One of the trickier things CBS does to suck Big Brother fans in to the live feeds is when they start the contest for new HOH at the end of an eviction episode, but design the competition so that it can never finish before the episode ends. If you want to witness the power dynamics shifting in real time, you can sign up and watch everything play out live online.Even though I've considered myself a pretty locked-in BB viewer for the past few years, I've never succumbed, until now...yes friends, I've become a Live Feeder.
Late last Wednesday night, as the Houseguests and theirs spoons full of BBQ sauce slipped and slid all over the backyard and Julie Chen cheerfully said goodnight, I knew I wasn't gonna make it to today without getting an eye on the goings on inside that House. Sure, I gave myself the "Well, I'll just check out the free 48-hour trial period..." self-deception, but I already knew in my heart that I was in for the full season.
A few days later and now just a few hours til the next edited CBS episode hits air, all I can say is 'wow.' Like I told my friend Jane: I doubt the live feeds would turn you into a Big Brother fan from scratch, but if you're already a fan of the game, the live cams will turn you into a fanatic.
Though I didn't start watching until a few seasons in, the Big Brother game just fascinates me. Even when I loathe the personalities involved (see: this season), I can't bring myself to impose a boycott because I just love the mechanics of the game so much, and even more so now that I can watch the developments as they happen instead of waiting for the scrubbed and sanitized CBS version of the story. Yes, of course there are lulls and boring stretches, loads of them, but there are also some really compelling convos and moments that never even come close to making the broadcast. For three months of that, $27 bucks seems like a bargain.
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| I mean, who wouldn't be captivated??? |
Of course, I can also justify the purchase because of this writing project. How can I be expected to accurately come up with Power Rankings using incomplete information, right?
It does mean I need to be careful. Though I'm self-interested enough to make sure and check out my pageviews whenever I post something, I'm not so delusional as to think my posts will ever reach some huge audience. There are dozens of BB blogs out there who take the task of tracking everything much more seriously than I do, and I don't think my little musings over here in the corner pose any major threat to their readership. I'm mostly just writing for myself and for my friends who like the show. I'd hate to ruin things for anyone in that group who does prefer to take things a little slower.
For instance, when the show picks up tonight on CBS, we'll see the end of the HOH competition, then a couple days of gameplay, then the nominations. We may also get the reveal on who wins MVP and who the third nominee is, but that's doubtful (last week they waited til the Tuesday POV episode to reveal MVP). In real time, though, that POV competion already happened last night. I want my rankings to reflect the most relevant info about who's controlling the game, without giving away too much for my friends who only watch the edited episodes.
With that in mind, here comes the spoiler alert.
It just wouldn't make any sense to me to write this post without acknowledging the results of the HOH comp and the MVP vote. I'm also compelled to discuss conversations and events that took place in the aftermath of those decisions.
However, even though I do know who the Nominees and the Veto Holder are, I'll leave that info for tomorrow's post. Hope "my readers" can live with that. Going forward through the summer, I'll make decisions about how much info to include with the goal of enhancing enjoyment of the game first, and the show second. Hopefully that works for y'all.
Rankings and Spoilers below this brilliant piece of fan art:
Bottom Tier - Destined to be Also-Rans
15. Jessie
14. GinaMarie
13. Helen
12. Kaitlin
11. Aaryn
So, if you are following the game's daily developments on the live feeds or just on Twitter, you may be shocked to see the current HOH stuck down on the bottom rung of my power ladder.
Yes, even though many fans are convinced that she and her partner Jeremy cheated, the Regina George of BB15 got the HOH key around her neck and all the accoutrements that go with it. But the sad fact is that a terrible of a person as Aaryn is, she's even worse at playing Big Brother. She remains a conceited, hateful bitch towards Elissa and all the minority houseguests (she selected Elissa, Helen, Candice, and Andy as Have-Nots this week), and she's completely deluded as to how the audience is reacting to her actions (The night she won HOH, Aaryn whined on camera about how hard it is to be in the House and how she "better get a good job out of this" ... at this point I'm not just asking for a live camera to follow her first day back on the outside, I'm demanding it!)
