Why ___ Won (and the Others Lost) BB28

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] You played yourself and got voted out. This is why blank lost. This is why blank lost. This is why blank lost.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_02] Welcome back to the Big Brother version of Why Blank Lost, or as we call it this time every season, Why Blank One. Joining me one more time is, of course, my co-host, Chappelle.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_01] We did it! We did it! We made it, David. We got through a season of Big Brother together. It's so much fun. And now we have a new winner. We got some new lore that we have to add into the Big Brother lexicon as well. But I'm so happy it's over. It was a long season. I mean, not long as Big Brother standards, right? Like it was just, you know, summer. But now that it's over, I really do want to look back at kind of the, you know, the gameplay and really talk to you about our new winner here.

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. So congratulations to Rick Devens and of course to Taylor for snatching second place away from Drew, which we'll talk about. And yes, to Drew for getting third place. Both of the latter two did much better than I had predicted in our preview podcast.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_02] I gave Drew an expected rating of two out of ten because he couldn't even keep his answers straight and said he could write a book about Big Brother while also saying he was going to keep his job hidden, which was surgical dental assistant. Although I think his real job is reality TV show contestant. Absolutely. And I gave Taylor a three as a long time episode only casual fan, mostly because she had come in with that very specific strategy that she wanted to enact.

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_02] And I was a little worried about that.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And even looking back, I don't think you were wrong in being worried about both of them. You know, like I think Drew, a lot of things bouncing his way for sure. There were definitely moments where his approach in Big Brother is not always successful. It turned out to not be successful in the long run for sure. But yeah, I think there's a few times where we could have been talking about Drew earlier in the season. And I think you could say the same thing about Taylor. I think that Taylor's like kind of tether strategy that she was trying to push.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_01] She tried to push it in the house as well. But I feel like she was leaning on that a little too much. You know, she didn't really have other plans. And so when that didn't really plan out, she was kind of just like, you know, just surviving week to week almost. And so, yeah, I think that kind of peeping that they would be on the lower end was a good shout, even though they did well. Because, again, your placement doesn't necessarily dictate how well you play the game. However, we ranked Devin's pretty high.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I gave him a seven. I said it would have been higher if he wasn't going to be seen as a big threat and targeted for it, which is, of course, a topic we will discuss plenty later. I don't remember what you gave him.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_01] I think it was I think it was a seven or it was lower because I remember saying that he was a chaos demon. And I was like, I was like, he's too much of a showman. He's going to draw attention to himself. There's no way that he doesn't. And he likes to play from the bottom. And, you know, I drafted him actually for the Survivor 50 draft. And so I feel like I feel like this should count. You know, like I get some type of, you know, honorable mention. I totally agree. I just think I should get something. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, so I was high on Devin's for sure. I think I was higher on D.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_01] And so, yeah, but not mad about the winner by any stretch of the imagination. I think that it was a chance for him to really use the experience that he had playing Survivor both times and put it to work. And we got to see what it looks like when you have, you know, experience playing these games. But also when you're a person who genuinely can show up for themselves when the time is right. And he had a couple of clutch moments that really helped solidify him getting to the end. And yeah, I think for the Devin's fans, it was a good night.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, definitely. Or Devin's. No, we're not. Yeah, something like that. It doesn't work. Now, since this is a triple podcast and for the players who were there all summer and therefore have the most to talk about, it is going to be longer than usual. Of course, most listeners already know that because they've downloaded it or they're watching it already. We don't know exactly how long it's going to be right now. It's going to be long. This means we will unfortunately have to drop out some of the examples we otherwise would have used.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_02] You know, I'm going through my notes. I put them all in there. I'm like, nah, nah. Yeah, it's just there's not enough time to cover all of them. We'll condense some things a bit for our second and third place winners. We'll still get the necessary points across. So, you know, look forward to that. And also, I just want to mention, be sure to stick around to the very end of the podcast for my own special message to all the listeners about what this season has meant to me personally.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_02] So be sure to, you know, go past all the stuff that you normally, I know, listen very intently to about where you can subscribe and, you know, join the patron community and all of that. But go to the very end. So, you know, we'll have something for you there.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_02] But for now, even with three players, including a winner to discuss, we will follow our usual path of comparing how they all played to a set of guiding rules I originally wrote back in 2004 and have modified ever since. We will analyze their actions using what we saw on TV, live feeds, interviews, and other information. And of course, the most recent published version of the rules is posted at robhaswebplate.com slash bigbrotherrules.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_02] Now, we usually have some other things to discuss about the week in general, but we're at the end. It's all about the winner, runner-up, and third place. There was nothing else. However, we do have, we're going to make a little bit of time for this season's final edition of Julie Chen Moonves' Ron About Plank. Because for the past few weeks, we've been noting she was much less wrong than usual, which we attributed to her having a good intern to actually give her information.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_02] It looks like that intern was mostly still around for her pre-finale interviews, but maybe took a couple breaks when they shouldn't have. It was definitely a mixed bag. But I will say the most honest thing that Julie said was when she told Mike Bloom, when we have our weekly meetings, I always ask for a quick download. There it is. We've been saying for I don't know how long. She doesn't watch the show.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02] She certainly doesn't watch feeds. She gets a quick download. This verifies everything we've said. And to all the people who have commented, no, she watches everything intently. No, we know that she knows everything. She just admitted that she doesn't.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And look, I'm not judging Julie for getting her download. If you got it like that, sure. You know, like as a person who enjoys the feeds, I don't watch them all the time. I let Taryn download me. You know what I'm saying? So I get it. I get the stuff, right? I get it. But Julie, Julie don't follow close enough for the stuff that she says. And like, for instance, David, I think I tagged you in something on Blue Sky about being loud and wrong. But I think, again, if Julie was watching closely, she would know. Even if she just listened to some podcast.

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_01] I'm not even saying listen to RJP, but you can go listen to other people's podcasts. We've talked these games to death. There's so many takes out there that are just just far and away more truthful than the ones Julie makes sometimes. And so although she got the download normally, I feel like they missed a couple spots in the past.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. I wonder if the intern, like, had to go back to school part time. So it wasn't there fully, you know, in that time of year. Now, we'll get to that stuff in a second there. The one you tagged me in in particular. She did also admit she had been wrong about Devin's and had a bias against him to start with. She did not mention those old tweets of his. But I suspect that as you had brought up at the time, she had a little those had a little something to do with her feelings.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_02] But with the guy in the final three and as she was doing the interview, potentially being the winner, she couldn't be on record as hating him. So she had to, like, swallow her pride and admit, oh, no, I shouldn't have said that about him.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01] I think I support Julie in her in her original take about Devin's. Not to say that I dislike Rick Devin's because I do. I do. I do like Devin's as a character. He seemed like a very nice person. But Julie, I think he I think he did give her a lot of reasons to dislike him. Right. So, like, if you talk about those tweets, if I'm Julie, definitely not rooting for you after something like that. But Devin's did come into the Big Brother house with his survivor buff in the diary room with his suit on, with his buff on. And it's just not that's not Big Brother.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_01] You know, and so Julie, even though she's a casual fan of her own show, she she still was trying to keep the Big Brother spirit alive. And it's like Rick Devin's was the antithesis of that. You know, he came in like, oh, no, I'm a survivor player. He was about to play Big Brother. And I've talked trash about the host. You know, it's kind of like like nobody's forcing you to be here, Devin's. And so I think for Julie, she was just protective over the brand. And very quickly, she had to walk back those things. Right. Like she's like, oh, he doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't have a clue. It did.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_01] And it's OK to say I was a hater. It's OK. Because sometimes you be hating and that's OK. Listen, I, too, be hating sometimes. And that's OK. No. So, I mean, sometimes. No, sometimes. No, sometimes. Well, not too much. So most of the time, it's completely honest, unbiased opinions. But I do be hating sometimes. Everyone every now and then. Once or twice.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. Yes. Well, another positive answer that she gave was in telling Mike Bloom she doesn't want to see previous house guests up against a group of new players like we've been having recently. But she acknowledged she understands the corporate side of thing and the positive impact on ratings. And so, look, I know there are people out there who don't like it. But I'm I would prefer to see all newbies or all returners, returnees. Oh, don't say returners.

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_02] Returners or vets or whatever you want to call them. But people, we have to be ready for this. When the ratings go up after they have done something to change it, they are going to keep doing that same thing. They are not going to say, hey, it was a ratings boost. Now let's go back to the old way of doing it. No, they got renewed for two more seasons. There are going to be players from other shows on these next two seasons.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I read somewhere it was an eight percent increase on the ratings this summer. And that's, you know, they're not going to scoff at that, you know, because Big Brother's been on for a long time. It's dirt cheap to produce it. And so if they start to, you know, really bring in more more viewers, I think they did a lot right this season. Even social media presence was really good. Like you said, they brought in some icons. Not that like I don't really care to see icons playing alongside newbies, but it did bring eyes to the show. And it's probably no coincidence that Survivor was coming on right after.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_01] So for the people who like Survivor 50, they can watch that. There was the D and Devin's tie in directly into that. So they were pushing the envelope onto how to get more ratings and it worked. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So I could just imagine them going right on back to the well. Oh, yeah.

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, yeah. But of course, this is a segment about Julie being wrong. And I need to point out a few of those things. One, she made anti-superfan comments because after she talked about some things, she said, I even have a little bit of a problem with people who are like, I watch every season and they get to be like an expert. They come in like, oh, this is day 52. And this is when they're going to make us do the wall or whatever. I'm like, ah, don't be such an expert. Excuse me? Excuse me?

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_02] You want more dumb people on your show rather than people who know what they're doing? Frankly, I think she's just jealous that superfans know more than she does. Although, frankly, I think a lot of casual fans know more than she does.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_01] She's like the face of the casual fans now. She's like, why would you be a superfan? Why would you enjoy a show that you've been watching for 28 seasons? Why would you learn everything there is to know about this show that you spend every summer watching? You tell us the live feeds are on 24-7 and then when people enjoy them, you're like, go outside, touch grass. Julie, you got a problem with us? You got an issue? Because we can argue. Because I could talk to Julie. Julie, lean in. I know she's watching this. Julie, I find it funny that you've been doing this show for 28 years or something and you

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_01] have yet to get any say-so on what's going on on this show. You know, Jeff's been a producer since like season three or something like that of Survivor. Julie, are you okay? Some people don't care about your opinions about the show or nothing like that. Like, you know, Julie sound like us. Like, man, I hope they bring in newbies one day. I hope they bring in vets. Jeff Probst would never. He's like, I decided that they're bringing in vets. Julie has no control over her show. So before you worry about what we're doing, superfans, you need to worry about you, Julie.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_02] And let's look at the three people that we're about to talk about. Devin's not a superfan. Let's say that up front. But he played Survivor twice and he did watch the show. Clearly, there were some things about the endgame he did not remember. But who are the other two? I mean, many people would call them superfans. Taylor, I think, would not call herself a superfan. But she knew a lot about the show.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_02] And then you have Drew, who did call himself a superfan. These are your final three. So, Julie, don't say you don't want superfans when they're the ones who are having the good gameplay. You want more chucks on the cast? Is that it?

