I don't usually like when there's a clash of reality shows, but I didn't mind Phil Keoghan on Big Brother 17's two-night premiere this Thursday night. Mostly because he told one of my early favorite houseguests that there would be a reward coming her way. Keoghan promised Big Brother 17 houseguests Da'Vonne and Vanessa a reward for sitting out of the first HOH competitions. As Phil says, "With risk sometimes comes reward. More later." Even though Phil is taking a page right out of the Julie Chen-cliffhanger handbook, I welcome the idea that these two women will receive some type of advantage during the game. Now, it's just a matter of theorizing what it could be.
Advantages in Big Brother can be as large as a game-changing power (see: the coup d'etat from past seasons) or as minuscule as a slop pass — which means absolutely nothing to the viewers at home. But I can't believe that a reward for sitting out of a pretty important competition would be a measly slop pass. That would be the most anticlimactic "reward" Big Brother could throw at the houseguests. So what could the reward be?
Some fans on Twitter are guessing that the reward could be The Amazing Race related, because Phil told them about it. I'm praying to the Gods that put Clay Honeycutt on this Earth that this is not the case. If it is Amazing Race related, it could be something like the express pass, but I'm not sure how that would work in Big Brother other than maybe advancing the houseguests a week without any penalty. That seems like a huge reward, however.
I'd like to see the two women get some type of power-related reward. The only issue with this is that when houseguests possess such powerful rewards, they tend to be a big target of a blindside. No one wants someone who can change the entire game in the house. If the reward is a past Big Brother-related reward, it could be something like a safety pass or the diamond power of veto, which allows a pair to take off current block nominations.
Then again, it could just be a slop pass. And if that is the case, I will smash my piggybanks and hire a skywriter to fly over the Big Brother backyard saying something spoiler-y that I haven't decided on yet, and make the Big Brother producers rue the day they did this to me*.
*I will probably write a strongly worded blog post or comment on the live feeds and leave my piggybanks in tact.
Image: Sonja Flemming/CBS
