With the new series due to start, and as I’ve already done my Top Ten Best Big Brother Eviction Moments, here is the bad side of the same coin, my Top Ten Worst Big Brother Eviction Moments.
10) Stephanie screwed over before she’d even entered the house (BB9)
On launch night in Big Brother 9, the first four housemates to enter, Luke, Stephanie, Mario and Lisa were given a secret mission. Mario and Lisa were a real life couple, and the task was to make sure the other housemates didn’t know they were a couple. The cover story was to pretend that the couple were Mario and Stephanie, and it included them doing a fake wedding on the show. If they passed the task, all the other housemates would face eviction. If they failed, Luke, Stephanie, Mario and Lisa would be up.
While the task itself was a good way to start the series, it was more than a little creepy to have 19-year-old Stephanie having to pretend to be in love with 42-year-old Mario. But in any case, it was a mistake to attach it to an eviction. It meant that, in week one, they would have lost one of four good housemates. Mario was basically David Brent wearing a Ronseal painted leather mask. Lisa was Xena Warrior Princess off to an ’80s themed disco, and Luke was a comical camp motormouth geek boy. Popstar wannabe Stephanie showed signs she could have bought fun and fiestyness if she’d been able to be herself after the task was finished, and as the two rival cliques in that series were BBlock vs. The Luxury Bedroom, it might have been interesting to see where Stephanie fitted, as she seemed to be friends with people from both bedrooms. But as an attractive young woman who had admitted to being on the show for the fame, she was always the one of the four who would be judged most harshly by viewers.
Even worse was that the producers more or less fixed it for them to lose the task by announcing to the house there was a fake couple. It was probably to save that ball of anger and misery “memba I told you!” Alexandra from eviction. Well, they backed the right horse there, because Alexandra was nominated by the other housemates the following week, and they had to remove her and cancel and refund eviction votes after she made threats of violence. Stephanie had been one of the few to stand up to Alexandra too.
But what made this twist particularly unfair was that Stephanie was selected for it before she’d even entered the house. There are many that have been screwed over by first week eviction twists, but at least they were mostly due to random chance. Stephanie didn’t even really get that chance.
9) Conor swipes half the prize money (BB13)
Big Brother 13‘s White Room Task has to be one of the most tedious, overhyped tasks this show has done, but the outcome of it was worse. The two last housemates in there, Conor and Luke S, had to press a button to take some of the prize money, but if they did that they would have to leave the house. Conor pressed it at the last minute despite saying that he cared more about getting to the final.
Conor had almost been kicked out because of his disgusting comments and bullying behavior towards Deana, and not only did he get no comeuppance for that, he ended up taking half the prize money with him. It left a nasty taste in the mouth for many viewers. The only reason it’s this low down the list is that it was pretty hilarious that Luke S was left looking like an absolute berk, as he clearly wanted to press it, and was left blubbing and kicking the cushions around in anger. But again, it says a lot about Conor that he stabbed someone who’d been an ally to him in the front like that.
8) Sunshine evicted for “making John James look bad” (BB11)
Medical student Sunshine was a Lady Gaga-ish figure and one of the more intriguing housemates of Big Brother 11. She was a surprise evictee, as she was initially third favourite to go out of three up for eviction. But then Crab Eyes John James pulled her around the floor bruising her leg, and because she got upset about it, John James’ squeeing fangirls voted her out. It wasn’t the first sign (see below), but it was a confirmation of how the evictions would go in BB11. Regardless of how good a housemate they were or what they brought to the series, anyone who got in the way of the tedious showmance between John James and Josie was turfed out, as was anyone who didn’t suck up to them or even just those who didn’t think it was OMG GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER!1! and that it wasn’t going to end happily ever after, which predictably, it didn’t.
