Warning! The following contains spoilers for Big Brother Season 25 Episode 6. Read at your own risk!
It already feels like 100 days have passed in the Big Brother house since Hisam Goueli‘s Head of Household started. There has been chaos ever since he won the veto, including an attempted blindside that may not even be happening anymore. We can put all that aside for now because I have a major issue with the Scary-Verse that I need to air out. I’m disappointed in what I’ve seen, but there’s still time for the CBS series to fix this.
Perhaps I shouldn’t say what I’ve “seen” because my complaint is actually the exact opposite. I’ve been watching Big Brother online with my Paramount+ subscription and waiting to see what happens in the Nether Region when Houseguests disappear, only to be left in the dark about what’s actually going on when they’re gone.
What Do The Houseguests Do When They’re In The Nether Region?
From Night 1 in the game, we’ve been aware of Houseguests being sent to the Nether Region. When Cory Wurtenberger finally returned after a couple of hours away following the premiere, he was instructed not to discuss what happened. I had my hopes up and was ready to hear how wild this Nether Region was.
Following Cory, Jared Fields was the next Houseguest to be transported after finishing runner-up in the Week 2 HOH competition. Jared appeared via television and could communicate with Houseguests with it, but he said he didn’t use the option as much as he could’ve. Jared also mentioned he didn’t have a bed in the Nether Region and had trouble sleeping, but it’s unknown if he was playing up the spookiness of it. Jag Bains and Bowie Jane have also been to the Nether Region but didn’t report back anything more than Jared.
It seems like the main point of the twist is to exclude Houseguests from certain elements of the game on a given week, and it’s just not being used to great effect. To be fair, Houseguests circumventing or underutilizing twists is nothing new, and I think Big Brother should’ve put a bit more pizazz on this promising twist for the sake of entertainment.
The Nether Region Should Feel Like A Real Punishment, And We Should See It
In my mind, I envisioned the Nether Region being a place where Houseguests were sent as a punishment and would be annoyed with other Houseguests for sending them there to endure some sort of light-hearted annoying thing. Nothing torturous, but just the usual Big Brother shenanigans like interrupting sleep with nonsense or making them recite stuff. I also expected a stylized room we could peek in on, and it could even make for some humorous segments.
Right now, it feels like Big Brother is leading Houseguests to a broom closet, making them hang out in there in mild discomfort for a few hours and sending them back. That’s not scary. That’s just lame. At least when Sam Bledsoe was taken out of the house in Season 20 as part of a punishment, she was given a cool robot she could control:
The above is the type of shenanigans I love from Big Brother that I feel is severely lacking in the Nether Region. As I said, there’s still time for the production team to spice it up. Just give me a room I can see them in and some funny punishment they must endure. Give me that, and my complaints about this week would do a complete 180 the same way the house turned on Hisam after witnessing his HOH.
Big Brother airs on CBS on Sundays and Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET and on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET. The game continues, and with a few more universes to cycle through, I hope there’s a chance to make the Nether Region a little more spooky when it returns.