Love is a Dangerous Game

This Week in Bold Strategy #8

Welcome back to This Week in BS, where we break down highlights of Bold Strategy from Survivor, Big Brother Canada, and whatever the hell I want.

As always, scroll to the shows you watch and skip the ones you don’t. Or read everything and see how consuming endless hours of competitive reality TV programming a week affects your personal relationships, your career, and the rest of your life.

Survivor 44

😘 Love is a Dangerous Game

Since Rob and Amber ended up in the finals together, showmances on Survivor have gotten a bad rap. With Matt leaving this week , it feels like a good time to ask, can a showmance be a good strategy in Survivor? My answer is that much like any other strategy, it comes down to the execution.

In Big Brother, where showmances are more common, it can be a legitimate strategy in many cases. You generally want to be the lesser threat of the two - assuming you’re not a thruple - because in a visible duo, you’ll usually be targeted second. The apple of your eye becomes your shield and when they get voted out, you’re seen as a free agent, a number to be recruited.

Where did Matt and Frannie, or Frankinship, go wrong or lack execution in this strategy? Well, a few areas. Frannie should have dropped in the immunity challenge once she won individual safety. That would have been a more powerful place for her because she’d get safety and get to attend tribal and vote. Why care about winning immunity for everyone else when Matt, her number one, was in the other group? It’s pretty clear that Brandon, who was immune and still voted, played a big role in choosing who went home.

Second, the showmance should have hid their relationship better. It was very clear to the three former Ratu members voting that Matt had strong relationships on Soka and taking him out would weaken the strongest tribe that came into the merge.

Bad twists and game mechanics that the players weren’t clued in on played a huge role here and it’s not like Matt or Frannie did anything awful. They were in a decent position and they mostly got screwed by a twist. With that in mind, one of the challenges with showmances is that they’re generally not approached from strategic reasoning. I don’t think Matt and Frannie fell in love, and are still dating because one of them was deliberately pursuing this for game purposes. People naturally fall in love and there is a whole ethical debate about showmancing for game purposes only. The reason why showmances aren’t usually strategic is that people rarely pursue them as strategy. Rather, they pursue them because it’s human nature.

With all that said, could this showmance have worked? It kind of did. They were in a decent position going into the merge, had a good working relationship with another duo of Danny and Heidi, and you know what’s more powerful than a regular alliance? A love connection! They were so close that they were holding hands in the shelter at night. You’re not going to backstab your showmance any time in the early merge and you’re only going to do it at the endgame if you’re a twisted person. We saw some rumblings at Soka that splitting up Matt and Frannie was on the agenda but not enough to say that it’s the main reason why Matt lost. Having a close ally is not a bad thing.

Showmances can be effective strategies on Survivor. That’s why Rob and Amber making the F2 was so threatening for years after: all other showmances date in their wake. There are lots of stats about Big Brother showmances outlasting Bachelor couples… and actually Survivor has a pretty good history there as well. Whether it be Rob and Amber, Whitney and Keith, or even Alex and Kara Kay, a jury-mance, these couples tend to last. It makes sense: you’re not on a dating show so the relationship isn’t forced.

If you can hide your relationship in the game, or at least if you’re the lesser threat (e.g. Amanda staying over big threat Ozzy in Micronesia), showmances are a legitimate strategy to utilize in this game. And they’re pretty cute too… usually.

Big Brother Canada 11

🎗Shanaya’s Veto: The Moves Around The Move

The Shadiest Bunch pulled Shanaya into a room an hour before the veto ceremony and asked her not to play the veto and I tweeted this:

As a general statement, that’s correct, BUT there is most context here. It’s not just that you use it, it’s how you use it. Shanaya’s failure to execute on the moves around the move were why she seemed to get a lot of heat after the veto ceremony.

Big Brother is not always clearcut game. There are some obvious moves, yet most are grey. The way you make your choice most effective is to 1) be decisive and 2) give yourself enough time to lay the groundwork for the decisive move to be effective.

Shanaya wavering this week was why she got a lot of crap. Yes, they were a bunch of babies getting mad at her for not doing what they wanted. But also, Shanaya gave them too much space to pitch her, to the point where they weren’t even sure what she would do at the veto ceremony - and that was her error. She should have heard them out and remained firm.

One of the hardest things in Big Brother is sticking to your convictions when everyone around you is trying to unstick you from them. Renee was right though, the reactions from the rest of the house showed that using the veto was the correct move. The wavering was where Shanaya went wrong. Whatever move you do, you need to spend these very long weeks making sure that you cover your bases. It’s not just about nominating X and Y, using the veto, or voting to evict someone, it’s about using your time in the house to make sure that you cover all your bases around executing on that move.

I do think we’re missing some context on why Ty chose Shanaya as his houseguest choice. It sounded like maybe he was trying to hide his relationship with The Shadiest Bunch and he only has himself to blame for her using it. When he started threatening to put up Claudia, I sort of loved it. Since we’re talking about showmances this week, we’re used to boring showmances. This one is/was dysfunctional and weird and probably unhealthy in many ways. Kudos to Claudia for calling it quits; however in terms of entertainment, at least this showmance was interesting. The wild thing for Ty is because Shanaya flip-flopped on the move, he got far less blame and fell into an HOH where his final nominations, Hope and Jonathan, actually made sense for him and he left the week in a slightly better place than where he was when it started.

🕊 Tweet of the Week

Something I think about a lot is the families behind these players. Jonathan’s wife has been running his socials and it’s not a small thing to look out for these people while they’re locked away from society for ~3 months. Shoutout to the family members and the friends who let their loved ones live out their dreams while taking care of paying bills, submitting taxes, and remembering birthdays.

Come watch Survivor and the BBCAN finale with some great reality TV people, including me, in Toronto on May 10th and 11th with a live podcast to follow both nights. Tickets available here.

Until next time,

Kevin 🐍

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