Big Brother 7: Official Discussion Thread (NO Spoilers)

[Toups]

I voted for Mike.

If Mike wins, Will wins half the money (or some portion of the prize, maybe 60/40 or 70/30).

[Chris]

I voted for Erika.

Mike's already rich and Erika can use the money to help her mom/get out of her mom's house. Boogie may have played a better game, but he's a disgusting, vile person who I can't vote for.

[Jinxed Soul]

Yeah, I've finally decided that I'd prefer Mike to win it all over Erika. That way, Will would win something out of it. Clearly Mike and Will have an agreement where they would divide up the money if one of them won. This became very evident when Will said that he didn't care whether he or Mike won it all.

[Toups]

Janelle admits she has feelings for Will!

http://beta.soapzone.com/boards/read.php/shared/talk/1388399

[sweetness514]

I couldn't bring myself to vote for Erika, just making a good move at the end is just not enough for me to want someone to be the winner, this is supposed to be All Stars

Last night I got to thinking about Mike and how the bastard has already money IRL, he won 10 grand, a trip to Aruba, the car, hmmm what else? That really pisses me off, and I wish the prizes would have been more divided. I also wish there was America's vote, or maybe they knew Janie would win most of them so they didn't do that?

Survivor does get a lot more ratings, and I know that having a house like BB and with all the staff to be paid it is supposed to be pretty expensive, maybe that's why they don't give as much.

Btw, did anyone see Janelle on the Early Show? Good Lord she looked either hungover, extremely exhausted, or on some kind of sedative like Valium the way she talked Her hair was a mess, and her lips looked like they had gotten a treatment to make them more puffy, and it also looked like she had lipstick on her teeth Even my hubby couldn't believe it, what happened to our Janie? Maybe she's tired and she needs to sleep poor thing.

[Toadstool]

I saw her. She looked worn out. But remember she aired just after 8 am EDT and was interviewed in California so it was 5 am - not exactly the sleep cycle she's been used to lately.

[ilovesteveandkayla]

I'm not voting. I don't really care who wins, neither really deserve the title imo.

Good luck to both of them though.

[SteveFrame]

I voted for Erika. I feel like between the 2 she deserves it the most. She did win some competitions even though one was taken away from her and given to Janelle. I know it was BB's fault, but still ERika won and was almost out the door.

I think both of them played about the same game. They both won about the same number of competitions. Mike depended on Will to get him through. Erika floated between alliances but each time she knew what to do to keep herself in the game. I know that the Janelle fans do not see anyone else as All Stars, and I felt the same way about Will at first. But I think Boogie and Erika both esp. at the end proved they were All Stars. I mean they took and beat the 2 Best Players that have ever played the game. No matter how good both Janelle and Will were they got beat.

I know that there were circumstances that helped them, but both Boogie and Erika came through with strategy or whatever when they needed it.

I don't care for either of them anymore than I did, but I do acknowledge that played the game their way, and their way got them where they are at. It is clear you can be the best like Will or 2nd best like Janelle and still not win the game.

One of the things that made me really vote for Erika was that she was the most responsible for Will's eviction. Due to Janelle's attraction to Will, I just don't think she would have ever questioned and would still be under his spell - it was Erika who started the ball rolling and Janelle went with it.

Also even though it was despicable, Erika did have the balls to vote our her best friend in the game - Danielle. Danielle did the same to Marcellus and it help lead to her not winning. I just wonder if Danielle will follow Marcellus' pattern and not vote for Erika, or if she will do what she hoped Marcellus would do and give Erika her vote. I know she said at the time that it was a game, and she had hoped Marcellus would realize that. Maybe she will too.

[sweetness514]

[darraholic]

I voted for Erika but that's no surprise.

I really wouldn't be shocked if Dani voted for Erika to win.

[Toups]

http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/a....art&page=1

Big Brother: All-Stars – Why Will Lost

by David Bloomberg -- 09/06/2006

Will Kirby is the best Big Brother player ever. Period. He controlled the game in his first visit, five years ago, and controlled it again for almost the entire time this season. Almost. What happened to cause Will to lose control of the game and be evicted? Why did Will lose?

Will came into Big Brother: All-Stars with a huge target on his back. By all rights, he should have been gone within the first few weeks, tops. But against the odds, Will hung on and took control, planning and executing one eviction after another. Just when he and Mike thought they were right where they wanted to be, the rug was pulled out from under him. How did his world turn upside-down so quickly? Why did Will lose?