Caught up in faux-grief over David's eviction, she's pretty much ceded all her power this week to Jeremy - he influenced her noms - and has basically let him mindfuck both her and Kaitlin into thinking that he's their only hope for survival in the game.
In fact, in Kaitlin's case, there may not be any "mind" about it. The two have been getting hotter and heavier by the day, and though they constantly interrupt their own makeout sessions by saying things like "I can't believe I'm doing this on national TV" and "Having a showmance is throwing off my game" and "Sorry, Dad!", the fact is that they haven't shown too many signs of slowing down - even though Jeremy has also sworn to his brothers in the Moving Company that he has no emotional connection to her and he's just "having fun in the house." Honestly, I think if Kaitlin were to leave the House soon, Jeremy would waste very little time trying to jump right into bed with Aaryn. He's a scumbag (more on this later).
Kaitlin has drawn bad attention to herself with annoying, crazy behavior (ever since the last vote, she's been harping on and on about how she "knows" she'll be next to go, even days before the actual nominations), but it's her doomed showmance that will ultimately damn her game. At one point this week she actually said that if she ended up on the block and won the veto, she wouldn't use it on herself because she'd be scared of Jeremy going up as a replacement.
She has zero chance of winning with that mentality, and it's too bad because she actually could've been a decent player if she hadn't latched on to Captain Asshat right from the jump. I guess we shouldn't be shocked that she admitted this week she didn't know anything about the show before coming on, and in fact didn't even actually try out (she was recruited by a casting agent while at a bar one night, and skipped straight to the final auditions).
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| Jessie's been on the outside looking in this entire game |
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| Avoiding this does not make one a gay man |
GinaMarie's gameplay is just as non-existent, so far she's been content to be Aaryn's mean girl wingskank and shamelessly throw herself over-and-over again at a very uninterested Nick. She's not even playing the game, she's just caught up in the popularity contest. Her best bet is to see the bigger targets she's aligned with get sent home first, then she can try to re-invent herself at a later stage of the game. I don't give her much chance, but I give her a way bigger chance than I give Jessie.
Helen is a nice person who plays the game pretty hard, but not particularly well. She's a target of the Axis Alliance (Jeremy/Aaryn/Kait) because she's nice to Elissa, but she also should be safe for a bit since she's got a few human shields in front of her. Right now her strongest alliance appears to be with Spencer of all people, but she's also said things to everyone else that contradict things that she and Spencer have discussed in confidence. It's hard to know exactly where she stands, but it's easy to see people aren't really taking her seriously, yet.
Middle Tier - Destinies Unknown
10. Candice
9. Andy
8. Elissa
7. Judd
6. Spencer
Candice probably has the game figured out better than anyone else in the House, but can't seem to do much about it because she has no super-strong allies of her own. She knows that there is a super-alliance of guys, though she isn't sure exactly who's in it. She also figured out that Jeremy was behind in David's eviction (even though J did vote to keep the him, he knew that ultimately the surfer brah was going home), and she even realized that the reason she wasn't told about the movement to boot David out was precisely because Jeremy needed the vote to go 7-to-5 so he could cover his own tracks better with Aaryn and Kait. She's bright, but if she's really smart she'll start making some friends, fast.
Andy has started playing the game a little harder in Week 2, but unfortunately for him it has actually hurt his power. He's trying to play all sides of the House and be in good with everyone, but he's made such a habit of popping into rooms and interrupting people's game talk that it's now a running joke on Twitter. It seems like because he came in as a super fan and because he reminds people of Ragan, he's gotten the benefit of the doubt from viewers, but that's quickly fading. When it comes to making moves, Andy needs to remember: Quality over Quantity.
