The Emperor of (His Own) Doom

With fellow nominee Peter winning this week's Power of Veto (seriously? Now you win a competition?) Alec's chances of surviving the week are not looking good at this point.

I cannot get enough of this cap series.

Alec started the game as a player with a lot of promise, which is why I've been paying attention to him - a self-professed student of the game, a Big Brother international superfan, a social psychology doctoral student, and a decent athlete to boot - so yeah, I had high expectations. 

Unfortunately, Alec has failed to realize them. He wanted to be Dr. Will, but Alec is more of a Dr. Won't.

The Shield Moms - can anyone spot which Mom is doing the sign wrong? (Hint: her son did not win the POV.)

He and Peter have been stars of the broadcast show and seem to be favorites of Production (I mean, their moms got a segment together?), but at this point, nothing short of a miracle is going to get him through to next weekend.

Trio

Alec has played an interesting game, but not a winning one. If I had to sum up Alec's game flaws, I would say that he's overconfident, he plays way too personally, and he doesn't understand how to campaign or secure alliances for the long haul.

Let's run through some of the specific mistakes he made along the way:

Why Alec Lost Big Brother Canada

1. He Turned on Quattro!

Yes, it was delicious to watch villains Tom and Liza go out back-to-back in a double eviction, especially after Tom douched it up about Showergate. But Alec was targeting Tom before that, simply because he didn't like him.

Now, I didn't particularly care for Tom either, so I get why Alec was eager to boot him with Liza. But Liza's manipulations were easily neutralized once people realized she was lying, and she and Tom were allies and huge shields for, well, the Shield.

Sending Tom out of the game too early raised Alec's target and cost him a chunk of his own side of the house.

It's hard to say if Tom would have left if Alec hadn't turned on him - he was Gary's target for the week long before the Shield got in his ear (but shhh, let them think they were running the show.) Still, if Alec had managed to save Tom for a few more weeks, he would have had a loyal ally to hide behind as he slipped deeper into the game.

2. He Annoyed Andrew!

Sealing his fate 

I've said before that this was one of his biggest mistakes. Up until this night, Alec and Andrew were forging some sort of cautious trust, but after Alec forced Head of Household on Andrew in the Double Eviction and went on to score $10,000 for it by winning the next Head of Household, Andrew has been counting the days until he could send Alec packing, while Alec remained oblivious.

Alec only realized this in the last few days, and missed his chance to solve this problem quite easily during Topaz's brief Head of Household reign.

Speaking of which...

3. He Sold Out Topaz and Gary!

On paper, running a Brigade strategy sounds great. In practice, it's not as easy as the original BG made it look.

This group really sucked at it. Tom and Emmett both fell prey to the classic Brigade pitfall of "actually caring about your side alliance more than the main alliance", and Alec's attempts to prevent the same just made him look shady and untrustworthy to the rest of the house.

And then there was the disastrous Fast Forward. For some reason, Alec decided that his weak alliance with Andrew meant more to him than his solid alliance with Topaz, and kept the dangerous Andrew over loose cannon AJ. Why? Well, apparently because he liked Andrew better than Topaz. That's the best I got.

Topaz knew right away just how badly he'd screwed up, but Alec, far too cocky about his game as usual, just couldn't see it:

No, Alec, you're not.

No, Alec, you don't.

Thank you, Topaz.

(If only.)

The short-lived Fourgy Alliance, when Peter and Alec faked a secret alliance with Gary and Topaz, was probably the one thing that could have positioned the Shield solidly in the game for a few weeks.

If they'd been sincere about it and tried to target others with more connections in the house, instead of house outsiders Gary and Topaz who could have been pulled into a firmer alliance with them, the Shield might not be looking at getting split this week.

4. He Quit POV!

"Would you get mad if I killed you?" (The Canadians keep quoting this wrong, by the way.)

We won't know until Wednesday's episode exactly what happened, but for some reason Alec decided to give up in yesterday's Power of Veto competition, allowing Peter to land his first competitive win.

(I still can't get over that.)

To The Victor

His one shot was either winning POV or having Topaz pull him off the block - Peter's victory seals Alec's fate once and for all.

So why would he do it? Did he think that Peter needed the save more than he did? Did he do one of his quick calculations and realize that he couldn't win? Did he think he could get Talla or Andrew on the block and get them out instead?

Whatever the reason, I have a feeling Alec will look back on that moment as the one that finally sealed his fate.

***

Ready for the taking

The kicker to all of this is that Alec did have the tools to get to the end of the game, if he'd realized that Topaz was his best potential ally after Peter. I genuinely want to smack the guy for not realizing this earlier. 

One of the most valuable things you can have in the Big Brother house is a loyal ally, yet he's been tossing his left and right for people he would rather get along with. 

Unfortunately for Alec, he'll be spending most of the jury phase in the Jury House, with the people he already tossed.

***

Too late

One of two weird things is happening in the last few days with Alec and Topaz, by the way. 

He's looking at her longer, he's not recoiling from her kisses anymore, and he seems just as affectionate in private as in public. Either he's gotten much better at faking it with her - which is a distinct possibility - or she's finally broken through to him with her sweetly protective "turning the other cheek" act, and he's starting to fall for her a bit. 

