The third season of Celebrity Big Brother is nearing its conclusion, and its jury format is having game ramifications not seen in traditional seasons. As with regular Big Brother seasons, the winner of Celebrity Big Brother is determined in a jury vote. Similarly to Survivor, the BB game requires players to eliminate one another until only a select few contestants remain. Then, the eliminated contestants are responsible for choosing the winner from the remaining competitors.
The jury format has been top-of-mind in the Celebrity Big Brother house and in the conversations surrounding the season. Most notably, fan favorite houseguest Shanna Moakler called out Todrick Hall during her eviction, claiming that she would convince her fellow jurors not to vote for Todrick to win. The topic of jury management has been top-of-mind for some of the players following Shanna's threat, and the season will come down to who best managed their relationships with ousted contestants within the parameters of the unique CBB jury format.
Beginning with Big Brother 4, the regular edition's jury format requires the jurors be sequestered together until returning to the BB house on finale night to decide a winner. This isn't the case with Celebrity Big Brother, though, as the jury format more closely resembles that of seasons 2 and 3 of the original show. In those early seasons, the jurors, once evicted, got to return home, watch the episodes and live feeds, and engage with the public before casting their vote. This changed after season 3's Danielle Reyes, a dominant strategist, lost to Lisa Donahue in a controversial finish after the jurors were able to see Danielle's Diary Room confessionals about them. However, due to the logistics involved with hosting celebrity cast members, Celebrity Big Brother's jury format closely resembles the original structure. Once evicted, the celebrities get to return home and gain access to social media, as well as to the live feeds and edited episodes.
This format has major implications in the game and makes the celebrity edition a much different beast than traditional seasons. Instead of jurors basing their decisions on their own perceptions and word-of-mouth from other jurors, they can instead see, firsthand, what transpired during the season and cast their jury vote accordingly. This means that someone like Todrick Hall, who has made countless mean-spirited comments about jurors like Shanna and Chris Kirkpatrick, has very little chance at winning the game despite his strategic gameplay. Not only did Todrick do a poor job of managing his relationships with these players while in the game, he further cemented their distaste for him by making incendiary remarks about their morals, appearances, and families on the live feeds, which they now have the ability to see for themselves.
Though the Celebrity Big Brother jury format differs greatly from the traditional version, it still rewards the players with the most self-awareness in their gameplay. A truly great Big Brother player would take the jury into account when maneuvering through the game and would adjust their strategy to not leave their competitors feeling personally offended by their gameplay. In the early days of Big Brother, Danielle's loss made more sense due to the lack of precedent she could draw from when playing the game, but there's no excuse for a player like Todrick to personally insult jurors behind their backs when he knows they will be able to see his comments and will be deciding the ultimate winner of Celebrity Big Brother.