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Everyone, I'm exhausted. I am back at the hotel from the wrap party. Emil and I were able to mingle with the evicted houseguests, minus the final four. I should have a full recap on Wednesday when I get off the plane.

Emil and I have lined up some interview and radio shows with Marcellas, Janelle, James, Sarah, Chicken George, Howie, and a couple more. Stay tuned for dates and times.

Also, Emil was the one in the audience who caught Mike Boogie's Chilltown t-shirt that was actually worn in the house. We'll be auctioning it off for you guys soon!

We've got plenty of pictures from the wrap party that we will post, so don't leave us just because Big Brother is over. Thanks for an amazing season.
Chat with us in the forums!

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The Arrival

My day at the Big Brother finale started a bit strangely. The email I received told me to be there at 3pm. Since I’ve been to the BB5 and 6 finales, I know how this works—you show up a bit before 3, there’s a huge line of cars, etc, and there’s always a long line of people to get in. So I decided this year I’d outsmart everyone and arrive around 2. Well, that’s great til the reality of leaving work early hit and I couldn’t make it out as soon as I wanted to. I ended up getting there at 2:50 and drove directly into the parking lot—no lines, no waiting, etc. I am thinking this may be a small, intimate finale as this is VERY unusual (For BB5 I arrived around the same time, maybe a bit earlier). I pull right up, tell them I am there for BB, and “Rent A Cop” attitude shows its ugly head.

“You need to be here at 3.”

“But it’s 2:50. I’ve always been told to arrive *by* 3 and I’ve always gotten in before 3.”

“I can’t let you in until 3. You have to leave and come back.”

I’m a bit flabbergasted but decide I’ll pull out and park right around the corner and just wait. I make a couple of quick phone calls and turn around to get back to the lot at 2:57—and to my shock, about 300 cars (ok, maybe a bit fewer than that) showed up out of NOWHERE. All waiting to pull into the CBS lot. Luckily, since I was coming from the north (with a bunch of dead end streets) my line was only about 4 cars long, but anyone who’s waited to turn left into a long line of right-turning cars knows, you’re going to wait a bit.

The line didn’t move for like 10 minutes. AT ALL. For those of you familiar with CBS, the line (from my vantage point) went at least down Radford to Ventura, if not spilling out onto Ventura. Finally, they started letting cars in – and totally dispensed with all the normal security checks. No trunks checked, no IDs, no nothing. I think they knew they had a massive traffic problem and figured the people checking us in would straighten out who belonged there.

I got parked and they directed all BB people down to the side of the garage. If you were there for BB5 it was set up almost exactly the same way. Big long line, people walking down checking you in. Now, for those that don’t remember, I had been told I was on the list for BB6 but something went horribly wrong and I wasn’t on the list (but managed to talk my way into standby). I was worried that even with an official email something bad would happen. When the woman checking everyone in got to me, I kinda gritted my teeth and gave her my last name. – she knew who I was without even looking at the list! I was pretty shocked, and should’ve asked how she knew who I was. I got a purple wristband and she went on her way. There were light blue and orange wristbands (Apparently houseguest-guests) and purple (crew guest), and the standby people with numbers.

While we were waiting in line, Marvin (BB5) showed up, followed by (in no particular order) Monica, Bunky (both BB2, not together), Lisa (BB3 a few of us in line THOUGHT, it was slightly hard to tell), Diane (BB5 -- or maybe her twin sister), and then the HUGE BB6 contingent of April, Maggie, Rachel, Sarah with Ivette and Beau showing up a bit later. Gretchen (Housecalls) and someone who looked like her (like a sister maybe?) showed up. Kaysar’s family also showed up, and I think Janelle’s mom did as well but I didn’t know it at the time. (I think a few others showed up but I am blanking, it was the most previous HGs I remember seeing at a finale!). This is my first hint the crowd wasn’t a real “fan crowd” – in BB5 when the previous HGs showed up, everyone in line clapped, tried to talk to the HGs, etc. Now maybe it’s a function of who I saw but no one in line even approached any of the HGs. Granted, neither did I, but I am not the most extroverted person. In fact, there was a lot of debate, one person thought Beau was Marcellas (apparently not remembering the whole ‘jury’ deal!). It was a bit frustrating. It did appear they MIGHT have had stuff out to make signs, and possibly some pre-made signs, but they weren’t actively pushing it like they did at BB5.

