‘Big Brother Canada’ debate: A twist too far?

For “Big Brother Canada” fans, it’s been one heck of a quiet Easter Weekend. Thanks in part to a new twist hitting the game (which you can see some spoilers for over here), the live feeds have been down at a time in which many people would probably like to see them the most, and we admit there is a part of us that wonders whether this move could actually hurt to spike interest for the show when you have “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead” finale airing at the same time. One piece of evidence of the live feeds helping drive interest in the show? The shower incident between Tom and Alec; we saw enough of it on the feeds to be interesting, but we still wanted to see what the cast had to say in the Diary Rooms.

As frustrating as the live feeds are, perhaps what may be the most troublesome part of the game right now is simply that you can only twist a game so many times, before the show itself feels almost like a giant twist. We’ll start here by saying first of all that the show is ridiculously entertaining, and the fact that Slice has been good enough to bring “Big Brother” north of the border has made spring TV so much more interesting. However, there are still clearly ways to make it better.

When you look at all of the twists that have been in the game thus far, you really have to ask the following question: do they really make it better? Let’s evaluate some of the big moves so far in the game, and try to see whether or not there impact has been positive or negative thus far.

1. The first Head of Household – We’re not really upset about Suzette getting power from just answering the phone, since the show has always done weird things with their first HoH. The biggest problem with this was forcing Suzette to make nominations without really getting any chance to know anyone, since her picking Emmett and Tom doomed her game from night one.

2. The PowerShift – In forcing Canada to either save Suzette or AJ (and Suzette was obvious at that point, given that AJ had no screen time), they ended up causing Tom to put up and get rid of a good player in Aneal. Imagine how more interesting this past week had been had we not seen Suzette skulk around for five days when we all knew she was going.

3. The double-eviction – It’s bad enough to lose Tom, but Liza? Had she been given a little bit more time with Andrew as Head of Household, she may have been able to sway him. Instead, Emmett just got in his ear right away, and one of the best female gamers was gone.

We will ultimately say this: the results of the new twist, which you will see in action Sunday, have actually created some pretty spectacular drama in the house, but it really doesn’t have so much to do with the twist itself as it does the decisions a few players make. To use a very nerdy comparison, it’s almost like “Game of Thrones”: magic is rare, since you want it to feel special. If there is magic every week, then you start to get a little less enthused about it. “Big Brother” should be more about the players, and not the dynamics thrown at them by production every week.

We’ll get off the high horse now, mostly because we find ourselves having some sort of issue, as entertained as we are, with just about every season of “Big Brother.” Why? We want to see the players like Liza and Aneal go far, and instead we have people like Topaz or Andrew, who have really done very little in the game, still hanging in there. Without the twists, who knows what would have happened? Even if the results were still the same, though, at that point we would only be able to blame the players.

Photo: Slice