Big Brother 15: Discussion Thread

[JackPeyton]

elissa takes control from amanda (but id of course terrified to put her up) then tries to save her. shes such a good, smart player.

Andy deserves the win, honestly. and GM deserves 2nd but id hate to see her get it.

[Angela]

The smartest move for Elissa would have been to never have gone against Amanda. Amanda had gotten closer to Aaryn (a woman who wanted to take Elissa out) and eliminated a lot of Elissa's allies BUT the bitch seemed to sincerely want to take Elissa to the end and she might have been able to accomplish it. That's probably part of the reason Amanda went so hard at Elissa when she realized Elissa was over her and would turn on her rule and order. I wouldn't take back Elissa's HoH week though. She could have let Amanda carry her and handed Amanda the game or she could have flipped things and she chose to flip things. Elissa didn't build the game to the condition it was in though in terms of HG - that was Amanda and Helen's work. I appreciate her HoH especially since Amanda had become so intolerable.

IIt's a game you have to swing with the way the wind is blowing.

Elissa unarmed Amanda but even with Amanda's eviction she had it set up to gain McCrae and he got that first HoH. They could have turned the Exterminators upside down in a second if McCrae and Elissa had just trusted each other.

Smartest move she could have done to gain a solid ally and survive this past week. It just didn't work out.

El's main downfall as a player is she wouldn't push her agenda as much as she should. She pushed it when she was in power but not hard enough. Despite GM and especially Judd's stupidity she could have gotten them in a room together and pushed hard for an alliance. She wanted one with them and Spencer but she didn't push it when she sensed they weren't open to it. She let it drop. She's done that all season. She knew Helen was dead wrong to get rid of everybody from Kaitlyn to Jessie but she'd just drop it. Some of that was probably due to the way the house was conditioned to react to her expressing opinions and her to them starting at the "Cool Girl" reign of power.

[Cheap21]

I think the moment Elissa lost the game was when she nominated Aaryn. It was something she obviously regretted soon after but that was a decision made purely on emotion. Had she nominated McCranda together, one of the likely would have left that week, and probably Amanda. With her gone, the Exterminators wouldn't have been created and that week could have solidified an alliance between she, Aaryn and GM. She really should have been a bit smarter about her nominations before she made it bc her plan B failed.

[Angela]

I think Aaryn was a good eviction. When you leave the competition wins alone in these "what if?" scenarios, Amanda would have remained in the game due to winning PoV. Aaryn was ADDICTED to Amanda like she was crack-cocaine. Aaryn wanted Elissa out and would stir the pot to cause trouble to try to enable it. The more Amanda wouldn't allow her to get rid of Elissa the more Aaryn had an issue with Elissa. Aaryn could have kept her mouth shut after Amanda won the PoV and the girls could have worked together to get rid of Andy or not McCrae (Amanda took him off the block) - Spencer? Aaryn went and ratted out Elissa to Amanda before the stench of PoV had even faded. That showed me clear right there that Aaryn and Elissa would have never been able to work together. There was a chance had Amanda not won PoV that week and if she was evicted but otherwise? Nah.

[Angela]

Rat just confirmed that GM actually did do that.

[KMan101]

At this point, based on the game, I (ugh at those two being in the finals) agree.

My biggest problem with these people is that in reading the feed recaps, they're trashing everyone, and just being generally nasty and seemingly on this power trip. Even their DRs and vote outs were obnoxious. I mean, if they were even remotely likeable, I would have loved to have seen the 'underdogs' team up, but they were the forgotten floaters who were suddenly given a shot in the game. America can not be rooting for this alliance. Andy seems particularly obsessed with hating Elissa every five minutes. Hope your students are watching.

Carl, you are correct in that Helen and Amanda pretty much have themselves to blame for who's left, and they are. They were short-sighted and almost always went after people who weren't after them. It was painful this year to watch them all make such stupid decisions, after such a promising start to the season with the moving company being disbanded. I'd take them back anyday now. Go figure.

[KMan101]

Of course.

But McCrae's the idiot who believed it. I can't wait for them all to see what really went on in this house.

[Angela]

I don't get it.

McCrae wasn't as blinded by Andy as Amanda was in the days prior. Amanda spent hours appraising that ring as being worth 3 to 5 grand. She wasn't just taking Elissa's word for it, she was examining that ring. She was appraising. McCrae had to have observed they were treating Elissa differently after the alignment while Andy was the "enemies" very best friend and while Andy was treating Amanda and McCrae like they had the plague. Amanda and McCrae go on and on about what a bad liar Elissa is and were confident she wasn't lying due to that, yet...

Like I've said, part of me feels like McCrae just wanted Amanda (and Elissa) out of his life but he has mentioned what GM told him Elissa told her ("fake ring. Trying to get Amanda off her back.") more than once now so that makes me think his reaction was a reaction to their plan working on him. Maybe it was a blend? He didn't really like Amanda or Elissa much yet he was aware of their worth to his life in the game BUT he ultimately fell for the fake-out. These women were shields (as a package of 2 or 1) for him no matter any personal feelings, it would have been unbelievably dumb for him to have really known the truth and made this move clearing the path to his own eviction next.

