big brother 22

Cody won Big Brother 22 All-Stars, beating Enzo by a unanimous jury vote of 9-0 — and he did it without ever sitting on the block. Nicole finished third. Sixteen returning players, and the second All-Stars season the show has run.

• Aired: August to October 2020, on CBS.
• Premiere: 5 August 2020.
• Finale: 28 October 2020 — Day 85.
• Winner: Cody.
• Runner-up: Enzo.
• Third place: Nicole.
• Final vote: 9-0 — unanimous.
• Houseguests: 16, all returning players. Two of them former winners.
• Prize: $500,000 to the winner, $50,000 to the runner-up.
• America’s Favourite: Da’Vonne, $25,000.
• Length: 85 days and 37 episodes — fourteen days shorter than the two seasons before it.
• The twists: the Safety Suite, the BB Basement, the BB Neighbor, and the show’s first triple eviction.

Who won Big Brother 22?

Cody won Big Brother 22 on 28 October 2020, beating Enzo 9-0. Every juror voted for him — Ian, Da’Vonne, Kevin, David, Dani, Tyler, Memphis, Christmas and Nicole.

The number that defines his season is not the jury vote. It is this: Cody played all 85 days and was never nominated for eviction once. He won eight competitions along the way, including the final Head of Household, and at no point in the season did the house seriously discuss putting him up.

The last decision was the hard one. He held the final Head of Household and had to choose between Enzo, who had no competition wins to speak of, and Nicole, a former winner who had been his closest ally since week one. He cut Nicole.

He said afterwards that the cut was about loyalty to Enzo rather than about picking the easier opponent. Nicole’s reaction in the moment was shorter: “You’re joking, right? I would never have done this to you.” She voted for him anyway, and said afterwards she had known what he was doing more or less the whole way.

Enzo took the shutout harder than the loss. “If I was going to lose to somebody, it was going to be to Cody,” he said — then, on the 9-0: “That bothers me. I don’t think I deserved that. I should have gotten at least two votes.”

Da’Vonne won America’s Favourite with over a million votes. Tyler was the other announced top-two finisher.

Which All-Stars season was this?

The second. The first was Big Brother 7 All-Stars in 2006, and the two were cast in completely different ways.

• Big Brother 7 let the audience pick. CBS shortlisted twenty candidates from the first six seasons and America voted online. The plan was for viewers to choose half a twelve-person cast; the response was big enough that fourteen went in — eight chosen by the public, six by producers — off a reported 15.7 million votes.
• Big Brother 22 had no public vote at all. No shortlist, no campaign, no announcement. Production picked all sixteen and the cast was not revealed until the live premiere, as the houseguests walked in.

There was also no published rule about who qualified as an all-star. David proves it on his own: he came straight from Big Brother 21, where he had been knocked out of the game on day one.

Who was in the Big Brother 22 All-Stars cast?

Sixteen returning players, two of them former winners. In finishing order, with where each of them came from:

• 1st — Cody. Runner-up on Big Brother 16. Came back and won without ever being nominated.
• 2nd — Enzo. Third on Big Brother 12, where he ran the Brigade. Reached the final two again and took zero votes.
• 3rd — Nicole. Seventh on Big Brother 16 — evicted, returned, evicted again — then won Big Brother 18. Cut at the final three by the ally she had carried.
• 4th — Christmas. Third on Big Brother 19, where she played most of the season on a broken foot. Held a power here she never used.
• 5th — Memphis. Runner-up on Big Brother 10. Two Heads of Household this time and out at the final five.
• 6th — Tyler. Runner-up on Big Brother 20. Won a Head of Household and a veto inside the triple eviction and was gone the following week.
• 7th — Dani. Runner-up on Big Brother 8, eighth on Big Brother 13. Held the Replay power and spent it on someone else.
• 8th — David. Sixteenth on Big Brother 21, knocked out on day one. The only houseguest here to use a BB Basement power.
• 9th — Kevin. Third on Big Brother 11. Won a veto in week 4 and used it on himself.
• 10th — Da’Vonne. Sixteenth on Big Brother 17, eleventh on Big Brother 18. Third time in the house, and America’s Favourite.
• 11th — Ian. Won Big Brother 14. The season’s first juror.
• 12th — Bayleigh. Eleventh on Big Brother 20. Evicted 9-0, the last houseguest out before jury.
• 13th — Kaysar. Tenth on Big Brother 6 — evicted, voted back in by America, evicted again — and tenth on Big Brother 7. Out 10-0.
• 14th — Janelle. Third on Big Brother 6, third on Big Brother 7, twelfth on Big Brother 14. The first houseguest to play four seasons.
• 15th — NicoleA. Third on Big Brother 21. Evicted second, on day 16.
• 16th — Keesha. Fourth on Big Brother 10. First out, 13-0, on day 9.