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_01] Dumb chucks? She wants some dumb chucks. She wants that. You know, I think there's something to that. You know, I think there's a contingent of the audience that's like, no, bring me the challenge beast. I want the challenge beast. I want the people who are just going to win their way to the end. Who wants to see all the strategizing and the backbiting and, you know, the sneaking around? It's like, for me, that's the show. That is the show. You know, the challenges are there as well. And it's a big part of the show for sure.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_01] And I think we probably have been over the years rating them so much less than we should be, especially in the modern day of Big Brother. Like, challenges are a really big part of the show. So, but that said, Julie, how are you going to hate on everybody else that just can't come in and win six, seven challenges? Let the people enjoy the show. They can study the show and they can give themselves a leg up when they have to go up against these challenge beasts. You know, it was it took like an act of like Congress to get Kamu out of the house. You know, it was like, hey, for Yash, they people had to people died.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_01] You know what I'm saying? So they're just not easy to remove from the house because they can win challenges. But to me, that just becomes boring. Why don't you just watch the challenge or American Gladiators if you just want to see people compete against each other? If you want to see some strategy, come watch Big Brother.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yes. And we're not biased at all as the hosts of a strategy podcast. We're just saying. Yeah. Yeah. And then. So Julie was going. She was driving. She was hitting people, bouncing off of cars. And then she just kept going right off a cliff. I think what you tagged me in when Rachel played last year, quote, to be honest, her game wasn't as good.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_02] She got by because people were afraid of her because they knew what she was like in her seasons and they were afraid of her. Excuse me. Why do you made that up? Complete BS. Yes, it is widely accepted that this was Rachel's best game and she had a good shot of winning it if it hadn't been for that stupid effing hamster wheel. Now, maybe that's why Julie is retroactively downgrading her gameplay to minimize the bad twist some more.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_01] Maybe Rachel was a target throughout that game, but they never got her on the block. They attempted to get her on the block.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_02] That kind of sounds familiar to someone that we might be talking about in a few minutes.

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, but Rachel didn't have to win 16 challenges to do it either. You know, like to your point, the hamster wheel got Rachel out. Rachel was at the at the jury phase, never had touching the block before. And she had plenty of ops in the house. So for this narrative that people were just afraid to put her up, it's just not the case. We saw people actively targeting. Vince was actively targeting Rachel. Tom's Keanu was actively targeting Rachel. Zay comes after Rachel week one. Zach also. You said Zay and I'm like, who? Who?

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_02] I remember. Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_01] So that's what I'm saying. She had some obstacles to get around. It wasn't just like, oh my God, if I put Rachel on the block, she's going to be mad at me or she's going to come after me. Right. The people were playing hard last season. And so, yeah, it wasn't the best strategy, but at least they were, you know, playing the game and they were not afraid of Rachel Riley. And so and they probably should have been because I think as a completely opposite to Julie, what you said is that she played. This is her best game. It wasn't relying on challenges. It wasn't relying on her connection with Brendan.

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_01] It wasn't saved by some America's twist. It was actually derailed by a disgusting twist. And so I guess the twist give it and take it away in the case of Rachel. But Julie, if you were just paying a little attention, you would know that this is not this is not how it went down.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_02] Again, this was before her intern was there. This was last year when we got a good job. Had our fill of this segment every single episode. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Now, there was a cherry on top of everything else because Julie was asked if she had to pick three BB 28 house guests to return, who would it be and what? First one was gosh. I'll agree with her on that one. OK. OK. I will also agree with her on not being able to. Bringing back Angela. Not for the reason she gave, because she said Angela's too seasoned.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_02] It would be too good of it. Too good at it. Julie, girl, what? Yes.

[00:18:00] [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. She's making stuff up. Oh, because now Angela's got the secret formula to Big Brother. OK. Right. OK, Julie.

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that is complete nonsense. We saw that. We saw that in the house. We saw that in the jury. You know, she was screaming at Melody. She she can't even behave like a normal human being in the jury house. It's enough. It's enough. Angela. We are done with her. But then she said she wants to bring back Kamu or Haley. Really? Really? Those are the two you're finishing up with?

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_02] Two horrible people outside the house, including one who was miserable to watch in the house, too. I think the intern definitely took a coffee break here and needs to come back and be like, Julie, you need to understand something about those two. And like just because Kamu says he's a good Christian.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_01] That's not his name. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's definitely a fascinating pick. Wild one from Julie. But I've seen this in the fandom before. Not so much about these two particular people, but in the past, like people used to say, like, bring back Amanda Zuckerman. You know, and I'm like, what? Why? Or, you know, like, what is that? Why? Why would you bring her back? That lady was awful. She was an awful person, you know, and so but it was like the gameplay was so fun. Oh, my God. We really enjoyed the drama.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_01] Like, OK, it's crazy that you can overlook the things that she did because you want, you know, good gameplay. Right. So, I mean, and don't get me wrong. People's mileage may vary on a lot of the actions of people inside out of the house. But to me, it's just funny that, yeah, Julie just like, oh, yeah, I'll take a blind eye to everything that I've seen and just be like, you know, maybe it can be fun to watch them on TV again. Dog. I don't know what Julie's going to do with that. But she did. She was just there. Dog wasn't. She's had a few bad weeks, obviously.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_01] But what? I don't know what Julie thinks she's going to get out of Haley again.

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_02] You know, she made a comment like, oh, well, she's used to what it is now. So she won't be having those bad weeks. I'm like, she's not used to it. No, not used to it. Julie. She would still be saying the same exact thing. It's a wild answer.

[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_01] Like, I thought Julie and Lala were bonding. I thought I could see her saying Lala just because I was the strength of her and Lala were sisters from another mister. You know, I think that a lot of people in the jury phase, you can make an argument for a lot of them. Pre-jury. I wouldn't hate to see Lyric come back. You know, like, I wouldn't hate it. But I'm not clamoring, you know, for that either. So, yeah, for Julie to land on Kamu, who's been gone for over a month, and Thog, who's been gone for over a month.

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_01] I was like, all right, well, she's not paying attention. She's not locked in.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, and I mean, maybe she should have taken a hint that even the producers of a CBS show did not ask anyone from Chagmu questions in the finale. Those three just sat there until the very end when Kamu and Chuck both kind of horned in. They got right behind Devin so that they were in the picture.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_02] You know, you couldn't see Devin's receiving his America's favorite player without seeing them because that was all they got. Nobody wanted to ask them a question. Why would you?

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_01] Can I say something bold and courageous? Sure. I appreciated the shorter finale, and I know they didn't have time to go down the line and go to all the pre-jurors. They hit the hot spots. Lyric and Rome. Well, I don't know if that's a hot spot. That was a very, very lukewarm spot with Lyric and Rome. Definitely. But she just like picked her, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom. And let's move on. In the past, we would have got, okay, what do you think about what they said? What do you think could happen?

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01] They were feeling two hours. Listen, don't throw the tomatoes too hard. I'm good. An hour and a half, in and out. Honestly, hour and 15. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I was nice. I thought, I think they kept it tight. They kept it tight. I won't complain. And so you got to, you got to cut some people out the show a little bit. I'm not mad that it was Chagmu.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_02] Oh yeah. No, I mean, that was the perfect people to cut. You know, I mean, like I said, who wants to hear from them? Nobody. Nobody wants to hear from them at all.

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

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[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_02] All right. With that, we can move on to the stars of our show here. Devins, Taylor, and Drew followed a very different path. Yet they all ended up in the final three together. What made Devins' game stand out to the jury so much compared to Taylor's? What caused him to cut Drew at the end? And how did each of them make it to that point? It's time to dive into all three games. Look at what they did right and wrong and see how it all shakes out. At RHAP, we know Big Brother.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_02] And we know why Devins won and Taylor and Drew lost. Now, the first and most important rule, and the one that is going to take us the longest to talk about, so stay with us here, is, of course, to scheme and plot. When we heard Devins was playing Big Brother, I immediately said, I knew he understood this rule because he had guest co-hosted on the Survivor 41 premiere Why Blank Lost podcast.

[00:23:52] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, he was also on Survivor twice, so that probably helped a little bit, too. But mostly the podcast. The question was, as you brought up at the time, not so much if he knew, but if he would do it or go for the brash moves. It's pretty clear he ended up doing both. And we'll talk about the first group here and the second group more in Rule 2.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_02] But Dee started us off nicely in describing Devins because when she discussed him in her exit interview with Dalton Ross, she said, I have never played with someone who is so highly intelligent but also very risky, but also can keep their composure. But also he wants to have fun. I've never played with someone like him as intelligent. That man is so smart. He's playing. He's such a good person and he's fun to be around.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_02] When I tell you he is the best ally a girl could ask for and not just to me, to everyone, everyone loves him. And that's why he's so damn good at this game. It's like she was doing her own little mini why Devins was going to win ahead of time. You know, and then similarly, Yash came out of the game. And in Mike Bloom's word association, he said tactician and masterclass. And he added, I respect Devins game so much. He has played almost a flawless game. He is phenomenal with his words.

[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_02] He is very convincing and he gets people to eat out of the palm of his hands. And yeah, I mean, Devins certainly had that jury eating out of the palm of his hands.

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I mean, they're doing a lot of work for us here, David. The jury loves it. And, you know, if we're talking about scheming and plotting, Devins did it and he did it in a way that didn't piss all these people off. You know, don't get me wrong. They definitely wanted him out. But I mean, how often do you see somebody win a game and people just, I mean, unanimously come out with good things to say about them? I mean, we I haven't really heard too much from Melody. But, you know, Drew, you know, that's his dad. You know, Barrett likes Devins a lot.

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_01] You know, maybe maybe I have to check Lala to see how she feels. But for the most part, yeah, he just he was able to scheme and plot, but also make these alliances, be the tactician that he is, but still kind of play such a social game that. Right. All right. We're not going to get to the end and be super bitter against him. We all knew that if it came down to the final two and Devins was in it, he had a more than a great shot to win the game. And a lot of the jury votes weren't even in question.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Right. Now, going all the way back to the beginning, he came in as the guy who was loyal to a fault. He wasn't going to backstab his true allies. He ended with an admitted vicious betrayal of the guy who called him dad in the game. I don't think he at all needed to do it. But Taylor got into his head and he decided he just couldn't take the risk.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_02] Keeping Drew and giving Drew seventy five thousand dollars was not worth the chance that his own real family would not get seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He didn't want his whole summer to have been for naught. And I can't blame.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. If I'm Jack, if I'm Jack and Juju, what? You mean to tell me you went and found another another child in the big brother house and you don't care about their livelihoods? More than ours? No. Cut, Drew. Cut, Drew. Why not? Cut. You know, you have a better chance against Taylor. Why not do it? I am so impressed with Taylor for coming up with that. You know, waiting to the perfect moment to do it. She didn't tell him at the beginning of the week so he could, you know, mill around with it, potentially tell Drew that she said it. All this other stuff.

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01] Waited till basically the last day and was like, hey, just so you know, if we're counting votes, I'm voting for him. And he would vote for you. And it just it was a it was a good sign. I think there was a good way to leverage a jury vote because Taylor wanted to get taken to the end. And I think for a lot of us, we just didn't see any world where Devin's would want to take her because he could be Drew anyway. Like you said, he doesn't have to cut Drew. But if you want an insurance policy, this is the way to do it. Yes, absolutely.

