Anyone who is reading this blog likely knows the outcome of
the Big Brother finale. Paul, in a repeat of last year’s finale, was defeated
5-4 by a person many people think he should’ve beaten. Déjà vu All over again.
While I don’t want to get into comparing Nicole and Josh as equals, because
Nicole did have more of a case to win than Josh did, Paul’s double loss brings out
some very important discussions to have about the game. Many people think Paul
was “robbed” and that he was by far the “better” player in both instances, but
more so in this season. I want to use this post to talk about the flaws with
those perspectives on a reality show that is inherently a “social” experiment.
Hopefully, this will serve to bring a new take on the finale and how the idea
of someone dominating a game does not mean that they are playing it the best.
First, before I explain why it was reasonable Paul lost,
first let’s talk about some fundamentals about Big Brother. Primarily, the game
has three major components. And sorry to steal from Survivor, but they are just
as applicable here : “outwit, outplay, outlast.” For those who don’t watch
Survivor that roughly translates to strategic game, competition game, and
social game. In my time watching the show, I’ve noticed that both myself and
the rest of the viewing audience puts too much emphasis on the first two and
appears to disregard the third. This finale proved why that is a crucial
mistake.
Big Brother is first and foremost a show that was meant to
be a social experiment. It’s very basis is that you are interacting with people
and trying to get them not to want to evict you. Competitions and strategy play
a role, but the very basis of the game is social. To go a long with this social
theme, a jury of their peers (other players) ultimately decide who wins the
game. There is no manual for them deciding who they want to win. We can bitch
and moan about who they choose to give it to, but their vote is their vote. If
you are truly playing a social game, you would know what makes each of these
players tick. It is up to each and every Big Brother player to determine how
the jury members think and to cater their moves around that. That is
essentially their job over the entirety of the season.
If you are fired from your job because you were not doing it
satisfactorily, does that mean your boss is “bitter” or you were “robbed”? No,
because you knew the tasks that were expected of you. The task that is expected
of you in Big Brother is to get the jury to want to vote for you, and
ultimately Paul failed twice at the task. There is no “bitter” jury because
there is no set guideline of how they should cast their vote. Dominating the
game only means that you achieved “outwit”
or “outplay”, but it does not guarantee that your social game was what
it needed to be to win the votes.
Jury management is the key upon which the latter half of the
Big Brother game is based. I’ve seen complaints about how the jury should not
be allowed to not vote for someone because they don’t like them. So let’s bring
this back to the job analogy. Imagine you are giving an interview to two candidates.
The first, has all of the qualifications you could ever dream, but is a total
asshole that you would feel sick giving any money to by hiring them. The
second, lacks some qualifications, but you at least like the person and think
you could work with them. In the majority of cases, the second person gets the
job even if objectively the first had all of what is perceived to be the “best”
and “most important” part of the decision. Paul, to the jury was the first
candidate. Josh was the second.
Paul lacked jury management.
When the jury cannot stand you,
that is a very bad thing. They will be
looking for excuses not to vote for you, and Paul gave it to them and more.
One, he orchestrated the mass bullying of Jessica and Cody consisting of them
berating his “fake” military service and using his daughter against him. He
then orchestrated the bullying of Mark and Elena. And yet, people blame them
for not liking Paul enough to give him the money? Did you vote for the school
bully to become president even if they tormented you, but had more leadership experience?
If ever there was a reason to vote on emotions, it was this season. Paul’s
antics extended beyond what could be interpreted as game. Cody’s military
service and daughter are not game. Trash talking them after they have left is
not game. Trash talking period in most instances is not game. And when you do it about everyone, prepare
for it to cost you votes.
So now that we’ve established how Paul lost the Cody, Elena,
Mark votes. Let’s talk about how he lost Alex and Jason’s. As I’ve already
mentioned, many fans are enraged when the “best” person loses the game. First,
my goal was to attempt you to see that the very definition of best people are
operating with is flawed. But secondly, even with that definition Paul made a
lot of errors. Jason and Alex and how he handled them was a prime example. Alex
had even left the house ready to vote for him, but his actions lost her vote.