My inner romantic would be satisfied if it's the latter - if Alec finally realizes how much he's screwed up with her, right as he loses the game. 

Unfortunately, because this is Alec, he's probably just getting better at faking it. 

Gary: What I Like About You

While we've got some time on our hands, I wanted to devote a few minutes to Gary "Glitter" Levy, one of the more interesting products so far from Big Brother Canada.

I admit, I didn't expect much from Gary in the beginning. Maybe the fact that he was neither the only minority nor the only gay cast member should have tipped me off - Big Brother Canada has been more diverse from the jump, and many of its star characters have proven to be much more complex than they seemed at the first impression, for better or for worse.

Gary defies the stereotypes - he knows his role on the show and plays into it with glee, but there's far more to him than meets the eye.

Gary and Luxury (RIP)

Gary is a complex character - one moment he's immature and selfish, the next he's surprisingly thoughtful and insightful. Part of this may be due to his age. At twenty-one, Gary is still on the cusp of childhood, and it shows. One minute he's creating a fake party task and pissing everyone off, the next he's astutely calling Alec out for his machinations with Topaz, the next he doesn't understand why the Have Nots are upset to be giving him a pedicure, the next he's standing up to the house's herd mentality to support Suzette on her way out the door.

Those glimmers of strategy and guts are what make Gary so interesting as a player. The first hours of his Head of Household reign were incredible to watch, as he subtly manipulated information out of the entire house and used it to push for what he wanted (Tom's eviction) while making everyone else think it was their idea (no, Alec and Peter, it wasn't).

In many ways, he reminds me of Daniele Donato, who I found to be extremely immature and whiny on Big Brother US Season 8, but transformed into a gutsy, self-assured rebel by Big Brother 13. Britney Haynes also showed a great deal of growth as a player between her young appearance on Big Brother 12 and her slightly older one on Big Brother 14.

Pwned

I don't think Gary is going to win this season - he can't, from the outside of the herd mindset in this house - but I could easily see him owning a future All-Stars season once he gets some more life experience under his belt and figures out how to wield his skill set to his advantage. And this guy is a shoo-in for All-Stars.

Gary is extremely confident in his own skin. That goes without saying, of course, but there's another layer to it. We've seen so many openly flamboyant men on these shows who harbor insecurity based on years of being bullied and ridiculed for their fabulousness. That kind of thing leaves bitter scars into adulthood, but if Gary wears those scars, he doesn't let them show. He loves who he is, and expects everyone else to love him until they say otherwise. He's not bitter or resentful as a result of his uniqueness, which is probably a credit to his family, who seem to be supportive of him.

Gary does possess one of the fatal flaws of big characters on reality television - he wants to be famous, and discusses it frequently on the feeds. (Seriously, we hate that shit.) When he discusses the fame he wants, though, he often frames it in terms of wanting a platform and a message, instead of wanting to just soak in attention. Obviously he wants the attention, too, but he wants to be a role model.

And he should be.

Seeing beyond the obvious

Gary has seen his closest friends go out the door, back to back - Danielle, Suzette, and now possibly Topaz, depending on the outcome of the veto(*)

(*)If you're Alec, who do you get the house to go after, between Topaz and Gary? Both probably hate you to an equal enough extent now, but Gary is the bigger competitor. At the same time, Gary isn't going to freeze you out for the next week, but that may make him more dangerous, so yeah, Gary is probably the target right now.

Despite pressure from the house last week, Gary refused to join the group that was isolating Suzette. As depressing as he found her in the last week, and as much as he knew it was risking his own game to spend time with her, he was unable to adopt Alec's strategy of forgetting that people are human, and did his best to keep her from being entirely isolated during her last days in the house. He knew better than to try and flip the game to save her, but he couldn't bring himself to mix the personal and the game and cut her out like the others, as hard as it was for him.

I've got a golden ticket

So where is Gary now? As we saw last night, he now seems to realize that the "Fourgy" alliance he thought he had with Topaz, Peter and Alec is worthless. Either Gary or Topaz will probably go home this week, and Gary has his veto replacement power to play on this week. During last night's feed leak he seemed to be trying to strategize with it, but he and Alec disagreed on its nature, so look for the interpretation of the power to be something Gary plays to his advantage. 

If Gary does succeed in rolling through this week, he's got to get over his annoyance with the other houseguests and use his house knowledge to assess the power dynamics and try to forge an alliance from what's left. Peter and Alec aren't going to do it for him, Gary and Talla don't seem to get along, and Emmett and Jillian are untrustworthy. Andrew and Gary have a very weird relationship and Andrew seems to be targeting Gary at the moment, but Andrew's flipped all over the place with Alec and might be willing to work something out. Who knows?

In the meantime, as much as I like both Gary and Topaz, I'm not sure that Topaz has much more to offer to the game once she's unleashed her fury on Alec. Her bridges will be burnt, and her options will be limited. Gary, on the other hand, has the ability to try to slip his way a little closer to the end if he thinks it over and draws on his skills.

Should Gary walk out the door on Thursday, I don't think it will be his last time on reality television. And I'm just fine with that. This world could use few more Garys in it.