Big Brother 15 Power Rankings - The Accidental MVP

What should I do as the MVP?
No really, what the hell should I do as the MVP???

A lot of memorable moments inside the Big Brother House this week were either too pathetic, too morally ambiguous, or just too damn NSFW to make it into Wednesday night's POV episode, and as a first-time live feeder, I'm just now getting a real grasp on the real size of the disconnect between the three edited hours that most fans get per week and the nearly 24/7 access enjoyed by super fans. 

I've always cast a critical eye at the editing of this show over the years I've watched it, looking for production tricks that might reveal more about the storyline show runners might be trying to "sell," against what's really going on in the house. I do it even more now that I have access to so much more of the raw video (and now that so much more of the video is so raw).  



Of course CBS finally did give a nod toward actual reality last Sunday when they revealed a small sliver of the terrible things Aaryn and Friends have been saying. If you like this show and haven't seen the 10-minute supercut linked above, you should definitely check it out immediately. It's stomach-turning on one level but very well put together in revealing just how out of tune those folks are acting.

Also much more powerful than the brief bigotry segment on last Sunday's episode was Julie Chen addressing the issues personally on "The Talk" on Monday. BB Fans love Julie because Julie loves the game as much as we do, and seeing her feel conflicted over the value of it, just like I've been feeling myself, really moved me...at least as much as a fake reality show about losers and famewhores treating each other like shit for three months should be allowed to move anyone.

She keeps the GIF makers busy, at least.

Anyway, now that CBS has squared up (at least somewhat) the edited shows with the live feeds on the issue of prejudiced and hurtful speech, it's time to talk about an issue that's probably hurting the actual gameplay of Big Brother 15 even more - of course I'm talking about Elissa, which makes this the perfect paragraph to kick off the Power Rankings:

Bottom Tier

15. Elissa
14. Nick
13. GinaMarie
12. Jessie
11. Aaryn
10. Kaitlin

For much of the game, Aaryn/GM/Kaitlin have been referred to as the Mean Girl Alliance. I'm now proposing we dub Elissa/Jessie/GM the Dumb Girl Alliance, because even though none of them are working together, their blindness in this game has binded their fates together as sure as if they'd triple pinky-sworn it.

Elissa just hasn't played the kind of game worthy of the priveleged status she enjoys as the only Houseguest with a pre-existing tie to a huge BB Fan Favorite. Producers had to know she was a lock to win at least the first month's worth of MVP votes, but she didn't come into the House prepared to make the most of that power.

Wednesday night's episode showed all the reasons why.  She made many, many misplays after getting her 2nd MVP card:

• Nominating Jeremy, which meant she'd compete against him directly for the veto
• Telling Nick she'd give him safety if he threw the Veto. She should've asked him to play hard, win it, and not use it
• Putting Nick on the spot after Jeremy won Veto, not giving him time to think about her question, just generally approaching him the wrong way and not giving him a reason to see Kaitlin as target
• Never talking to GM or even Aaryn about Kaitlin (you actually didn't see it in the episode, but the Aaryn/Kaitlin alliance has been fracturing all week), missed many chances to see consensus building against Jeremy's bed buddy
• Nominating Nick

Elissa seems like a nice woman with good priorities who's been unfairly mistreated by a lot of her fellow players in this game. But she's nowhere near as good at Big Brother as her sister (and it's questionable how good Rachel really was), and other than being decent and bonding over motherhood with Helen, she hasn't really earned the amount of #TeamElissa love that she's getting among fans. At one point this week she said to McRae that she didn't want to go home this week, but she still hoped to go home before the Jury...what the hell is that?  And don't think we've forgotten about the time she told, errrrrrrrrrrrr, didn't tell Jeremy that her sister was Gisele Bundchen!!

I definitely support her as a person in the battle against bad behavior from sniveling little twits like Aaryn, but I can no longer support Elissa in Big Brother 15. I've made peace with her going home and I hope to see it happen.

Of course, it may not work out that way.

In the biggest case of How the Mighty Have Fallen that we've seen so far this season, Nick finds himself out of the Top 4 and all the way down in the Bottom Tier, a first for both occurrences. And even though I don't think it will happen, some BB bloggers with a lot more experience than me think that, especially based on the editing of Wednesday's episode, Nick is actually good as gone.

Either way, he's starting to look like a fraud to me...I knew Dan Gheesling, and this guy is no Dan Gheesling. 

Nick wants to be the Cool Guy Who's Got It All Figured Out, but his Diary Room session show him overacting just a little too hard. Worse, his social game mostly consists of blankly staring Draper-like into space when cornered by women, then bouncing around like Chester the dog whenever he gets behind closed doors with the alpha males.

Nick feels confident going into tonight's vote, but the truth is he's very much at risk of going home and it's incredibly stupid that he even went on the block in the first place. Even as he did nothing proactive to sell Elissa on Kaitlin as her replacement nominee, Elissa still came to Nick several times begging him to give her a reason to do it. 

It all became clear in the scene from  Wednesday's show where Elissa asks Nick for his word that he'll work with her and he can't give it to her, asking for more time. Even though I think Elissa should have granted his request, for her own game, the fact that Nick had to ask showed just how thin his strategy really is.  He's not thinking on as deep a level about the game as I thought at first.  It would've been sooooo easy to promise Elissa he would vote with her and then just do whatever he wanted a few days later when it came time to vote...he never would've even sniffed the block. Instead, he made one big move on Day 2 in forming the Moving Company, then got overconfident in that success and expected it to carry him to the end.  Now because of sheer laziness he finds himself exposed with a growing target on his back.

