[Maru]

7. It started out great, the cast selection was good, but completely hobbled by BB interfering at every step. Terrible nominations rules, the stupid HoH thing, and last but definitely not least... the horrendous handling of nominations rule breaks which I think was designed to spike the ball.

The HMs found a predictable path for themselves to follow through on via the nomination chat leaks alone. You could tell BB had their favorites that they wanted to script the show around and they were very tempted to handle those storylines directly.

Production really didn't seem to care that most of the cast became wasted floaters who were merely tools of convenience to feed into a main plot.

The interference and the information being offered up for free via constant rule breaks made it very easy to tell what the "main" story line was going to end up being in the longterm to the HMs also, so why try to be more creative? Ali was clued very early on and you could tell as she turned on her main character syndrome pretty hard once saw the role being designed for her. Lily trying to be a live-in panto didn't help. Why bother competing with a dollar store Nikki Grahame?

I'd rate lower but I enjoyed actually getting to know the HMs individually, especially over LF. I just didn't end up liking most of them as HMs since they each were looking for their ways to coast to the Final and that was pretty lame in my book. I'd thought closer to the end some might pop out of their shell, but nope. Next series I won't make the same mistake again

I can't really blame the HMs, though. The series is short, so the runway to success was shorter and easier to sit out. That's an incredible incentive to walk to the final if you believe you can by merely "showing up"... and since nothing was in their control with all the interference, why bother trying to actually play the game one's own way? Ali thought she could be booted every week and you could tell that changed her behavior and to not take her time for granted. The others didn't show the same concern until it was time for them to actually be up and even then, because it was modified from standard noms, it didn't really have the same impact

I would've given up too after a couple of weeks of the same storyline of "Who is the fake one" dominating nearly every conversation and BB-fed line of questioning. How many times was that same line of questioning fed to the HMs and even then, after a while it became clear the "be authentic" pathway was to play a narcissistic game rather than answering questions with any real sincerity, so why play? It resulted in tediously predictable TV. People's individual personality's were squeezed out by endless nominations talk (gameplay spoilers) and the same predictable trap questions clearly suited to the authenticity storyline... sure, ask them over and over regarding who is the "most" this or that, by all means. People who answer the questions of life in these terms are two-dimensional anyway. It's why I think that the series missed its potential because the HMs were actually good. However, they were encouraged to follow that spectrum pretty early on rather than it being allowed for them to find their own spectrum of behavior and it being overwhelmingly one storyline as a result... even the final clips they showed during the final L&L were dominated by that logic...

Just my thoughts.