‘Big Brother Reindeer Games’ was a happy accident that saved Christmas
In memoriam & support of what absolutely should be a holiday tradition
At the tail end of 2019, mere months before the collapse of the pre-pandemic world, Kacey Musgraves “revived a classic holiday tradition” per NPR. “The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show” brought yuletide camp to Prime Video in a new old-fashioned way: cozy acoustic performances from music industry standouts, guest appearances from Musgraves’ star-studded rolodex and a tongue-in-cheek leaning-in towards the seasonal spirit rounded out Musgraves’ biggest year to date.
There’s an entire wiki dedicated to cataloguing holiday TV specials, but few have stuck around in my sphere. Sure, I bought Big Time Rush’s 2010 “Holiday Bundle” at the age of 12, but “boy bands covering Mariah Carey” is not exactly a prestigious genre. Moving down my interests of the last decade, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has also fallen flat on its face attempting to stir up snowy spectacle in the last few years.
Each of these memorable December touchstones throughout my life has felt meticulously assembled. “Big Time Christmas” was cooked up in a lab by Nickelodeon executives; the “Drag Race Holi-slay Spectacular” might be the most skippable hour of reality television’s most bloated franchise; even Musgraves’ bold effort was built to promote her then-three-year-old Christmas album, “A Very Kacey Christmas.”
I don’t often seek out Christmas specials. But the past two years of television were widely impacted by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, leaving networks scrambling to keep viewers hanging onto every word of content they didn’t have.
Just like the late-’00s WGA strike, unscripted television was given new, spacious room to breathe. Thanks to its low production costs and lack of a need for writers, reality television, my most guiltless pleasure, was able to save the day for primetime stalwart CBS. “Survivor” extended the length of its episodes and gave its best season in years; “Big Brother” aired its longest season ever.
“Big Brother” also teased a holiday TV special, but not to much fanfare – “Big Brother 25” spotlit several issues with the “Big Brother U.S.” product as a whole and as such, this December coda to a sluggish “BB” saga wasn’t received with very open arms.
But a year later, I’m now proclaiming that “Big Brother Reindeer Games” saved Christmas in 2023. It definitely wasn’t supposed to.
As a reluctant “Big Brother” fan, I’ve followed this franchise for over 10 years, becoming well-acquainted with the show’s favorite faces. When “Reindeer Games” was announced – a shortened, holiday-themed competition between a cast of “BB” legends – I wasn’t enthralled. Throwing alums like Frankie Grande, who managed to offend pretty much every marginalized community possible whilst on “Big Brother 16” and Josh Martinez, who weaponized not just one, but two of his fellow “Big Brother 19” contestants’ PTSD against them, back into the “BB” fray was not a particularly attractive move to me.
But for every casting misfire, there was a success. I wasn’t expecting “Big Brother 24” winner and beloved fan favorite Taylor Hale to ever accept a call to re-enter the “Big Brother” house.
Hale suffered a cascade of ostracism and antagonism from her fellow houseguests during the summer 2022 “BB” season, and while this treatment made her path to “BB” victory immeasurably satisfying, it was painful to watch herd mentality tear her down at the season’s onset.
But what Hale found during the “Reindeer Games” was a cast that finally took her seriously. She was disparaged during “BB24” for not being a “girls’ girl,” something that other girls in her cast cliqued up to arbitrarily decide. On “Reindeer Games,” however, the cast of legends saw Hale for who she was: a girls’ girl, much so that it was even subtitled by the editors during a particularly whispery congregation of the other women.
This quick course correction of the “BB” narrative might’ve been just as satisfying as watching Hale win her season. Even “Big Brother 18” winner Nicole Franzel-Arroyo, famous for intentionally going against other “BB” women in order to fulfill a fantasy of selling “last woman standing” T-shirts, joined in canonizing Hale as a girls’ girl.
Franzel-Arroyo experienced what was, in my eyes, a complete character renaissance as well. Gone are the days of her whiny nursing student persona from “BB16.” The self-proclaimed “chubby mom” came back to “BB” intent on working with women, possibly traumatized from her “simp for men” strategy going up in flames at the end of 2020’s “Big Brother: All-Stars.” To see her shift roles was unexpected but welcome.
