I started watching Big Brother this season to support Devens and Dee, and two weeks in, I’m fully in the deep end. I’m making real alliances, sleeping in the have not room, making fake alliances, reattaching my microphone and eating slop. I think this show is just going to be a part of my summer routine moving forward, but as a Survivor fan, I need to talk about the confessional situation because yikes.
At least eighty percent of everything we see come out of the Diary Room is inauthentic trash. So many of these confessionals sound like the houseguests were given a paper to read from. Perhaps even worse, a healthy percentage of them are just narrating plot action that we’re all literally watching on the screen or detailing the most obvious surface level motivations that we don’t need to hear.
During Wednesday’s episode this week, we all watched Lala go over the rules of the Veto Competition in really extended and specific detail. Then, for unclear reasons, we got a confessional of Lyric blandly explaining the exact same rules to the audience like thirty seconds later, once again in really specific detail, down to telling us how many pieces they had to find (12) and how they needed to fit on the board (“flush”). What could have possibly been the thought process behind including that confessional? Choose one or the other!
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Sadly, that’s a recurring theme with so many bits we see from the Diary Room. Let’s just focus on that same Veto Competition as an example. We also got confessionals from multiple houseguests explaining to us that some of the pegs have more space around them so that must be where the bigger pieces go. That’s obviously a good strategy observation and worth hearing about, but did we need that same a-ha moment from both Jason and Angela? No, we did not. Choose one or the other!
And don’t get me started on the references and puns. I love bad puns, and I love cheesy references. I kind of like how kitschy Big Brother is. I was fine with Rachel getting murdered by a dinosaur during the first episode, but a confessional either works or it doesn’t. If the houseguest sounds like they’re delivering a rehearsed line, it shouldn’t make the final edit. There are at least four or five confessionals every week that sound so inauthentic coming out of the houseguest’s mouth. It’s shocking so many of them make the final edit.
After a few episodes of this, I asked the other people on staff here at CinemaBlend who watch Big Brother what the story is with the Diary Room content, and they both said some version of, that’s just how the show is. You’ll get used to it. Why is that an acceptable answer? It’s certainly not fine with some former players who have complained about it.
I watch so many reality competition shows. I watch Survivor, The Traitors, Top Chef, MasterChef, Dancing With The Stars, Project Runway, Tournament Of Champions, The Amazing Race and like a dozen more. None of the other shows have this problem. Not a single one consistently includes content that feels repetitive and inauthentic. It doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s all particularly frustrating because each episode does contain some legitimately terrific confessionals, and if you watch the live feeds, these people have a lot of charisma and are always hooking up and scheming. There is a reason they were chosen to move into the house. There is plenty for producers to work with.
Unfortunately, it seems to me like those same producers are encouraging players to distill their thoughts down into generic euphemisms, obvious observations (“I need to win to get myself off the block!”) and corny line reads they’re literally handing them. Why is that the goal? Who decided this was the most optimal Diary Room content?
The team needs to change their strategy for getting Diary Room content, and they need to be more thoughtful about what they’re choosing from the material they do get. We need less obvious narrational content. We need less inauthentic line reads. We need less generic summaries. Instead, we need more confessionals that show off the personalities and emotions of the houseguests.
You can catch new episodes of Big Brother 28 multiple times a week on CBS, and you can watch the live feeds on Paramount+.
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