With a new season of Big Brother just around the corner, I figured it was high time I checked out one of the most iconic seasons of them all. I've been watching Season 10 with my Paramount+ subscription, partly because I saw a recent update from Dan Gheesling on Jerry MacDonald, and also because the Michigan native is one of the best ever to play the game. I'm enjoying my watch so far, though I can't help but wish one thing from this classic season makes it to Season 27 when it arrives this summer on the 2025 TV schedule.
Would I love to see another iconic run by a future Houseguest? Sure. Would it be great to see a season full of the absolutely chaotic fights that occurred in Season 10? Absolutely. All of that would be fantastic, but if you were to ask me what I wanted the most of all in Season 27, it's the return of something the CBS reality series has left far in the past: food competitions.
Big Brother Used To Do Food Challenges In Older Seasons, But Has Gotten Away From It
Big Brother used to do a lot of competitions back in the day for luxuries for the Houseguests. While winning a new car or some cash was fun, the best competitions the series used to do were the food competitions. These happened one of two ways.
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In one version, teams would divide off into an even number, and the losing team would have to go on slop for the week. In Big Brother Season 10 in particular, this caused a big fight in the house after Libra Thompson suggested it wasn't fair that the oldest Houseguests, Jerry and Renny Martyn, were put on the same team. Basically, she was saying they were the reason their team was put on slop, and that went over with the older players like a fart in church.
The other version of food competitions had the Houseguests compete as a team, and they'd work to complete a challenge that would award them a certain type of food for every task they complete. This could lead to a situation where you have a week where you have plenty of vegetables and beer, but no meat.
Food challenges were discontinued by Big Brother after Season 10 and replaced with a simpler Have/Have-Not challenge where Houseguests either won and had food, or didn't and had slop and cold showers. It's natural that BB evolved over the course of its run, but after watching this latest season, I think this was a change they ultimately got wrong and need to reverse.
Food Challenges Bring Some Of The Most Entertaining Content To Big Brother
There's so much that we lost when Big Brother decided to stop doing food competitions. Among the biggest of these, however, was the team element of competing. More often than not, BB challenges are a free for all, with only one winner when it's all said and done. The team challenges created some alliances among players who didn't always get along and caused more tension when things went south. Case in point, I already mentioned the big fight that went down when Libra complained about having Renny and Jerry on the same team.
I also think the team element led to more interesting competitions, many of which you don't see on the show anymore. An example of this is the "Slop, Pig Ears, Crickets" challenge, which was a twisted version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors." The winner of each round not only had to win, but then had to eat the food they won with to earn a point for their team.
I also have to give a shoutout to Big Brother Season 6, which gave us "Conveyer Belch." That saw Houseguests shove their faces with as much food as possible. The team with the least amount of food waste didn't have to go without that week, which feels like a cruel twist of fate, seeing as the team who ate less had to go without.
Food competitions were a great way to create drama and put the fate of "going on slop" in people's hands. That's not to say it was always fair, because Jerry in Big Brother 10 was on slop for close to a month. That feels borderline dangerous to me, which brings me to the next reason I'd love to see food competitions return.
I'm So Tired Of Slop Being The Only Food Punishment
A week on slop is the most brutal punishment you can get in Big Brother, but it's so played out at this point that the CBS series rarely even mentions it in the episodes. We still have people who are regularly subjected to it, but more often than not, the Houseguests find a diplomatic way to ensure that no one stays on slop for too long.
This isn't the way things should be. Going on slop should be something that's manipulated and used to drive tension in the house. I also think that there are far better food punishments that would be worse than eating the slop, which is basically fortified oatmeal. Like, what if we had a week where Houseguests could only eat salmon? Not only is that a healthier option, it may just permanently ruin their enjoyment of it for good.
I just have to believe that with Big Brother going on 27 seasons, and all the other adjustments its made over the years, there has to be a way to improve food punishments. If there's still time to hint at what the theme will be for this season and solidify the cast of Houseguests participating, there has to be time to reconsider how to do food punishments this season. Let's just redo food in general, because I don't want the best meals these Houseguests have be when they play poorly on The Traitors years later.
For those who want to watch Big Brother Season 10, it's available to stream on Paramount+. Coincidentally enough, Dan gave the world an update on what's happening with Jerry, who is doing well years after being the oldest Houseguest to play the game.