Every week, we compare evicted contestants to the guidelines found in What All-Star Houseguests Should Have Learned. But this week is a bit different, because many of these rules were based off of the game play of one Dr. Will Kirby! Sure, there have been many seasons since then, but the basics have stayed pretty much the same. So let’s see how Will lived up to, well, himself.

It will come as a surprise to nobody to find out that Will knew how to scheme and plot, succeeding easily at the first rule. He came into the house with an alliance he knew was absolutely secure – Mike Boogie. Nobody else had that, and they all suffered for it. Sure, there were other alliances and friends, but none others who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that their partner had their back.

But there is certainly more to scheming and plotting than that. After all, one of the keys of the second rule, which we’ll get to in a little bit, is not to form duos because they are so easy to nominate together. Yet somehow, week after week passed without Mike being put up against Will. It was incredible.

Will never won an HOH competition. He never won a veto. He controlled the game completely from the shadows. How many alliances did Will have? It’s a bit difficult to count. We know for sure about Chill Town. Then there was the Legion of Doom. And we can’t forget the flirtmance, Janelle. At various times he also told George and Erika they were honorary members of Chill Town. And there were probably others I’m forgetting – not to mention his various promises to people that they were safe when, in fact, they were headed out the door.

Will made and broke promises and alliances as necessary. The only “to the end” alliance he intended to honor was the one with Mike Boogie. He made others, but those promises were empty. In fact, let’s quote from this rule, looking back at Will himself in BB2: “Will started with Chill Town in BB2, but then made various different promises to different people after Chill Town was busted up and made it all the way to the winner’s circle.” Sound familiar?

As I’ve discussed at length in the just-posted Reality TV Hall of Fame induction for Will, Will is simply the best plotter and schemer ever to enter the Big Brother house.

But is it possible Will schemed and plotted too much? Could the master have been undone by overdoing it?

Well…

I don’t know that we can really say Will plotted and schemed too much. He did what he needed to do in order to get himself to the final four, after all. And in his first stint on the show, he actually became the exception to this rule, which notes: “If you spend all your time scheming and plotting, and you try to scheme and plot with everybody, everybody will know what you’re up to. In the end, nobody will trust you and they’ll turn on you. Well, in theory, anyway. As we’ve already discussed, it worked for June and Will. But that is mostly because they always managed to direct the target elsewhere.”

And that is a perfect description of what Will did – he pointed people in other directions. It was kind of like a magician – don’t look at the hand doing the work, look over here instead.

Anyway, another part of the rule says, “Will was honest in saying he would lie, but … he managed to make people think he was lying to everybody but them, so in his own way he was keeping his scheming secret.” Will managed to pull this trick again in All-Stars. A perfect example was shown earlier this week, in Sunday’s episode. Will and Mike told both Erika and Janelle the same thing, but also said they were misleading the other woman. In theory, even if the two had talked, it shouldn’t have mattered. After all, Janelle believed Chill Town was misleading Erika, while Erika believed the same about Janelle.

Here is where the problem came in. Will went a little too far in telling them both the same thing. He even used the same terms, such as mentioning ninja stealthiness. I think this is part of what did him in. When Erika and Janelle sat and talked, and each of them had virtually the same stories to tell, it began to sink in that they were being played. It’s one thing to believe your alliance partner is misleading another player. It’s quite another to hear almost the same exact words coming from that other player and quoting your own alliance partner! At that point you are forced to wonder if perhaps you are the one being played!

The third rule tells players to pretend to be nice and act like an adult. While some people might point to Will’s speech about hating everyone or his early-game whining and moaning, this was all part of his strategy – and in some cases was done for humor value rather than as serious gripes. He did act rather child-like at times, such as with the trampoline, but it was not in a way that would turn people against him, like, say, the way Howie sometimes behaved.

Will always had the best attitude of anybody about being nominated. Of course, that was largely due to the fact that he always believed he would be safe. But even when the tables were turned on him and Janelle sent him home, he seemed completely okay with it. Will managed a smile for almost everybody, and he even sent some very nice goodbye videos, probably knowing it was good preparation for the jury in case he made it that far. Will was not voted out because he was disliked.

