Big Brother Got Twelve New Housemates Last Night. Let’s Make Snap Judgements About All Of Them!

It was a morbid fascination with which Australia tuned into Big Brother last night, to meet 12 of the 16 new housemates who will spend the next three months inside a terribly bright Gold Coast house, watched by a dwindling number of people until the show’s finale.

Sonia Krugar opened the precedings with an incredibly awkward and misplaced dance spectacular, starring a bunch of shirtless men covered in blue paint.

She then explained the conceits of this year’s show: before they entered the house, the housemates would be given a choice between two partners, who they would have to play the entire stupid game with. Each pair would be rewarded together, punished together, and DRIVEN MAD BY POWER together for an entire week, as they became ‘Heads of the House’.

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Pair #1: Priya (The Indian One) and Katie (The Bossy One)

The first housemate out of the stable was Priya: a 27-year-old  from Adelaide who is “a narcissist” and “in your face” and can be “self-obsessed”. This pretty sums up everyone who has ever appeared on the show.

She came onto the stage wearing an Indian sari as techno-Indian music played, because she is Indian.

After finding out she was going to be the head of the house, Priya was given two options for a partner — a good one, and a bad one. The audience liked the irritatingly energetic Jake, but Priya picked Katie to keep her storyline interesting. Priya is strategic and manipulative like that.

Katie is a 25-year-old athiest/reverend’s daughter from Sydney who recently lost 13 kilos, gained confidence, and became “confronting”. She found out she would also be head of house, and did this with her face:

After they left the stage, Kruger informed us that she’d made the wrong choice: Katie was a bad psychological match. SUCKED IN, YOU GUYS!

Priya explored the house as Katie embarked on an increasingly — almost worryingly — desperate hunt for champagne. Soon they were set up in the ‘Power Room’ to make snap judgments about everyone else: “Watch closely,” said Big Brother, with that luscious, omnipotent timbre, “because based on your first impression, one pair of housemates will have a very different start to their Big Brother experience to everyone else.”

And then we met our next pair.

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Pair #2: Jake (The Excitable One) and Gemma (The Tall One)

Jake is 25, from Brisbane, and super-single. He is a prankster! You can’t prank the prankster! He can give it, but he can’t take it! He likes to stir the pot, but doesn’t like it when the pot is stirred!

He bounded onto the stage with Buddy Holly glasses, ripped denim shorts and a flurry of energy, as if to say, “Yes, you will be irritated by me”. He couldn’t even stand still without giving the appearance of bouncing.

Jake chose the redhaired Gemma to be his pair: a 29-year-old hard-ass nurse from Perth, who has a condition called Marfan Syndrome, which makes her very tall.

Gemma came onto the stage, and turned out — yes — to be very tall. “You’re so tall,” Jake noticed. “You are very tall,” ogled The Kruger. “How’s the weather up there?” Jake asked, hilariously. It’s a good thing Gemma had her entire childhood to get used to being teased all the time!

They ran into the house to be watched by Priya and Katie. “She’s very tall,” said Katie. “That’s a very high bun.”

“She obviously needs the height,” answered Priya. “They’re like shorty-and-tally-went-through-town,” said Katie.

I hope everyone has noticed that Gemma is tall.

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Pair #3: David (The Bearded One) and Sandra (The Curly One)

David is a single 31-year-old radiographer from Sydney. He has a “nice-smelling” beard for which he has a “game plan”: it’s “manicured”, “thick”, and “luscious”, and “has to be maintained”. Australia’s very own Fleet Foxes, Vance Joy, provided the background music to this intro clip, because of course.

David came out onto the stage looking like every barista/mixologist who’s ever made you an espresso martini in a small bar off Oxford Street. He said his mum and dad have a near-perfect relationship, so everybody fell in love with him a little bit — even though he also said he’d dump a woman if she had a cold sore or bad teeth.

David chose Sandra to be his pair, because the other option, Dion, looked like a complete asshole. He made the right choice: Sandra is a 30-year-old curly-haired bucket of sass from Wagga Wagga. She’s single, lives at home with her parents, and works at a Bonds store.

“I was a very ugly child, so I had to develop a personality at a young age,” she explained. I’d date the shit out of her.

When Sandra came out onto the stage, Krugface informed her that she wouldn’t be able to bring erotic novels into the house. “No, I won’t,” Sandra replied. “I do have quite the vivid imagination though, so I should be fine”.

