendon but her Skype camera was spinning and shaking around so bad I think I saw more of the jungle around the resort than her face. Then the host had to tell her to shut her mouth cause she wouldn't stop babbling on about a poison frog and they lost her feed. They took calls and I'm pretty sure they lost or couldn't hear 75% of them. At least twice the callers asked pretty clear questions but the dumb host wasn't even listening and didn't know what was asked so she just went to the next call. Anyways, the main point is that when Dani said she heard Rachel was going to be a mentor, Rachel didn't deny it, she avoided answering by going into what people she thought would be good mentors. Then when they were talking about Janelle being a mentor Rachel said she can't be a mentor because she is in Greece and they are doing a Skype interview this Friday. At the end of the show the host said we can rule out Rachel coming back. It's all very confusing and I don't know what to think. Technically, since Rachel and Janelle's interview is Friday and the HGs don't go into the house until Saturday it is still possible they are both mentors but a little strange because they are supposed to be in sequester.

Well they just put the HGs into sequester today and that seems to be when it is safe to make the announcement.

Now that this rumor is posted on the news page and has at least a good chance of being true, what do you think of it? I have mixed feelings about this. It sounds kind of cool but seems like it could easily fall apart. I assume the mentors keep choosing people until everyone in the house has one? And then what, the mentors just pull their people into a room and say "Okay here's your alliance for the season. Go team go." And then they just chill until their team is gone? That seems really pointless and boring. And what is the incentive for people to actually care what their mentor thinks? And I see our favorite producer, Grodner, manipulating the crap out of this season to keep the mentors there as long as possible. And one more thing: Rachel? Again? Seriously? I like her better than probably 95% of people because I think she's great tv but this is a bit much. Has anyone from any competition reality show ever actually done three seasons in a row?

Since they just did a semi-all star season last season I highly doubt they would do that this summer. Possibly next summer since BB15 is a milestone number. BB20 will probably be a mandatory all-star season like Survivor was but that is a LONG ways away.

Suprised she won against Danielle? She was kind of evil while Lisa was pretty likeable. Luckily the jury didn't know that Lisa voted against her boyfriend Eric coming back in the house cause that was smart but kinda of brutal. I believe I remember reading that Lisa gave most of her money to charity though so she's a cool girl in my book!

I do think there are many universal qualities that work well no matter who your castmates are though. Every cast has all kinds of personality types. The cocky alpha males, the materialistic tweens, the motherly/fatherly figures, the quirky anti-mainstreamers, the comedians, the slimeballs… the challenge is how to navigate your way through all these personality types to the end of the game and also get their votes. I personally thought the Brigade was the most well-constructed alliance ever and actually modeled several of these tips after them (Hayden did win the first HOH after all). It wasn’t just the fact that they amazingly remained a secret all the way up until they chose to reveal their alliance at the end of the game, it was also their ability to control the votes and protect themselves from the start by having each member create a fake side alliance that created the illusion of the house being made up of nothing but a bunch of two-person alliances, which almost always kept two Brigade members from being on the block at the same time. I think it’s a great and flexible strategy and the reason that that season was so boring was because of how dominant the Brigade was. Brendon and Rachel certainly didn’t hurt but I think they would have done just fine without them.

Last year BB started on 7/7 and ended on 9/14 so it's closer to two months long really. It might go a bit longer this year because of the later start date but you should be fine whether you buy them now or later.

Hi all! I can't wait until the 12th so that I can resume my live feed addiction. I hope the free mobile app works well so I don't have to drive my wife nuts carrying her laptop around the house wherever I go. I was the one doing the live feed clip of the day last season and look forward to resuming that. I'm looking forward to discussing the new hamsters with way too much detail and passion. Here's hoping for an entertaining cast!