Around 3:50 they took in the orange/light blue wristbanded people to the house, and pulled the purple wristbands into our own line. The annoying aspect of this is the line DID NOT stay in order and people were racing around cutting in line and such. But it wasn’t a big deal as it turned out, as I’ll get to in a bit.

Just after 4, they took the purple wristbands in to the show. They took us through the CBS lot (past the Passions soundstage, among others!) and we had to wait outside of the house for a bit as they seated people. It was REALLY hot and pretty miserable at this time. Whereas in the original location we were shaded by the parking structure, we were out in direct 100+ degree heat. Luckily they got us in in about 5 minutes (maybe only like 2 but it felt like 20).

When I first got in the seats were pretty empty, but they did have assigned seats for some former HGs—Bunky, Ashleah, Ivette, Beau, Maggie, and the F2’s families. The HGs seats had signs on them with pictures; family were just plain text.

Seating was ENTIRELY arbitrary, based on how attractive you were. My proof? Walking near me was a couple—the girl was absolutely gorgeous. The guy wasn’t too bad looking, maybe sorta like Michael Vartan from Alias. As you walked in, the handlers assigned where you would be sitting. I got about 4th row on the left side (As you walked in, and the left side as it appears on TV) I was near the aisle, since I was alone. Now, as the couple behind me walked in, I heard the guy directing me to say “Hey, uhm [whatever the other guy’s name was], do we want them for the runway?” pointing to the couple behind me. Eventually, they were NOT given runway seats and seated behind me. (definitely the guy’s fault for not being handsome enough!) This sorta happened last year when I was on standby and waiting in the green room, they were definitely judging who got to sit where (most “attractive” = closest to Julie = most camera time). It’s a bit annoying, it’s TV, what can you do.

So eventually Bunky and Gretchen (housecalls) come up and sit pretty much right in front of me. Some guy sits next to me and seems a bit upset he’s got such a bad seat, I just write it off as a weird personality. Ivette and Beau end up in the row in front of me, all the way at the other end by the catwalk. Only Ivette was supposed to sit there but Beau went with her. Maggie and April (and Rachel?) sat together in the front row of my section and I think only Maggie was supposed to sit there. The production staff got REALLY flummoxed by all this and started telling Beau and April they HAD to move where they were TOLD to sit. Beau refused, and April said someone TOLD her to sit there. Neither ended up not moving.

A guy next to me was trying to hold seats for friends (Not sure the deal, they didn’t have wristbands). He had the “HOW WOULD HOWIE VOTE” sign. I don’t quite know what to make of him; I don’t want to say too much and possibly offend him or a friend who may be reading this, but I didn’t “get” him. He claimed to be a huge fan of the show from as far back as S2, but didn’t know who Bunky was. (or Krista, when I pointed her out walking in) He didn’t seem to know much about the show but claimed to have been one of the pre-show standins (They run a week of semi-rehersals before the show starts – they hire people to live in the house, do comps, etc. They’re not allowed to stay overnight, so the hours are like 8am-11pm, but all meals are catered, etc). Not sure if he was telling the truth but it’s not something the average BB fan knows exists, so who knows.

Like I said, Krista (BB2) did show up and it was pretty shocking when she walked in. She was wearing a home made t-shirt with “Louisiana” and a bunch of Katrina-stats (About houses destroyed, people needing help) – it was very hard to understand the shirt. She looked like she had lost a lot of weight since BB2 and looked nice. (even if the t-shirt seemed a bit .. out of place?) She did sit at the very end of the runway, I have no idea if they were planning on doing something with her but they never did.

As Bunky was sitting down he asked around and said “Well, who is everyone?” It seemed a bit rhetorical, but I always liked Bunky, so I reached out to shake his hand and introduce myself. I think he saw the sign the guy next to me had, as he asked if I was Howie’s brother. I have no idea where that came from otherwise…..!? But it was said in jest but I didn’t quite know how to respond. I did ask if after seeing the season he was happy he wasn’t in it, and he said he was VERY relieved he didn’t make it into the house, that it wouldn’t have been worth it. He was pretty openly talking to anyone who asked him questions. I wish I had thought to tell him how much I enjoyed the Kent and Bunky shows from BB2.