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_02] But of course, he's been making strategic moves all season from the very beginning, while Julie was idiotically insulting Devin's in the way that we talked about earlier. He was putting himself into a great position when he won H.O.H. in week two. We saw him on live feeds almost immediately making the rounds, letting everyone know his plan for the week. So no one felt like he didn't value them as a player.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_02] Of course, those plans ended up changing as he decided to take a shot directly at the person he perceived as being the leader of the other side, Rome. Something that seemed to me to be unnecessary at the time, but which allowed him to proclaim that he was always going big in the game. And, you know, he had said it from the start and he mentioned it again in the recap episode. He wanted to play a big game. He said, quote, give me all the smoke.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_01] I thought that Devin's was going to come in and play like this huge, bombastic game. And he there were moments where he was doing that. But one of the criticism I have against Devin's and not this is not a gameplay criticism. This is my entertainment criticism is that when I like my big brother players to get in the mud with these people, you know, if you're going to go there, you know, bang on the tea kettle. You know, no, it's not good strategy. It's not good social play, but whatever. Do it.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_01] You know, when he goes and blindsides Rome, his natural instinct, whether it be the daddy Devin side of him, I still I still think he's like, you know, like like a TV dad to some of these people. It wouldn't allow him to be as cutthroat as he should have been. Like he made the move against Rome, but then he went and just moved it over. You know, he when he came after Kamu, he just moved it over. You know, I was just like, Devin's that ain't that, you know, it's good for you.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_01] But for me and my TV, you know, I want y'all to rehearse your speech and then come out and say the speech with the same, you know, bluster that you had when you were making the speech up. He come out there and he see these kids, these young 20 year olds. He's like, oh, I can't. I can't do them like that. And he would just make the better move, which is, you know, not socially isolating himself. So I have to give him a ton of credit for that, even though I hated it.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_02] Now, as as part of his move to take out Rome, he brought together the red corner and the crossovers to form the tool shed. But even as he did that, he still wanted to try to play the middle between them, not letting Chagmu know about the prior existence of the crossovers, even as Angela kept ridiculously pushing to do so. Also, in those early days, he trusted Drew while D was taken in by the Angela paranoia about him.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_02] Now, that wasn't always the case throughout the game, but more often than not, he at least acted like he trusted Drew, which, of course, played a significant role in getting him to the final three, because it seemed like Drew was going to evict Evans until Devins agreed to a deal. If he had not been building that trust over the course of all the summer months, there's no way Drew would have gone with it. And Devins would have been left out in fourth.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_02] As he told Mike Bloom, I always felt like he's my dude. If it comes down to it, even if he turns on the crossovers, he's not going to turn on me. And he was 100 percent right, at least as far as we saw, because Drew never had to make that final decision. He says he would have if he had won that final HOH, and that's fine. He should have if he had won, just like Devins did. But I think Devins was absolutely right.

[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_02] Drew, he formed a relationship with Drew that lasted the whole game, even when his allies were getting super pissed at him.

[00:31:30] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, we see D on the way out, Angela on the way out being like, you weasel, you weasel, you're such a weasel. You know, Devins is really cultivating that relationship. Yeah, we're on the outside of the house watching it. Like, I think they actually are like father and son in there at some point. And, you know, it's like the closest thing you could get to a showmance. You know, it's like, OK, if I can't have a showmance, I need to at least commit, like create a familial bond with somebody that I know is always going to have my back. Now, Devins is a seasoned big survivor player.

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_01] So he also knows the the benefit of cutting people, even if you're close to them. Right. Like you've seen it before it's happened to him. And so he's like so he has that in the back of his mind. He has to think about D potentially cutting him as well and whether or not he should potentially cut D. And so he never really let his guard down all the way to think that, oh, yeah, Drew is going to take me to the end 100 percent all the time. I think he was always on edge and he was always thinking, OK, well, if I keep Drew around, at least I have one more person, including D, including Angela, who will always have my back.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. Yes. And the thing is, like you said, he wasn't just building trust with Drew, but with other people, pretty much almost everyone in the house. He had the main alliances, of course. But then he also did have side alliances, despite the fact that I don't think they really ever meant anything to him. Even when he when when he turned on those, he found a way to keep people on his side like you were talking about when he smoothed over with Rome, he smoothed it over with Camus. He also smoothed it over with the people who are staying there.

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_02] And as we discussed last week, D often played the bad cop while he played the good cop. And let me tell you, good cop, much better role to play when you need people to vote for you to win the game at the end. As he told Mike Bloom, she called Drew a weasel the whole time. I called Drew son the whole time. So when it came down to it, I got the benefit of that.

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_02] And at one point or another, he made alliances with and then turned on Yash, Barrett, Drew, Melody. He got all of their votes to win. A lot of it, of course, speaks to his social game, which we'll get to later. But it was also the way he played strategically that set things up for him.

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, if Drew was more savvy and I'd say that about some of these players in the house as well as Drew. But if it was more savvy, they would notice something like that. Right. Where it's like, yeah, D is calling me a weasel. Devins is calling me son. That ingratiates me a little bit more with Devins. I feel a lot more comfortable with him. But like a seasoned reality TV star, they would say, and that's why I need to get them out. They are so good. You know, they are doing the right thing. Thus, they need to go.

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_01] Drew was at the first level, but he hasn't reached that status of level two, which is, oh, you're doing the right thing. Strategically sound, which means you're too good. So I got to get you out because I'd rather go with a person who's not strategically sound to the end, you know, because that's a person that I could probably beat in a jury vote or, you know, or out flank. But with Devins, he's doing everything perfectly. And Drew was just in a fog of Devins missed. Yeah.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_02] Now, I want to highlight a couple of the plays that Devins made that really stood out to me. And it usually involved the way he handled Drew and Barrett because he really did manipulate them quite a bit. Back on August 10th, we saw Devins on the live feeds as he wanted to trick Drew and Barrett into giving him information about the FAP alliance. He caught them so off guard that he got them to tell him the name.

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_02] Barrett told him Mallory might still be holding a grudge against D from week one and more. There is no way they should have told him those things, but they just couldn't help themselves when he hit them kind of like came in from an angle and just surprised them with it. And another time he pulled a fast one on them when they were talking in the hammock because D was nominating Mallory. In fact, it was essentially a result of the prior information they had told Devins. Drew and Barrett complained about D and the alliance in general.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_02] And then what did they see? Devins staring at them from across the yard. He'd been there the whole time. He acted like he heard everything, which caused Drew to spill everything to D before Devins could. Then Drew and Barrett confessed their sins to Devins, who acted like the forgiving dad and comforted them and told him he understands. But he's with them 100 percent and so on.

[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_02] Somehow, Drew and Barrett came out of this thinking they were in a better spot with Devins than before. But I guess I didn't make this point yet. Devins heard none of this for anyone who doesn't remember this incident. He heard none of it. It was total acting. It was totally being like the dad who has caught their kids in something but doesn't know exactly what. And tricks the kids into fessing up.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_02] And it was Devins who improved his position here while Barrett and Drew thought they had.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it was fun to watch. Devins, I think after this season of Big Brother, his dad is definitely one of his personas. I don't know if that was a persona he really had on Survivor. But, David, you're a dad. I'm sure that there's tactics that you've learned with talking to your kids about things that you can utilize when talking to some of the people in the younger generation like Devins did.

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean, there were times where I absolutely, you know, busted my kids in lies by using little tricks. You know, sometimes I had the truth on my side. Sometimes I just knew something was up. And, you know, it depended on which kid. One of my kids was not a great liar, though I recently found out he's evolved. The other one was always a good liar and would maintain the lie.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_02] It didn't matter for how long. Like, there was one time I took away his allowance until he told me the truth. That kid went two years without an allowance. And I finally just caved in. I finally just caved in. I'm like, I'm never getting the truth out of this kid.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I respect that so much. He was down for it. He was down for the cause for the long haul. Yeah. But, yeah, Devins came in with his lived experience. Being an older gentleman in the house, we've seen that that's kind of a death blow for a lot of people in Big Brother. We don't see a lot of older winners. It's really just hard for them.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_04] Or he too isn't older.

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_01] Older than these people, right? But that's the thing. He was able to use that instead of being like, oh, I'm out of the loop. You know, have we seen with people like, oh, I was about to say Terrence. I guess you could use Terrence for an example. DJ Showtime. But even like last season with Will, you know, there were just moments where they couldn't fit in. But then when they slid into that dad role, that's where people started to let them in. We saw that with Will, with Ashley and Ava. They were his girls, you know.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_01] And now with Devins, we see the same thing with Drew and with Barrett. And, you know, in a lot of ways with other people in the house as well.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now, other plays we saw along the way were the obvious ones. As he said in his final speech, he and Dee had their hands in almost every eviction. And unlike Angela saying the same thing, you know, to Melody while screaming at her, they were, you know, this was actually true. When he made a move, he ensured it was a big one so people could see what he was doing. Now, that wasn't always good, as we'll discuss in a bit. But it left no doubt in anyone's mind about whether or not he was playing the game.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_02] As he said in response to one of the jury's questions, he wanted to attack the game, not coast. His hands were covered in blood. And then he emphasized how it related to the jury by saying so many of them wanted to make their mark on Big Brother. So he would be a great representative. Now, did the answers or the speech make a difference? No. But I do think that what he said was the general feeling already, which he, of course, encouraged in subtle ways.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_02] Like in late August, he said, we all want to play Big Brother till it's time to play Big Brother. Then it's I don't want to do this. The key was he was pushing the idea that if you're going to play, play.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, he went all out. You know, no one can say that Devin's didn't put his heart and, you know, his all into the game. You know, despite people, you know, a lot of pushback about his a lot of alliance being built in and the advantages. He could have really coasted on that. He could have really just rested on. Well, I don't have to do anything. I can sit around. I got a diamond power, you know, when the time comes, I'll just do that. And then I'll figure it out from there. But he was building so many relationships. He was a part of like almost every alliance in the house, which, of course, means he's been talking to people.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01] And so, yeah, he was an active player throughout. You can't accuse him of riding these coattails, which would probably be really, you know, really easy to do because these such a strong and powerful force herself. But no, he made his own path. It was it was very fun watching him. Him and D kind of divide and conquer, you know, their different methods of who they were talking to. But at no point was he just like playing these game. You know, it was always about the agenda that he needed to push for the icons.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_01] And then even throughout, he was planning on, OK, well, if push comes to shove, do I cut D? Do I cut Drew? These are all things that he considered.

[00:40:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:40:40] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_02] And of course, you know, his strategy came to a head when they were at Final Four. And he was, you know, in a situation where he had to find a way to convince Drew to take him to the end. He worked on Drew for days. And it looked to us like Drew was still planning to bring D. And what Drew said in interviews was that he went back and forth. But then. Drew posed a question. Would Devins promise to take him to the final two? Yes, absolutely. No hesitation.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_02] Would he throw part one of the HOH comp? Yes, absolutely. No hesitation. This is the correct way to scheme and plot. You can't hem and haw like D did. How many times do we have to say you can bounce checks in the big brother house?

