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Reality check

The Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition is off to a rousing start

AT FIRST, Direk Lauren Dyogi had his reservations about doing a second season of Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition, because according to him, having celebrities as housemates is not as simple as one might think.

“It’s hard dealing with celebrities, because you have to contend with a lot of things, like their managers, whether they have endorsements and whether those endorsements could be affected by anything that happens inside the house — and that’s just the beginning,” he explained.

Despite his reservations, however, he was prevailed upon by his ABS-CBN bosses, led by Linggit Tan, to go through with plans to do a second season. The show (which aired its first episode on October 14) features a new batch of celebrity housemates: FHM cover girl Riza Santos, sexy comedienne Ethel Booba, showbiz newbie Jon Avila, Star Magic talents Victor Basa and Baron Geisler, taekwondo champion Donnie Geisler (who, by the way, is Baron’s real-life big brother), female race car driver Gaby dela Merced, Kapamilya Deal or No Deal 26K girl Marylaine Viernes, former 26K girl Jen da Silva (who was booted from the show after the first season, following reports that she couldn’t get along with the other girls), actress Yayo Aguila, McCoy Fundales of the disbanded pop-rock band Orange and Lemons, Davao-based comedian Ruben Gonzaga, dethroned 2007 Mutya ng Pilipinas Zarah Aldana, former Starstruck finalist Megan Young and model Will Devaughn.

However, there was an unexpected twist to this batch of housemates: four of them — the brothers Baron and Donnie and the past and present 26K girls Jen and Marylaine — are ‘2-in-1’ housemates, meaning that if one of them is nominated for eviction, the other gets nominated as well; and if one is saved by text voting, the other is saved in turn.

In another unexpected twist, PBB Über host Mariel Rodriguez was brought in to serve as a guest housemate, although as of this writing, she has no idea that she is in the house merely as a guest. As host Toni Gonzaga explained during a recent episode of the show’s Primetime Bida edition, Mariel is in the house because she was assigned a special mission by none other than Big Brother himself. Be that as it may, she is allowed to join the official housemates in any activity or task assigned to them. “Big Brother wants her to have as well-rounded a stay inside the house as possible,” says Gonzaga. “He wants her to find out what life as a housemate is really like.”