This was widely understood to be code for “I’m going to be masturbating pretty much the whole time”.

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Pair #4: Dion (The Muscly One) and Jason (The Natty One)

Dion is 24, straight-edge, has a long-term girlfriend, and likes to work out. He hates excuses, hates alcohol, and thinks women are to blame for the fact that he kind of hates them too.

After being offered Jason or Skye as a partner, Dion made the obvious decision by picking the one who wasn’t a woman.

Jason turned out to be a lovely and emotional real-estate salesman from Canberra, and maybe also a ventriloquist doll.

Back in the house, Katie and Priya were judging everyone from the sidelines. Katie refused to call Jake cute, didn’t like Dave’s beard, and was very upset that all the women had kicked off their heels already: “Real ladies don’t do that” she said.

When Dion walked into the house, however, she immediately warmed up. “Green-pants isn’t gay,” she declared, before Priya warned her: “These days, you never know“.  So take that, heteros.

WAIT #QANDA IS ON BUT SO IS #BBAU HOW DO I DECIDE *Swiftly changes channel to abc*

— brad esposito (@braddybb) September 8, 2014

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Pair #5: Skye (Skye-Skye!) and Lisa (The Selfie-Taker)

“I like being in the sun, big sexy lips, making people laugh; and I don’t like war, that politics thing, and stinky bad breath.”

Skye-Skye is an orange barista from the Gold Coast, who appears to be singlehandedly setting the feminist movement back by at least 40 years (Skye-Skye!).

Very slowly, loudly and clearly, Krugbot explained that Skye-Skye needed to choose a partner, between Lisa — another blonde — and Travis, who loves girls, football, “and hitting the late night disco”. Skye picked Lisa.

Lisa is pretty, funny, recently single, and has a dog: “My friends are all married and having children,”she says, “and I’m at the first birthday party getting as drunk as I can.”

I like Lisa. She will probably hate Skye. Katie and Priya hate Skye too, and when Skye stood next to Jason at one point, she said very loudly “I wonder if there’s going to be a gay one” — so maybe he hates her as well.

Everybody on Twitter also hates Skye, which means everybody will grow to love Skye, and Skye will probably win unless Tim Dormer shows up. Go Skye!

Skye has a lovely voice and sounds much of the time like a fruit bat on bath salts who has failed to climax for some hours #BBAU

— Helen Razer (@HelenRazer) September 8, 2014

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Pair #6: Travis (The Italian Bro) and Ryan (The Other Bro)

Travis is a 24-year-old who lives with his parents in Victoria; whenever he speaks, traditional Italian music plays in the background because he is Italian. He hates women who cry too much, and rocks up on stage with a backwards cap because he is just too kool.

“A lot of people call me the Italian Stallion, but I don’t think I am at all,” Travis says. He is paired with Ryan, a 26-year-old graphic designer from Sydney who “[does] pretty good with girls, but [is] not a sleazy guy.”

So these two can talk heaps about not being good with chicks and that.

After Travvy and Ryno bro’d their way into the house, Katie and Priya were asked to choose which pair would have to spend the first night in the “fishbowl” outside, eating muesli bars and drinking water behind a glass cage, while the others partied with champagne and a banquet.

This was a hilarious idea that almost made everything else worthwhile.

After being let into the house to meet everyone, Priya and Katie were forced to tell the housemates who they were banishing. They chose Dion and Jason — “we think you two will have a good time in the fish bowl anyway”, Priya offered optimistically.

Jason and Dion both tried to look like they were okay with this news. Jason tried especially hard.

As the show wound down, $20,000 worth of the prize money were laid out on a table in front of Priya and Katie: their next Power Play. They could take $100 each, with no consequences: take $1000 each, and deprive the house of all food but meal replacement shakes for three days; or take $10,000 each and deprive the house of food for a week.

Priya, ever the strategic thinker, believed all of the other housemates would take the $10k: “Each man for himself,” she said twice in a row. But Katie chose to sleep on it.

Tonight, Katie and Priya will have made their decision; Dion’s guns will be glistening after bench-pressing Jason in the fishbowl all night; and four more people will have joined the house: a midwife, a magician, a “door bitch” and a paralympian, who will probably be going without food for a week.

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Big Brother airs on Channel 9 at 8.40pm every single night forever.