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it's so real with Devins. Even in that moment, it's true to form for if you're established that we have a father son type relationship. I shouldn't be hesitating to take you to the end. You're essentially telling me by saying that that you would be fine going to the end with me and losing to me if that was possible. Right. Like if you could if you could beat me, I'm down with it. I'm happy with either one of us winning. I think for a large portion of the game, that was the relationship him and D had. I don't know if it ended there. You know, depending on the day you asked them, they might say that they were going to cut each other. But I don't know.

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_01] But it would be out of character for Devins to be like, well, I don't know. You know, you could definitely times where you could do that in the past. But it's crunch time now. Right. Are you my dad or not? Are you willing to take me to the end or not? And he said yes. Now, whether or not he believed in the moment, who knows? But he knew that he shouldn't hesitate when giving that answer. And it paid off. You know, I think that looking back, a lot of people will say that was the perfect time to cut Devins. You have a better chance of beating D. That was the argument that we were making at the time.

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, maybe there's a different world where he does cut Devins and maybe D still wins. We will never know. But you bringing Devins to the final three is essentially bringing the biggest threat that the game has seen throughout the entire game. And being willing to sit next to them and hoping that you can win is a tough spot to be in. It is.

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_02] It is. Now, with all of this said, we have to address something that you already brought up a couple minutes ago, which is the fact that Devins came in with some big advantages. Look, I know he and D kept claiming they were disadvantages because they all had targets on them. There were only three of them. They only had safety for one week. And there were so many opportunities for the others to get rid of them. I won't disagree with them that they should have been targeted.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_02] And boy, oh, boy, after this season, I really hope newbies learn a lesson when there are future mixed seasons. As we talked about, I'm sure there will be. But the fact is that in this season, the newbies did not target them in the right way. Part of that was because of the alliances and relationships they had formed, as Devins said.

[00:43:35] [SPEAKER_02] But it also goes back to the fact they automatically had the week one HOH, which allowed them to build a wall of protection around themselves. And despite there only being three of them, they were the three tightest because it was in their best interests to not turn on one another, as Devins acknowledged to Dalton Ross. And they never did.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_02] You give me two allies like that any day, including especially one I just played another game with. I would rather have those two than four or five or probably more randos with whom you have no relationships and you don't know how they will act.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, they they got it handed to them on the silver platter. And when they said America was going to be voting, guess what? We're going to give you more stuff. Not only do you have a built in alliance, but every week we're going to find a reason to give each of you a power. We saw Angela get the first one. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you all right now. I would. I didn't vote for Angela for what? For a power. Angela is not getting my vote, but she got it. And it ended up being the egg. I know production probably was like, give her the egg. You know, they were not going to let her get the advantage. They could have. But we needed to see Angela in the egg. And that's fine.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_01] But Devins, D, no coincidence. That y'all were the next ones that brought in that room. And then even Drew got pulled to that room. Drew was connected to these people. You know, I'm not I'm not shocked by it. You know that you everybody else has to build a fan base. Basically, they're starting from scratch. These people are coming in with a built in fan base. We know the survivor. People came to watch it because their ratings went up a percent. So somebody did. Right. And so if they brought in their own fans, then when it's time to vote, they're going to reap

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_01] the benefits of that. And there might even be fans of them in the house as well. You know, we saw Barrett saying, I'm a I'm a super fan. I know exactly who you are. We saw Drew latching on to them because she knew who they were. I mean, he knew where they were. Angela, even big fan of Rick Devins, big fan of D. So, yeah, not only did they come in with fan base on the outside, you also have fan base on the inside, which is just another assistant and giving you the leg up on all the competition.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_01] It is wild for them to think that these advantages did not drastically change the outcome of this game for them, or at least the way that they would have to play the game. And I mean, drastically. But that said, I think they made the most out of the advantages, whereas some people, a lesser player would have fumbled and Devins indeed to a lesser extent did not. Yes, yes.

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_02] Now, yeah, I mean, the jury pointed this out. We talked about it last week for D. The those powers allowed them to control the game for quite a while. Devins acknowledged to Dalton, were we more likely to win America's vote to get a shot at the time capsule? Definitely. We came in with fans. So he acknowledged the same thing you just said. Taylor noted to Dalton that privilege that coming in with the fan base is the reason why

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_02] you got that vote to go in the time capsule. And I know Devins also said his move against Rome might have won him the time capsule vote that week, even if he'd been a newbie. Those of us sitting out here can easily say no, no, it wouldn't have. I'm sorry. We we didn't think it was that big a deal at the time. We were not like, oh, yay. We have the perspective that he doesn't.

[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, with all of that to said, you know, Devins told Dalton, I ended up with a great power. I made the most of it. So it's the same thing that you were basically just saying. And, you know, D ended up with a great power. We made the most of it. I agree with that. And there were ways that the newbies could have fought against this better. Yash should have nominated Devins when he put up D and Angela. Did he know about the diamond power of veto?

[00:47:34] [SPEAKER_02] No, but there was already the regular power of veto and the blockbuster. So there was a way for both of the nominated icons to escape. That's why you needed to put up all three. But he didn't because he had this fake alliance with with Devins. You know, speaking of Yash, I've said it a few times now. He could have handled the bribe better by at least trying to negotiate terms. But instead, he just accepted D's offer when she was HOH and then purposely avoided winning

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_02] HOH himself because he was restricted rather than winning it and getting it over with, which gave the icons additional weeks of safety.

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, this is what happens when you come in with not only advantages, but also experience. Do you know the icons know how to play these games? Even Angela has played this game for a long time. So she knows what it looks like when someone is scheming against you. She also doesn't know what it looks like when someone is scheming against you. Right. She just got to she goes she's just going off of gut, you know, vibes. But Devins and D, they've had a lot of experience. And so when they come in, they know who to work on, when to work on them, how to approach them. You know, they use different tactics.

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_01] They were doing so much to make these people make these rookie mistakes. When D goes to Yash and gets him to do this bribe, we're all like this bribe ain't nothing. And then when D correctly gets basically a free ride to the final five, we're all like, dang, how did she pull that off? Because she's done this before. She knows how to play the game. Yash is like his mind is blown. He was just happy to stay off the block. He wasn't thinking on the next level, which is OK, I'll take the bribe. It keeps me off the block. But how do I get you out if I can't put you on H.O.H.?

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_01] He just took the money. Yeah. If he had taken a beat and thought about it, maybe he ends up on the block, you know, so maybe he didn't want to do it. Or maybe if he pushes back immediately, he's able to get a better deal and then he can target them. We'll never know because he took the first offer that he had. And so, yeah, it's really cool to see. Like they're able to navigate it. But, you know, like you said, there were times where you could have flipped the game in your favor. It's just that a more savvy or more skilled player would have had to be in that spot to

[00:49:38] [SPEAKER_01] make it happen.

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_02] Right. And speaking of their own skill, you know, did Devons form alliances outside of the icons? Sure. But again, that first week of safety set them up. You know, as Taylor said to Dalton Ross, when you have people in the house who are fans of Survivor and Big Brother, they are almost in awe of these people instead of wanting to gun for them, wanting to get them out. They say that. But in real life, they want to work with them. They want to be up under them. They want to learn from them. So this is what you were saying earlier about the fans in the house.

[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_02] But Taylor saw it, too. That's why I wanted to get that quote in there. But Devons certainly did a lot right. It's possible he could have won without this.

[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_01] But we have to acknowledge that it absolutely helped. Yeah, I was doing my made up winner rankings in my mind. I don't. I saw them. Yeah. Way behind there, but I did see those.

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_02] Yes.

[00:50:30] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I stopped. I stopped because it got tough. It's got tough. And maybe I'll talk about it with you one day. Just like out of curiosity, see what you think. But I got I have to keep I have to put Devons in the lower tier of the winner for me. Because of the advantages. Right. There are some winners who kind of they got it out the mud. They came in. Some of them got it out the mud. They came in at the bottom of whatever the power structure was. Just who they were socially. Thinking about people like like Steve Moses. Right. Where you could go on the block day one because we just don't really vibe with you. And you still managed to pull out a win. That's more to me.

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_01] That's more impressive than, you know, doing what Devons did was very impressive. But having the assistance of this alliance and these advantages and playing against newbies, you know, it does to me diminish it a little bit. But it was still an impressive win nonetheless.

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, this is why I don't usually do rankings. They're arbitrary and capricious, I believe, is the reductive, if I'm not mistaken. Reductive, reductive, not precious. Well, they might be capricious. I'm sorry. That capricious and arbitrary is actually something from my old job peeking back into my brain,

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_02] because that was the reason you could get a variance from rules. So it goes back to rules because that's what I did even for work. But if the rule was determined to be capricious and arbitrary, then you could get a variance from it. So that's poking back in my brain when I hear arbitrary there. But anyway, I don't know that it's possible to quantify and truly compare the positives and negatives of what he got.

[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_02] I absolutely, though, don't agree with him when he told Dalton, I think more than anything, it was a disadvantage. Now, look, he's right. A lot of it did come down to his relationships. But like we said, even some of those stemmed from his position. Would Drew and Barrett have been drawn so close to him if he hadn't been Rick Devins from Survivor? It's possible. We don't know. We have no way to know. I like to say this isn't a choose your own adventure story.

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_02] We can't use a dining table time machine to say, let's get the Rick Devins from before he played Survivor and move him here. You know, we can say whatever advantages he had, he made the most of them in ways that many people wouldn't have even thought of. However, I just wish those advantages hadn't been in there. If production is going to cast former players from Big Brother, from Survivor, from wherever,

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_02] let them play like anyone else so they can truly show what they can do.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think the pushback I have against that is that if you do that, then they're coming in at a disadvantage. That would actually give more credence to what Devins is saying, right? You come in and you don't have a built-in alliance. You don't have the America's votes every week. Like Rachel, like Rachel last week. I mean, last season, I'll say. She came in and she was not always at the top of the structure. You know, she really had to get, she really had to fight, you know, to get that target off her back because she was Rachel Riley. They hadn't even seen her season.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_01] They just saw like clips on YouTube of her and was like, oh, she fought with everybody. She got to go. That's what they were saying about her preconceived as she went into the house. If Devins didn't come in, like if he came in by himself and he was just Rick Devins from Survivor, that is still, that's still a reason to put a target on his back, you know? So I think they always, there's that delicate balance of we want to bring people back, but we don't want them immediately booted out the game. It's why Survivor went and did Edge of Extinction, you know? It's because like, we don't want, we're rooting, we're voting our, you know, in season 40, we

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_01] got our all-star season, all our winners, but we don't want them to be off the TV screen. We're probably paying them too much money for that to happen, right? Yeah. And so they're going to do what it takes to make sure they're on the show a little bit longer. Maybe give them one week of safety.

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's it. I mean, Rachel had one week of safety. Yeah. And look what she did with it. You've got to, I agree. I mean, Sheree had one week of safety. Or after it had started, I remember some parts of it. I don't remember exactly the situation. I know she was pouring champagne after, after part of a comp, you know, give them that week,

[00:54:47] [SPEAKER_02] but don't give them power as well. And then don't pile on more power on top of that. Because yes, there was that instantaneous feeling of, we got to get out the vets. We got to get out the icons. If you take that off the table, if you let them work their magic, if you let people get to know them for a week, and when we say a week and big brother, week one is actually like a week and a half. So you've got a solid 10 days to make your social and strategic relationships.

