‘Big Brother: Over the Top’ will tell houseguests of Presidential election results

Yesterday, we had a rigorous internal debate regarding what “Big Brother: Over the Top” should do regarding the results of the Presidential election, mostly because this is a show that people use for escapism. Given how divisive this election was in particular, we can imagine that some out there are looking at the show as escapism and a chance to break away from the drama of the real world — we certainly understand that! Of course, the irony in particular here is that we’re talking about a show that has caused plenty of social-media chaos of its own with online voting.

If there is one takeaway that most “Big Brother” fans should have from the past 24 hours, it’s that who stays and who goes in a silly reality TV show doesn’t have anywhere near the same bearing as what is going on in the real world. We’ve heard a few houseguests vocalize their own thoughts and fears about the election in the house already, and they’ll have a chance to be more open about it come Thursday. During the question-and-answer session with Julie Chen, the players will learn from her that Donald Trump is set to become the new President.

Speaking on this decision to Entertainment Weekly, show executive producer Allison Grodner notes that it was not an easy decision for them to make, given that disclosing serious information from the outside world is not something they do lightly or frequently:

“Information about outside news events has come into the house in the past through a competition or a live Q&A with Julie [Chen] … But most of this information has involved pop culture events like Kim and Kanye’s baby name. Other than 9/11, we have not given the houseguests world news with as much magnitude as the presidential election.”

Ultimately, we do think that this is probably the right decision by production, if for no other reason than that if they didn’t tell the players, they’d spend the rest of the season talking about it. We just hope that they’ll be able to move on, mostly because we’re not sure how much more election-related coverage we can really process at this point.

Don’t worry — this is probably the last we’ll talk about this until tomorrow. We’ll be back later at this link to analyze the eviction further. (Photo: CBS.)