#BB15 NYC Launch Party

Last year, I put out an innocent call via Reality Nation (RIP?) for fellow fans to gather for the launch of Big Brother 14. It evolved into a huge production with input from Big Brother alums, and was repeated this year through the stewardship of BB14's Adam Poch at Murray Bar 34 in midtown.  This year, relieved of hosting duties (relieved being the operative word), I hit the party as a spectator with my good Big Brother buddy ST in tow.

The night was interesting, to say the least - it was a hot and humid night in NY, and if you can't tell from the party pictures, the place was about 95 degrees and even more humid inside. That didn't stop fans and houseguests alike from mobbing the place for hours, squeezing through and stepping on each other's toes for photo ops and strategic debates.

A few highlights:

-The bar was 21 and up, and a group of young kids were unable to get into the bar. When we arrived, a considerable number of houseguests were kindly posing for pictures outside with the forlorn kids, including Porsche, Enzo, Ian, Adam Poch, Monica, and JennCity.

-Porsche was considerably taller than I expected, especially in her six-inch heels. She was pleased to hear that I was rooting for her at the end of BB13, then whispered: "Even against Rachel?" Yes, I said, even against Rachel. She seemed satisfied with that.

-I was squeezing through some close quarters and ended up standing in front of BB2's Monica for a few moments. I felt compelled to share with her, truthfully, that I've been re-watching Big Brother 2 on my iPhone at the gym lately, and I hope she wins this time.

-Somehow ST and I ended up chatting with Chef Joe Arvin of BB14 for awhile. We struck up a conversation as the show was airing, and ended up getting into a detailed consideration of whether Elissa should come clean about her family relations. Joe, who famously got Russell Hantz's brother Willie booted, was of the opinion that everyone would know immediately about Elissa's family connections. His prediction proved to be right.

-Joe also informed us that on BB14, while he wasn't familiar enough with Survivor to make the connection, he found out very quickly about Willie's family ties from his fellow housemates.

-Chef Joe Arvin is possibly the loudest human being I have ever met in my life.

-One more great Chef Joe moment: While discussing his season, Joe noted to us that, while his game may have been lacking, he at least knew what was going on in the house the majority of the time. The fan standing beside us piped up: "When the lights were on, anyway." Ouch. I took the opportunity to ask Joe how that conversation would have gone if Dan hadn't outed himself. He said he was planning to tell "Shane" that Dan was still with Danielle, and not to believe any of it.

-We also had a chat with BB14's JoJo, who was very into the premiere episode. She wasn't a Big Brother fan before going on the show, but like most former houseguests, she now claims to be obsessed, to the point that she even watched Big Brother Canada online. JoJo was a fan of The Sheyld and Talla, which makes sense, since Talla was basically the Canadian JoJo.

-Michelle Maradie was in attendance ("Who?" First boot on BB4, look it up!), which made us note her more-than-passing resemblance to BB15 houseguest Aaryn.

-Eric Stein remains one of my favorite Big Brother houseguests of all time. He did not seem pleased about his recent loss in Risk, which he was quick to point out was just a silly board game. Duly noted, Eric.

-Michelle Costa was audibly shocked when McCrae won the first HOH.

-ST wanted a picture with Ian, who was looking quite adorable as he got a little more drunk and sweaty. Not that I'm planning to rob the cradle or anything. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't consider it. We asked Ian how Jun's matchmaking service is working out for him. (ST is Jun's honorary sister.) Ian admitted that it wasn't. Hopefully ST can use her honorary family connections to make that happen for Ian.

-On a similar note, ST and I both noted Elissa's misspelling of Jun's name on her dreamboard and immediately docked her points for that.

-All in all, it was a great party, and shoutout to our new bar buddies, Karen and Jeffery, as well as all of the houseguests who put up with the heat, humidity, and harassment of fans to enjoy the premiere with all of us.

The BB NYC party is becoming a fun tradition, and I'm already looking forward to next season. Thanks for keeping it alive, Adam!

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.

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.

Big Brother Around the Web: Do You Love It edition

From the official BB team, converted by OnlineBigBrother.com, I bring you Tallaisms:

Speaking of things people love, or don't - via the Jury House:

Topaz, girl, I feel your pain. I do. 