[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_02] That's all they should get, especially if they're coming in, in two, three or more of them, because, you know, you had one of Rachel. Now we have three people who knows what they're going to do next time.

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. If it's three of them, they don't need it. They don't even need a week of safety. Put them in. If there's three of them, they already have an alliance. What do they need a week for? You don't have to, you got a bond, you know, figure it out.

[00:55:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that was Rick. Now we have our runner up Taylor. Whose game was incredibly different from Devon's. He had advantages. She was on the block as a have not from the start. He made big and bold and brash moves in a spotlight. She worked in the shadows. But in the last hours of the game, she outplayed Devon's and drew to earn herself $75,000.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_02] Now, as anyone who follows me on the video sites knows, I did not think Devon's would fall for Taylor's pitch and actually go against Drew at the end. I made a video even after she had said that saying, well, Drew obviously gets $75,000. And some people commented, well, what about Taylor's pitch? I'm like, ah, he's not going to do that. Come on. Yeah, I was wrong. It happens. What? I'm sorry. What? No, I'm sorry. What? I, I, I, you must have misheard something. Okay.

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_02] I thought, yeah, I might've had a stroke. Okay. My bad. Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, he had approached, he being Devon's had approached Taylor with a proposal and a threat and she rejected it, but then use the knowledge from that, that he didn't understand the jury and came back later with her own version that put the pressure on him

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_02] and made him believe there was a chance Drew could actually beat him. Even if that chance was small, he couldn't risk it. I mean, what's the acceptable risk level for losing $750,000? 10%. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't bet that. I'm sorry. And he, he figured if he does it this way, it was approximately 0% to lose to Taylor. It wasn't worth it to take the risk.

[00:57:30] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Um, it was very impressive from her. We've seen people kind of talk their way into the final two before. Uh, and, and I like that. I do. I appreciate the person who, if I can't win my way there, I will figure out a way to get there. Uh, she fought tooth and nail for that one. She waited, she waited, she bought, she made sure she took her time. She didn't just come out immediately and say, you got to turn on Drew. Um, but when she outlined the jury votes for him, I mean, it was very clear that she, first of all, she wasn't wrong. Um, she knew that like, Hey, if she, she has, she can vote for whoever she wants when she

[00:58:00] [SPEAKER_01] gets voted out. Right. Right. So she can tell him I'm immediately giving you one vote. And Lala is also going to vote with me because I've been, you know, running Lala's game. I can convince her. Uh, especially if I tell her you were all for or something like that in the last week, she'll come with me. Um, and she's like, yeah, so that's two votes right there. Now you don't know how Barrett feels about you now after y'all, you know, kind of threw him to the wolves and, you know, um, put, voted out the pipe queen and then ended up getting him out of the game and kind of isolated him that week.

[00:58:29] [SPEAKER_01] You know, maybe he's mad about it. You don't have the best relationship with melody and she likes, she likes drew a lot. So that's a drew vote right there. You know? And so when she starts outlining, he's like, man, dang, that's tough because you know, why would I send, why would I send Taylor to the jury to vote for drew when I can send drew to the jury to vote for me?

[00:58:49] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, exactly. And I think that now I do want to clarify just in case people think that you said something else, there was no way she was going to be able to convince Lala because Lala was on one end of the jury and she was, would have been on the other end of the jury. And it's not like in survivor where you can walk up and talk to people. Julie would have been yelling at you. Don't do that. You can't do that. You know?

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_02] So, but again, she took advantage of Devin's not knowing this about the big brother jury and the way she handled it overall was somewhat representative about how she played all season. Not so much in making a move that caused a big flip, despite her belief, which she now realized was wrong of, you know, that she caused the flip against lyric, but rather her understanding of the pieces on the game board, not always, you know, like I just referenced

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_02] the lyric thing, but most of the time, even Julie of all people or her intern said every diary room session. She knew every beat of what was happening. She's smart. Now, the problem was that even with knowing all of this, she never really had the power to do anything with that knowledge. And then the final three came and her power arrived in her ability to convince Devin's. As she told Mike Bloom, I decided to use what he did to me and throw it right back at him.

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_02] And I decided to do it the night before. So it will be a rash decision, an emotional decision, a decision that he made because he was so frantic at being so close and not winning. I mean, we've already said it. It was perfect timing. It was the perfect argument. She couldn't get the win. She knew that if Devin's was to win the HOH comp. But it earned her $75,000.

[01:00:38] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Nothing to sneeze on. There's no, there's no advantages anymore. Devin's there's no either high behind. There's no diamond power veto. This is just the social strategy game of big brother. That's it. Is this is raw form? Pick me over this person. And here's why, you know, and when left to her own devices without any of the other interference, we saw what she was capable of. I thought that was very impressive. I think that for people, a lot of people were looking at Taylor's game and like not really impressed.

[01:01:07] [SPEAKER_01] I think that that is a move that you can hang your hat on. You know, it gets you second place. Yes. But it's not that. Oh, Devin's just like, oh, I can be Taylor. And I knew all week I was going to, you know, take Taylor to the end. That is not the case. Um, or Devin's that entire week was fine with his son getting $75,000 and Taylor convinced him to do something that was not in his son's best interest, but it was in her best interest. And to me, that's the game of big brother. That's why people were so impressed with D sitting on the block and somehow surviving

[01:01:35] [SPEAKER_01] the block time after time when she should have been the one going home. Uh, you know, it's because at some point you cannot win anymore. You cannot use any powers. It's just going to be you, your brain and your mouth. And you got to start, you got to talk, you got to talk to trash and you got to get, you got to get people to do stuff that benefits you. And she did it. And I'll say this too. It's very much a have and a half not situation. You know, she points out privilege a few times. Uh, but like, think about it. We just outlined all the advantages that Taylor, uh, that, uh, Devin's had.

[01:02:04] [SPEAKER_01] Taylor had the opposite. She was on the downside of all those advantages. Every way that he benefited, she, she lost, you know, the built-in alliance took people away from her, you know, the diamond power veto ruined her allies, HOH, you know, one after one, her ally could not put them on the block because of the bribe. One thing after the next, after the next, after the next. So the fact that she was even able to make it that far as impressive as far as I'm concerned. Yeah.

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, if we go back to the beginning, we see how she played such a different game from both through and Devin's for years. The advice of many big brother experts was go to sleep for the first half of the game to avoid being seen as a threat. Now that's not the advice these days for most people, for most big brother experts, I'll say, because you need to get power early to solidify alliances, much like we just discussed how Devin's played.

[01:02:55] [SPEAKER_02] But in many ways, the low threat level strategy is what she did. And indeed, it meant she didn't have those solid alliances, but she still survived. However, surviving is not necessarily thriving, at least not enough to win, because that style of gameplay earned Taylor a reputation. And that reputation was enhanced by production through her BB comic, through the Zingbot joke,

[01:03:20] [SPEAKER_02] both of which promoted the idea that Taylor didn't do anything in the game, which certainly could. And I would say did impact on what jurors thought. We even heard some of them discussing those like Barrett saying, if she has truly been in her bed as much as her comic and Zingbot said she has, I don't know what to say. And indeed, it was what I would call the overall house perception. Not to say everyone believed it, but it was the general opinion.

[01:03:50] [SPEAKER_02] We say all the time on this podcast that perception is reality on reality TV. So if the house believed in general that Taylor just stayed in her pod, well, that's difficult to overcome. And Taylor herself knew it. As she told Mike Bloom, my perspective of what everyone had of me was that I wasn't playing hard enough. Yeah, she was absolutely right.

[01:04:11] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And that's a downside to her strategy for sure. You know, you're hiding, right? You're laying low. You know, the tall poppy syndrome or whatever, you know, we pop up and then you get chopped down. And so she's like, I'm not going to pop my head up. I'm going to lay low. I'm going to try to make these alliances in the shadows. All that. All those are good, right? Until it's time for you to plead your case and you and nobody can tell you what you did. No one can appreciate what you did. You have to be to some extent, you have to put some you have to put some third level on you.

[01:04:41] [SPEAKER_01] You have to make yourself somebody that, yeah, I sit by you because I could beat you probably. But at the same time, you're not a slouch to where, oh, yeah, you're a layup to where everybody wants to take you. So it's a it's a tough balancing act. But we've seen it before where, you know, like you said, the past is people you say just like sleep and then just start winning on the way out. And that and that works when you can win. Right. Taylor couldn't win any challenges. And that's really where the downside was. When she started winning, that's when her her profile starts to rise.

[01:05:09] [SPEAKER_01] It just didn't happen to what the final four. And so, yeah, that's that's the issue. Now, she won a challenge or two prior. I won't take that from her. But as we're getting toward the end game, people are looking at Lala to win. They're looking for Drew to win. They're looking for Yash to win. They're looking for D to win. They're looking for Devin to win. Hey, you're not going to have any power if all these other people are winning. And so once you get in the end, people are going to ask you what you did. And you're not going to be able to say that you did anything next to all of these juggernauts.

[01:05:38] [SPEAKER_01] And so, yeah, you can lay low. But at some point you have to own your game. You have to be able to show what you've done. And I think that, you know, her perception really did outweigh some of the active gameplay that she had. But that's the downside to the way she was playing the game.

[01:05:52] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Yeah. I mean, in the in the recap episode, she said her strategy was being quiet and listening more than she talked and watching more than she listened. That gave her the knowledge we already discussed. But lying low like that hampers your ability to do anything with that knowledge. Now, I've previously referenced some great thoughts from Dolphica, who makes those those great alliance maps all season long.

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_02] So, yes, she had another great blue sky post in mid to late August saying, I really wish Taylor didn't take those first two weeks off the game. Because once she decided to enter, everyone she chose to work with was already aligned. It put her in a terrible game position. She never got game footing. And yeah, looking back to all the way to day five, Taylor was telling Barrett on live feeds, I'm a loner.

[01:06:44] [SPEAKER_02] And she suggested she didn't really have any alliances and wouldn't be fake. None of those things are good for this rule, especially since she was already a nominee. And indeed, not only was she not in an alliance, she told Dee and Devins in one conversation and then Lala in another that she didn't think any alliances had even started yet. Meanwhile, Dee and Devins were probably in a half a dozen of them by then. Even by July 20th, Taylor said she thought it was too early to be attached to one side.

[01:07:13] [SPEAKER_02] So she put off making alliances even when she had the opportunity to do so. So it's just not the way to play this game.

[01:07:22] [SPEAKER_01] No, it's a big flaw. Even if you look at the last, I don't know, maybe let's go last 10 Big Brother winners. All of them at some point find themselves in a powerful alliance that's leading the game. Taylor, at one point in this game, was kind of in that spot when Kamu, well, when Yash won HOH. That was the first time where she really saw like, oh, I could see the light of day. And then from there, she was back at the bottom because of, you know, the powers. Right. So that said, she gets that one week. But think about it.

[01:07:53] [SPEAKER_01] Ashley Hollis, she won last season, but she was a part of the judges alliance. They ran the end game. Chelsea ran the end game along with MJ. They were active players. People saw what they were doing. By the end, Jag and the mafia are running the table. Right. They're winning all challenges, but you see what they're doing. Taylor Hale, at some point she was with the leftovers. They saw what she was doing. We have nothing to hang on. Taylor's like the honor society wasn't pulling that kind of weight. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, it wasn't.

