I always thought of Zach as the dorky guy in school that just tried "too hard" to get people to like him. Usually the harder they try, the weirder they become, and thus shoot themselves in the foot. :shrug:

At this point though, I'm rooting for Jameka or Zach. I wish we could see more of Zach's DR sessions. Did he have a strategy the whole time and the producers just never showed him? I don't remember seeing him in the DR much except for at eviction time and he always came across as voting the smart way for his advancement. :shrug:

I disagree that getting dealt a straight flush in every hand indicates a perfect player. No, it indicates a cheater.

Actually after the MRA disbanded nobody really bothered to tell Zach who they were voting out. That is one of the reasons why Zach ended up on the opposite sides of the Mike and Nick evictions (that and he blaimed Kail for blowing the alliance out of the water and betraying him). He didn't get back in on things until D/D needed him to try to get Eric out. Zach's basic strategy until a week or two ago was pretty much survive and advance. As long as it wasn't him, he didn't care (he promised his vote no matter for whom to both sides when they were in power).

I think it was Dustin and Dick who referred to getting "Zached". Zach would enter the room, and eventually everyone would leave. I would feel bad for him, but he can be so strange.

I always felt a bit of pity when they'd show people leaving the room when he came around. :lol: They didn't really show in final editing why they didn't care for him. Of course, I like strange people, so take my opinion with a grain of salt! :lol:

He would make odd, sometimes not entirely appropriate, comments, and he could be a little "handsy" with the girls (I know that's what Jess didn't like). I was watching an old video the other day where Carol was freaking out, and Jen was trying to calm her down. The funny thing in the video is that at the time Carol was sitting on Zach's lap, and he was stoking her arm. At the time no one would think anything of it, but knowing now how Zach is perceived it's kind of funny.

On a completely unrelated note, Eric's brothers apparently drafted his fantasy football team for him while he was gone and decided to name his team the Wichita Thunder.

The Donatos are both incredibly annoying ... and easily the best players since Dr. Will. Danielle got Zach in a nutshell ... he's the friend you let go to the answering machine to listen to later. Talking to him is like instant Valium. His alma mater should make CBS blur their logo.

Dick's coded letter from his son. You'd think this is against the rules. People are smelling a fix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKuLTnVC7w4

Of course, Dick didn't get the letter until after everyone was gone, -according to the on-screen crawl he got it Saturday after anything referred to in the letter was well past its shelf-date. Effectively, it wouldn't have helped him ay all as things played out.

The question is, -did the producers screen it and decide to give it to him after the fact? If this did slip past the producers, should they then have to screen every item brought into the house previously for other clues other people may have gotten? Of course, one could say the producers themselves cheated certain players out of a "fair game" through the interference of a paid mole.





(Spoiler)

So let's say they punish Dick for the attempt and assign one vote against him. This would give the tie-breaker to Zach, and Dick would probably go home. The three remaining would battle it out for the next HOH.


Interesting...

Zach's best chance to win is against Dick, so it's in Zach's best interest to be in the final 2 with Dick.

rotfl

I really tried to watch that but once Dani came in with her 'life is so hard' crying...I had to turn it off.

And how did you expect the producers to crack that code before giving it to him? Are the CIA "we're checking the video for encoded messages" guys working overtime for CBS?

Consider the blockheads who came up with this code, -it was supposed to be a basic "first letter of the word" thing. I would imagine they've had these type of situations before, and I'm sure most of these shows that depend on a certain measure of secrecy have certain protocols in place, if only for legal reasons. After all, everything they wear and everything they say -or sing, -is screened for possible copyright infringements, or for improper content. I don't think its too much of stretch that they saw through this thing and vetted it. I would assume they give a cursory "once over" to everything going into the house. That doesn't mean they'll catch everything, -but its a possiblity that they might have.

Of course, maybe this is like "Prison Break" and we should take a closer look at Dick's tattoos...

Do you honestly think that someone would be able to pick that up. I mean if it was something out of the ordinary like ending a word with a Q or something, sure they should have caught it. But starting a paragraph with the letter E and ending it with an S.... that's way too common to be able to figure out. How about this:

"Everyone at home is pulling for you guys."

There, I just encoded their message with just a sentence. Would that put up any flags for you?

Unless you've got code breakers working on it, you won't figure it out. You especially won't figure out with a cursory read. Maybe if it was repeated, but not on a one-shot thing like that.

Thing is, though, if they weren't doing it before, -they're going to have to start doing it now.

