Finally caught up on this season after being gone on vacation....just some random thoughts.
-Agree that it's been a weak season, gameplay-wise. I think what has happened to BB goes back to season 15, four years ago. That was the season with the rampant racism and just awful people, and CBS caught a ton of grief over its casting of the show. Since then, I think you can see a noticeable pendulum swing back to casting people based more on character than their potential to cause conflict and "good TV". So the past three seasons have had, on the whole, better people, and SOMETIMES those people are good gameplayers(Nicole, Derrick, etc.), but sometimes they're just good people who love the show, but have zero game at all(Ramses, etc.). I think it's happened this season, too. They all seem to be okay as people(though I've only seen the CBS broadcasts, so I'm not privy to everything), but in terms of gameplay, how many houseguests have really been *playing*? Cody, Jessica, and Paul clearly, but then there's a big dropoff to that second tier(Christmas, Alex, etc.) and then another dropoff to people who are just happy to be on TV(Raven, Jillian, etc.).
-Years ago, my biggest pet peeve in the BB diary room was contestants adding "in this game" to the end of every other sentence. Now it's Josh saying "your boy" all the time in the DR. You're not America's boy, Josh. If you were, you would've been voted to receive a temptation. I started noticing it last year with Victor and Paul using it all the time, and now Josh is continuing the trend. It's terrible.
-I thought Zingbot was less funny and more crude this year. But then again...it's America in 2017, so I guess that fits.
-I miss the days when you legitimately didn't know how a vote would go, because not every single vote was near-unanimous. Been that way for a while now, and I hate it. I wonder why "Survivor" has so many one-vote margins, while BB almost always votes in one direction or another. Makes Thursdays pretty anti-climactic.
-I haven't loved this season, but at least it's fun watching Paul pull the strings and they seem like okay people for the most part. I used to see BB as appointment viewing in the summer, now it's more of a nice distraction when it's too hot to do anything outside. Still works, I guess.