Mergatory & The Crown

This Week in Bold Strategy #7

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

🚀 Mergatory Failure to Launch

As much as I enjoy this cast, this is two years in a row where the mergatory boot is the person that everyone can look around at and say, “Ok”. This year, Josh, and last year, Elie, were the collateral damage in standoffs when no one really wanted to say a name, someone dared to, and the name they suggested went home.

This is a byproduct of having half the tribe safe. By giving immunity to half the players at this crucial junction, you’re putting the other half in more danger than a regular merge immunity, where only one person has safety. When there are only six options to vote out, it’s a lot easier for five out of the six to get on the same page. They’re put in a situation where there isn’t anywhere to hide so focusing in on one player together is just agreeable. When, at this and last year’s “merge” feast the name thrown out was the one to go, it’s more on the game mechanic than anything else.

Like Kane said, he doesn’t really know these people. That makes the stakes of voting a Josh or Elie, if you’re not on their tribe, actually pretty low; this is slightly different in Josh’s case where he was on two tribes and didn’t seem to build good game relationships on either. Yam Yam actually beats himself up at one point for saying Josh’s name to people that he wasn’t close with. In mergatory situations, throwing out a name aggressively, like Yam Yam did, is actually not a bad move. People know they have just one round to get through to make the merge. If you’re offering a way to make them guaranteed dateable, it’s an easy yes, even if it feels like one person is steamrolling the vote.

You can even look at Survivor 41 and 42 and see how Sydney and Lydia, the other mergatory boots, were just collateral damage. In Sydney’s case, she was in a seemingly good position but due to the copious advantages and immunities at that tribal, her tribe turned on her. For Lydia, no one was onto Omar at all yet and when he suggested her as an option - in order to get himself closer to the other Vati players - people didn’t really object. Survivor has fiddled with the mergatory concept a lot and people want this to be an easy round of play, so I really think it opens up the door to more directly target someone than the usual obfuscation and tomfoolery.

Big Brother Canada 11

👑 Breaking Down the Crown

This is a banger of an alliance. You’ve got the characters, you’ve got the energy, and you’ve got the mutually beneficial elements that you need to be successful. For an alliance to work, it needs to make sense for everyone. This one does.

In contrast to the bros alliance from the beginning of the season, this one has a bunch of people who bring something different to the table. Let’s go person by person and talk about their mutually assured success.

*I will preface this by saying that any F2/jury decision speculation is nonsense at this point and I will unabashedly do it anyway.

The Shadiest Bunch

While this alliance should be renamed The Shady Bunch to reduce the number of syllables, I won’t focus on that. Let’s start with Big Daddy K. Kuzie is seen as a HUGE threat in the house and rightfully so. People recognize that she is playing a fantastic game and that’s going to be a problem for her. She seems a bit worried that Daniel C. and Anika have a final two, yet that should not concern her at all right now. Her worry should be getting to the end at all. If she winds up in a final five with this group, she can not only compete competitively, she can also decide between the two final twos of DC/Anika and Jonny/Hope. Someone is going to see Kuzie as a threat and if this group stays tight, it gives her the best chance to get to the end. Having a shot to win the game at final three by winning the final HOH is one of the best places you can be. I would take that every time and for DC/Anika to want to take Kuzie to F3 - not F2 where she is probably a lock in any scenario - that’s actually an awesome spot for her. Someone to take you to the top three? That’s only a good thing.

Daniel C. has The Shadiest Bunch, his F2 with Anika, and a good relationship with Hope. He’s in a position to dodge, dip, duck, and dive, based on the way that the wind blows, and he’s proven to have the strategic chops to do that. Using the veto on Ty was an unpopular move with the audience, but a good choice for Daniel. He gets the house target ahead of him and is in a decent position to survive a double (don’t think any triples are happening given the number of weeks and the people who walked). Based on what we’ve seen, he’d beat Anika in a F2 and would have potential against anyone, including Kuzie. He can turn on Kuzie any time before F2 with options. He does have really good relationships outside of The Crown, for example with Renee, Claudia, and Shanaya, yet he’s a clear number four in that group versus The Crown where it’s less hierarchical.

Anika might be in the best position. Kuzie and Daniel are visible threats and someone will eventually take a shot at Kuzie. If Hope and Jonny go after after The Shadiest Bunch at five, she or Daniel are their best bet to join up with them. Anika seems to be a good talker and if she can make her way to the end with Jonny or Hope and present the case that she was part of the alliance that ran the game, well that’s tough to say no to. I’d love to see more of her in the DR so we get a sense of her own perspective on her game. She is someone who barely watched the show so for her to be in a solid spot at this juncture is pretty cool. I do question whether she’ll be able to make sense of the endgame enough to evaluate her position there, but that’s a later problem.

Hope and Johnathan

If Hope studies well and goes to the final five with this group, he can win. He is by far the most athletic and although the endgame comps typically require deep studying, they do tend to favour athletes if everyone is on fairly equal footing with their recall. We’ve seen evidence that Hope is close to everyone in this group other than Anika and that’s a good place to be when it gets down to five and others want to make moves. Going to the F2 with anyone in The Crown other than Kuzie means Hope has a chance. He has a locked in F2 with Jonny and would be a great person for Kuzie to look to if she were to turn on DC/Anika.

Jonny is a beloved father figure in the house and a great alliance member. He’s reliable, straight-up, and so honest that by the middle of last week no one still suspected that he was the Invisible HOH. Assuming a nine person jury, there won’t be a Canada’s jury vote (which he would surely win with this group, given the Bel-Air Direct safety). While he is well-liked, sometimes that’s not enough at the endgame. And with DC, Hope, and Kuzie all having excellent stories to tell, someone might take Jonny to the end thinking they can beat him. If he can grab a couple of comp wins or make some strategic decisions, he’ll be a tough guy to beat in a jury vote - and even if he can’t, he’s still someone who people really like, and that might just be enough. Jonny and Hope are in good with Santina, however her game is heavily predicated on comp wins and her days might be numbered if she can’t make a run.

Will The Crown last? Well when and why should you make a move against your alliance? You might think you need to go against your alliance at n+1 players remaining, where n is the number of alliance members. You create a new majority and bring in the extra houseguest as a number. That brings up the question of whether you should act at n+2 thinking that others will act at n+1, and so on as the gameplay becomes more complex. The best alliances are mutually beneficial to the point when everyone at n houseguests remaining has a mostly equal shot, so there isn’t any motivation to make a move against the group.

That’s the point of any analysis here: each person in this particular crew has a chance to win should they go to F5 and they bring a diverse set of skills and backgrounds to the team. That’s what I want to see out of an alliance and that’s why this one has a chance to make a decent run and even make it all the way to five. It’s too early to say whether they will, but if 5/5 of them doing the sign in the DR is any indication, all five are in this one for the long run. If someone is making the signal when they vote, where everything is between the houseguests and the audience, then they’re truly committed. They’re saying to you at home, “This is where my loyalty lies and this why I’m doing what I’m doing.” So, yeah, I’m a fan of the alliance and I think if they stick together, they all have a fairly equal chance to walk away with The Crown.

🕊 Tweet of the Week

I didn’t talk about Carolyn much at all in this newsletter so I need to take a moment to recognize greatness.

Be yourself. You might end up dominating screen time on Wednesday nights and also with a significant place in my heart.

Appreciate all the responses last week.

Until next time,

Kevin 🐍

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