A History of Sex in the Big Brother House

Season 25 of Big Brother has featured everything from last-minute blindsides, secret relatives, a shadow realm called the "nether region" where nightmare creatures lurk, and a Survivor legend pulling everyone's strings. It shouldn't come as a surprise that it has also featured the latest instance of two houseguests having sex in front of the live-feed cameras. On August 26th, after a few weeks of flirting and making out, Jared and Blue got under a blanket and did the deed right there on the couch in the loft. Afterwards, perhaps as an acknowledgment that other people sit on that couch(!) including Jared's mom(!!) who is in the house with him(!!!), Jared wiped down the couch with what appeared to be Clorox wipes.

Jared and Blue's quickie under the covers presented the usual dilemmas when it comes to reality TV hookups: how will this impact my game? What will my girlfriend back at home think? But the truth is that Jared and Blue are the latest in a long line of Big Brother contestants to have sex under the watchful eye of the live-feed cameras. For a show that isn't nominally about hooking up, Big Brother sure is conducive to it. Copious amounts of down time in a season that films for three months of real time offers a prime opportunity for contestants to get really bored, really sexually frustrated, and very willing to ignore their inhibitions. There are also beds everywhere. That house is approximately 70% bed. Of course people are going to be tempted to hook up.

As extreme as it may sound, sex in the Big Brother house pays off the implicit promise of the Big Brother 24/7 live-feed experiment. When the show was first launched in 2000, the idea was that the viewer would see everything: every strategic conversation, every fight, every mundane household activity and goofy moment of levity. Cameras were everywhere, from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedrooms. The tantalizing, if unspoken, possibility that the viewers might see something truly risqué was always baked into the concept. Additionally, given that "showmances" inevitably complicate the personal and strategic relationships inside the house, you could say that the in-house hookup is Big Brother at its utmost: combining the voyeurism of the show's premise with the social strategy game at the show's center.

The history of sex in the Big Brother house is long and complicated. It took four seasons for two houseguests to hook up on camera, and when it finally happened, it received all the fanfare that the show's producers and contestants could muster. Season 4's twist was the "Ex Factor," when five of the houseguests were surprised by an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend joining the cast. This naturally ratcheted up the tension in the house, sexual and otherwise. David, a former Army ranger, and Amanda, a bartender whose ex was removed from the game in the first week for being volatile and making threats, had been flirting on the live feeds, though none of it had been included on the TV show up to that point.

On the eve of Amanda being voted out of the house, Head of Household Nathan ceremonially gifted David and Amanda the key to the HoH bedroom for the night. In the green glow of the night-vision cameras, the audience — both on the live feed and a few days later on the CBS episode — saw David and Amanda, mostly covered up by a blanket, kiss, grope, writhe, and on a few occasions moan, all to the strains of Melrose Place-worthy primetime-soap music.

David and Amanda's hookup didn't have any bearing on the strategic game of Big Brother 4, as Amanda was voted out that week and David got the boot a few weeks later. Their hookup was strangely devoid of any strategic implications, and there was seemingly never an expectation that David would vote to keep her around. This would prove to be an anomaly in the history of sex-and-strategy on Big Brother.

The Big Brother house would remain sexless for five seasons after David and Amanda's big moment. Big Brother 9 made up for lost time. The only season to not air during the summer — it was a mid-season replacement the last time there was a WGA strike in 2008 — Big Brother 9 featured a couples concept, with the houseguests paired up with each other by a matchmaking algorithm. Accordingly, several of the pairs got carnal with each other, including Matty (an obnoxious Masshole) and Natalie (a needy wreck), as well as James (punk-presenting, though he'd also done some amateur porn) and Chelsia (verrry tan). There were also Ryan and Jen, a pre-existing couple who were matched with different people in a rather transparent bid by the show's producers for extra drama. All three pairs had sex inside the house, part of a season that is widely reviled for reasons mostly incidental to its orgiastic reputation.

