Big Brother 5 (Datria)

Big Brother 5 was the fifth season of the Datrian series Big Brother. The season aired on Channel 7 from June 17, 2006, until August 25, 2006, lasting 70 days. After 10 weeks of competing, Diane Davidian won the $500,000 prize over Auburn Drew by a 4-3 vote.

Rather than stick with the public voting system implemented in the previous season, Big Brother 5 reverted to the traditional format from the start, with the Head of Household nominating two housemates for eviction every week and the rest of the house voting to evict one of the two nominees. This season also featured the first set of intruding housemates in the show's history, with Auburn Drew, Claire Bruzik, and Vickie Carlyle entering the house in the fourth week.

Big Brother 5 is what many fans consider to be the beginning of the "Big Brother Renaissance", which lasted for the next two seasons. Big Brother 5 was praised for its return to basics and more cutthroat nature. The reason had an average viewership of 0.995 million, roughly 10% up from the previous season.

Twists

 * Intruding Housemates - After three weeks of competition, three new housemates entered the house to replace the first three evicted housemates. All the intruders were granted immunity coming into the house and were not eligible to be evicted their first week in the house.
 * Datria's Jury Vote - Early in the fifth week, Sandra McHale decided to voluntarily leave the house. However, because Sandra had walked from the competition during the jury phase, she was not eligible to vote at the finale for the winner. Because of this, her vote was given to Datria, where the public would vote for the finalist they would want to see win. Datria ultimately cast their vote in favor of Diane Davidian, which ultimately led to her winning by a single vote.
 * Sequestered Jury - For the first time in the show's history, rather than having all of the previously evicted housemates vote for the winner, a jury composed of the seven previously evicted housemates would instead choose the winner.
 * Final Two - Because of Vickie's expulsion from the house during the eighth week, there would be only be two finalists instead of the original three in order to make up for the unexpected exit. This also had the consequence of leaving Vickie's spot on the jury completely vacant in order to keep the jury at an odd number of votes. This is the first time that a final two was used without it being intentional, as was the case in Big Brother 3.

Food Competition Results

 * + denotes the Head of Household.

Week 1
When the first 10 housemates entered the Big Brother house, they all took part in the first Head of Household competition, which was won by Alex Leder. Using his position of power, Alex was able to galvanize the support of the other men in the house to form the Guys Alliance, along with Garry Maruca, Harold Southey, and Josh Hallmann. The guys believed that Frederic Vitali was also a member of the alliance, but he preferred to keep himself at a distance and never considered himself as a part of the group. With the nomination ceremony looming, Alex randomly selected two of the women to be nominated, resulting in Kristy Strachan and Sandra McHale being put up. Alex didn't have a strong preference for either one going home, but the Guys Alliance feared Kristy more since she was seen as being a more viable competitor and was closer to the other women in the house. With Frederic acting as the swing vote, Kristy was voted out of the house by a 4-3 vote.

Week 2
The second Head of Household competition was ultimately won by Garry Maruca, keeping the Guys Alliance in power for another week. The alliance continued to set their sights on the women; but rather than randomly select the nominees like last week, Garry decided that they should go after the strongest women in the house in order to cripple them further. This resulted in Anna Crane and Diane Davidian being nominated for eviction. Anna detested the nature of the Guys Alliance and spent the rest of the week campaigning against them and trying to rally support for an opposing faction. This irked the rest of the Guys Alliance as they now saw her as their biggest threat going forward. On eviction night, Anna was evicted by a 5-1 vote, with Sandra McHale being the only housemate to vote against Diane.

Week 3
In a twist of irony from last week, Diane Davidian became the third Head of Household, ending the Guys Alliance's hold on power. Though Diane was not a part of any organized alliance, she knew that the Guys Alliance was the biggest obstacle to her game, thus she nominated two of its members. She chose to nominate Garry Maruca, for nominating her previously, and Harold Southey, for his condescending behavior towards the women in the house. The plan seemed to be set to get Garry out of the house because he was seen as a more critical member of the alliance, but Frederic Vitali worked to get Harold out instead, hoping that the move would win him some favors from both the Guys Alliance and the other women. The vote ultimately flipped, and Harold was evicted by a 4-1 vote. Bea Aureli ended up being the only housemate to vote against Garry.

