Big Brother 5 aired in the summer of 2004, premiering 6 July and finishing 21 September, and was won by Drew over Michael — Cowboy — by a jury vote of 4–3. It was the season of Project DNA, which hid a pair of twins and a pair of half-siblings in the same house, and it produced the move that changed how every season since has been played.
- Winner: Drew, 4–3 over Michael. $500,000.
- Runner-up: Michael, $50,000.
- Aired: 6 July to 21 September 2004. 31 episodes, 82 days.
- Houseguests: 13 on Day 1, plus Natalie on Day 35 — 14 in total.
- Theme: Project DNA — Do Not Assume.
- New rule: the veto became a six-player competition. That is what made the backdoor possible.
- No America’s Favorite. That prize did not exist until Big Brother 7.
Who won Big Brother 5?
Drew won Big Brother 5, beating Michael 4–3 and taking $500,000. Will, Marvin, Karen and Diane voted for him. Adria, Natalie and Nakomis voted for Michael.
Neither finalist expected that result. Drew went into the finale saying it would be seven to nothing against him and that he would not get a single vote. Michael thought Will was his.
Drew got there by winning the final Head of Household and then cutting Diane — the houseguest he had spent the summer in a showmance with, and who he had assured he would take to the end. He had told Michael the same thing.
What was Project DNA?
Project DNA — Do Not Assume — was Big Brother 5’s theme, and it hid two secrets in the house at once.
Two of the houseguests were identical twins sharing one identity, swapping in and out of the game. And two others were half-siblings who had never met.
The audience was told both on the premiere. The houseguests were told neither.
One of the two secrets lasted five weeks. The other lasted two days.
How did the Big Brother 5 twin twist work?
The Big Brother 5 twin twist ran on Adria and Natalie, identical twins playing as a single houseguest called Adria, who swapped places in the Diary Room — one twin walking in as the other walked out, every few days.
The deal was survival. If they could reach the halfway point of the season without being caught and without being evicted, both would be allowed to play as individuals. Only the twin in the house voted, and Julie described them to the audience as one player.
They made it, across roughly ten switches in thirty-five days. The only physical difference between them was a beauty mark beside Adria’s nose.
The closest they came to being caught was Week 3, when Drew put Adria up as a replacement nominee and she had to campaign for her life — reading the Bible aloud to Diane and telling Michael she was just a little baby country girl. She survived 7–1.
And the house did suspect a twin. They suspected Holly. Holly only found out the truth in her exit interview, and said afterwards that if she had been part of that conversation instead of its subject, she could probably have worked it out.
When was the twin twist revealed?
The Big Brother 5 twin twist was revealed live on Thursday 5 August 2004, Day 35, immediately after Scott’s eviction. Julie told the house that one houseguest had been playing with an identical twin, and Natalie walked in.
Diane said she had never been so dumbfounded. Jase called it his worst nightmare and, on the feeds, threatened to quit outright — saying he did not have a snowball’s chance at winning even fifty thousand dollars, and that producers had stacked the odds.
Nakomis was simply pleased. She had one more vote on her side, and she won Head of Household the same night. The reveal and the power flip happened in the same hour, and the Four Horsemen never recovered from it.
The twins lasted three more weeks. In Week 7 Nakomis nominated both of them, Adria won the veto and used it on herself, and Natalie was evicted 4–1 with her own sister casting the only vote to keep her. Adria went out unanimously the week after.
Who were the Big Brother 5 half-siblings?
Michael and Nakomis shared a father. Michael had never met him, and neither knew the other existed before walking into the house.
That secret did not last. Michael worked it out himself on Day 1 — from her surname, her hometown, and the detail that her father had lost part of a foot in Vietnam. He kept it to himself at first, then told the Horsemen, who pushed him to tell her. She did not believe him. Big Brother gave them both letters from home, and the house knew by the end of Episode 2, on 8 July.
It changed nothing about the format and everything about the season’s ending. Nakomis gave Michael the photograph of their father from her Head of Household basket in Week 5. She nominated him in Week 7 after promising she would not. And in Week 11 he used the veto on Diane, which left Nakomis as the only nominee and sent her out with no vote cast at all.
His words at the ceremony: “I am a man of my word, and I do use the veto to save you, Diane.”
She voted for him to win anyway.
What was the Six Finger Plan?
The Six Finger Plan was Nakomis’s Week 5 strategy, and it is the most influential single move in Big Brother history.
Big Brother 5 had introduced a new rule: the veto was no longer played by everybody. Six players competed — the Head of Household, the two nominees, and one player chosen by each of those three.