About then, the guy next to me on the other side, who had been complaining about his seat, asked if he could switch with the guy next to me and swap us down a bit. We kinda didn’t know what was up but we agreed to slide down. Then, I overheard him introducing himself to Gretchen and Bunky as Nate and it hit me—it’s Janie’s best friend! He finally did say that that was who he was; he didn’t seem very comfortable talking about Janelle but I did tell him how amazing all of the fans thought Janie was and he was really lucky to have her as a friend. He seemed like a nice guy, a bit unsure of how to handle the attention (I don’t blame him, I wouldn’t know what to say if total strangers talked about my best friends as if they knew them!). I guess Janie’s mom was in the row in front of me, or maybe the row in front of that.

At one point, the production staff asked us a bit later how many of us had to go to the bathroom. When half of the audience raised their hands, they decided to take small groups. Problem was, they only took ONE small group before pretty much ignoring the rest of us. They kept telling us to wait, they’d come back, but we finally revolted and just left of our own volition. Of course, we didn’t realize the stage door would be locked behind us when we came back. I led a small group of 3-4 people back to the other door (there are 2 entrances; one is used to get into Julie’s studio/finale studio, the other goes more into the production areas) into the studio where a very freaked out crew member stopped us and asked why we were coming in. I told her we got locked out going to the bathroom. For some reason she agreed to ONLY take ME back to the stage (I think she only saw my wristband but everyone else had one) but I told the rest of the group to follow me in. We wandered around unsupervised for a few seconds, but it was about 7 minutes to showtime. I ended up wandering right between Julie and her teleprompter to get back to my seat. She was getting last minute hair/makeup done and reading the teleprompter.

After they finished depleting the ozone layer getting Julie’s hair ready, the hair and makeup people got a pretty decent crowd reaction. ;) The stage coordinator told us about acting exciting, cheering, standing up/sitting down on cue, etc, etc. The normal TV show stuff. Then Julie did a brief rehearsal of the first intro to the show. There were a few dead minutes waiting, and then we went live….

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The Show

This part won’t be as long since everyone actually SAW the show. I’ll just write the things that stick out in my head that maybe wasn’t obvious on TV. It might be easiest to try to answer questions people have about what was shown…. I am re-watching the show again (doing a very fast scan of it) to try to remember anything that popped up.

The crowd was definitely pro-Janelle. I was disappointed to see on the TV how much of the crowd noise they cut out. It’s weird to watch on TV—they had Julie mic’d VERY low in the studio (to avoid feedback). We could NOT hear Julie at all when there was any applause. I did notice the crowd got louder during Janelle’s introduction. There were LOTS of crowd reaction to many of the taped segments, like the jury stuff, but they kept that all off of the broadcast-- laughing when re-showing the flower/bee veto, shocked noises when Janelle said she prayed to God that Erika wouldn’t win, etc.

It was weird being behind Julie and getting to read her TelePrompTer. She stuck to the script about 95% of the time, and actually did do some minor (VERY minor) ad-libbing. The plasma TV that kept appearing and disappearing behind her was carried in between each section. It was kind of funny seeing 3-4 crew members dragging the TV back and forth just to set up one shot. When Julie switches cameras that she’s looking into, there is a guy standing directly underneath the cameras that swings out to show her where to look. It’s pretty funny to watch. (the TelePrompTer says stuff like “to 60” or “to 40” where each camera is numbered)

During a break, they raced in the furniture for the jury area – just a wood platform and 7 chairs. They were scrambling to get them in and set up in time. But they obviously did. They did the same for the 5 evicted HGs; they had to move cameras and race in the platforms.

They didn’t allow us to hear the end of the jury questioning—they were lining up the jury outside the studio and didn’t want our groans or applause or the like to taint the jury, so the production people came out and explained they were cutting the audio for the last 2-3 questions and the final statements. So that was a bit of a bummer. (They need a better way to handle that, last year when I was in the green room they told us to be quiet talking since the jury might’ve been influenced by us) And again, when they jury DID come out we could NOT hear who was being introduced, so the crowd reaction for the person didn’t start until we actually SAW them (Which took a while to due to how high the seats were, they had to fully get on stage until we saw them). Janelle immediately saw Nate and started waving and smiling at him (you can see it on the show-- and I’d like to think we made eye-contact as well ;) ).