Whether intentional or just coincidental, the Big Brother 9 sexcapades opened the flood gates. Over the 11-season span from Big Brother 11 to Big Brother 21, 11 couples had sex inside the house:

• Big Brother 10: Ollie and April
• Big Brother 11: Jessie and Lydia
• Big Brother 12: Brendon and Rachel
• Big Brother 15: Jeremy and Kaitlin
• Big Brother 15: Amanda and McCrae
• Big Brother 17: Austin and Liz
• Big Brother 19: Cody and Jessica
• Big Brother 19: Matt and Raven
• Big Brother 20: Bayleigh and Swaggy C
• Big Brother 21: Jack and Analyse
• Big Brother 21: Jackson and Holly

It was during this era that house hookups began to have a real bearing on game strategy. The concept of the "showmance" had been around since Season 2, when "Chilltown" alliance members Will and Boogie each used short-term in-house romantic relationships to further their games (Boogie did the same when he returned for All-Stars, showmancing the hopelessly naive Erika all the way to the grand prize). Those relationships stopped short of sex, but they did establish the showmance as a regular strategic gambit on the show. Having sex in front of the live-feed cameras wasn't required in order to establish a showmance. Big Brother 11's Jeff and Jordan and Big Brother 20's Tyler and Angela had great success on the show and after it despite never sealing the deal inside the house. But the heart — and other body parts — wants what it wants.

But while a showmance can be a very powerful alliance, it can also paint a massive target on a couple, as happened to almost every one of the above-listed fornicators. Ollie and April were pretty brazen about their relationship, essentially declaring themselves an unbreakable pair, which predictably made them a big target and ensured they were broken up by the other houseguests by mid-season. Amanda and McCrae were running the show on Big Brother 15... until they were betrayed by an ally because it was obvious they'd never betray each other. The exact same thing happened to Austin and Liz on Big Brother 17.

On a few rare occasions, sex in the Big Brother house has led to long-term romance. Brendon and Rachel had sex early on in Season 12, the beginning of a run that's included multiple appearances on BB and The Amazing Race, a marriage, and children. Cody and Jessica's in-house sex on Season 19 was another "How I Met Your Mother" tale for the ages.

Still, only one Big Brother couple managed to parlay sex in the house into a top 2 placement on the show. Season 21's Jackson and Holly managed to win enough competitions to remain bulletproof, despite making themselves a huge target from a very early stage.

Game strategy aside, having sex on TV in the age of social media paints a very different kind of target on its participants, as Kyle and Alyssa found out on Big Brother 24. After flirting for weeks, Kyle and Alyssa finally succumbed to their attraction and had intercourse while lying atop pool floats in one of the bedrooms. The Big Brother Twitter community, which by this point had evolved into a vicious sea of piranha, eager to tear apart anyone other than their favored few contestants, released an avalanche of snarky jokes and memes about pool floats and Kyle seeming to last only 10 seconds before finishing. Jared's hasty Clorox-wiping of the game room couch was fodder for similar ridicule. This seems like it would be obvious to anyone who takes part on a show like Big Brother — indeed, this season's other showmance, Cory and America, have slow-played their physical affection, mostly because Cory knows his mom watches the live feeds.

When it comes to sex in the Big Brother house, the issue seems to boil down to one question: is it worth it? You may as well just answer that question with another: does it matter? Bad-idea sex isn't exclusive to reality TV contestants; people get horny and throw their critical thinking skills out the window sometimes. Yes, it makes you a big target in the house. Yes, there's a good chance it will break up your relationship back at home. Yes, your mom will find out. Yet nearly every season, as of late, it happens. Big Brother has created the conditions to lead its houseguests into temptation. On a long enough timeline, cameras be damned, hot singles (or not-so-singles) are gonna do it. All we can say is play safe out there, Big Brother hotties. And please keep that couch clean.

Big Brother airs Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sunday nights on CBS, with episodes streaming next-day and 24-hour live feeds on Paramount+. You can join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.