I don't have much to say on GinaMarie right now, but I did find this piece of fan art to be rather insightful

It's inevitable ... unless someone realizes
she's the perfect Final Two partner!

GM, Jessie, and Aaryn remain in the bottom tier because their games are hopelessly tied up in doing what other people want them to do...of the three, Aaryn actually seems closest at this point to turning things around and starting to show more agency in her moves. She's also been such a villain so far that she's starting to gain power as someone that people might see as a great partner for the Final 2, even though that kind of power generally won't take home the big money in the end.

Kaitlin has been as much, if not far more of a floater as the blondies below her on this list, but since she's now intimately tied to one of the most powerful players in the game so far, her relative ranking stays a little higher.

Middle Tier

  9. Judd
  8. Spencer
  7. Howard
  6. Candice
  5. Helen

Judd continually cracks me up on the feeds because he's always begging to talk game with people but most people wanna hang out with him and be chill...no one will promise him anything about working together to go far. It's gotten so bad he's been reduced to negotiating a Final 2 deal with Aaryn!! Not that that would be such a bad thing, as I indicated above...it's just that she's not exactly the most powerful person in the game right now so if she's the only one you can talk to, that means you ain't so powerful, yourself. 

Still, Judd is nowhere near being a target for anyone and eventually his determination to start playing the game harder has to pay off. He's a floater by default, not by intent.

Meanwhile, the Spencer/Howard and Candice/Helen combos represent two of the more rock-solid yet non-romantic pairs in the house.  These duos have been the most active schemers in the House this week, with the boys campaigning to get Elissa out while telling her side they'll vote Nick, and the girls staying on 100% grind in attempt to chip away at Nick's support and keep their Golden MVP Goose in the House another week. Candice and Helen rank higher because a), they appear to be winning at the moment, and b) the guys have started to raise the "untrustworthy" red flag in the minds of several fellow Houseguests.

Top Tier

  4. Andy

Though the two previously mentioned pairs have been very active, no one has actually played the game harder in Week 2 than Andy.  More than anyone else, Andy's game mode is *always* on. He flits about the house like a butterfly on the wall, sitting in on as many significant conversations as he can get to. I mentioned in an earlier post that it had become a running twitter joke among feed watchers, and the jokes have only increased since then. At first I thought this was kind of weak, but it's turned out to put Andy in a great position for now, because he'll have an easier time than most flipping whichever way he needs to after the next HOH power shift.

Zing, indeed...

  3. Amanda

Amanda cemented her status as Big Brother Nation's favorite real estate agent with her tipsy backyard striptease in front of everyone the other night. It lightened some tension, definitely put Kait and Jeremy in the mood, and even got the disembodied voice inside the House to bust out an early-season Zing.

Aside from that, she briefly surfaced as a possible target of the Moving Company (mainly just Spencer) based on perceived issues of trustworthiness and her control of McRae. 

Though she bordered on flipping out over this news when she first learned of it, Amanda got things back under control, then went about calmly and skillfully squashing any notion of herself as a major threat, then went about organizing Helen, Candice, and Andy into Operation: Save Elissa. If she'd sniffed out McRae's participation in the MC, I' probably give her the top spot, but she may get him to turn on them anyway without ever realizing he was part of it. I think she's got what it takes to go very far this season.

  2. Jeremy

Jeremy stays in the top echelon of power ahead of tonight's vote having orchestrated just about everything this week, with the help of a few dumb moves from Elissa. But his run as the leader of the pack is going to crash spectacularly if the Moving Company falls apart tonight as many predict, and especially if he falters in the HOH competition. Jeremy's rude, crude bullying tactics have worked well up to a point, but he's built up a mountain of karma in the last two weeks and set himself up for a very hard fall.

  1. McRae

Simply put, McRae is deciding who goes home this week.  Whether it's Elissa or Nick, the vote is almost certainly going to be 6-to-5, and both sides think McRae is voting with them. 

With a lot of preparation, a little luck, and some genuinely solid people skills, McRae has outplayed everyone else in the House so far. But I think he's been making one critical mistake since about halfway through the first two weeks, and that has been to keep Amanda in the dark about the Moving Company. He and Amanda have become so close that there is no way she'll tolerate him having any outside loyalties on the same level as their coupling. If she were to find out about it from someone besides him, she would be LIVID. And because McRae's feelings for Amanda have become so real, he would not be able to handle it if she turned on him.

Fortunately for him, McRae seems to have realized the the Moving Company, as grand an idea as it was in its conception, is hopelessly flawed in its foundation. Jeremy is too big a bully, Nick is too bland and shallow, Spencer is too untrustworthy, and Howard is too wishy-washy.  The Brigade is laughing at these guys, I promise.  

If you read or listen to any of the live feed experts, McRae finally flipped the switch in his head on Wednsday afternoon, and is preparing to vote Nick out on Thursday's live show. I'm not 100% convinced myself, but I do think it would be his best move. He'd dodge the giant bullet of Amanda learning his secret, and pending the HOH result, would never have to sweat the vengeance forcefully foretold by Jeremy.

For me, I can't lose tonight...I'd prefer that Elissa goes home to add more mystery and strategy to the MVP twist, but if Nick goes then it strengthens the position of McRae and Amanda, my two fave Houseguests. The only thing I know for sure is that the aftermath of it all will be must-see not-TV on the live feeds.