This season masterfully demonstrated the beauty of age as a maturity purveyor and legacy builder, in that sense.
Britney Godwin (née Haynes), my first-ever “BB” favorite, was given the chance to return to the show that builty her reality career after an unsuccessful “Amazing Race” stint a few years back. She was able to demonstrate that she’s still funny! With 13 years and counting past her “BB” debut, she’s moved on from the humorous albeit low-hanging fruit that tickled my 14-year-old brain and advanced to self-deprecation with a maternal perspective that entertained me at 25.
Old-school “BB” icon Danielle Reyes also returned to TV screens on “Reindeer Games” for the first time in close to two decades. Reyes was fresh out of her 20s on “Big Brother 3” – now a grandmother lauded for pioneering “Big Brother” gameplay, there was a satisfying awe in watching younger cast members respect her history. Even after her exit in one of the year’s best reality TV episodes, watching modern “Big Brother” winners pay tribute to Reyes felt like “BB” fandom lore firmly codified.
In general, while the old-school “BB” players added depth to their television personas in an exciting way, the younger all-stars found themselves subverting expectations. Martinez revealed a mellowed-out version of himself, a more well-rounded version of the confrontational persona exhibited in 2017. Additionally, “Big Brother 23” winner Xavier Prather found himself playing the “Reindeer Games” from the bottom of the social food chain. Prather was dominant during his “BB” season, having the win on lock by the time “Reindeer Games” co-host Tiffany Mitchell played herself out of her power position within their alliance.
“Reindeer Games,” in short, subverted and enriched the legacies of several big names in “Big Brother” – and it did some course correction behind the curtain as well. Last year’s “Big Brother 25” dredged up the most potent batch of complaints that “Big Brother” competitions (to earn power within the overall game) had grown to favor athletes, particularly male houseguests. As such, when it was announced that “Reindeer Games” would conduct its game almost exclusively via competitions, eyes rolled across the internet and continued to write off this spin-off.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, “Reindeer Games” managed to create equitable competitions. In a format where the only way to stay in the game would be to win a head-to-head challenge rather than a vote, the top two contestants were women, following a season of one-on-one upsets that sent brawny players home against puzzle wizards and balancing beasts.
During the final episode, where Grande and Prather lost in the first round of the “Reindeer Games” tournament between the final four contestants, their losses were treated primarily as awesome victories for the players who’d conquered them. This magic permeated its way into this past summer’s “Big Brother 26,” a season lauded for leveling the playing field for standard “BB” contestants once more.
On top of it all, “Reindeer Games” was filled to the brim with camp and heart. “BB” producers are nothing if not consistent with how hard they’ll commit to an aesthetic theme. With that theme being Christmas, viewers were treated to a high-budget raiding of every Christmas store in the country in order to dress the cast and decorate the “BB” house, referred to as “Santa’s Lodge.” The show even offered the first-ever visual of the energetic “BB” narrator – dressed up as Santa Claus, of course. The competitions, of course, were also delightfully jovial and festive, but that’s a separate compliment that goes to the show’s challenge producers for adhering so tightly and proudly to the holiday spirit.
“Big Brother” has never shied away from camp – it’s a very overproduced TV show, bordering on Cocomelon for adults at times – but with “Reindeer Games,” the season gave some reason for this. Houseguests regurgitating fed lines in their confessionals instead felt like holly-jolly winks at the camera. Everyone felt in on the joke, just having a little winter fun.
I don’t care if the telos of “Reindeer Games” meant that influencers who’ve already won six-figure sums on “BB” were allowed to win even more; this silly little series brought a much-needed aesthetic lift to my most recent Christmas, as my family’s once-grandiose holiday décor was pared back in preparation for a move away from my hometown.
I want “Big Brother Reindeer Games” every holiday season, but the strike’s impact has pretty much played out by now; the strike itself was over before 2023’s “Reindeer Games” were even announced. And tragically, with no “Reindeer Games” to join in this December, we’ll just have to wait and see if CBS ever feels cheerful enough to revive this holiday thrash.