What is the Big Brother 13 Golden Key and what does it mean?

Season 13 of Big Brother introduced a number of twists during it’s premiere Thursday night. As was expected, the eight new contestants were joined by three pairs of former contestants: Brendan Villegas and Rachel Reilly (season 12), Jeff Schroeder and Jordan Lloyd (season 11), and “Evel Dick” Donato and Danielle Donato (season 8). But, after that CBS unleashed some surprises that took the contestants (and knowledgeable fans) completely by surprise!

The first announcement was that the new contestants will also be pairing up and that each week one “couple” would be nominated for elimination. One of the two teammates would be evicted and the other would be staying in the house. With that knowledge the houseguests paired up like this:

Adam Poch and Dominic Briones
Porsche Briggs and Keith Henderson
Shelly Moore and Cassi Colvin
Lawon Exum and Kalia Booker

The venerable Rachel Reilly won the Head of Household competition after working out a deal with Evel Dick and Danielle – agreeing not to choose their team for eviction.

That’s when Julie Chen dropped the biggest bomb of the night – the introduction of THE GOLDEN KEY!

For the first four weeks of the competition whichever half of the couple nominated for eviction is not evicted will receive a Golden Key, which means he or she CAN NOT BE EVICTED until there are ten houseguests left. Holders of Golden Keys cannot compete in the HOV competitions but do still vote in the eviction ceremony.

So, as Rachel so eloquently put it on the show, deciding which team to nominate isn’t so much about who you want to send home but who you want to still be around in four weeks! She will be essentially creating the “ultimate floater” as she called it.

Cuh-razy! (Definitely a better idea than the infamous “Saboteur” bust from a season ago.)

So what do you think of the Golden Key idea? Leave a comment below or sound off in our forum!