Two Nicoles, and how to tell them apart

Big Brother 22 cast two returning houseguests called Nicole, and most confusion about this season starts there. Nicole — the Big Brother 18 winner — reached the final three and was cut on the last night. NicoleA, from Big Brother 21, was the second person evicted, on 20 August. After that date an unqualified “Nicole” always means the Big Brother 18 winner; before it, it means neither reliably.

What were the Big Brother 22 twists?

Three, and they ran one after another rather than overlapping — the Safety Suite in weeks 1 to 3, the BB Basement powers in weeks 5 to 7, and the BB Neighbor in week 8.

The Safety Suite

Every houseguest was given a single VIP pass. In a one-hour window before nominations they could spend it to enter that week’s Safety Suite competition — and the pass could only be spent once across the whole three weeks, win or lose. The reigning Head of Household could not play. Whoever won was safe for the week and had to name a Plus One, who was also safe but took a week-long punishment for it.

• Week 1 — Kaysar won and saved Janelle, who spent the week in an All-Star mascot costume.
• Week 2 — Christmas won and saved Ian.
• Week 3 — Enzo won and saved Christmas. The last one.

It was announced as a three-week twist from the start, so it did not fizzle out — it finished. The one-pass rule is what made it interesting: spending it early meant having nothing when the house turned on you, and Keesha, the first person evicted, went out with hers still unspent.

The BB Basement

In week 5 every remaining houseguest went down into a darkened basement to search for three power symbols. Three powers came out of it, each usable once, and all three expired at the end of week 7.

• The Disruptor — David. After nominations, secretly remove one nominee from the block. That person was safe for the week and could not be named as the replacement. Used in week 6, on himself — Dani had to put Tyler up instead.
• The Blocker — Christmas. At the veto meeting, stop herself or anyone else from being named as the replacement nominee. Never used. It expired.
• The Replay — Dani. Let an outgoing Head of Household compete in the next one, overriding the usual rule. She did not use it on herself after her own reign. She used it on Memphis, who then played in week 8 and did not win.

Three powers, one of them used, and the one that was used moved a nomination by one seat. It is a fair summary of how much this season moved.

The BB Neighbor

On 24 September, Dr. Will — the Big Brother 2 winner — appeared on a balcony next door as the BB Neighbor. He never entered the house. What he did was turn that week’s two competitions into a choice between power and money.

In the Head of Household, each player had three golf shots and could aim at the Head of Household side or at a cash target. Cody won the Head of Household; Dani and Tyler tied on the money and split $10,000. In the veto — an OTEV competition — there was a shirt worth $10,000 hidden in the course. David found it and took the money, which ended his run at the veto. Cody won that too.

Dr. Will’s appearances then supplied the questions for the first competition of the triple eviction a week later. That was the end of it — the Neighbor lasted eight days.

Who were the Committee?

Six houseguests — Cody, Nicole, Dani, Christmas, Memphis and Tyler — who formed in the opening days and controlled every eviction from week one until they started cutting each other. Enzo was never formally in it, worked with it throughout, and outlasted all but one of them.

The numbers are the argument. Between them the six and Enzo took twelve Heads of Household and eleven vetoes. Only two vetoes all season went to anyone outside that group — Kevin in week 4 and Da’Vonne in week 6. Every eviction after the first followed their count.

What it did not do was hide. Bayleigh’s read on it afterwards was that from the first days she and Da’Vonne could see they were not the priority, and that the group made no real effort to conceal itself. That is the difference between this and the alliances it gets compared to: the Brigade and the Cookout both had to stay invisible to work. The Committee did not need to.

Which is also the case against ranking it top. It ran a field that never organised against it — Janelle and Kaysar were a visible pair from the start, and the outsiders never built a durable counter. Elite on control, easier on opposition.