7) Rachael punished for John James targeting her (BB11)
The first evictee of Big Brother 11 was Beyonce lookalike Rachael. She was only up in the first place because of a twist anyway, but her week in there was spent being berated, shouted at and insulted by John James. He’d taken a dislike to her even though she hadn’t done anything to him, and went out of his way to try to make her time in there hell. And she was evicted for it. There was some karmic justice when the producers brought her back for a task towards the end of the series. John James slated her again, and bragged about it, until it was revealed that Rachael was now going out with another former housemate, tall hairy laddish joiner Nathan. John James practically shat himself and started crying for his mummy! But still, one of the biggest cases of blaming the victim on Big Brother was Rachael getting evicted because of how John James treated her.
6) Vanessa gets an orange thrown at her for doing nothing! (BB6)
Big Brother 6‘s Vanessa was hardly the greatest housemate ever. She didn’t really do anything other than occupy space. To be fair, she was the first housemate to reference Mean Girls (saying “fetch” in her introduction video), and given that Richard BB7 spent most of his stay quoting it and Big Brother producers and fans have mined that film hollow in the decade since, maybe Vanessa deserves credit for getting there first. But she wasn’t a particularly good housemate by any stretch of the imagination.
Her eviction was cruel, with the housemates having to choose between her and Makosi as to who would go. As Makosi had pretty much taken over the series completely at that point, no surprise that it was an almost unanimous verdict to evict Vanessa. But when she left the house, someone in the crowd threw an orange at her head. She literally had an object thrown at her head for the crime of… doing nothing. People say that the franchise has got worse other the years, but thankfully it isn’t as nasty as it was back then.
5) Halfway House swapping, then swapping back (BB8)
Big Brother 8 was a series in which every twist fell flat, but this one stood out as terrible even compared to the others. They shoved in a bunch of new housemates into the Halfway House and the housemates in the main house had to choose one of them to come in. But whoever they chose, one of the current housemates had to move into the Halfway House in their place. Later, Shanessa won a task where the prize was a place in the main house. It kind of went on like this for ages and was all a bit boring, but by the end the producers realised that they didn’t like the combination of main housemates and new housemates they had in the Halfway House, so they just asked the housemates to swap them all back at the last minute. That is the producers not even trying to hide their incompetence!
Anyway, the people in the Halfway House were up for a double eviction, and the two that went were newbies. Fat, camp emo David and the live-action version of Lena Hyena that was Shanessa. To be honest, they were no great loss, but you could hardly blame them for being bitter about the way they were messed about like that. Shanessa had a good point when she wondered aloud “What did I win?”.
4) Four In, Four Out (BB16)
At the start of Big Brother 16, the housemates mostly got on with one another, and weren’t falling for Big Brother’s usual tricks to stir things up with their tired old “here’s what you’ve all been saying behind each other’s backs” tasks. So in probably the most ridiculous, desperate, ham-fisted twist they’ve ever done, they reversed the nominations, put up all people who hadn’t got nominated, so were by definition popular in the house, and did a quadruple eviction, replacing them with newbies, and sprung it to the house as a surprise on eviction night.
It was certainly an unfair twist. The housemates were put up for no other reason than they didn’t get nominated that particular week, and with six housemates up with four being evicted, hardly anyone would be able to survive that. Indeed, the two that did survive it were eventual winner Chloe, and Danny who finished in 3rd place. While most of the housemates who ended up going (Harriet, Kieran and twins Amy & Sally) were all very average, they weren’t bad housemates really. The final evictee on this night, Sarah, had been the house Queen Bee and looking like one of the big characters. Surely it would have been better off trying to keep her in if they wanted conflict?
The replacement newbies were so generic too. A spiteful, obnoxious wind-up merchant (Marc), a bonkers bird who got her tits out (Harry Amelia, though to be fair she turned out to be one of the most interesting housemates in BB16), an ex-X Factor reject (Sam) and bringing back SHOWBIZ! who’d already shown what little he had to offer on launch night.