Nor was he voted out because he allowed his emotions to control him, which the fourth rule advises against. Will always knew exactly what he was doing when it came to his emotional attachments. Yes, he made friends in the house. But he knew his object there was to get to the end of the game. He flirted with Janelle, but was always using her. He encouraged Mike to do the same with Erika.

The only emotional attachment he would not break was the one with Mike. But in this case, it was not detrimental. As I noted earlier, Will knew he could trust Mike 100%. Furthermore, I truly believe that if Mike and Will had made it to the final two, Will would have had a cakewalk unless he chose to hand the win to Mike.

On the flip side, I don’t know that we ever really saw Mike get angry. He was always cool, calm, and collected, no matter what might have been going on around him.

Then we have the fifth rule, which says not to be a threat. We saw on Survivor: All-Stars that the people who had won or were strategic successes in their seasons were quickly targeted and disposed of. That’s what we all pretty much expected for Will as well. But Will turned that target into an asset. He said he couldn’t be a threat because the jury would never choose to give him the money again. He helped convince Janelle that she should go after floaters and leave him in the house because he was a second target. He used his own threatening reputation to help him get farther!

But sometimes, it all still catches up to you. Will showed the other contestants just how big a threat he continued to be in All-Stars when he pulled the strings to send player after player home. He looked them straight in the eyes, told them they were safe, and lied.

As noted earlier, his strategy was to convince people he was lying to everybody else except them. But after one full season and all but a week of another, some people might just catch on. And that’s just what happened with Janelle, after Erika grasped at straws until she found the right one. Janelle finally realized that if he was lying to all those other people and manipulating her to do his bidding, he might just be the big threat everybody thought he was!

The sixth rule says players should be flexible. I would say Will was pretty much the epitome of flexible, as he was willing to go along with almost anything that didn’t involve the nomination of himself or Mike. At least this was true in the early goings. Later, as his plans firmed up, he was more willing to push in order to direct traffic. But even then, he didn’t get hung up on the details and could drift with the winds of opinion in the house.

He also understood the seventh rule, which says to trust almost nobody. We’ve mentioned that Will trusted Mike. Fine. But that was it. He knew how easy it was to lie in Big Brother, and he knew if he trusted other people, they would turn it against him. After all, that’s what he would do to them, right? He knew if he trusted James and kept him around, James would stab him in the back – so he got rid of James first. He knew if he trusted Danielle and kept her around, Danielle would stab him in the back – so he got rid of Danielle first. I do believe he would have done the same to Janelle if he ever had the chance, but she never gave him the opportunity.

As has been the case almost all of this season, the eighth rule, which advises against being lazy and showing bad habits, did not come into play. Moving along.

Much of this article has probably seemed like an ode to Will Kirby. Indeed, it’s difficult to say too many bad things about a guy who wins once and makes it to the final four the second time. Plus, as I mentioned, a number of the rules were based on his actions the first time around, many of which he duplicated this time!

But we still need to explain what happened, and I think we’ve done that. Will was a known threat when he came into the game, but he had somehow made Janelle forget that little fact. When Erika reminded her, Janelle finally realized she’d been had, as if waking up from a long dream (or nightmare). Will was a threat! Who knew? Oh yeah, everybody!

Add to that the fact that Will schemed and plotted just a little too much. By telling both remaining women almost the exact same story, Will pushed the envelope just a little too far, even for him. Indeed, as we saw on Tuesday night’s show, once he realized they’d been busted, he told Mike he didn’t think there was really much he could do. And he was right.

Will shall remain the best Big Brother player ever. Even the person who beats him this time – whether it’s Mike, Janelle, or Erika – cannot take that title from him. But even experts make mistakes. Will’s mistakes were small, but became magnified when Erika latched onto them as a way to save herself. Will was too much of a threat to Janelle, which was shown by his scheming and plotting too much, even for him. That is why Will lost.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.realitytvhalloffame.com/cgi-bin....art&page=1

The Best ‘Big Brother’ Player Ever: Dr. Will Kirby

by David Bloomberg -- 09/06/2006

Just as Dr. Will is evicted from Big Brother: All-Stars after controlling the game secretly for almost its entire run, the time has finally come for the Reality TV Hall of Fame to give him the proper recognition he deserves. Read on to be reminded why the Evil Doctor ruled Big Brother.

