The Brigade Alliance: Members, Nicknames and Big Brother 12

The Brigade was the secret four-man alliance that ran Big Brother 12 in 2010: Enzo, Hayden, Lane and Matt. It formed on Day 2, kept control of the vote for most of the summer without the house knowing it existed, and put three of its four members into the final three.

• Members: Enzo, Hayden, Lane and Matt.
• Nicknames: Enzo was the Meow Meow, Hayden the Animal, Lane the Beast and Matt the Brains.
• Formed: Day 2 of Big Brother 12, in July 2010. Enzo named it.
• First told to an outsider: 4 September 2010, when the last three members told Britney.
• Cut from inside: Matt, voted out 4–0 on 26 August 2010.
• Result: Hayden won 4–3 over Lane on 15 September 2010. Enzo finished third.

The Brigade is the alliance later alliances get measured against, and it did not win by being loud. For two months the house read the game as a set of loose friendships and showmances. By the time anyone outside worked out that four of those friendships belonged to one bloc, there were not enough people left to do anything about it.

• The members: who the four were and how each one finished.
• How it worked: the outside pairs that kept the four off the block.
• Week by week: every Head of Household and eviction of the season, from the Brigade’s side.
• Why they cut Matt: the member the other three stopped trusting.
• The reveal: the night the house found out.
• The best alliance ever? The case for, and the case against.

Who was in the Brigade?

Four men, each with a nickname Enzo gave him.

• Enzo — the Meow Meow. Named the alliance and gave out the nicknames. Cut at the final three, third place. He was back ten years later on Big Brother 22.
• Hayden — the Animal. Won the first Head of Household of the season and the last. Won Big Brother 12.
• Lane — the Beast. Kept the alliance’s closest outside friendship, with Britney. Runner-up.
• Matt — the Brains. Held Head of Household twice and the Diamond Power of Veto. Voted out by his own alliance in week 7, seventh place.

How did the Brigade work?

Each member kept a visible partner outside the four, and those partnerships were what the house saw. Enzo was close to Rachel and then Brendon, Hayden to Kristen and then Brendon, Lane to Britney, and Matt to Ragan. When Enzo finally explained the system to Britney, the point was simple. If a Brigade member did land on the block, the person beside him was likely to be one of those outside partners, and the other three held the votes to decide who went. Getting close to Brendon, Enzo said, was about making sure two of the four never sat on the block together. As he put it that night, nobody had a clue.

It worked because the rest of the house was busy. Rachel and Brendon spent the summer fighting most of the others, and every fight kept eyes off four men the house did not see as a group. The system was not airtight: in week 6 Brendon put Matt and Lane on the block side by side, and it took Matt’s Diamond Veto to get the Brigade out of it.

The Brigade week by week

• Week 1 · Hayden HOH: the four agree to work together on Day 2. Annie, revealed as the season’s Saboteur, goes 10–0.
• Week 2 · Rachel HOH: Matt goes up next to Monet, and the Brigade’s votes keep him. Monet out 7–2.
• Week 3 · Matt HOH: Andrew out 8–0. Matt leaves Rachel and Brendon off the block, the first thing the other three held against him.
• Week 4 · Rachel HOH: Hayden is nominated next to Kristen, his showmance. Kristen out 6–1.
• Week 5 · Matt HOH: Rachel out 6–0.
• Week 6 · Brendon HOH: Matt and Lane nominated together. Matt uses the Diamond Veto on himself and names Kathy. Kathy out 5–0.
• Week 7 · double eviction: with Britney as HOH, the other three backdoor Matt, out 4–0. Hayden wins the next HOH and Brendon goes 3–0.
• Week 8 · Lane HOH: Enzo wins the veto and takes himself off the block. Ragan’s campaign goes nowhere, and he is out 2–0.
• Week 9 · Hayden HOH: the three tell Britney everything. She leaves on Enzo’s vote, the only one cast.
• Finale, 15 September: Hayden wins the final HOH, evicts Enzo, and beats Lane 4–3.

Why did the Brigade turn on Matt?

Matt had delivered two Heads of Household and the Diamond Veto, and he was also the member the other three trusted least. By their own account, the doubts started when he held HOH in week 3 and did not nominate Rachel and Brendon. They set hard in week 6, when he used the Diamond Veto and named Kathy as the replacement. Looking back on 4 September, Enzo said that was when he knew Matt could not be trusted.

In week 7, with Britney holding HOH, the other three worked to get Matt backdoored. Ragan, by then suspicious of the four, put the alliance to Matt directly. Matt covered for the others, then tried to use what Ragan knew to talk Hayden and Lane into cutting Enzo instead. It did not work. Brendon won the veto, Matt went up as the replacement, and the house voted him out unanimously. Hayden, after the finale, called it the move that decided the season: “The Brigade turning on Matt was huge. That probably made the game for me.”

Whose idea the alliance was stayed disputed. Matt and Enzo both claimed it. Hayden’s verdict: “They came up with it together, but Enzo named us so I’m going to go with Enzo.”

When did the house find out about the Brigade?

Ragan came closest first, in the week they cut Matt, and was evicted the week after. The first houseguest told outright was Britney, on 4 September 2010. She was on the block next to Lane, and Hayden was holding the veto. Enzo walked her through it in the HOH room: the alliance since Day 2, the nicknames she kept hearing without knowing what they meant, and the pairs. Lane admitted he had taken over as the brains once Matt was gone.

Days later she was gone on Enzo’s single vote. The jury got the whole story from her too: at the finale she walked into the jury house in a homemade Brigade T-shirt and explained the nicknames and the pairs to the people the alliance had sent there.

Was the Brigade the best alliance in Big Brother history?

Enzo said so the night they told Britney: “People might not want to admit it but it was the best alliance ever made.” The case for him is the record. The four stayed hidden for two months, three of them reached the final three, one of them won, and the house only saw the bloc once it was too late to stop.

The players who came after treat it as the original. Enzo, back on Big Brother 22 in 2020, lined the famous blocs up on the feeds: “You were the hitmen, we were the brigade”, with Tyler adding Level Six. The Cookout of Big Brother 23 ran the same structure with two more people.

The case against is the opposition. The house around the Brigade never organised against it, Matt did much of the early competition work before the others cut him, and the system slipped at least once, in week 6. Even at the end nothing was locked: the final HOH decided which two of three friends would sit in the final two, and the jury split 4–3. It was the best-hidden alliance the show had seen. Whether it was the best is still an argument.

The full season is in the Big Brother 12 season guide.