'Big Brother 18' News: Are Team-Based HOH Competitions Really Fair? [POLL, VIDEO]
The Big Brother 18 premiere featured multiple twists and competitions, but some are not pleased that one of those twists is continuing into future weeks.
The teams twist, which was introduced in the premiere, featured the four returning houseguests recruiting three new houseguests each. These teams then competed in several rounds of competition, until the losing team competed against each other to stay in the house. After Glenn was eliminated for coming in last place, the other three houseguests on his team had to decide who, from their team, would be the first HOH.
However, this apparently was not a one week event. Host Julie Chen announced during Thursday night's episode that the houseguests would be competing in teams again and whichever team won the competition would decide which of them would be the new HOH. And fans were not happy.
I don't like that the team gets to pick who is HOH. #BB18
— Dani Donato (@danidONAT0) July 1, 2016
The team HOH literally makes it impossible for a member of the minority alliance to be HOH. #BB18
— Ashley's Dreamboard (@AshsDreamboard) July 1, 2016
I disagree with HOH team comps. They have no place here. #BB18
— The BB President (@TheBBPresident) July 1, 2016
This team thing and the way you can dump the comp to screw over a teammate makes me miss the BotB. #BB18
— Sue (@SueMe_DC) July 1, 2016
Team HOH comps makes power shifts in #BB18 impossible. I mean, if the producers want the season to be predictable, fine.
— Tom Palmer (@Thorfist7373) July 1, 2016
okay but all hoh comps are gonna favor the teams with more players it should be everyone for themselves and whoever wins gets team safety
— lexa deserved better (@poison_candyy) July 1, 2016
Team HOH comps pretty much insures that July of 2016 will be a boring month of #BB18
— Tom Palmer (@Thorfist7373) July 1, 2016
As seen above, many fans argued that this essentially squashes any opportunity for the minority alliance to gain power in the house. With James saying on the live feeds that he threw the competition, to essentially prevent his teammates Bronte, Natalie and Victor from getting power, this added more fuel to the fire.
Is there a fairer way of conducting these team-centric HOH competitions? Possibly. If they wanted to continue team-based competitions they could still do so, then have an individual face-off between those three or four team members. While this could lead to another instance of James throwing the competition, it would at least give the minority group a fairer shot than simply having them come to a consensus.
They could also conduct an individual HOH competition as usual and then the first houseguest from each team to finish the task moves on, with the four winners then competing against each other for HOH. This would prevent throwing the competition and would still have some type of team component.
It remains to be seen if Big Brother producers will switch up the format of HOH competitions in the coming weeks, but for now, many fans are not thrilled with how things are going.
Big Brother 18 airs Wednesdays and Sundays at 8 p.m. and Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