[01:08:19] [SPEAKER_01] The tethers alliance did not drag her in, you know, or carry her toward the end. She did not ever establish herself as a powerful, like player in the game. Whereas I just listed the last six or six winners or so. I mean, I could keep going Xavier, Cody Calafiore, like off the top of my head, Jackson, Mickey, you know, all of these people at one point. You could have stopped before him. I could have stopped right there. Casey Clark. Yeah. Yeah. Let's start. Let's start with Casey. But all these people found themselves in a powerful position where they were making decisions.

[01:08:47] [SPEAKER_01] Not since Josh Martinez has the winner of this game been such a passenger. But Taylor was in that position and she was never able to flip it to where she was in control. So, yeah.

[01:08:57] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And you mentioned the tethers alliance. We talked about this way back at the beginning here. And we talked about how she came in with this very, very specific idea. She eventually presented it around August 11th, where she had the M&Ms and she was, you know, trying to show it off. But one problem was it was still so firmly set in her mind that when other people, like I think Devin's and Kamu suggested, well, what if we altered it a bit this way?

[01:09:26] [SPEAKER_02] Because we already know that these people are together or these people are not together. She was against it. She was like, no, these are the tethers. This is the way we're grouping them. And like I said, she was trying to bring in Devin's and Kamu, but she was again late to the alliance party. She was trying to attach to people in a way that didn't correspond with the relationships that already existed in the game.

[01:09:51] [SPEAKER_02] She was basically trying to force things in a way. She was trying to put a square peg in a round hole is what she was trying to do. And yeah, she did try to make some other allies, but the same issue kept presenting itself. And you'd like to think that in the grand scheme of the whole summer, a few weeks at the start wouldn't define everything. But in games like this, it absolutely can.

[01:10:17] [SPEAKER_02] And that's why I say in this rule, from the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships. Note that I said from the very beginning, while there is a strategy to lie back and let things happen around you for the first half of the season, players still need to make those connections and alliances early. A surprising number of alliances formed in the early days last a very long time in the Big Brother house. And that's exactly what happened to her.

[01:10:43] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've seen that on Survivor as well, where you meet your final two on day one. You know, like, well, let's just do this. We can always trust each other. There's so many Big Brother examples of that, you know, where week one, this huge alliance has formed and there's nothing you can do about it. This was another example of that. And so taking the first couple of weeks off of forming alliances and really getting in good with people, even if they're fake alliances, it's not a great strategy. It's the same reason why you shouldn't be throwing the first HOH. Go out and win it.

[01:11:12] [SPEAKER_01] And that drags people toward you, right? You can't avoid the first HOH because you have to at least go pitch your case for why you shouldn't go on the block. It's a magnet for alliances. And then the next week, you can promise everybody whatever they want, you know? And so next week, whenever somebody wins, they think, OK, well, that person was HOH. They didn't put me up last week. You really only got one person, you know? So a person who survives, maybe with a blockbuster, maybe two people have survived that could come after you.

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_01] But for the most part, you have the chance to really just like gather an army of people and that that and that army can pay off later on. Like you said, Devin's alliances, they popped up so quickly. Taylor showing up two weeks in and being like, hey, the tethers. It's like, yeah, it's a little too late.

[01:11:53] Yeah.

[01:11:54] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now, because of her situation, some players viewed Taylor as doing nothing. Others saw through the facade, like Kamu told Mike Bloom, she's a silent assassin, man. She kind of hangs out in the shadows and she locks in. Barrett said at one point that his experience with Taylor was she had tried to form a million alliances and none of them stuck. And he added in the jury house that she had been low key and incredibly smart.

[01:12:20] [SPEAKER_02] In another blue sky post, Dolphica again later said Taylor has been much more active in the game than those on the other side think. It's just that they keep shooting her down. But of course, part of that shooting down goes back to the alliance issue we just discussed. Players are much more likely to listen to someone in their alliance than someone outside of it.

[01:12:41] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. You coming in and trying to flip the alliance on the head without any power is tough. You know, it's not like she was bringing a lot to the table. She's like, hey, look at these three people that I can bring to the to the group. Like, yeah. But what else you got? You know, he got a power. I got a power. Drew got a power. Like, what are you bringing? You know, it's kind of like vibes, charisma. You know? Yeah. You know, like, yeah. And don't get me wrong. I've been getting I've been getting by on that for a while. So I get it. But, you know, in the game, you got to have more.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And I do think there were definitely times when repeatedly hitting a brick wall got to Taylor. And she she just didn't try as hard as she could have, because who wants to have that happen over and over again? She was on the block against Evans and Lala. Her campaign was a bit lackluster. One time she even told Lala, I'm not campaigning. I'm just going to try to win the blockbuster. You know, now, would it have mattered if she campaigned more in those situations?

[01:13:34] [SPEAKER_02] No, because obviously she stayed anyway, but she was unable to advance her overall position for the future.

[01:13:43] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. She didn't have a lot of agency when it came to the beginning stages of the game. Like if the icons wanted her out, she would have been out. But they had bigger fish to fry. Right. Like Jason was making a big target on himself. Obviously, Rome and Lyric, the showmans. So she she bought a lot of time. But in that she didn't really utilize that time as effectively as she could. And like you said, with her getting shot down a few times, it really made her like retreat. When in response, she should actively go harder.

[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_01] You know, like don't get me wrong. She made it to the end. She got $75,000. So who am I to tell her how to play the game? But at the same time, maybe you could have won the money had you come in and really advocated for yourself and been able to push and move your own agenda to where you're not sitting in the end with an icon and his son. Right. You should be at the end with people that you can beat. But because you didn't have any sway over the way the direction of the game was going or what the jury was made out of, you just had to work with what you had. Yeah.

[01:14:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Moving to Drew. What can we say about him in this role? He obviously understood its importance and clearly was the biggest schemer in the house. He was thrilled to be able to jump right into bed with the icons and also play the middle. It was practically his dream job.

[01:14:57] [SPEAKER_02] Of course, that dream turned into a nightmare several times during the season when the icons would somehow forget that they told him to play the middle and get mad that he was doing so. Despite the fact that he kept bringing back invaluable information. The problem was they just didn't believe him. That even started early, way back on day seven live feeds. He told D what Jason said about wanting to go after Devin's and then also added in the Angela information.

[01:15:25] [SPEAKER_02] It was shocking to them. But at one point they they doubted it because the story sounded too ridiculous to be true. Look, it's not Drew's fault that Jason was being that ridiculous. And that sort of thing continued almost all season, even when it made no sense to the point that they were ready to vote him out on thogs. And then D even nominated him later. Yet he's stuck by their side. They literally could not get rid of him.

[01:15:52] [SPEAKER_01] No. And I think I saw Taron as Devins about his mistrust for Drew early in the game. You know, talking about Angela and D just being paranoid. And that's that's true to a large extent. But also because Devins was I mean, Drew was such a schemer. He had options. So even though they they told him, oh, yeah, play double agent when they saw it in action. It's very threatening. He's able to talk to us and then immediately go over to talk to them. How do we know that he's not playing double agent against us? You know, we think he's our spy, but what if he's really their spy?

[01:16:22] [SPEAKER_01] And there were definitely times where he could have done both. He could have been their spy. He could have thrown him under the bus, but he was remaining loyal to the to the crossovers or whatever. But should he have? You know, if he had if he had been playing both sides against each other, maybe he could have got one of the icons out early without actually having to pull the trigger. Maybe he could have helped get somebody else out. You know, that could have furthered his game a little bit, but they knew he had the capacity to do that. Or at least they thought he did.

[01:16:51] [SPEAKER_01] And it was just the idea that he could be doing it made them so paranoid that they just could not allow themselves to believe that he wasn't doing it.

[01:16:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it would have helped him to maybe have FAP get someone out if maybe all of his allies and FAP weren't repeatedly throwing HOH comps. But, you know, aside from that, which we've already talked quite a bit about. Yeah. I I know when Devin's talked to Taron, he said, you know, we would talk to him and then he would go over and be whispering with the others. And this is something I'll get to in a moment, I think. But the thing was that whispering was just social.

[01:17:27] [SPEAKER_02] And that was part of the issue. He was hanging out. He liked hanging out with the others. He liked scheming with the icons. But everybody assumed that the hanging out was also scheming. And so that's, I think, what, you know, came back to bite him. But his perception among the other players was he was nothing but a vet pet. And in many ways, he was. The question to me is how much of it was intentional and how much was emotional.

[01:17:55] [SPEAKER_02] Now, the latter topic we'll discuss in, you know, the appropriate rule. I truly don't know that we can answer. I I don't know that Drew can answer. However, he did make some moves that helped his own game, like pushing to get rid of Kamu and voting out Yash. And he realized that sticking to the vets like glue could get him far. It's been talked about all season long. History tells us working with a vet will typically get you further than working against one.

[01:18:24] [SPEAKER_02] So, as we discussed earlier, I hope that changes in the future after people see what happened this season. But the key to Drew's game was in knowing when do you make your move and split. Drew clearly thought it was all the way at the very end. But the problem with that was it relied on him winning the final HOH. When he didn't, he was stuck. That's the issue with a plan like that.

[01:18:51] [SPEAKER_02] You can never be sure about when you will actually have power. It's similar to when people were criticizing Barrett and say he should have waited till later. No, you don't know when he's going to have power again. He doesn't know that. Use it while you've got it. But you can try to put yourself in the best position, as he did when he eliminated Yash the Compies. And then he won a couple of comps after that.

[01:19:16] [SPEAKER_02] But he wasn't able to take either part one or part two of the final HOH comp. And that was all he had. Part of the problem was that he went so far with two huge threats to win. He cut D at four, but that still left Evans. And even if he had done the reverse, which I know a lot of people say he should have. Okay, you cut Evans at four and you still have D, who is also a huge threat to win. He needed to have one of them gone sooner.

[01:19:45] [SPEAKER_01] Do you think if Drew won the final HOH, he was going to cut Rick Devins? I do. I don't. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm crazy. I do think that. I don't. I don't. I don't. I just can't. I can't see it. You know, it's just the way he looks so betrayed when Devins cut him. Like, it's like, it's almost like he couldn't fathom it, you know, whereas Devins should have been looking.

[01:20:13] [SPEAKER_01] And I think Devins at one point did let his guard down with Drew and figured that he would take him. I mean, Drew did a really good job of being like, I would rather, you know, lose to you than lose to Taylor, which is, I mean, a compelling argument for sure. If you're Devins. But I just don't believe it. I don't believe it. I think that, you know, I think he was in too deep. And I think that it took Taylor at the last minute to get Devins to see the light. I don't know what would have got Drew to see the light. You know, that he would have had to be Taylor.

[01:20:38] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I would have had to tell him, are you crazy? You know, and you.

[01:20:42] [SPEAKER_01] But how many people told him that, David? Melody has been, Melody's dying words are, you know, like, what are you doing? Don't go to the end with this man. And here we are.

