Big Brother 19 episode 16 review: The Temptation Competition; Jessica and Cody’s mistake

For the first time, Sunday night’s new episode of Big Brother gave us the Temptation Competition. Out of all of the Sunday twists, this was great! It was a simple twist that gave someone safe for the week, and there is some great strategy that goes into it. The last thing that you ever want to do is go on the block, even if it’s as a pawn and you would assume that you would automatically be safe.

Mark managed to win the first Temptation Competition, and as a result of that, earned safety this week and mess around with Head of Household Paul’s plan. He wanted to use him and Elena as worthy replacement nominees in the event that Jessica did something big with the Halting Hex, and this did force him to regroup. Good on Mark for winning it, but we want to talk more about the biggest mistake of the week: Jessica and Cody not playing in this competition and ensuring their safety.

Let’s turn into Jozea for a moment (odd proposition, sure) and start thinking about scenarios: Had Cody won this competition and Jessica won the Veto, they wouldn’t have needed to think about the Hex at all. We won’t spoil the Veto winner here for show viewers, but it doesn’t really matter: In not competing in the new competition, they ensured that if the house wants to force Jess to use the Hex, she can. Otherwise, she could have saved it for another week and kept her and Cody safe.

To play devil’s advocate, we do think that Jody is in a tough spot in the game: They’re scrambling to find someone who they can trust, and really the only two people that that they have are Mark and Elena … and they only have Elena to a certain extent. It’s understandable that they would want to show Paul that they will trust his judgment, but this is someone who’s already evicted Cody from the game once and blindsided them on the Ramses vote! There has to be a limit as to how far you go with that trust.

Best/Worst Cody Moment of the Night: Him stating “I don’t care” in his confessional after he and Jessica were nominated. Nobody gives blunt statements in the DR quite like Cody does.

Other odds and ends

Production included Josh being a lunatic with the pots and pans! We’re not sure how this comes off to the average viewer, but this was definitely important to include given some of what’s likely coming on Wednesday’s episode. The feud between him and Mark is one of the most childish feuds arguably in recent Big Brother history.

Also, it’s ironic that Jason is a third nominee because of the Temptation Competition and the show barely mentioned it. That’s how much the house is actually considering getting him out of the game — they’re not. He can go take a nap for the week.

Finally, Message to Matt: You can be a Team Player, but Big Brother is not a team game. Sooner or later, he’ll take one for the team on his way to fifth place. Episode Grade: B.

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