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| Elissa won another MVP by landslide |
I'm probably ranking Elissa a little too high because she remains Aaryn and Jeremy's #1 target (they're completely obsessed with getting her out), but she did win MVP for the second straight week, and if she can find a way to survive, she'll probably win it next week, too. The smarter players in the game realize the value of that knowledge and hope to capitalize on it...simply put, you're in a much better spot if you know who the MVP is rather than having to guess, and as long as Elissa is there as the major target, everyone else is just a little bit safer. But they may be forced to cut her loose in fear of Jeremy winning HOH next week, since he's been aggressively threatening everyone, even Moving Company members, that if she doesn't go, he's coming after them.
Judd has been playing a very solid social game and it's starting to pay big dividends...as the House stratifies, he's straddling both sides much more stealthily and successfully than Andy. Judd looks like a lock to make the jury so far, and he could go much deeper. His biggest issue right now is that he's not part of the Moving Company, which means if they put him in their sights, he's in trouble. By contrast, Spencer's game is more aggro and not as strong as Judd's, but since he's in the MC, he ranks a little higher on the Power chart, for now.
Top Tier - Destined for Greatness
5. Howard
Howard has really stepped up his gameplay in the last week, even more than I can write about without being too spoiler-heavy. His quiet game keeps getting louder, whisper by whisper. I love the way he's dealing with his religious convictions in the House...staying devout with his Bible study, refusing to mistreat people or overreact when he's mistreated, but still recognizing that "within the game," you are going to have to be at least a little devious to win. Besides just getting more involved in game strategy, Howard earns major props for shutting down Spencer's homophobic chatter on Saturday afternoon. I'm not a religious guy and generally find modern Christians to be a hypocritical group, but it's always great to see a counter-example.
4. Nick
Still pulling strings in the Moving Company and still staying off peoples' radars, Nick has also earned major sympathy this week as he's had to endure an onslaught of obvious and over-the-top flirtations from the awful GinaMarie. He's done a masterful job keeping her at bay while not pissing her off so bad that she turns against him. It's funny that Aaryn has been trying to console her poor friend Gina by convincing him that Nick is gay. If he was gay that would be fine, but if I remember correctly from the premiere, he left behind a girlfriend at home. Just one more bit of evidence that Aaryn and GinaMarie are majorly stuck up, self-centered pieces of trash.
3./2. Amanda/McCrae
These two have basically become a unit, so I'm sticking them together in the same slot. I really like these two, even if I'm still completely bewildered as to how they ended up together. I was very skeptical of Amanda's intentions in Week 1, I thought she was playing McRae and would drop him as soon as he lost the HOH key, but they've continued hooking up since then, and they speak to each other more openly and honestly than any other pair of Houseguests. Amanda got legitimately pissed off and jealous when Jessie started flirting with her pizza boy. This couple has built solid relationships with almost everyone else, they have a good read on their rival alliances, and they've got the best strategy for dealing with the Elissa MVP issue.
The best thing they could do right now is slow their gameplay down a bit and drop some on the radar. Amanda in particular is playing a little too hard, too fast. She's drawing negative some attention to herself from Jeremy and his ladyfriends, they're getting more suspicious of her by the day. But she's smart and she's pulling a lot of strings. McRae's biggest problem is that he's becoming hopelessly smitten with Amanda, which can't help but affect his strategy. Thankfully he seems to realize what's happening, and he's doing his best to stay level-headed. But take it from me: when a guy ends up with a girl that he considers out of his league, he'll do a lot of stupid things trying to keep her or make her happy (and it usually doesn't work). McRae's best move so far is keeping Amanda in the dark about the Moving Company...it's his ace in the hole in case she burns him.
1. Jeremy
He's pretty much the antithesis of what I think a man should be, but you can't deny that this is Jeremy's week in the Big Brother House. After leading himself and Aaryn to victory in the HOH contest, he let her take the official title while he still made all the important decisions. He's got both Aaryn and Kaitlin wrapped around his finger, he's in the Moving Company, and he's been able to bully and intimidate other players like Andy and Helen into deferring to his will.
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| Somehow, she's having the time of her life |
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