The first triple eviction

On 1 October, Day 58, Big Brother ran the first triple eviction in the show’s history — three houseguests out in one two-hour episode. Big Brother Canada had done it before; the US series had not.

The format was the week’s scheduled eviction followed by two complete compressed cycles — Head of Household, nominations, veto, vote — not one Head of Household nominating three people at once.

• Kevin, 6-0. The scheduled eviction. Cody had been Head of Household all week, nominated Kevin and David, won the OTEV veto and left the block alone.
• David, 3-2. Memphis won the first quick Head of Household and nominated David and Nicole. Christmas won the veto and did not use it. The closest vote of the night — Cody, Dani and Enzo sent David out; Christmas and Tyler voted for Nicole.
• Dani, 4-0. Tyler won the second Head of Household and the veto, nominated Dani and Nicole, and left them there. Cody, Memphis, Christmas and Enzo voted Dani out.

Nicole was on the block in both quick rounds and survived both. Three of the six who left that night were Committee members, which is when the alliance stopped being a bloc and started being a countdown.

Who won each HOH, veto and eviction in Big Brother 22?

Eleven weeks and a finale, with three evictions in one night in week 8.

What is Big Brother 22 remembered for?

A winner who was never once in danger. Eighty-five days, eight competition wins, not a single nomination, and a unanimous jury. As a résumé it is close to the best anyone has assembled. As television it is the reason the season has the reputation it has.

The All-Stars who went first. Keesha out in week 1, NicoleA in week 2, Janelle in week 3, Kaysar in week 4. Four of the names the season was sold on, gone inside a month, and the second All-Stars was decided by the same bloc from the first week to the last. Compared with Big Brother 7, there was never a power shift.

The feeds. This is the complaint that has stuck hardest with the people who paid for them. Blackouts ran longer and were explained less than in recent summers — one stretch of more than 22 hours in late September, after a wall yeller shouted information into the yard that the house was not supposed to have. Two separate wall-yelling incidents cut the feeds and triggered lockdowns. No total was ever published.

We said so ourselves at the time. Our own finale write-up called it “very boring for a feed only watcher” and put the blame on few likeable people, almost nothing unexpected, constant feed blockages, and houseguests playing to their social media accounts. It ended: “Finally, BB16 is not the worst anymore.”

The pre-game question

The season’s other running argument, and it needs stating carefully because most of it was never established.

What is documented: a number of alumni knew who else had been approached before move-in, and several houseguests said inside the house that the big alliance did not look like it had formed from scratch — Bayleigh, Da’Vonne, Janelle and Ian among them. Cody and Nicole had a prior connection through Cody’s brother.

What is not: any agreed slate, any confirmation that anyone reported pre-season contact to production, or any ruling from the network on any of it. Cody addressed it afterwards and said he had talked to a friend who was not cast, denied there was a pre-existing alliance, and said the only in-house connection he had counted on was Nicole. Nobody involved in the show ever adjudicated the claim.

Records and firsts

• First triple eviction in the US series — 1 October 2020. Big Brother Canada had run them before.
• Second unanimous winning vote in the numbered US series, after Big Brother 10.
• A winner who was never nominated across a full season.
• First houseguest to play four seasons — Janelle, and she passed 200 cumulative days in the house on the night she was evicted.
• Second All-Stars season — and the first cast entirely by production, with no public vote.
• 85 days — fourteen shorter than each of the two seasons before it, on a pandemic-delayed August start.

Big Brother 22 live feed updates, week by week

We covered this season live from the feeds every night. These are our posts from the night each result happened.

• Cast and premiere: The cast revealed live, and Cody wins the first HOH
• The house: A sneak peek inside
• Week 1: Keesha evicted 13-0
• Week 2: NicoleA evicted 10-2
• Safety Suite: Christmas wins and saves Ian
• Week 3: Janelle evicted 9-2
• Week 4: Kaysar evicted 10-0
• Week 5: Bayleigh evicted 9-0
• The powers: Who came out of the BB Basement with what
• Week 6: Ian evicted 5-3
• The Disruptor: David takes himself off the block
• Week 7: Da’Vonne evicted 5-2
• Week 8: Kevin, David and Dani out in the triple eviction
• Week 9: Tyler evicted 3-0
• Week 10: Memphis evicted 2-0
• Week 11: Christmas evicted at the final four
• Finale: Cody wins Big Brother 22 All-Stars