I'm sure someone reads the letters, but the thing is that it's nearly impossible to catch every sort of little code. For instance, can you crack this one?

There are 6 purposefully encoded messages in that one seemingly harmless note. Even knowing that there are 6 encoded messages in there (which the producers do not know), I bet you can't figure out half of them.

The advantage the producers have, though, is that I'm sure they collect those letters way ahead of time, so if someone like Dick wins HoH next wek, his letter is already 3 weeks old, making it meaningless unless it's some specific information (for instance, "E.S."3 weeks ago would have been good advice. Last week, though, he could have trusted Eroc since we clearly saw Eric and Jess agree that if Jess stayed, they would honor their agreement with D/D. But, if there's an elaborate message like "Eric doesn't control his vote" would have been valuable throughout the season.).

The families actually have the option of updating the letters as the season goes on. For instance when Jessica won her second HOH her mom referenced things (like the toga slop pong) that had happened in the previous week. Obviously, Zach's family letter had to pretty much be brand new this week since he won in back to back weeks.

I understand that its not that easy to crack codes, but this reflects a weakness in their system and they are going to have to address it in some fashion, -or at least pretend to. After all, they went to the expense of the "sequester" process in Season Four, as a response to problems revealed in Season Three. This being Hollywood and all, I'm sure there are Security Firms they could put on retainer who have experience in these sort of things.

Of course, they could do something as simple or basic as barring all correspondence, though they'd miss that scene of someone reading their letter and tearing up.

Well, if each season started with a strip search, ratings could go up. :)

Ok. Chiming in again. Show has gone downhill. And why is that? Because of America! America just ruins everything. If it wasn't for their vote, Dick would have been long gone. I'm sick and tired of that fucker. America trying to vote against Danielle last week was too little, too late. Why America liked Dick and Danielle? I can only guess they wanted to see tension with their father/daughter relationship and secondly, to watch what a fucking immature ass Evil Dick can be.

Dick and Danielle's control of the house is too strong. The other players don't help by not nominating them enough. Last week, Zak should have put one of them up using the power of veto. Maybe it will work now that both are on the chopping block but then again, it may be too late. Gawd, can 2 people get any smugger? Jameka, show them what you're got! :)

I liked Eric but no more America's Player, BB. What seemed like a great idea and fun in the beginning ruined the game. If you have to do America's Player, make him/her do anything but force votes on them.

I agree. I like the idea of an AP without forcing votes. The problem is that CBS has trouble coming up with reasonably interesting AP activities. Sabotaging Jen's stuff was a good one, but then the rest were lame.

No more America's Player. While there may be some immediate gratification in seeing someone go --or stay, over a season it sabotages the whole BB concept. Of course the game is rigged -- America did it by telling Eric how to vote. But it's one manipulation too many ... especially since no one inside the house (but Eric) knew it was going on. So BB producers, PLAY FAIR or you soon won't be playing at all.

The problem that I had with it is that it gave certain players unfair advantages. What good does it do for someone like Dustin to be catty in the diary room (which they encourage and where he's supposed to be allowed to be catty with no ramifications) if it gets him evicted.

The other thing is with America this extensively involved the show edit becomes more and more prominent. I just rewatched the show from when D/D when up a second time (when Jess was HOH), and the edit on that show bothers me even more now. Not only do they paint Dick as some sort of righteous father of the year protecting his daughter they also made Dustin look like a petty catty little bitch. By not showing any of the homosexual slurs that Dick was throwing at him constantly and then not giving any context to when Dustin screams back and calls him a deadbeat dad that's really affecting the AP vote. Now, Dustin had it coming too; he was entirely too arrogant and catty, but the edit affected that vote.

Of course, they painted people however they wanted all year. Early in the year they tried to make Jessica the "bitch" during her week with Carol. After watching the whole season, I'm pretty sure they manipulated her into that (given that she was really uncomfortable when people starting making fun of Carol later in the year...there really was no feud there). She sort of figured it out so she pretty much stopped saying anything in the diary room (she referenced this in the house at one point).

Even if it's not used, "America's Player" will affect the game next year for sure. Everybody will wonder if there's one in the house and be playing accordingly.

I've only been watching BB8 here and there since I got tired of Dick's rampages, but I thought I'd chime in to show this--pretty funny--it seems Carol's dad is already selling her BB8 stuff on ebay...does he really think he'll get those Buy It Now prices? lol

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZphillipbjourney