Around the Web: #BBCan Fallout Matchmaker Edition

Now that the Big Brother Canada houseguests have returned to the outside world, most of them are on Twitter, with the notable exceptions of Topaz, Emmett, and Jillian.

OTP

As I had hoped, The Shield The Sheyld have been particularly responsive so far, with both fans and with haters, though Peter seems more comfortable on Twitter than Alec.

Vs.

Needless to say, the pair aren't getting a uniformly cheery reaction on Twitter, but they're able to find the positive:

In other news, the Alec/Topaz "thing" continues its weirdness, unabated:

Ohhhh, she probably did. 

In other Big Brother news, there's a new development in the Big Brother US winner's circle, with BB4 winner Jun Song starting a dating service focused exclusively on finding love for BB14 winner Ian Terry after a particularly self-deprecating tweet from the founder of the Quack Pack.

Wonder if she'd expand the circle outside of Big Brother winners to include Big Brother losers? Since it sounds like Alec might be back to the drawing board in that department.

And speaking of Big Brother winners and love, someone in the UK has had a little time on their hands:

Indeed.

I wonder if Jay and Louise's rumored breakup had anything to do with Aaron's Big Brother marathon - I can't shake the feeling that he and Faye are privately giddy about outlasting JayLou to be the longest-lasting showmance of BBUK Season 12. I imagine their reaction looking something like this:

Maybe Jay can get a leg up now from JunMatches.com too, if she expands the circle to include Big Brother losers. (Warning: link is to Jay's very unflattering leg tattoo of Louise, don't click while eating.)

I guess all that's left to say on that can be summed up by the Bit on the Side caption team:

10 Things We're Not Talking About Re: The #BBCAN Finale

And one we maybe are.

1. The Side Show art for Part Two of the HOH competition:

She's Alive!

Long live that bottom caption.

Kind of amazing, no? There was also some weirdness with the shower curtain art on Part One, but it made no sense, so I won't bother capping it.

2. Gary's face on winning Part Two:

Hallelujah

I can hear the bells.

3. How in the final HOH round, Emmett kept waiting for Gary to answer before locking in his. Until it came down to the final question, I was ready to call shenanigans.

Hmmm

Not sure why Emmett waited so long on every round if he wasn't cheating. Maybe he was cheating, but then honestly thought he would beat Gary on that last question.

(Emmett, cheat? Never.)

4. Gary evicted Emmett.

You guys, Gary fucking evicted Emmett!

"Watch oot for the gay guy"

I can still hear the bells.

5. Alec and Gary both tearing up at Gary's answer to Alec's question:

Alec should have brought his sleep mask to the finale

6. Peter not having it with Jillian's answer to his question:

Watch check

Jillian? All he wanted was for you to own your game. Fail.

7. The final death throes of The Sheyld (sic):

1 of 2

2 of 2

Can't help it, those two guys still crack me up, even for all their failures. I'll stay a fan. Peter's got a different Twitter now than the one we all expected, by the way. Seems pretty verified, he was tweeting about being in the party van right before other official accounts started talking about the van. Then again, I already got taken in by a fake Gary account today when his mother retweeted it. So, take it all with a grain of salt for now.

8. Topaz's hilarious hissy fit over the vote reveal:

Someone call the ophthalmologist!

Also, did anyone notice who was onscreen half the time during that sequence?

Check the lower left corner - hi, Dan!

9. The internet's meltdown upon the vote reveal:

Jokerized

 10. But of course, what we're all talking about today, and will be for years, is:

Topaz'd

 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in a nutshell, as tragic as it is, I think it's hilarious. Did Gary deserve to win? Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, yes. Many have said that it "wasn't fair" for Gary to return at the Final Five, but Big Brother returns players all the time, and they almost always bounce out within a week or two, as soon as they can. The fact that Gary didn't is a huge testament to his game - making the right alliances, winning the final competitions, gaining the right trust and backstabbing just when he needed to.

And that's ignoring the fact that, as Alec has pointed out multiple times, Big Brother Canada has had a Big Brother UK influence from the start. Being a big character and beloved by the audience was going to be a part of the game, and all players should have understood that from the Suzette Power Shift onward. That was a part of the game Gary played brilliantly.

That said, is it the end of the world that Gary lost? Of course not. He'll do fine with the $20K he won, it gives him a sympathetic story to propel his public career, and really puts his "the money doesn't matter" talking point to the test.

I'm sure there was a moment inside where he wanted to do this:

But he didn't, at least not on camera. Instead, we got Beauty Pageant Runner-Up Face:

Mature, gamer Gary is taking the reigns, and immature, selfish Gary is going to have to take a backseat. Totally for the best, and now he's a shoo-in for Big Brother Canada All-Stars in a few years.

And Jillian can take her $100K and her milkman and get off our screens at last. Was she a good player? She was all right. I don't blame Alec and Peter for the "bitter jury" stuff - it seems like their contention, which is worth pointing out, was that Jillian was unnecessarily nasty, making deals she didn't need to make, breaking them when she didn't have to break them, and then refusing to admit what she'd done. If she'd been willing to admit it in the jury questioning, Peter might not have rolled his eyes and checked the time, but he clearly knew she wouldn't.

Jillian is a good player in the Rachel Reilly "Most HOH wins" kind of Big Brother game, but without Emmett, she wouldn't have gotten to the end, and without a disaster of a vote, she wouldn't have won.

Still, she won fair and square a little crooked, it's hard to dispute that.

So congrats, Jillian, for what it's worth. Ultimately, your strategy of sticking with Emmett turned out to be the thing that got you to the end.

I'd say drinks are on you for that first real-world date.

Exeunt

#BBCAN Morning Conspiracy Theory

Who's Number One?

I will have a lot more to say about the astonishing Big Brother Canada finale later, but I did want to highlight this intriguing conspiracy theory making the rounds this morning, posted at Survivor Sucks by mabc:

Been a lurker for a while, first post as I wanted to share some interesting things! As much as I believe this is true... there are conspiracy theories that are intriguing. Here are some things I noticed:

1) Notice how AJ does a face palm sign and says something foreshadowing about someone making a $100,000 mistake. Notice Topaz smiling. THEN he sits in Alec's chair and says something to Topaz and Topaz smacks him (Is the face palm a symbol for a "plan" they concocted?)

2) Alec comes up and also does the face palm sign and says "Darkness" (their plan?)... "I'll absolutely love how you'll win" (more foreshadowing to Jillian winning in this horrible way)

3) Topaz ALSO does the face palm sign! 150% secure x2... dig at Jillian's lies for sure. Is she really dumb enough to make such a mistake? She sure was squinting a lot (poor acting?)

4) Peter doesn't do the face palm (maybe since he's the last and just does his own thing to complete this plan) Now what injustice? 

Possibly the four believe that Jillian deserves to win, but wants to mess up her win. Maybe to them it was not fair that Gary got to go back in the house and not them. Maybe they feel that since production screwed them over with the Topaz twist they want to mess up the show ( also Gary winning is probably what production wanted). Could they have thought about such a scenario and pre-plan this whole thing? 

Wow. Could they? Hmmm. It's wild, but it would explain some of those ironic and weird comments from Alec, AJ, and Topaz, as well as why no one seems that upset about it today.

Udder Certainty

Nice work tonight (well, earlier this week - it's all discombobulated without feeds) by the milkman. He's got his endgame bases mostly covered, but he's definitely sealing the deal with his actions as edited on the penultimate episode.

Nice save, milkman

Hard to say if the Jemmett tension is legitimate or being played up for editing purposes, since we can't see the feeds. But I did predict that the relationship is not long for the real world. We'll see.

Hard truths

Emmett's panicked scramble at realizing it was nearly time to evict Talla? Hilarious. Would have been even funnier on the live feeds. Alas.

The fuck, Emmett?

Jillian is finally starting to realize she should be playing her own game without Emmett. Naw, really? A little too late for that, Jillbot. The jury is locked and loaded.

The fuck, Emmett?

Emmett made a last-ditch effort to secure Talla's jury vote by gifting her one of Dan's bracelets. Talla was touched by the bracelet, but it wasn't enough to get her vote. Emmett's really going to regret giving that bracelet up.

He's still destined to win, unless Gary somehow squeaks out a final HOH win and cuts him. And he should win. Emmett's game has been nearly flawless. Early in the season, he remarked that his last ex-girlfriend called him "cold-blooded", and at the time, it was difficult to see why. Now, it's not. Emmett can be friendly and funny, which disarmed his fellow players to their detriment, but he has a ruthless, emotion-free side that served him well in this game.

In other news, guess what else is happening?

So nice to see Tom partying with all those losers he didn't want in his jury house. 

Big Brother Around the Web: #BBCAN Dance Remix

If you're still lingering around waiting for something to happen before the finale, here's a couple minutes to keep you entertained, courtesy of the Slice.ca editing team:


BBCan Remix by f100003092719386

The #BBCAN Crystal Ball

I conjured up my Ouija board tarot cards magic wand crystal ball tonight, and here's what it had to say about what the next few weeks hold, as the last group of Big Brother Canada contestants are released into the big wide world.

Jury House Stew

AJ: Bearing the curse of the forgotten first jury member, AJ will cultivate a small Twitter following, which will dip when he confuses followers by still referring to himself in the third person, making them think it's a fan account. Joins his friend Murtz for a double interviewing act for awhile, further confusing the issue.

The Emperor of His Own Doom

Alec: His relationship with Topaz will last longer than anyone expects, largely because he's too insecure to end it publicly at first. He will move in with Peter as planned and create that Sheyld Youtube channel I've been rooting for all along, focusing on entertaining and often wildly incorrect Big Brother game analysis. He will also realize, much to his relief, that nobody in the psychology world gives a goddamn whether or not his wiener showed on Canadian cable access (it didn't). 

Topaz Glitter

Topaz: Will stay with Alec a little longer, just to stick it to the haters, because she's stubborn like that. Eventually she'll give up and dump him, within a couple months of watching his Diary Rooms and simultaneously getting bored with him. Will be amazing on Twitter.

Marsha's Favorite

Peter: After a couple of months of moping over Liza, will sleep with her once and then move on to try to date either someone from the Big Brother US crew, or a moose. His depression over missing Dan's visit to the house will be alleviated when Dan has him on a webchat, one of the many podcast appearances Peter will be making in addition to his own Youtube channel.

Add caption

Andrew: Will move in for the kill when Emmett and Jillian break up, but fail and end up dating one of Jillian's sisters instead. Will also spend months, if not years, complaining on Twitter about how the game was stolen from him by Dan Alec Production Emmett Marsha the Moose.

No, Talla, We Don't

Talla:  Tries to trademark Do You Love It t-shirts, but sales are poor. Starts her own Youtube channel, but ratings are low. Will live on forever in countless .gifs. 

Zoe's Brother

Gary: Where do we start? Big Brother Canada All-Stars, Big Brother US special visit, featured in the Toronto gay pride parade, starts working up his fabulous drag routine for a national tour. Gary conquers the world.

Look at Jillian... looking

Jillian: After Emmett dumps her shortly after the show, will mope a bit before getting on with her normal life and disappearing. I can't come up with anything more colorful than that. It's Jillian.

Milkman

Emmett: Waits a month or two before dumping Jillian, just long enough to make it look like it was maybe real. Will enjoy his newfound riches back on the dairy farm, ride in the Toronto Gay Pride parade with Gary, and enjoy playing the field in Nova Scotia.

Big Brother Around the Web: Egypt Edition

And you thought you were in denial about the way this season is ending:

Sounds delicious to me.

Last, Best Hope

So with the game winding to its boring close, I thought of one more hypothetical scenario that could make it interesting in the endgame. 

Rickie and Brian, BFFs?

Jillian is set on taking Emmett to the final two if she wins her record-setting last HOH, and Emmett seems likely to take Jillian. Gary has one last card he can play that could work on Emmett, especially if Emmett and Gary are in the final HOH showdown, which is possible.

Gary's been setting up this idea that Jillian is favored by the jury and likely to win the game, which is total BS, according to him. 

If Emmett and Gary face off in the final two, Emmett might be tempted to go to the end with Gary, but much like the Big Brother 5 endgame between Drew and Cowboy, he knows he can't cut his showmance himself, Gary would have to do the dirty work for him.

So if Gary can convince Emmett that he's trustworthy, which is an outside possibility, he can propose to have Emmett throw the final contest to him, so that Gary can choose to go to the final with Emmett, and Jillian is cut at a hand that's not Emmett's.

The punchline to all of this, of course, is that Gary will actually take Jillian to the finals, not Emmett. If he's right about the jury's dislike of Jillian, that could ultimately be the move that wins the game for Gary. Tada! 

Should it in fact go down like that, I'd say he deserved the win, twist or no. Unfortunately, Emmett is not big on throwing contests and doesn't like putting his fate in the hands of others, so it's unlikely to happen.

Sigh. Three more days of nothing but writing Big Brother fanfic, knowing it's bound to be more interesting than what we're actually waiting for.

Endgame

The feeds may be over, but Big Brother Canada isn't - I'll have more blog content coming from you all throughout this four-day feed outage leading up to the finale. (Though, let's face it - in four days, will anyone still care? We'll see.)

"How straightforward the game, when one has trust in one's player..."

So, it comes down to this: the feeds are finished, and while we've yet to see the endgame play out, it's becoming fairly obvious what's about to happen. 

With Emmett holding the final Power of Veto, he decided long before the feeds ended that Gary would be moving on to the Final Three, with Talla heading out the door.

The true tragedy of the early feed outage is that Emmett was planning to admit this to Talla before her eviction, but after the POV. The beauty of that plan is: Emmett didn't seem to realize that Final Four POV and eviction are the same ceremony, so we'll probably get the footage of Talla's reaction to her betrayal anyway on Wednesday night. Goody!

So with only Gary, Emmett and Jillian left in the game, what happens now?

Emmett's chances of winning the final HOH are strong. He's a comp beast, no doubt about it.

Should he win the endgame, which is likely, Emmett will probably take Jillian. He's confident that he can beat her, and in the off chance that he can't, he might suspect that he can benefit from her win more than Gary's.

He's probably right, though. If Emmett squeaks in to the final two in any form, he's likely to have this game in the bag. 

At this point, it's extremely unlikely that anyone else will win, which I guess is deserved, though, ugh.

Gary's chances of winning the final HOH are not good, especially against Jillian and Emmett. He has two chances to beat them and get into the finals, though, and if it's anything like the BBUS final HOH, the last competition will be the usual crapshoot. So what happens if he lucks his way to the end?

He's promised Emmett that he would take him to the final two, but from his conversations with Dan, that's unlikely to happen. He knows that the jury despises Jillian and grudgingly admires Emmett, and he's not stupid. Gary would take Jillian to the finals if he won, leading to his one potential path to victory.

On the off chance that Emmett does fall for Gary's machinations and take Gary to the finals, Gary would probably lose to him, but it wouldn't be out of the question for Gary to squeak it out with a bitter jury. If that were to happen, Gary would have earned it - he's been working his tail off since his return, trying to convince everyone that the jury admires Jillian and will vote for her to win. And they've all fallen for it. Not bad on his part - if he'd actually been able to win some competitions here in the end, it might have been worth something. 

Jillian is one final HOH away from a record number of Head of Household wins. She should be focusing on that record more than on this silly "first showmance in the final two!" dream, especially since Mike Boogie and Erika already achieved that on Big Brother All-Stars, so, yeah.

Jillian will likely pull out one of the two final Head of Household rounds and end up in the final, given her track record, so her chances of being the final one to make the decision are high. 

In the endgame, she's guaranteed to take Emmett, thinking that even if she doesn't win, at least her boyfriend will, and she'll be guaranteed some cut of the prize. (There hasn't been any overt discussion of prize sharing that I know of, but we can assume she's assuming.)

Her chances of winning are really null at this point. She'll probably get a vote from Andrew and maybe from Talla or AJ, but Emmett should easily get the votes of Topaz, Gary, Alec, and Peter, all of whom despise her to varying degrees.

Jillian will not take Gary to the final, which is smart of her, since she'd likely lose to him anyway, and better to be making out with a winner than not making out with a winner.

If Talla somehow manages to squeak through after what we saw on the feeds, chalk it up to her idiot savant floating skills. It's unlikely to happen, but we can't rule it out - maybe Emmett would legitimately flip for once this year.

In an endgame, she would probably take Jillian, leading to Jillian's sole potential path to victory.

Neither Jillian nor Emmett would take her to the finals, so I'm not even going to entertain that hypothesis at this point.

***

The fact that Jillian and Emmett spent most of the game betraying their allies over and over, without alienating the allies they had left, really did make for some masterful gameplay. I admit it grudgingly, but I admit it. Emmett should have been questioned from the instant he turned on Tom, and Jillian from the moment she lied to Aneal, and yet Alec, Topaz, Peter, Andrew, and Talla all walked out the door at their hands, still thinking they were besties with Emmett and Jillian up until it was too late.

I still can't say I particularly enjoyed watching it, but would Emmett deserve to sit on a list with the Big Brother US greats?

Oh fine, yes, sure, whatever.

Why Andrew Lost

A couple weeks ago, I had Andrew pegged to win the game. What went wrong? 

Andrew will tell you it's Dan's fault. According to his exit interview, Dan got in Emmett's ear, and that was that. It's a narrative that works for Andrew and the way he defined himself in this game, which has a lot to do with why he's now chilling in a lodge somewhere this morning taunting Peter about Dan's visit. 

But it's just not the case.

The truth is, Andrew, as well as he disguised it, had one of the worse egos in this game, and it got in his way. Alec and Peter were stupid to align with Jillian and Emmett, he told himself, but it made sense for him, because he was honest, or something. 

Andrew refused to acknowledge the truth Dan was trying to help him see: that his allies had not only betrayed ally after ally of their own, but put him on the block two weeks running. Despite that, by the fact Dan got into the game, Andrew's moose was already cooked. 

Andrew was a target long before Dan entered the house, and his game may have been over the moment he aligned with Jillian and Emmett and decided that he would protect both. It got him further than he would have gotten on his own, as he was at the bottom of the pecking order at one point, but to proceed to the end, he would have had to win more competitions and also strengthen, rather than weaken, his connections to Gary and Talla. Still, the showmance held all the power at the end, and without being able to shift them (as no one really has throughout the game, they waver but never shift with campaigning), he was screwed.

Like so many others before him, Andrew's ego proved to be his undoing, leaving him in exactly the same position as Alec, ironically - $10,000 richer and off to the jury house.

So now there are four - Jillian, Emmett, Talla, and Gary. The game is practically Emmett's for the taking unless Talla or Gary manage to squeak out a veto win tomorrow. He's played a classically good game and probably deserves the win (she says grudgingly), but it would be fun to see the underdogs take him out and leave the outcome in doubt this close to the end.

I don't really expect that to happen, but at least it gives us all some minor reason to keep watching.

By the way, if you missed it, Dan has a great rundown of the houseguests left in the game, and singles out pride as the reason for Andrew's downfall.