Self Evictions and Medical Evacuations

This Week in Bold Strategy #6

Welcome back to This Week in BS, where we break down highlights of Bold Strategy from Survivor, Survivor Australia, 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 seven hours of competitive reality TV programming a week affects your personal relationships, your career, and the rest of your life.

Big Brother Canada 11

🤡 Plan Z

It’s Thursday night and I have to scrap my Big Brother Canada section because Zach and Ty lost their minds in that house. I need to write this for my own well-being because if I don’t spit out some thoughts here, I might just explode.

I never ever ever ever want to see someone leave a game via quitting or being medically removed. It sucks. I revere Big Brother. I revere Survivor. These are special competitive reality shows that make people FEEL.

Thursday night’s Big Brother Canada episode was incredible. Not because of the gameplay. It was incredible because it was the real story (yes, I know, “real”) of real people responding to high pressure situations.

Zach and Ty tried to play production and they felt like they lost. For Zach, this meant that staying in the house would be against his moral line that he drew. For Ty, he realized that it was just a game show, as he said, and he stuck around.

Production handled Hope’s letter well. He got a punishment of no vote and being removed from next week’s HOH. There was no magic bullet here to make everything right. A punishment had to happen and I think anything between slop and and an auto-nomination would have been acceptable. BBCAN production takes fairness extremely seriously and I thought they evened the playing field with the letters from home.

Was having a note even an advantage for Hope? Maybe. Probably. You really miss the people you love in there and for me, I was constantly wondering what they thought. Should Hope have been kicked out? It would have been egregious. By removing Hope’s guaranteed vote to evict Zach, Zach and Ty actually came out of this with a win versus production (who had no choice in the matter - if they did nothing it would encourage future cheating).

People choose their own moral lines in these games. Zach and Ty chose to go down a path that they thought would end Hope’s dreams of winning and playing Big Brother. That’s a decision they made for their games. Although I generally abhor the idea of trying to get someone removed from the game for anything other than violence, I am ok with other people having different moral compasses.

I am in no way condoning the move; I hate it. I am saying that they have the right to have a different line that they’re willing to cross, this one being production. For them to cross that line, however, they also have to deal with the consequences. In this case it’s a fandom who, for the most part, dislike them as players. I say, “as players” because you never know the mask someone is wearing in there. I separate the person inside the house from the person outside; that’s my specific approach and not necessarily something I think others should agree with or follow.

We don’t know everything that happened in the house. We do know that Zach had some semblance of a chance to stay. And even if you know that you have no chance, staying, getting evicted, walking out to Arisa, and exiting the usual way shouldn’t be an exception, it should be the norm. John Michael and Rob shouldn’t have to be praised for fighting until the last second. That’s how you play the game. Without feeds, the 44 minutes is the story we got told, and like I said a few weeks ago: exit press isn’t canon. Whatever gets said online or whatever stories get told, what we got is what we’ll get. 44 minutes is a limited story, with a limited point of view, yet it’s the one we got told and the one that will be closest to the truth of the matter.

Here’s the kicker though: Zach walks and leaves his BBCAN legacy, or lack thereof, as someone was in front early, flamed out, and quit after pulling a shady move. He’ll be remembered for being overbearing and for trying to get a fellow houseguests expelled. Ty, likely will be remembered for the same… but he has a chance to change the narrative. He made a bad move, a bad action, and he has the opportunity to change his story. Do I think it’ll happen? Do I think he can win this? Not really. That said, if you’re not out the door, you’re still in the game. There is always Hope.

 🤖 Manipulating Production

This isn’t for me on Big Brother Canada. It’s not something I respect when the team works really hard to make this show fair for everyone. Zach and Ty did get Hope penalized and whether you like it or not, them holding onto the info until it mattered was playing directly against production. Had they not spoken about it openly, it could have seemed like a lucky coincidence and they’d seem like (evil) geniuses when they told the story after the season.

There is also a team taking care of their wellbeing in the house who can’t fully trust them anymore, or at least Ty, who is still there facing the music. When you go on one of these shows, you put your wellbeing into the production team’s hands, and to try and play them is kind of icky in my mind.

There is a time and a place for this though. That’s when production is playing against the players. This doesn’t really happen in most North American reality television shows. Not going to go into detail here because it’s way too crazy to summarize in a sentence but the way Luiz is playing against production in BB VIP Albania is absolutely genius. No, don’t think you could get through this without an Albania reference.

🥇 Setting the Tone as HOH

Kuzie came into this week not needing a win. I scrapped everything I wrote about this a few days ago although I’m glad she was the HOH, the leader of the house, this week. She didn’t put up with crap and she stood up for what she believed in.

The same way that Zach and Ty chose their moral line, so did Kuzie, and she ended up as one of the heroes of the story. Big Brother is a weird game where you can have major impact very early on. No matter what happens in future weeks, even if she goes home this Thursday (which would be horrific), Kuzie’s coronation is complete.

Big Daddy K, welcome to the pantheon.

Survivor 44

🩺 Med-evac Matthew

Don’t compare this to what happened on BBCAN. It was unfair of production to put the onus on Matthew. His shoulder, as we learned in exit press, was completely fucked, with a fractured humerus, scapula, torn rotator cuff, and more. Safety is the number one priority and they should have pulled him. As much as I don’t want to see anyone leave like that, it was the right decision to walk. Kudos to Matthew for fighting immense pain for nine whole days on the island.

Having played a game I love, I have immense pity for the Plant Daddy. He prepared hard, he built challenges in his backyard, and he seemed to be doing well socially and strategically. Now I’m not saying I’d screw up my shoulder for life in order to maybe win Survivor. I’m also not saying I wouldn’t. Still, I respect his exit, his impact on the pre-merge, and his potential that we’ll never see.

🍀 Lucky Tika

Whatever Probst said about Matthew’s exit changing the future was both ridiculous and true. Matthew’s loss is Tika’s gain and we keep Carolyn and Yam Yam (and Josh) going into whatever mergatory they make up this time. I look at Carolyn and Yam Yam and I just have so much love for these weirdos. They are wholly and fully themselves, their unique, crazy, charismatic, ridiculous selves. That’s why I watch these shows: for the people. And those two characters showing up, week after week, has been excellent. It’s not just that they’re two of the quirkiest people ever: it’s that they’re each other’s foils. Survivor knew what they were doing putting them on the same starting tribe.

*Aside: it’s no wonder that the journey, which involved no twist other than people talking, was by far the most interesting journey of the season. Let the castaways be human!

Survivor Australia: Heroes V Villains

🤴Killing the King

There is something magical that happens when you commit regicide in a competitive reality TV show. Killing the king, the biggest perceived threat/the mastermind/the main character, tends to give you the win. Liz took out George and got herself the W after a fantastic season.

When this happens, it’s like you’re one of those supervillains who absorbs the powers of anyone you kill. Liz almost gets credit for George’s games moves by taking him out. And it makes sense. Like she said at final tribal, Liz did what none of the jurors could do: kill the king. By doing that, she did what no one else did over the course of two seasons, as George systematically took out every single player until the one who took him out took gold.

To make Liz’s win about that one move is, actually, an oversimplification. Intentional or not, she set up a beautiful structure to her game by aligning with George and Shonee from the outset, two larger threats who would help her learn the game and also be shields to be targeted before her. In seasons with mixed newbie and returnees, returnees almost always dominate. The right move for a new player is to align with the vets and let them take you along, then cut them when the time is right. She did that with George and she toed a very fine line waiting until the perfect moment, the last moment, to take him out. Good W.

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Until next time,

Kevin 🐍

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