[01:20:51] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, there's no way we'll ever know. You know, again, it's, you know, it's not a choose your own adventure book. We can never know. I do think he would have found it in himself to cut Devins. But you're right. He might not have. It's possible he would have fully intended to and then simply not been able to pull the trigger. He's 22. You know, it's difficult.

[01:21:19] [SPEAKER_02] And I just want to think that he would have been able to do it. And again, it's the same thing. It's the same thing we discussed about D last week. D, I'm going to cut Devins. I'm going to cut Devins. I'm going to cut Devins. And she comes out of the house and said, I never would have been able to. We don't know. We literally don't know. It's a lot easier to say in your interviews. And maybe, maybe each of them. Well, I would say definitely each of them is convinced. If you hook them up to a lie detector test.

[01:21:48] [SPEAKER_02] And again, if lie detector tests actually detected lies. If you hook them up and said, were you going to cut Devins? He, the answer would come back as true when he said yes. And it would come back as true when D said no. Okay. But in the moment, we don't know. Because you know what? If you had hooked up Devins a day earlier, he would have said, no, there's no way I'm cutting Drew. And then it changed.

[01:22:18] [SPEAKER_02] And you just never know what could cause that change.

[01:22:21] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I saw how hard it was for Devins to cut Drew. And I just don't know if that same pressure was on Drew, if he could do it. Because Devins has been here before, right? He's played these games before. He gets it. You can cut your allies and still be besties with them. Well, he also lost because he didn't. Right. They cut him. But you still could be besties. He knows it. He knows my alliance is to my family first. There's a world where he could convince Drew that your alliance is to me.

[01:22:51] [SPEAKER_01] You know, to us. We can take this to the end. And it's not, this is not crazy talk, right? We've seen it before. Cody Califiori sitting next to Derek Levasseur. What is that about? You know, there are so many times in the history of all these games, right? Where, yeah, this person, your ally, but you got to have the guts to cut him. And we've seen Drew not have the guts to cut him so many times that I find it hard to believe that he would have the guts to cut him this time. Yeah. But we'll never know.

[01:23:18] [SPEAKER_02] Right.

[01:23:18] [SPEAKER_01] Right.

[01:23:20] [SPEAKER_02] Now, another thing we don't know is as the season went on, how much did Drew really have a good read on his true position in the game? Because like back in the July 22nd episode, we saw that Drew and Barrett did seem to understand where they sat in the tool shed alliance as we wondered if they would do something about it. In that case, well, D and company did something by blowing it up with the lyric to melody flip.

[01:23:48] [SPEAKER_02] But in other cases, it seemed like Drew just kept pushing forwards, even when his on again, off again allies didn't trust him. And it appeared to be because he had no idea what they thought. Like even when Haley put him up as a supposed pawn, he was upset, but he trusted Devins completely without realizing Devins was in on it. Devins told the others how upset he was and said, if you're going to take a shot at Drew, it has to hit because he's already upset.

[01:24:17] [SPEAKER_02] Meanwhile, Drew couldn't even read the most obvious signs of Devins being cold, Angela not caring, Kamu refusing to commit to using the veto on him and so on. At one point, Mallory flat out told him, you don't have the votes. Did he listen? No, he ran back to Haley and Angela and said, ha ha, silly girl Mallory, she doesn't think I have the votes. And the funny thing in all that, his massive denial saved him. Look, I know. Okay.

[01:24:46] [SPEAKER_02] Technically the blockbuster saved him, but in the overall grand scheme of the game, it was his denial because if he had known he would have freaked out, the icons would have been all, see, we knew he'd be like this. By not doing that because he convinced himself that he was fine. He ended up being fine going forward. His completely blind loyalty turned into an asset at times like that.

[01:25:13] [SPEAKER_01] He talked about it's better to be lucky than good. And I mean, if you want to talk about somebody who's just moving through the game with a lot of luck, you're definitely looking at Drew. There was, there was bad luck included as well, right? Like the fact that these people that he's giving all his loyalty to don't trust him, bad luck, I would say. But the good luck was there. Like, like you said, he's, he largely didn't know when people were targeting him on his own side. He thought he had the votes to say when he did not.

[01:25:41] [SPEAKER_01] He guessed on the blockbuster to be fair, you know, like they, he had one quick, they get, there was supposed to be multiple questions to be asked. I believe it was two questions and you, or at least two questions. Oh, there were multiple. Yeah. There were more than two. Definitely. He guessed after one answer. There's no way you could know and narrow that down to one answer after one question. That's why they asked that question. Yeah. He did a coin flip and he won, you know, and we don't know what would have happened had he, had he lost a, but we, we know he was projected to go home. Yeah.

[01:26:12] [SPEAKER_01] Things were falling in his favor a lot. And I do like, like, like I said, when I'm thinking about how I would like to rank my winners and all that kind of stuff, I look at the people's game and I, and I want to know how often are you in the know? Because everybody in the house is lying. Everybody in the house is lying. Except Adrian, but everybody is giving you so many false narratives and that they're creating their own ecosystem of lies around you. Right? So when you walk into a room with Kamu, these lies are what's true right now. When you walk into the next room, this is the new truth. Right?

[01:26:40] [SPEAKER_01] And so for you to have a good finger on the pulse of which is true, what, when people are selling you a dream, that to me is very impressive. What's not impressive to me is you kind of wandering through the game haphazardly. And then because you're good at challenges, you know, or because you're easy to beat, whatever the case may be, you are not able to like, like for me, that just doesn't impress me. Right? So like, I'm more impressive when people say, oh yeah, Taylor knew everything that was going on. She just couldn't do anything about it. Then I am about drew who did not know everything that was going on,

[01:27:10] [SPEAKER_01] but was able to do luck and challenges in a social relationship, still make it to the end.

[01:27:15] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, even when he was fine, it didn't mean he wasn't being actively targeted at the moment. He continued to give good information to the icon. They often ignored it. Like when D and Devin's through the knockout comp and allowed Yash to win, despite the fact that drew had told them Yash wanted to come for them. And this ended up forcing Devin's into using the diamond power of veto to save D. All of that could have been avoided.

[01:27:43] [SPEAKER_02] And then some of drew's biggest moves, you know, they came in what I would call negotiations. And part of it was his ability to lie. Even while being known as the biggest liar in the house, he swore on his sister after trying to swear on his fake cousin, Matthew, that he would honor his deal with Yash in the Fockers veto competition. And yes, he didn't technically break his word there because it was based on him being

[01:28:12] [SPEAKER_02] HOH, not him voting, but they had talked after that and made it sound like they would work together going forward based on the deal they had made. Then, of course, he approached both Devin's and D at final four about agreeing to throw part one of the HOH comp and take each other to final two, even though he knew full well, or at least he said full well that he didn't intend to do the latter. Now we can debate whether or not he made the right decision. That debate may go on forever.

[01:28:41] [SPEAKER_02] You know, just knowing what we know now, but in the moment he had what seemed to be an honest assurance from Devin's and hesitation from D and he got that through negotiation.

[01:28:54] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I saw people online really upset with Rick Devin's for basically, you know, swearing on his family that he was going to take. And I said, Oh my gosh.

[01:29:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. There are so many people in my, in my comments videos that I did congratulating him. And also I did a video talking about how it was the most difficult part for me to watch, you know, to see that happen. But I understood why it happened. There were some people in there. Rick Devin's is scum. He did this and did that. And I was like, are you new to big brother? Have you never seen anyone lie or change their mind on big brother before?

[01:29:31] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, if you were here two weeks ago, when drew lied about his sister made up a relative to lie on first. And then lied on his sister's name to Yash. That same person is the victim of what he just did. Right. And all of a sudden it's okay when drew does it, but when Devin does it, it's an issue that we're getting at here. So I just found that to be fascinating, a kind of narrative that's been floating around because, you know, we've already talked about this ad nauseum. We don't care.

[01:30:00] [SPEAKER_01] You swear on whatever you want to swear. If it works, it works. You know, you deal with that. However you do it later on, but this is part, this is part for the course. You know, I don't know. I find that so fascinating when people are able to say, well, when you do it, all right, cool. But these people are creatures of the moment sometime. Right. The Devons thing was such a demonstrative like moment. Like it's, it's so flashy, right? Like standing up in front of everybody. Whereas drew kind of quietly in the room, whispering to Yash doesn't have the same impact.

[01:30:28] [SPEAKER_02] Right. And you know, also let's, whether or not we believe it, drew has maintained and insisted. He was going to cut Devons despite making a promise to Devons that he would take him to the final two. So how can you be upset with Devons for the same thing? Well, it's easy because they're drew stands. That's the reason why. And they're upset that drew lost. I get it. I understand being unhappy that the person you are a fan of,

[01:30:56] [SPEAKER_02] or you are a stand of lost, but why a little logic, please. You know, I understand that. Yes. Devons was on the live feed saying, uh, drew parents talking to them buzz. And I'm sorry. I don't remember his mom's name. Um, you know, I am taking your son here. I promise you, I swear. And then he didn't, but you know what?

[01:31:22] [SPEAKER_02] Promises to people who aren't in the house mean even less than promises to people that are in the house.

[01:31:28] [SPEAKER_01] I'm sure he promised his kids. He was going to try to win the game.

[01:31:31] [SPEAKER_02] And so exactly.

[01:31:32] [SPEAKER_01] You're like, listen, I got to keep a promise to somebody I'm picking Jack and you, right?

[01:31:35] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now, of course, before we close out this rule, we do have to know, you know, we've already talked a little bit about it, but it's not like drew was perfect in this rule while maintaining his loyalty to the icons, even in the face of disloyalty seemed to help him. He had to save himself in those situations by winning comps. You've already brought it up. And he did not have great relationships with everyone in the house. As late as August 31st,

[01:32:05] [SPEAKER_02] he told D on live feeds that he didn't think he'd ever had a conversation with Lala. And D was like, well, that's on you too. He basically gave up the idea of ever working with Lala or getting her vote at the end compared to Devin's who at least had some sort of relationship with everyone. Yeah. Devin's wasn't going to get Lala's vote against Taylor. No way. But against drew, you damn well better believe she was voting for Devin's.

[01:32:34] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. It's one of the reasons why D looked like such an attractive person to keep, to keep over Devin's because D was saying things like, man, you know, it'd be nice to get to know the pipe queen. That would have been cool. It's like, well, D, why didn't you take your ass in there into the pod where the pipe queen is in there playing, you know, imaginary friends games, you know, all that kind of stuff. Why did you go in there and just be like, Hey, let's meet Utah. And don't get me wrong. Towards the end, we saw deep bonding with melody and with other people that she hadn't really had a relationship with. Yeah. But Taylor as well. Right. Same thing with like drew,

[01:33:04] [SPEAKER_01] you got to win votes at the end, right? Not going a month and change without talking to somebody that you live with. It's a wild thing to do in a social strategy game. You know, the heavy on the social side for sure. Yeah.

[01:33:19] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, that was rule one. I told you that was the long one. That was the long one. I'm, I'm, you know, guessing that was about probably half of what we're going to talk about here. So we can see, we can see how long this podcast is going to be. We are off to rule two. And I, you know, it says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret. Now, maybe I'll rename it, but don't be like drew rule.

[01:33:48] [SPEAKER_02] Although Devin's had some issues here as well, but at least we can start by saying that Taylor had no problem with this rule, unless you can think of something that I'm not.