Bunky is who held up the Bunky sign. That was his sign from his seat (holding his place). He got in trouble for holding it up!!! The production assistant ran over and told him to STOP that, they were like “What the f---“ in the production room… I don’t know what the big deal was, and Bunky seemed a bit mad that they told him to stop..!

We couldn’t see the keys or anything as they were voting. It looks MUCH darker on the show than I remember it in the studio—I didn’t even notice they dimmed the lights!! George couldn’t figure out how to turn the key, Danielle seemed to have trouble finding the correct key. Howie got a BIG reaction for both his comment about America hating Erika (like a “oooooooooh boy here we go”) and the HowieGordon.com comment—VERY loud applause. It doesn’t sound as loud on TV.

They did bring out the first 5 evicted HGs during a break and told us to wait to applaud til they were all named. Jase immediately became Jase and started into a routine kinda mocking Marvin – I can’t repeat it without sounding a bit racist but it was basically that he was sitting between 2 white women. (figure Marvin’s tendencies plus Jase’s sense of humour and I am sure you can imagine where it went—it was clean but just barely) I didn’t notice Nakomis’ face very much (Bad angle) but I don’t think there was anything going on with her eyes like some have asked.

Alison looked very striking to me—I’ve never been a fan of her nose job but she looked really pretty in person and a great outfit. (She looked the most “different” than what I expected, although I thought she looked pretty when she was on this season, better than BB4) Diane looked MUCH better in person than I thought she looked on TV.

The Mr/Mrs Smith thing went over BIG with the audience… as did any mention of Will being the best player for BB. The clips of the DR phone calls had the audience in stiches—I don’t think the HGs heard the majority of them as it was SO loud with the crowd laughing. They got the point, though—they were being mocked in the DR.

I think the audience was FLOORED when they showed Boogie’s segment to Erika—absolutely stunned. No one could believe they actually did that. You could totally see that Erika was emotionally devastated. It was pretty sad…

The crowd reaction sounded better on TV that I thought it did in person for Boogie’s win—it was applause but wasn’t really enthusiastic. I think there was some real-time audience volume control going on (making us louder). You can kind of hear it taper off before Boogie even gets to the end of the runway. There was some sliiiight booing at one point (I can’t remember now if it was when he was walking out, or when he mentioned the restaurants)

During commercials (Before and after Boogie came out), there was lots of Will and Boogie being Will and Boogie (well, once Boogie got out)— they’d “introduce” staff members they knew. Stuff like “Ladies and Gentlemen, Jonah [lastname], taking care of all of our families, give him a hand!”. So we did applaud, but it seems SO forced/fake on everyone’s part. “Everyone, it’s Arnold Shapiro!” (groan)

Once Erika came out she DID seem VERY upset by what happened with playing the DRs and the comments from Alison. She didn’t really talk to anyone. I did see her mom (?) come up to her after the game and you could tell Erika just wanted to run away and hide with her. They whispered for a long time (can’t lip-read, sorry!) but you could tell Erika was NOT happy at ANY point in the taping. I felt horrible for her. I met her before the BB5 finale and she seemed like a VERY sweet and genuine person. I know there’s been some controversy about her during the run of BB:AS but I hate seeing ANYONE hurting unless they really truly deserve it, and I don’t know if being on a reality show quite hits that threshold. I’m not sure if she pissed off the producers or what, but her face was NOT taking it as much in stride as her words were. And she is very, very thin. I remember her being thin during the BB5 finale but not like this. Her arms are TINY.

I quite honestly didn’t pick up on any major chemistry between Will and Janelle. ALL of the sequestered HGs seemed to be looking more in the audience for friends/family. They definitely weren’t spending more than occasional seconds whispering. It didn’t seem like they couldn’t wait to talk or something.

Julie had SERIOUS trouble opening the envelope for America’s Choice, it was NOT a ploy to drag it on (The show was running VERY late). The crowd ERUPTED when Janelle won AC – louder than anything Boogie got.

And then, the show was basically over. Julie raced through the last few lines, we went off the air, and the audience was told to hold on for a few minutes…. Little did we know there was (A little bit) more to come.

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