Elissa believing them about McCrae voting to evict Amanda? I believe GM was telling Elissa the boys formed an alliance and that's why McCrae voted out Amanda and why they were the nominees at the hand of McCrae. Add that to McCrae never standing up for Amanda and looking miserable with her, lol, and...

I think they also managed to talk block McCrae and Elissa for the entire live show WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUS to them.

The ExtermiHATERS (TM: Rachel Reilly) plan shouldn't have worked but I can see how it did.

[DRW50]

This is down in part to her poor communication skills.

She told Judd that she did not trust him. She told him she might nominate him instead of Andy. Why would you say that to someone you're aligned with?

Andy told them what made them feel more trusted. I do think GM trusted Elissa, but she knew Elissa was on her own. Then when Elissa cut ties with her, GM did the same.

Anyway, I thought this was a surprisingly good article, although I didn't think BB14 or 13 were that great (BB14 picked up thanks to Dan and Brit).

http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/09/06/big-brother-cbs-reality-tv-pantheon/

500th episode poster (why the !@#$%^&*] is that useless lump Frank on there)

http://forums.jokersupdates.com/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Board=BBMedia&Number=20927969

It didn't help that apparently Elissa asked McCrae after the vote if he had voted to evict Amanda.

[Angela]

I don't think there has ever been a group of such bad communicators in the history of BB. This house does pretty much let Andy completely control the information flow.

The afternoon before she accepted Amanda's proposal, Judd told Elissa he would probably nominate her (as a pawn). She knew anything they had in the game was pretty much finito then. She had never spoken of nominating him before that. Also, any solid alliance they had pretty much ceased for BOTH of them the moment she didn't obey him about nominating GM instead of Andy. She realized, at that moment, he had issues with women and would always be more loyal to men. He didn't like that she didn't listen to him and maybe took that as her having a stronger allegiance to the women in the game. It wasn't that at that moment. It was the fact that had she made any other move, Amanda would have been handed the game.

Hanging around with Amanda didn't equate to cutting ties with Gina Marie. GM found out Elissa aligned with Amanda behind her back. That isn't different from GM leading Elissa on while having a big alliance that didn't include her behind her back. GM started treating Elissa different. Elissa responded in kind. GM, until Elissa dared to try to get an alliance that would commit to her, nor Elissa, even within this alliance, would have likely nominated each other no matter what they said to other people in their alliances. Elissa was focused on Andy like she was focused on Aaryn in terms of targets to expel. Andy would have been in trouble.

[dm.]

Well, it's that moment again - the moment when the season goes to the crapper. I don't care if Elissa was the favorite of the production crew. I dislike everyone that remains in the house, so I guess I'll be FF-ing through the remaining parts of the season, much like I did with every season since season 11.

But to be fair, Elissa was not a smart player in any way.

[DRW50]

The morning after the POV that Amanda had won, she said something to him, while he was talking about putting GM up, that she might put him up instead. Even if she didn't mean it, which she clearly didn't, saying that to someone as paranoid as Judd was a questionable idea.

It almost had to, because she'd agreed to nominate GM. She was very pally with Amanda, noticeably so. She reacted to GM's change in attitude, but it was tough to hide regardless.

[Jonathan]

Good article, but this is far from the truth:

What we see on TV is far from the "genuine truth."

[dm.]

Exactly, lol.

[Angela]

Do/Did you have the feeds?

I'd call Elissa a good player. Not great, not bad - a solid good. I'd easily put her in Top 5 gamers of this season but, then again, I would say that even the best gamer this season (Amanda) was a bit of a f--kin' mess so it's not a great scale of measurement.

At the beginning of the season, Elissa is the one who convinced Jessie to turn on the cool girls which is what McCrae said he needed to turn on the Moving Crew. MC were targeting Elissa, first, and McCrae's girlfriend, Amanda, second. She saved herself and, more or less, destroyed the Moving Crew, the first major alliance of the show. Despite the opposition of almost everybody in the house including the person she was closest to at that point, Judd, Elissa nominated almost everybody in 3 AM and it pretty much destroyed the new majority alliance on the show. Aaryn had been giving Amanda HoH after HoH and was an even more loyal rat than Andy; Andy realized the tide had turned and jumped ship.

Taking Amanda up on her alignment offer was the best chance Elissa had to stay in the game through the DE irrelevant of Amanda staying or going. Had McCrae believed her about the vote OR liked Amanda more than he did, it would have worked perfectly.

2 POV's and a HOH exactly when she needed it to survive. Good read on people for the most part.

I'm glad she did that. He was pushing way too hard for GM to go up and it was idiotic, so it was on point to tell him to paraphrase "if you're so confident in Andy, maybe you should volunteer to go up." The thing is she didn't put him up. Judd told her he'd put her up without any provocation from her because it's what his alliance - that didn't include her but that only existed, in so many ways, due to her not listening to Judd - wanted.