By all rights, Will Kirby should have been one of the first people inducted into the Reality TV Hall of Fame. In Big Brother 2, he took control of the game and never let it loose, all the while telling people he was lying yet somehow making them believe him. Sometimes, however, proper recognition takes a little while. So now is the time.

Unfortunately, the time picked was the time Will was voted off of Big Brother: All-Stars. It was not intentional – I fully expected him to be moving on when I originally prepared this induction. Instead, this is his coda.

But let us give him his due – he should have been booted from All-Stars in the first few votes, as he was the only winner in the cast and the other players should have recognized him as the most dangerous person there. Realization came late to Janelle, but she finally figured it out. In the meantime, though, we are here to recognize what he did way back in Big Brother 2.

While Big Brother was in its second season in the U.S., Big Brother 2 was truly a new and different game. In the first season, houseguests nominated each other for eviction, but the viewing public actually voted. So Will had nothing on which he could base his strategy and play – it was all new and wide open.

Shortly after entering the house, Chill Town was formed. This group was made up of Will, Mike Boogie, and Shannon. Will and Shannon were drawn to each other and spent a fair amount of time canoodling. Meanwhile, the three of them acted like they controlled the game.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the house to revolt. Mike won the first HOH competition and nominated the then-unliked Nicole and the very well-liked Sheryl as a pawn. The house decided to show Chill Town who was in charge, and voted off Sheryl. Thus began the decline of Chill Town.

Ironically, the impending demise of Will’s alliance signaled the rise of Will himself. When he was nominated against girlfriend Shannon (the term “showmance” had not yet been invented), he convinced her that if he stayed around instead of her, he could do more damage in the house. So she left, but not before earning herself a Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment for her use of Hardy’s toothbrush to clean the toilet.

With Shannon gone, Chill Town was down to Will and Mike. While Mike still thought of himself as a “star” and the others as “extras,” Will began to let his egotistical humor work for him instead of against him. Among his classic lines was the one describing himself as “Half man, half amazing!” And at one point he asked himself, “Who can I fake bond with tomorrow? Who can I fake bond with tomorrow?”

When Kent won HOH, Will really moved into the type of action that won him this Hall of Fame induction. He convinced Kent and others that he could never ever win because everybody hated him. He also made a deal with Kent for immunity. It was a lie, of course, but it bought him the week while Kent targeted Mike and Krista, with Mike going home.

Hardy won HOH next and nominated Will against Kent. But Will continued his campaign of “woe is me, I can never win.” Kent, on the other hand, told the truth and exposed many of the various alliances. Indeed, Will even said in the diary room that Kent had the whole house figured out. But the Big Brother game, like politics, doesn’t reward telling the truth, so Kent was sent packing.

Will was busy laying out the groundwork for the rest of the game. He had made amends with Nicole, complimenting her and bowing to kiss her feet. At the same time, he let her in on some of the shifting alliances in the house, thus “proving” his trustworthiness to her while at the same time making her more suspicious of the others. He did the same with Hardy. By the time he was done, he had turned Krista from an ally of those two into a sworn enemy (he had plenty of help from Krista herself, of course).

That was when Will pulled another trick out of his hat. Krista and Monica (Krista’s lone remaining friend) called Will over to the hot tub to attack him for revealing Krista’s secrets. Will saw it coming and decided to turn it into a whole-house meeting instead, then deftly sidestepped the issue, shifting the target elsewhere.

As the game continued, Will convinced Nicole that he was loyal to her – despite the fact that he continually admitted to being “evil” and a liar. It was an awesome strategy that nobody except Will himself (in All-Stars) has duplicated to this day. Tell people you’re a liar and they suddenly believe you’re being honest to them. Brilliant!

At the same time, Nicole believed she was using Will, all the while telling us her real allegiance was to Hardy. The problem was that whatever she thought she was doing, Will was doing it better.

Weeks passed. Will didn’t win HOH, but allowed others to win it and do his dirty work. He was nominated by Hardy against Bunky, but Will made a deal – he promised not to nominate Hardy and Nicole if Will won HOH, and they agreed to let him stick around. It was a great deal for Will – a classic among his moves, really – and a terrible one for Hardy and Nicole. The only way they’d know if he was lying was if he won HOH and nominated them both, in which case it would be too late (remember, this was before vetoes). Indeed, Will told viewers in the diary room that he was lying through his teeth, and would happily stab them in the back. Will acknowledged to us that he would have made any deal he could to stay in the game, and Hardy was dumb not to recognize this. So he shook Hardy’s hand and looked him in the eye, which led Hardy to tell Nicole, “He shook my hand. I believe him.” Thus was the magic of the evil doctor.