Nakomis saw what that allowed. As Head of Household she nominated two of her own allies, Diane and Marvin, as pawns. That put all six veto slots inside her alliance. Whoever won would take a pawn off the block, and she could then name her real target — who had never had a chance to play for the veto at all.
Drew won it and used it on Diane. Nakomis named Jase. He was evicted 6–1.
Jase, who lost his game to it, called the plan absolutely brilliant and said he gave her full credit for it. Michael’s line to him when the penny dropped was less generous: tomorrow they say gotcha, you got bitch-slapped.
Was the Six Finger Plan the first backdoor?
The Six Finger Plan is generally described as the first backdoor in Big Brother, and the honest answer is that it depends what counts.
Big Brother 4 had evicted replacement nominees twice. But those were reactions — somebody used a veto, and a replacement went up and went home. Nothing was planned around denying a target the chance to compete.
What Nakomis did was different in kind. The pawns were nominated in order to fill the veto field. The target was never eligible. That is the version every season since has copied, and it is why a word that did not exist in the house before this season was ordinary house vocabulary by Week 7 — Marvin, on the block: “Anytime you’re a veto nomination, you might be getting back-doored.”
Who were the Four Horsemen?
The Four Horsemen were Jase, Scott, Drew and Michael — the season’s dominant early alliance, and the one the rest of the house dismantled.
Jase named them. Scott had wanted the Knights of the Round Table.
The first crack was a showmance. In Week 3 the Spy Screen in the Head of Household room caught Jase kissing Holly, and Scott and Michael voted her out with the house, leaving Jase as the lone vote to keep her. Scott went out in Week 4, Jase to the Six Finger Plan in Week 5.
Jase’s own diagnosis afterwards: a girl got in the middle. If Scott had not voted out Holly, he said, there would have been no Adria and no Natalie.
The other half of the alliance made the final two.
Big Brother 5 week by week
Big Brother 5 ran eleven eviction weeks across 82 days. Three houseguests held Head of Household three times or more — Nakomis and Drew three each, with Drew taking the final one as well.
- Week 1. HOH Jase; nominated Mike and Nakomis. Scott won the veto and did not use it. Mike evicted unanimously.
- Week 2. HOH Marvin; nominated Holly and Lori. Jase won the veto and used it on Holly; Karen went up. Lori evicted 7–2.
- Week 3. HOH Drew; nominated Holly and Nakomis. Nakomis won the veto and used it on herself; Adria went up. Holly evicted 7–1, Jase the lone vote to keep her.
- Week 4. HOH Diane, after a nearly nine-hour endurance competition. Nominated Jase and Scott. Jase won the veto and used it on himself; Marvin went up. Scott evicted 4–3. The twin twist was revealed the same night.
- Week 5. HOH Nakomis; the Six Finger Plan. Diane and Marvin nominated as pawns, Drew won the veto and used it on Diane, Jase went up. Jase evicted 6–1.
- Week 6. HOH Adria; nominated Marvin and Will, won the veto and kept nominations. The vote tied 3–3 and she broke it. Will evicted.
- Week 7. HOH Nakomis; nominated both twins. Adria won the veto and saved herself; Michael went up. Natalie evicted 4–1.
- Week 8. HOH Marvin; nominated Adria and Michael. Karen won the veto and did not use it. Adria evicted 4–0.
- Week 9. The accelerated week — a full cycle run in 48 hours. HOH Drew; nominated Marvin and Diane. Diane won the veto and saved herself; Nakomis went up. Marvin evicted 3–0.
- Week 10. HOH Nakomis; nominated Drew and Michael. Diane won the veto and used it on Drew; Karen was the only eligible replacement. Karen evicted 2–0.
- Week 11. HOH Drew; nominated Diane and Nakomis. Michael won the veto and used it on Diane. Nakomis evicted with no vote cast.
The final Head of Household ran in three parts. Drew won part one on a shaking platform, Michael beat Diane in part two, and Drew took part three — then evicted Diane and chose Michael.
Did Big Brother 5 have a double eviction?
Big Brother 5 ran the ancestor of the double eviction, and the show’s own 2004 copy called it exactly that — a double eviction week, spread across two broadcasts rather than compressed into one hour.
Adria was evicted on the Thursday. Julie then told the house another houseguest would go within forty-eight hours, and a full Head of Household, nomination, veto and eviction cycle ran by a live Saturday show. The stated reason was arithmetic: Natalie’s mid-season entry had left one houseguest too many for the calendar.
The phrase “Fast Forward” does not appear anywhere in 2004 coverage of it. That brand belongs to Big Brother 7.