JuryDuty

This is my biggest issue with Vanessa. She's clearly a smart player and she's good at manipulating others--at least the goofballs in this house.

But she keeps playing WAY too hard. I keep watching and wanting her to just shut up about two beats before she does. For a poker player, she sure gets emotional and ends up showing her cards to everyone. If she could keep it under control, she'd be the one to beat at this point...but I dunno. I think she's going to implode eventually too.

EDIT: I do think this is an interesting side-effect of reality shows being on so long. People come in now with full strategies, knowing what to expect. Now they swing to the other side where paranoia of not wanting to "play wrong" comes in and they overplay their hand all the time. Half the players this season have been voted out because of exactly that.

JuryDuty

BTW what ever happened to the Big Brother Takeovers and Expecting the Unexpected? It's like it all went away after about week 3...

LaxBandit

So where did BB Takeover go? Why did it disappear with no notice?

I spoke briefly to Julie Chen this evening at CBS’ TCA event for journalists, and she told me that the twist was axed because there were more interesting things happening, including the twin twist.

“We had so much going on, it was better to focus on the pure game–because the game is genius–and the twin twist. You don’t want to give the viewers too much to balance out between, ‘Oh, the power of veto. Oh the double HOHs.’ There was enough going on. You have to clean up a little bit. Pure game.”

http://www.realityblurred.com/realit...ed-julie-chen/

JuryDuty

Thx. I'm glad they made that choice. It was a bit overkill on the cross-show advertising anyway.

fujishig

I haven't watched that consistently, but are there no have-nots anymore? Certainly doesn't seem like an emphasis like it was in the past.

mwbmis

Yes, since the HOH picks the have-nots they have basically been taking turns. The week Shelli went home over Vanessa the broadcast show had a lot of have not room scenes b/c James/Meg/Jackie were have-nots and they pretty much held court there. No one went upstairs to see Becky in the HOH room. Last week, I'm pretty sure it was John, Vanessa, and Steve. I think this week is have not free.

mwbmis

Vanessa really parlayed that veto into a lot of information. There were other conversations not shown including individual ones with Meg and James.

Austin's gf has no social media presence so she hasn't said anything, but over the weekend her sister twitter posted the flowery letter he wrote the now ex-gf before he entered the house.

JuryDuty

Groucho

That font just broke my eyes.

Eddie W

Usually Zingbot's lines are kind of funny & harmless. But last night's seemed a bit harsh.

mwbmis

I don't know about that. I've always thought that they've been more than a little mean. I think it's production's way of saying things they want to say about the houseguests. Austin needed to be called out about his GF. They just did it during a zing to Liz.

Apparently earlier this year there was a houseguest named Jace, and he and Austin were friends or something in the house. He twitter posted a clip of a conversation they had early on about Austin not thinking Liz was attractive b/c he had a girlfriend. At that time no girls were attractive to Austin.

Josh-da-man

He should have used comic sans.

mwbmis

Returning player is

HOH is

JuryDuty

Thanks, mwbmis! Should be interesting!

GuessWho

The nominees are

won the Power of Veto

mnementh

Yay, the jury house Becky/Jackie/Shelli pillow fights continue for another week. Maybe Meg can join them.

stingermck

Not voting out was the dumbest thing I have seen in all my time watching this show. Spineless players just handed the final 2 to the twins.

DWilson

Just an hour of torture.

GuessWho

If the final 3 are Austin and the twins, would anyone watch, especially after dark/internet feeds? Worst "Three's Company" episode ever.

mwbmis

Just watched all three episodes. Thoughts on the week. The HOH portion of the Sunday episode went on longer than the actual HOH competition. Somebody in production screwed up there. That competition was supposed to be endurance.

Vanessa did use this week to realign the house. She reaffirmed her final 2 with Austin. She reaffirmed her final 2 with Steve (Students of Sound), and she made a conditional final 2 with Julia (absent Liz in the final 3) which essentially served to make the case to Julia that if Vanessa is ever on the block against Austin where Julia needs to vote. We saw her final 2 with John.

As to why Julia stayed. James was right. The opportunity was there if they pulled the right strings. They did not. James and Meg made the same mistake that they (and Jackie) made the whole game. They ignored Steve. You'll note in the episode where they were showing Steve's indecision that none of it had to do with a deal with Meg and James.

Their grand plan, which got out to a degree, was to get John and Austin to vote for Meg to stay and for Austin to then frame Steve for the vote. If James and Meg had stayed they would have ran right back to Austin. They would not have worked with John and Steve. Ultimately, that is why John and Steve decided it was a bad move, and Vanessa being completely against it also helped. Meg did NO productive campaigning; instead, she wallowed in self pity. That is why Meg left.

Now for a moment let's imagine that John and Steve did the "ballsy" move and voted out Julia. Meg, bless her heart, wasn't winning that HOH competition. Liz won. Who would Liz target? Probably John and Steve. One of them would have left tonight. Voting out Meg, the only HOH/veto scenario where either of them leave is if James doesn't win HOH but wins veto. That sounds like the right move to me, and that's why they did it.

I know most of the remaining house guests aren't the popular ones, but I would like to acknowledge one of the greatest alliances in Big Brother history. Freaks and Geeks (Scamper Squad) was a final five alliance made when there were 14 house guests in that place. They are now 5 of the final 6. That's better than the brigade did. They lost Matt at 7.

Edit to add...the voting mistake tonight wasn't made by John and Steve; it was made by Austin and Julia. Voting out James over John was a dumb move for their game. James was a number for them. John is against them.

JuryDuty

Thanks mwbmis. Now it makes sense.

I was thinking something made no sense. The way they edited it, it seemed a no-brainer for them to vote out Julia. Vanessa could say she had no idea they would do that and the heat would go to John and Steve. Meanwhile, they would have broken up the threesome.

But given the logic in your post about James and Meg running back to Austin, now it makes sense. I really wish they would take more care in editing the show to reveal the logic behind decisions like this.

Sigh all around.

mwbmis

For the record, I think that if it was Austin or Liz on the block, they should have rolled the dice and done it anyway. Julia just wasn't the one to take out; she's the one you keep and drag to the end. But of course that's why Vanessa didn't nominate Austin or Liz.

mwbmis

New HOH

SkullOrchard

This is the first time in 17 seasons where I pretty much despise everyone in the final 6.

James and Meg were terrible strategists. Meg was worthless as a competitor, and James wasn't much better, but God bless them both for making this season somewhat watchable. Without them, this season would have been completely dreadful.

mwbmis

Too each their own. I think this is the best season since at least 14. As for the remaining players, season 15 had some truly repugnant people make the end, and while the players weren't as bad (except for Frankie) season 16 was just dull. You just waited every week until Derrick decided who was going home, rinse, repeat. I don't really "hate" anyone in the final 6.

-Vanessa is playing. And she never stops playing (even when she should) so it's never boring with her around.
-Steve is a strange mama's boy, but he is playing the game. He thinks through all of decisions.
-John is just kind of weird, and his game is essentially being played for him, but he's not a bad guy.
-Austin is kind of tool, but at least he's playing the game. Last year's love struck tool was largely oblivious to the game.
-The twins are catty girls, and I think the cattiness feeds off each other. To date I haven't really seen them really go beyond catty to malicious. There have been some malicious houseguests in the past. They are up everyday; they talk to everyone, and they clean the house. They don't expect it to be done for them.