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ShowsBig BrotherSeason 5
Aired summer 2004 · The identical-twins twist

Project DNA

The strangest experiment of the early canon. Thirteen houseguests, except one slot is held by a pair of identical twins who swap in and out under the same name across the opening weeks, and the rest of the house has no idea. Project DNA is a structural gamble the show would never try again at this scale, and the seams show. Worth the watch for the audacity, and for proof that Big Brother was still gambling in year five.

Filmed
Studio City, California
Premiered
Jul 6, 2004
Episodes
30
Format
13 houseguests · twins swapping as one
the franchise's strangest early experiment
Host
Julie Chen
On this page4 sections
  1. 01The take
  2. 02Where it sits in the canon
  3. 03Adjacent in the canon
  4. 04Also appears in
01The take

Audacity over execution.

02Where it sits in the canon

The #24 slot.

Slot #24 of 27 in the Big Brother Editor's Canon. Twenty-fourth, the point in the canon where audacity starts outweighing polish as the deciding factor. Project DNA's twist touches only two houseguests directly, which is a much smaller structural swing than Camp Comeback's season-wide re-entry mechanic one slot up, and that narrowness is exactly why it sits below it. It still ranks ahead of the Pilot because a gamble this strange, dropped into a house that otherwise plays it straight, is a bigger canon statement than a season that hadn't yet figured out what kind of show it wanted to be. Weird and narrow beats sincere and unformed, at least this far down the list.

No spoilers. Every page is reviewed before it goes live.
04Also appears in

Cross-references.

Big Brother: every summer gets its own twistlist · 25 entriesThe resemblance was never just a fun factlist · 10 entriesBig Brother: the twist is the formatlist · 17 entriesWhen the cast was already relatedlist · 15 entriesBig Brother — Editor's CanonEditor's Canon · #24