There is speculation that one of the main reasons for this twist was to save spoilt princess type Jade from eviction, but if that’s the case then it was a waste of time, as she was evicted a couple of weeks later anyway. It didn’t improve viewing figures either, as the ratings didn’t pick up until they brought back big stars from previous series Nikki BB7, Brian BB8, Helen BB15 and later Aisleyne BB7, as well as a load of other ex-housemates from the civilian and celebrity versions popping up at various points. BB16 was a random mess, but nothing in it came close to the farce that 4 in, 4 out was.
3) Beinazir put on a bus (BB10)
The launch night twist in Big Brother 10 was that none of the housemates were technically housemates, they had to “earn” it. That would mean the housemates would have to work hard for their place! Except that housemate status was mostly “earned” by stuff like dunking a biscuit in tea with the one whose biscuit lasted the longest gaining a housemate place (Cairon), answering a telephone (Lisa) and being chosen to become a housemate by the person that had answered the telephone (Kris).
But the twist did make sure the ones who gained housemate status really wanted to be there. Oh, except sour-faced Saffia who was prepared to walk on broken glass to become a housemate, then walked out of the house altogether just a few days later. But the twist did keep big characters in! Except that once proper nominations started, BB10 became known for a lot of big characters being up for eviction against each other so one was voted out nearly every week. The late Sophia Brown was the first of them.
Anyway, to go back a bit, the unfortunate housemate to go because of the launch night twist was Beinazir, who looked like she might have been an enjoyable housemate in her introduction video, but we’ll never know as she got about 2 seconds of screentime and this eviction was a vote to save. In her exit she was literally put on a red double decker bus, and as she’d only been in 4 days, and the non-housemates had slept on the floor, hadn’t got their suitcases and had little food to eat there wasn’t much to say and she probably didn’t feel up to it. The producers probably LOLd themselves silly and patted themselves on the back for how clever they were while planning this twist and this eviction, but to many viewers it was rubbish and kind of depressing.
2) Hira loses out to everybody (BB10)
In this week, all the housemates in Big Brother 10 were up in a vote to save (because of Siavash deciding he couldn’t be arsed nominating anymore, but let’s not go there). A late bloomer in the series after being quiet for a while was relative newcomer Hira. She gave an entertaining dance as part of a talent show task and had a starring role in the weeks Alice In Wonderland shopping task as Alice, and had to find a key buried in a giant cupcake using only her face. It was and still is considered one of the best parts of BB10.
But on the eviction night highlights, Hira didn’t feature much as it was filled with the others having various arguments, which she largely kept out of, and when it came to announce the evictee, it was Hira. It was rumoured to have been a very close eviction and it could have been any of the bottom 4, but either way, Hira went, which was a very disappointing result. She was one of the few genuinely nice housemates in BB10, and she brought some much needed fun to what was quite a mean-spirited series.
1) Makosi’s finalist interview (BB6)
Makosi from Big Brother 6 had no doubt been a controversial housemate, with her scheming, manipulation, back-stabbing, stirring and she was ruled the house pretty much from day one and it all revolved around her, fans nicknamed it The Makosi Show because of it. But while she was the star of that series, she was definitely controversial. She got to the final and finished in 3rd place, and came out to very loud boos.
BB6 had seen the eviction crowd be even more of rent-a-mob who were baying for blood than usual, but this was one of the most hostile crowd reactions any housemate had faced. It was very uncomfortable to watch, and not helped by Davina McCall pouring petrol onto the fire. Credit to Makosi for putting up with such an onslaught, but it was a time which made you wonder why you were watching this. It’s all very well saying the booing is “panto”, but when you get that much directed at someone for, let’s face it, playing a game on a gameshow, it’s probably taking it too far. There’s also the elephant in the room, that Big Brother has an awful track record with how it has treated black women. Its treatment of Asian women isn’t great either. Or indeed, its treatment of women in general.
Let’s hope in the upcoming series there isn’t anything as bad as these eviction moments!
headphonedaydreams 