Week 4
The beginning of the fourth week had shaken things inside the house as three intruding housemates entered the game: Auburn Drew, Claire Bruzik, and Vickie Carlyle. All three of them were immune from being evicted and could not compete for Head of Household. The fourth Head of Household competition was won by Frederic Vitali. Frederic wanted to maintain his balancing act by nominating one man and one woman, but he thought this would make it seem like he's indecisive and trying to play the middle. Thanks to the efforts of Diane Davidian and Bea Aureli, Frederic ultimately sided with the women and put up two members of the Guys Alliance, Garry Maruca and Josh Hallmann. Alex Leder hoped that by garnering the support of the new housemates, he'd be able to keep Garry, his closest ally, in the game. Alex's plan was in vain as Vickie abandoned the vote to vote for Garry, sending him to the jury by a close 4-3 vote.

Week 5
While Bea Aureli was the winner of the fifth Head of Household competition, her victory was soon overshadowed by the voluntary exit of Sandra McHale. Sandra became increasingly miserable inside the house as she missed her family, so she removed herself from the game. However, the eviction for the week was still set to continue. Bea was tempted to go after the remaining members of the Guys Alliance, but she was also anxious about the intruding housemates and how it was possible they could become a voting bloc in the near future. To prevent such a situation from happening, Bea decided to nominate Claire Bruzik and Vickie Carlyle. When Bea, Diane Davidian, and Frederic Vitali found out that Vickie actually voted with them the last round, they worked to get Claire out instead. The three were able to get Auburn Drew to flip on the Guys Alliance and get Claire evicted from the house by a 3-2 vote.

Week 6
Auburn Drew came out as the winner of the sixth Head of Household competition, having just flipped on the Guys Alliance. Most of the house was unsure about who Auburn would nominate, so everyone worked to get him on their side. Auburn came around to the idea of knocking out the Guys Alliance sooner rather than later, as he feared that they will try to gun for him in the upcoming weeks. Wanting to eliminate his threats, Auburn chose to target Josh Hallmann, whom he saw as the more likely to beat him in a final two situation. He put up Bea Aureli as a pawn to keep some of the heat off of him, although Bea wasn't too thrilled by the idea. In the end, it seemed likely that Josh was going to be evicted as Josh and Alex Leder's attempts to swing votes fell on deaf ears. Josh would later be evicted by a unanimous 4-0 vote, with Alex only voting for Josh to prevent himself from being isolated further.

Week 7
After the seventh Head of Household competition ended, Diane Davidian was victorious and won the title for the second time. Diane's main target was of no surprise as she wanted to get rid of Alex Leder, thus spelling the end of the Guys Alliance for good. The big question though on the minds of the other housemates was who Diane was going to put up as the second nominee. Diane ultimately settled on putting up Vickie Carlyle as a pawn, believing that the other three housemates had no incentive to vote against her. Even though Alex tried to sway Auburn Drew and Frederic Vitali to keep him, his pleas failed as he was evicted by a 2-1 vote. Frederic, however, was the only housemate to vote for Vickie, but he did this only because he wanted to create paranoia among the other four housemates and use that to his advantage in the upcoming weeks.

Week 8
When the eighth Head of Household competition was over, Frederic Vitali found himself as the winner for the second time. Before the events of the week would start to unfold, Vickie Carlyle was removed from the house because of threatening comments she had made in an earlier conversation. The expulsion came when paranoia was running rampant in the house as Auburn Drew, Bea Aureli, and Diane Davidian worked to figure out who cast the odd vote against Vickie. Frederic sought to get Diane on his side by trying to convince her that Auburn was the likely suspect because of his previous affiliations with the Guys Alliance. Frederic also nominated Auburn and Bea, hoping that Diane would evict Auburn because she both believed that Auburn was the flipper and worked with Bea in the past. However, Diane later realized that Frederic was the stray vote, told Auburn about Frederic's plans, and shockingly evicted Bea, thus putting Frederic in a weaker position heading into the ninth week.

Week 9
Unlike the previous eight weeks, the final Head of Household competition was played in three parts, with the winners of the first two parts battling it out in the third part to become the final Head of Household. Frederic Vitali won the first part while Auburn Drew won the second part, so those two moved on to the third and final part. As Diane Davidian lost both parts, she was automatically nominated for eviction. In the end, Auburn won the third part of the competition and became the final Head of Household of the season. Faced with the decision of either evicting Diane or Frederic, Auburn ultimately saw Frederic as the housemate most likely to win the season, so he cast the sole vote to evict him. This left Auburn and Diane as the season's two finalists.

Week 10
After 70 days of being inside the house, the decision of whether Auburn Drew or Diane Davidian should win Big Brother 5 was handed to a jury of the most recently evicted housemates. While the six housemates on the jury were evenly split between the two finalists, the vote from Datria gave Diane the fourth vote she needed to win, thus she won the $500,000 prize over Auburn.

Trivia

 * This season was originally intended to have a final three instead of a final two. However, following Vickie's unexpected ejection from the game, there was no other choice but to have a final two.