At the same time Will was continuing to make great strategic moves, he also was – intentionally or not – driving Nicole crazier every day. Will did a variety of things to ease his boredom and have fun. But the more fun Will had, the angrier Nicole became. So while he was somewhat endearing himself to the houseguests who would become jurors, she was pushing them away.

Getting back to the deal Will made with Hardy and Nicole. Although he would have happily ignored the deal, Will found another way around it. In the final four HOH competition, Will was facing off against Monica (Nicole having accidentally fallen out already, in part due to Will). He realized that Monica would take out Hardy or Nicole, since they planned to get rid of her. So he threw the competition.

Hardy and Nicole were fuming mad and claimed he broke their deal. No, he hadn’t. As Will said, “I agreed not to nominate you if I won Head of Household. I didn’t win.” They were mad at him for lying, which was in itself laughable since he had been doing it all season – but in this case, he didn’t even need to lie. So Hardy was sent packing by Will, the only person with a vote.

It was down to the final three of Will, Nicole, and Monica. Neither Will nor Nicole wanted to win HOH and boot Monica, as they feared she would vote for the other in the end. Nicole told Will he’d better not throw the HOH competition or she’d throw it back to him. Nicole then won HOH. Was it because she was better or because Will threw it? I know what the likely answer is! Nicole figured she had a much better shot of beating Will in the finale (a point he had been driving home for weeks on end), so Monica was evicted.

So it was Will and Nicole in the final two. Over the course of the season, both had been reviled at one point or another. But while Will had played the game as a game, Nicole had let her emotions spill out in a big mess. In fact, on the official CBS Big Brother website, approximately 85% of the 160,000 voters wanted Will to win as we approached the finale.

The jurors responded similarly. Although Will almost blew it with a bizarre final speech that essentially said if they didn’t like Will then they didn’t like reality TV and therefore didn’t like themselves. Huh? I’m sure he was trying to be funny and at the same time say he was the best player, but he really managed to piss people off instead. Lucky for him, he had laid enough of a foundation by that point that it didn’t change anything.

Will was evil and a liar, but he played the game – and had fun while doing it. He never proclaimed himself best friends with somebody and then talked about them behind their backs, because he never pretended to be doing anything but playing the game.

The jury appreciated that – and in those days, the jury was everybody who played the game and then watched it on TV when they were done! (Well, everybody but Justin, who was thrown out of the house and became the first Reality TV Hall of Shame inductee.) Will not only won, but ended up with five votes to Nicole’s two (there was a rule at the time that allowed each finalist to nullify one juror’s vote, sight unseen – Nicole nullified Shannon’s and Will nullified Bunky’s, which would have been one more for each of them). Mike and Krista stayed loyal to Will. Kent, Sheryl, and Monica all voted for Will because they said he played the best game. Besides Bunky, only Autumn and Hardy voted for Nicole to win.

And that was the key – Will played the best game. He came into the house proclaiming himself a liar. He repeatedly told people he would lie. And lie he did. But somehow, some way, he convinced those same people along the way that he was telling them the truth. He purposely didn’t win a single HOH competition along the way, preferring to do all his maneuvering behind the scenes. And it worked like a charm. (In fact, I would add, it worked like a charm for one full season and all but one week of another!)

It takes a certain kind of personality to do what Will did. He needed to be charming on the one hand but absolutely cold-hearted on the other. It was a game, after all, and it had to be played like one. But the pieces in this game were human, and he knew they had to be played as well.

Nobody has duplicated Will’s feat, in Big Brother or any other game. And for that, he certainly deserves induction into the Reality TV Hall of Fame.

[King]

I think that's a given, at this point.

I see Erika winning 6-1.

[WTGH]

Janelle, Boogs and Erika are set to appear on THE VIEW.

[darraholic]

Rosie is the only one who will care. She brought up BB after Will's eviction. Barbara & Joy looked bored beyond words.

[darraholic]

http://www.cbstv2.com/Global/story.asp?S=5...p;nav=menu412_5

They also have video of Dani & Will. Well a picture in the video.