For the past few years now, I have paid faithful attention to CBS’ show Big Brother. I don’t get the live feeds, but I follow blogs and Twitter feeds of people who do so I can see what the network shows don’t show us.

As the summer approached, I got excited for a new season. You always find twists and turns in the personalities of the people in the house and how the react to things as the summer wears on.

Then creator Alison Grodner had to ruin everything. Well, for me. The rest of the country apparently loves this season’s format which mixed old houseguests – brought in as pairs – with a new group.

The ratings have gone through the roof, cementing Big Brother as a reality show stalwart. I guess a lot of people enjoy seeing the faces of Jeff, Jordan, Rachel, Brendon and Danielle because they know who they are. That’s probably true, but that’s not what Big Brother is about.

The returning players (along with Danielle’s father Evel Dick who thankfully had to leave the show early due to a personal issue) have so many advantages over the new players. They have the experience of going through the house, which is huge because certain things are constant from season to season. They have a partner (except for Danielle, which may explain some of her rash moves) to lean on in hard times. They also can, thanks to the ratings, enjoy “twists” which were clearly employed to benefit them instead of just messing with the continuity of the game.

Lastly, they had a chance to play with a bunch of really awful housemates (pictured above). They aren’t bad people. They were just so in awe of the returning houseguests that it rendered them completely useless in the game for the most part. This is what has pretty much ended my interest in this current season.

Sure, I’ll check in from time to time and will watch some of the episodes, but I just don’t care that much. I said form the beginning that if Grodner wanted to take advantage of the show’s past popularity, she should have done a complete All Stars season to see how past houseguests – who now seem to be quite a fraternity since they need to bank somewhat on the whole “reality show star” trend in the real world – formed new cliques.

Instead, she half-assed it, and the television viewing public has rewarded her with great ratings. Which means we’ll see more ways to get past houseguests on TV and fewer chances to discover new personalities who may go down in Big Brother history. Well done, Allison.