Big Brother 20 episode 12 review: The JC – Bayleigh race conversation

Going into Big Brother 20 episode 12, there was one thing that we expected to take center stage: JC and Bayleigh. It was clear going into this episode that we were going to get a difficult conversation between the two regarding cultural sensitivity (as CBS has put it), but it was not clear how it would be edited.

Let’s start off here with what we saw on the live feeds. JC was having a conversation with Bayleigh about how it is offensive to call someone with dwarfism a certain word that starts with an M. He then compared it to an African-American person being called the n-word … only he actually said the word. This infuriated her, but that’s all that the live feeds really showed us. We imagined that there would be more in the actual episode.

Of course, before we even got to this conversation, the show did things slightly out of order and gave you the endurance Head of Household Competition. It wasn’t as though JC and Bayleigh were set in a particular period of time. Sam won the HoH competition, and after that she made it clear that she knew her nominees. From here, the series moved on to other things, including all sorts of Faysal paranoia — generated in part by JC.

At around the 37-minute mark, we started to wonder whether or not this conversation would really happen, given that we were still focused on seeing Rockstar’s spectacle with the pots and pans.

The discussion

Should we credit CBS for showing this segment? Sure, though you can argue just how much was actually accomplished within the actual conversation. At first, though, JC seemed to be more interested in talking and defending himself than he did stopping, reflecting, and actually admitting that what he said was wrong. Meanwhile, Bayleigh was upset, but also composed and made some good arguments about the differences between what she said (asking a question for clarity) and JC deliberately saying a word that he knew was wrong just for the sake of a “point.”

As Bayleigh pointed out, and we also explain in the video below, JC could have easily have said the n-word without saying the actual word and still had made the same point. This is all his responsibility and while he did apologize, we’re still not entirely sure that he gets it. The episode did offer some resolution, but we don’t exactly think that any of this is outside of Bayleigh’s mind the remainder of the season.

Related – Be sure to get some other news when it comes to the live feeds

The nominations

Sam put up Haleigh and Kaitlyn on the block. We do think that this is going to be the memorable part of the episode, though. Instead, it was largely about sensitivity and trying to rebuild a bridge between two people.

Though, we will say this — what was Sam doing with the whole female empowerment message? Why tell other people what they’re doing is right and wrong? Sam didn’t need to that — it just felt like she wanted to embarrass them.

What did you think about Big Brother 20 addressed the conversation between JC and Bayleigh tonight? Share in the comments.

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