And this comes down to one simple principle that Paul didn’t follow.
Backstabbing does not
lose you the Big Brother game, but lying about it afterwards will. Andy
backstabbed. Boogie backstabbed. Derrick backstabbed. What do they have in
common? They are all winners of the game and all admitted to their deeds in
either goodbye messages or the jury questions. They owned up to the way that
they played, and while that doesn’t make it sting less for the jury members, it
at least gives them something to respect. Once someone is out of the game, the
need to lie and blindside them goes out with them. However, when Jason was
already evicted, Paul kept lying in his goodbye messages saying that he knew
nothing about it. This had two fundamental mistakes in it. The first, there are
people that know he is lying that will follow Jason into the jury house and Paul can’t make sure that they don’t say anything. Second, once Jason finds out
that you are still lying in your goodbye messages, it rubs salt in the wound.
It tells them that even after they are evicted, you think that they are still
too dumb to recognize what has happened. Josh, on the other hand, did what you
are supposed to. He owned up to every blindside in his goodbye messages,
apologized for it having to be that way, and then explained why it had to be
that way and why they needed to go. Josh was by no means a great player, heck
he wasn’t even a good player, but that’s how you need to handle goodbye
messages.
Paul proceeded to double down on this stupid lying strategy
in the jury questions. He owned up to nothing and refused to address how his
actions impacted the people in the jury. All he had to do was say some
variation of this:
“I backstabbed each and every one of you. I am sorry if I
hurt any of you, but in order for me to have any shot of winning, I had to take
out my biggest competition threats. Marlena, Cody, I know that how I treated
you was wrong, but yada yada yada some game excuse for doing it.” That’s it.
That’s all his speech had to be. He’d emphasize how controlling of a strategic
game he had had while also trying to make up for his bad social game by apologizing to the jury for the more ruthless aspects.
So let’s talk about Josh. I think its pretty clear with this
blog that Josh didn’t win the game so much as Paul lost it. But, that’s what
happens in Big Brother and ultimately life. He at least realized the potential
of Paul causing a bitter jury and decided to try to capitalize on it. Paul’s
idea to make Josh the person the jury hate backfired. Instead, it made them
respect Josh more because he was at least the devil who was rude to them to
their face. Paul tried to play innocent while orchestrating it all. The latter
is more of a betrayal and caused the jury to lose respect for Paul.
How do I rate Josh as a winner? Well, he is in the bottom 5
winners of all seasons. For sure. He was carried far into the game because he
was an emotional toddler who no one liked. When he had strategic insight, he
didn’t follow through with it. He didn’t win comps that weren’t thrown to him.
However, that does not make him not deserving. He did what the criteria
establishes you need to do to win the game. He made the jury want to vote for
him. That is what constitutes a “deserving” winner. Unless your name is Rachel
Reilley and the game was rigged and manipulated to force your win.
With that being said, I still rank him a 3/10. The only reason he has any points
was his goodbye messages and his decision to take Paul to the final 2.
So now let’s get off my soapbox and rank the season. Man was
I disappointed. As you could tell from my earlier posts about the season, I had
so much enthusiasm. The new cast seemed so great, but somewhere a long the line
it blew up. The idiots procreated while the decent and likable players were
picked off. Thankfully, Cody winning AFP
has shown these miscreants that America doesn’t support them like they thought we
did. Strategically, no one but Paul showed up. Socially, people like Kevin and
Elena would have flourished in normal seasons. Competitively we had Alex and
Jason. However, all of the ingredients didn’t work right. No one was really
playing to win and for that this season gets a 4/10. It would be a 2 if it weren’t for how entertaining Cody was
and how good the early episodes were.
So with all of this being said, I end my thoughts on this season
of Big Brother. I’m super excited to see how Celebrity Big Brother goes and to
talk about it with you guys, but hopefully my schedule allows me to talk about
Survivor with you guys as well. My recaps might have to just be written on the
weekends a bit late.
Also, let me know if you’d be interested in a ranking list
of all of the seasons of Big Brother and how they place. After every season its
definitely something I think about often and it would be interesting to hear
everyone’s perspectives.
