What Big Brother 9 Houseguests Should Have Learned

There are many things that Big Brother contestants should have known before they set foot in the house that will have them on camera 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After all, each year for the past seven years, this season’s players could have spent their summers watching every move of previous houseguests and thinking about what they could – or should not – do.

This season’s players have more history to draw on, but each time the producers throw in new twists as well – such as this season’s pairing up, which will certainly affect strategy to a great degree. However, everybody comes in with the same potential knowledge, so there are some general things the players should have been able to determine even without full knowledge of all the twists, and some things they can do in response to the “couples” twist this season.

The first run of Big Brother does not have much to tell us about the current version of the game. In that version – as in most non-U.S. versions – players were voted out by viewers rather than by each other. As Chicken George found out in All-Stars, it really is a completely different game when you have to convince viewers to keep you around as opposed to convincing those you are playing with.

Similarly, there are some parts of the previous series that won’t come into play here. Starting with Big Brother 4, evicted houseguests were not shown diary room excerpts that viewers saw, or other “private” comments. This means houseguests should feel free to fully express themselves in private without worrying that it will get back to the voting jury – as happened to Danielle in Big Brother 3. Also, because producers cracked down on houseguests looking up at banner planes after Big Brother 2, nobody should have to worry that the viewing audience will send messages about what they’re up to or who they’re double-crossing.

At least three times out of eight times in what I’ll call the “modern” Big Brother era (that is, not including the first series), the jury has been forced to choose the lesser of two evils: Will vs. Nichole in BB2, Jun vs. Alison in BB4, and Dick vs. Daniele in BB8. In BB3, BB5, and BB6, there were likeable people actually available for the vote – though in BB3 that was in part due to some incredibly stupid play by Reality TV Hall of Shamer Marcellas Reynolds, who failed to use the Golden Veto to save himself. And in All-Stars, personality issues were overcome by great game play on the part of Mike (with a lot of Will’s help).

So what does that mean for somebody who wants to win? And what should the Big Brother 9 contestants have learned? Let's take a look at these various rules. Each week, we will look back at this and compare how each losing player or duo did or did not accomplish these goals.

1) Make Machiavelli Proud: Scheme and Plot

In the Big Brother house, you don’t need to know how to cook, how to mow the lawn, or how to fix the plumbing. You do need to have learned from Renaissance schemer Niccolo Machiavelli. Big Brother: All-Stars reinforced this even more as the six-to-one final vote tally showed people were voting for game play rather than personal reasons. The same can be said of Big Brother 8 too.

From the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships. It can be difficult to know whom you can trust after just a couple days – or even hours, sometimes – but if you don’t start fast, you’ll be watching from the comfort of your own living room like the rest of us. A good example of what not to do can be seen in BB8’s Jen. Instead of making good relationships early, she immediately started alienating people and making them think she was nothing more than a self-centered brat. While she grew on some people a bit after the first couple weeks, that amount of time is far too much to spend without an ally – especially while everybody else is teaming up.

Over the past few years, we have seen several alliances born simply because people happened to be together at the same time. For instance, in Big Brother 3, an alliance formed of all the people who had given up during the first challenge, and Marcellas was targeted. Gerry ended up having a change in heart and saving him (something he might have later regretted – many viewers certainly did), but the point is that this “alliance” was formed simply because people were nearby and needed somebody to target.

Similarly, Big Brother 4 alliances were determined by who happened to come into the house in which group. The first group, “the originals,” found that a bunch of their exes would follow shortly, and all of the originals agreed to keep each other around; the exes similarly ended up as allies. Of course, any of the exes could have been in the first group and any of the originals who had exes in the game could have been in the second. It was simply a matter of who happened to be around that set up that particular group of alliances.

The key is to find some way to create alliances that will keep you around until you can figure out your full strategy later. We saw James use this strategy in All-Stars, aligning himself with the very people who booted him in the previous season, but knowing full well he was going to abandon them as they abandoned him once the game got going and he could feel out the other players. On Big Brother 8, we saw Mike accept entry into the Mrs. Robinson alliance even though he didn’t really want to (though he failed to follow up by figuring out a full strategy!). The one thing you definitely do not want to do is isolate yourself somehow – as Zach did in the same eighth season. That’s a sure way to get booted.