The Beginning Of The End

You know it's the beginning of the end of a season of Big Brother when you check your feeds and all you see is:

 Needless to say, not a lot happened today.  The veto ceremony went on as planned and Talla was put on the block. At one point I was going to start counting how many times Andrew complained about thinking the veto comp was rigged, but I lost count after 5 times.  The one thing remotely game related that has gone on today has been Andrews completely not subtle by any means campaigning.  All of his work is falling on deaf ears though.  Emmett and Gary are both in favor of Andrew being the one out and Talla is even in the know about it.  The slightly amusing thing I learned today? Talla can't multiply by 10.  Not that I should be shocked by that one, but, okay I'm a little shocked.  She joined Emmett and Andrew at the hot tub for a while earlier and started babbling nonsensical things as usual which somehow landed her on doing math problems.  She then started trying to figure out things like what's 500 x 10..and drew a blank until Andrew told her the answer.  Oh the stabbing pains I feel when I think about the idea of this blubbering, screeching idiot somehow slipping her way into the final 2.  *slaps forehead*

Anyway, that's your update for the day via Ash.  I'll be back tomorrow with hopefully some more interesting game play to report.

This is our house. They are just guests here.

Hi again! Ash here. I was asked by Karen to guest her blog for a few days while she lets real life get in the way of her BB viewing.  I shall try to keep you all at least semi informed.  Now that introductions are done, let's just get right down to it.

Since the exit of Dan today, not a lot of gaming has really gone on, so I think I will just give you guys a quick rundown of the house as I see it right now and the things I want vs what I am currently hating.  You all are of course welcomed and encouraged to leave your own opinions .

As of now Andrew is currently the target and will likely be voted out on Thursday.  Jillian doesn't want to see him go because she has a final 2 deal with him..but since Gary now holds the veto and Talla will be the replacement nominee, I am sure she would rather take her chances with Talla than to try and go up against Andrew in the end.  Unfortunately, to the dismay of all of our eardrums, it's looking more and more like Talla will definitely make the final 3 with a strong possibility of even being dragged to the final 2 where she will lose to whoever takes her...but still take second place prize.  Please BB gods..don't let that happen?! I wouldn't "love it".

I won't lie to you friends I am extremely disappointed that the final 5 have come down to people who all have deals with each other and were once all one big alliance.  I was really hoping the inaugural season of BB Canada would bring more drama in the end with one side of the house being against the other etc..  Sadly, this is not the case.  The only person that wants Jill or Emmett out of the house (maybe) is Gary, and I'm not even sure after tonight's episode whether he is trying to get rid of Jill or not.  At first I thought he was, but then in his DR he revealed that he wants to take her to the end since everyone in jury is bitter and won't vote for her. Damn that Jillian..she is a strong enough player to keep herself in the game and annoying enough to where people still want to take her to the end because she may not win.

From a personal standpoint, the only final 2 I would really like to see happen would be Emmett and Gary.  Emmett may not be the most entertaining, but I feel like he has played a relatively smart game compared to the others and he has had quite a few wins despite his frequent DQs.  I would also like to see Gary pull it out just because it's unexpected and because Gary himself is unexpectedly a relatively good player.  He wins comps when he needs to most of the time and he is actually pretty perceptive of other players and their intentions.  I do realize that taking all personal like and dislike out of it that Jill and Emmett would be the best/strongest players for the final 2.  I was not as appalled as I normally would be or should have been to hear Emmett say "This is our house and they are just guests in it" during tonight's episode, because let's face it, with the recent HOHs being Jillian, Emmett, Jillian, Emmett, and some veto wins thrown in between...he is kind of right.

The one thing we can probably be almost sure of at this point is that Andrew is going to walk out the door on Thursday.  I'm not sad or happy either way about this.  I don't particularly like Andrew.  I find him funny and more entertaining than Talla any day, but I'm not getting my hopes high for her walking, so for now I will just say bye bye Andrew!

What do you all think?  Have any favorites? Who do you want to see make it to the end? Who do you hope walks on Thursday?  Hopefully more gaming will happen in the next few days so I will have more to inform you all on.

Canadian Renegades

Dan set the house a series of challenges last night after dinner, with the goal of earning all of them an official cherry red Renegade bandana. He told them that everyone would get a challenge, some in public, some in secret. If they didn't want the bandana, they didn't have to accept the challenge.

Talla was first, with a public challenge to cannonball into the pool. She didn't know what that meant, and her form was not exactly perfect:

But the end result was the same:

Dan helped her out:

And crowned her the first Canadian Renegade:

Andrew received his challenge in the store room, for good reason: Dan instructed him to kiss Jillian in front of Emmett. In order to allow Andrew to maintain his head atop his shoulders, he promised to whip out a red bandanna the second he did it, so that Emmett wouldn't have more than a split second to be livid. Andrew was down with that.

It took a few minutes, but finally everyone was gathered in the hot tub, and Andrew announced he was going for it, in return for Emmett nominating him. Dan had the bandanna whipped out before Andrew had even finished.

Let's face it, Andrew has wanted to do that from day one.

He won a bandana for it, anyway.

Emmett got the next assignment in secret: to mimic Gary for ten minutes. This was a little confusing to him, and he asked Big Brother for a clarification. When he didn't get it, he went out to the pool area and began arguing with Talla in a loose approximation of a Gary accent, with a few Gary-isms thrown in ("motherfucker!")

This was so effective that it resulted in Talla leaping to her feet and yelling back at him, not unlike her fight with Gary a couple of weeks back. No one except Dan seemed to realize what Emmett was doing.

Dan blissfully spared Emmett after about two minutes of this, presenting him with the bandana and revealing the task, resulting in a quick make-up hug between Talla and Emmett as he donned his Renegade garb.

For Jillian's challenge, he lured her into the storeroom for help changing his battery pack...

...then asked:

"How comfortable are you dancing?"

"I don't like to dance," she replied.
"Okay, perfect."

The task? To carry a full bottle of juice to the pack porch and dump it over her head while dancing. Dan had to secure permission from Big Brother before assigning her this one.

"I hate my life right now," Jillian was overheard saying after Dan left her alone in the store room with the bottle of juice.

Look at Jillian dancing.

Aaaaaaand Jillian's in the club.

For his final trick, Dan instructed Gary to dump cold water on the first person to fall asleep, who happened to be a drunken Talla. It should be noted that one of Gary's punishments is to stay awake for 24 hours himself, which added to the fun of this one.

Talla did not think it was so fun, drunkenly filling a pot with cold water and stumbling up to the HOH room to try to find a target for revenge.

The upstairs group hid out long enough that drunk, half-asleep Talla either forgot or failed to care why she was hauling a pot of cold water up the steps. 

Mission accomplished.

And, with Gary's induction, all of the final five Big Brother Canada houseguests are officially Renegades.

It's been a fun visit - with no game to play himself and no chance of being buzzed in to do so, Dan is having nothing but a good time. As a viewer of the show himself, it's got to be surreal to step into the game and get to probe them on their game thoughts and manipulate them into having one of the best nights of the live feeds this year.

All in all, not bad work for Big Brother Canada, to keep things hopping near the end of the game.

I will be mostly unavailable for a few days, so I will be leaving you all in the capable hands of Ash. Follow her on Twitter if you don't already, especially since updates may not go out over my Twitter until I'm back at a computer.

The Moose is Cooked

Sure enough, today's Veto was the How Bad Do You Want It Competition. Andrew and Gary both wanted it, with Andrew getting a mohawk courtesy of Dan, and Gary getting slop for the rest of the game and a prisoner costume:

Gary wanted it more

Dan's influence on the game continued after the feeds came up, with Emmett finally opening up to Dan and deciding that it makes sense to boot Andrew now, and Gary and Talla making a quiet pledge not to nominate each other next week.

Meeting Marge

With the competition over and the backyard opened, Dan took a trip out to see the hot tub with Emmett and Andrew. He was very interested in Marge the Moose, asking if they talked to her, but didn't quite get it when they said no.

A tribute to Peter (RIP)

Back inside, he continued to grill them about who had talked to the other moose in the Diary Room hallway. Talla is the only one who has, for her talk show task the other day - no one else knows the secret of Marsha the Moose, who has only spoken to Talla, Peter and AJ. It took Dan a minute to realize his goof, as Talla played dumb and Jillian grilled Dan about why on earth he would ask about talking mooses.

Jokers reacts

Dan's goof went over the heads of most of the houseguests, but it didn't go unnoticed by the internet, or by Production, who called him into the Diary Room and elicited an apology a couple of minutes later (so as not to arouse suspicion). 

So the secret of the mooses remains (mostly) safe, and Dan is free to continue wreaking havoc on the house and entertaining the internet for the rest of the night.