[01:33:58] [SPEAKER_01] No, I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. She was in, she was in the shadows. She identified that about herself and the people who needed to know that she was in there. She was scheming. They knew, right? So Yash, Lala, the people who went into the pod, they knew that she was in there. And that's why at the end, they were talking up her game a little bit. They said like, Oh yeah, we thought she didn't do anything, but she was locked in. She was actually scheming and plotting. And it wasn't too much. It was actually too little. You know, like it should have been too, it shouldn't be, it should have been apparent that you were doing these things, at least to some extent, respectable, of course, but apparent.

[01:34:28] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So for her, not quite.

[01:34:31] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. All right. Then we can go on to Devin's and Chappelle. You knew all the way back before big brother 28 even began that Devin's was likely to break this rule. And you were right. Yet here we are because he was always somehow able to save himself. I knew for sure. Not as early as you did. Although you did convince me that, Oh yeah, this will probably be a bit of an issue, but I knew for sure he was going to be in trouble.

[01:35:01] [SPEAKER_02] When we saw him say on the July 18th TV episode, I'd rather go home playing a big game than stay playing a small game. And he wanted quote, to do a Rick Devins and quote, blow everything up when he was HOH and so on. Do many viewers love that sort of thing? Yes. Do, do David Bloomberg and others who evaluate strategy love it? No. No. Because it usually does not work out so well.

[01:35:30] [SPEAKER_01] I'm telling you, I'll be pushing for these, these like amendments to the rules. Winning a competition when you need to win a competition. I'm sorry. It's, it's a big brother. You can't,

[01:35:40] [SPEAKER_02] you can't put that in a rule. It's like, right. When, when you need to, it's just, it's, it's random and it doesn't, I mean, yeah, we could, I could modify something that says, don't F and throw competition. Yeah. But, you know, I'm pretty sure it already says that in there, but maybe it needs to be emphasized more. Um, but yeah, win competitions. There's, you know, hold on to the wall. Yeah. You can say about that. Really.

[01:36:07] [SPEAKER_01] It's hard to really qualify what that looks like. Right. Like you, right. Do you win every competition? They say every single competition, or do you just, do you throw some or like, you don't have to win every competition. Right. Like, but you should try to get power, but maybe it's good to let your ally get power this time. So yeah, it's hard to qualify that sometime, but I will say this, um, not winning competitions is not helping anybody. Uh, like for Rick Devens to come in and say, I'm going to blow up things. I'm going to play big. I'm going to play. I'd rather go home. Yeah. You can do all that stuff, especially when you can win, you know, um,

[01:36:36] [SPEAKER_01] he had the luxury of the advantages. We've already talked about that to death, but then on top of that, he's good at carnival games and he's clutch. He's able to come in and win when he, when he has to win. And so some of these rules, you can ignore a little bit. I mean, we talk about Jag,

[01:36:54] [SPEAKER_02] Jag. I was just going to say the same name came to mind there. You know, I mean, yeah, yeah.

[01:36:58] [SPEAKER_01] But that's the thing. Jack, Jack, not the only one of his kind. Ian Terry had no clue what was going on in that game for half the game. He's playing with Dan. Dan's like, come on, Ian, I'm going to take you to the end while plotting about like walking around with a knife behind his back, ready to kill Ian at the first chance when Ian loses the challenge. Well, Ian doesn't lose a challenge for like seven weeks. And so he's, he's not, he's immune for the entire jury phase. So you can't get them. So even if you're not knowing what's going on, if you're not, uh, if you're playing too big, if you're putting a target on your back, winning at the right time can definitely help.

[01:37:28] [SPEAKER_01] And it definitely helped Devin's. Yes.

[01:37:30] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now, obviously for Devin's, the most flagrant violation of the rule was when he volunteered to go on the block. This is something nobody should ever do period. Right. Past couple of seasons. I had to yell about this repeatedly because some players just didn't get it. So it was so frustrating to see Devin's do it, especially when he literally volunteered, not just once, but over and over again, it wasn't the spur of the moment, that bad decision.

[01:38:00] [SPEAKER_02] It was an ongoing and repeated bad decision. He was watching it happen, commenting to us and Angela about how stupid it was. And she was right. Even Devin's himself compared it, uh, to an arrested development scene saying it's the dumbest thing you could do. Never works out. Always gets F, but it could work for us. People, including his closest allies were lining up to vote him out at that moment.

[01:38:26] [SPEAKER_02] And he never found out to the point that he was still talking about the reasons he did it as a positive near the end of the game. When I'm looking at this, I don't care about the fact that he won. It was still an absolutely horrible move that could have ended his game for no reason. Despite what he said, there was no benefit to be found here. We often look at risk versus reward. He saved himself, not through strategy,

[01:38:54] [SPEAKER_02] but by winning the blockbuster, it was a hundred percent risk, zero percent reward. That blockbuster win was not a guaranteed outcome. You can be clutch. You can be good at carnival games, but you don't know what game they're going to put in front of you.

[01:39:08] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. He could have done, it was done some good to get blindsided at least once, you know, just to kind of bring him back to reality. Um, because I think he, he was smelling his own stuff. Everything was going, everything was coming up, Rick, everything was coming up, Rick. So he could play some wild, he could do some wild things that didn't make any sense that he knew didn't make any sense because he had kind of had this like, um, definitely earned sense of just like, I'm, I'm untouchable, you know, like, look, I'm the icon. So that's what we do.

[01:39:37] [SPEAKER_01] These people are kind of letting us, uh, run over them and I'm getting powers to do it. And yeah, I get on the block, whatever. I think he was way too comfortable. Obviously he volunteered to be on the block. Evans volunteered to be on the block, but I don't think anybody else did. I don't think anybody else in this season volunteered to be on the block. Am I wrong? Nope. I think that is the first time smarter than the past two seasons for the past two seasons. We've seen multiple people, multiple times volunteer to be on the block. And every time we're on podcast yelling, like,

[01:40:06] [SPEAKER_01] what are you doing? Um, but here we are. Rick Devins is so comfortable that he actually thinks that volunteering to be on the block was a good idea. I think a blind side early on would have had him on his, on his toes a little bit more. He'd have been more aware of what could happen, but when everything's coming up your way, I think it's hard to, to get you to kind of see, uh, like see clearly what's going on. Um, was that Felix Felicis or something like that? He's just walking around like luck is just poured all over him. He's good. He didn't have to worry about it and it should have come back to bite him.

[01:40:36] [SPEAKER_01] And a lot of people were rooting for it to come back to bite him. Yeah.

[01:40:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now I do want to clarify something here before we move on to drew. There is a difference between making strong moves and big moves. Devins made a lot of strong moves and maybe I should have emphasized that a little bit more in the first rule. When he had power, he wasn't afraid to use it. He didn't worry about getting blood on his hands. We talked about that. But when I said a couple minutes ago that you can make moves without drawing attention to yourself, I mean,

[01:41:07] [SPEAKER_02] doing things that go beyond just being strong to doing things that are unnecessary. Like for example, the volunteering thing or just making a move showier than it needed to be. That's what you don't need to do because you know that it doesn't help anything other than, you know, maybe the TV ratings and there were of course, instances of Devins doing things in a much grander and showy manner when it didn't need to be. And it put a target on him.

[01:41:36] [SPEAKER_02] There's a way to make moves in the game without drawing quite that much attention. Of course, we know that's just, not his personality, which is why you predicted he would play the game this way. And I was right. Thing is, he didn't stay in the game by doing this. He stayed in the game despite doing this. Other abilities took over to cover for this one. Some of those we'll be talking about in later rules. Some was, as you've already said, the ability to win comps at clutch times.

[01:42:05] [SPEAKER_02] So despite the fact that it worked out throughout the season for him, I'm going to anger some listeners by imploring future players. Do not do these sorts of things. Yes, I understand. It often gives exciting TV, but most of the time it's fun to watch because the person making the big move gets booted. And we all laugh about how dumb they were to do it. Not everyone can be Rick Devils.

[01:42:30] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And I'm going to give you the opposite advice. If you're going to do it, go full out. I'm so, I was so annoyed that Rick kept reeling it back in. You know, like I'm going to blindside Kamu. I think me and Kamu are good. I'm going to, like, it's like he was fighting with the urge. He's like, I can play the game really bad, but also I'm here to win. It's like, Rick, please, Rick, please commit, commit, burn it down, burn it down. Put yourself at the bottom of the Alliance. Get blindsided a couple times. That's, that's be messy.

[01:42:59] [SPEAKER_01] If you're going to be messy, be messy. Rick was doing a half measures for me, but we can, we've seen him do bigger. That's all I'm saying. It was kind of like, it was big, but it wasn't big.

[01:43:09] [SPEAKER_02] We've seen him do bigger and he didn't win. No, that's true. That's true. He won. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, there is that tug of war. Like I said, what I said will anger some listeners. Maybe not as many specifically on this podcast is a general thing, because, I mean, this is obviously a strategy focused podcast, but yeah, if I said this on a recap or a live feed or something like that, people would be like, Oh, boom, Bloomberg, you know, it's me because yeah, we understand you want entertainment.

[01:43:40] [SPEAKER_02] We want entertainment too. But if you're looking at it from the perspective of the person doing it, they should not because then the entertainment is us making fun of them.

[01:43:51] [SPEAKER_01] Yep. Jason fell victim to it. And Rick couldn't feel different. A victim to it had not been for other circumstances.

[01:43:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. All right. Then there's drew who also managed to make it to the finale, despite the way he exemplified plotting and scheming too much. We talked in the first rule and will again, in the third about how he played the middle. Of course, the funny part was the icons, like I said, agreed. He should do that. Which meant he was blamed for over scheming even more than he actually did it. He,

[01:44:22] [SPEAKER_02] he just had this particular manner to the way he behaved that people always thought he was up for something. You could even see it in his official cast photo that was on the memory wall. Like this was a schemer. This was a guy that was something going on up there, even if the picture wasn't moving, you know, and it often led to more blame coming his way. Like early in the game, when he told Devin's and Barrett about some discussions he had,

[01:44:49] [SPEAKER_02] but he didn't specifically reveal the four seasons Alliance. And frankly, I don't even remember the four seasons. I don't know what that is. It was, it was in my notes, but they were worried that he wasn't really sharing everything with them. This continued throughout the summer. As we even saw people blame drew when drew had nothing to do with it. Like when Barrett flipped, the icons were like that drew. He, he knew he convinced Barrett to do it. This is all drew's fault.

[01:45:18] [SPEAKER_02] And this thing happened over and over again.

[01:45:22] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it definitely, uh, the way he carries himself for sure. And the way he talks to people, not like he like talks, you know, down to people, but I think he, he, he has a sense of like certainty in the way he moves around the house that if you were in danger or you thought, you know, I could be in danger. You would probably be a little bit more, um, like tight lipped a little bit. Uh, he would often joke about, you know, what if I just put you on the block, you know, stuff like that. And people were like, what, why are you saying that? You know? Uh,

[01:45:50] [SPEAKER_01] and so he would do that throughout the game. And I think people start to say, well, he's so comfortable and he can just be in any room talking to everybody. He's gotta be up to something. He's gotta be up to something. You know, there's no reason why he should be this comfortable. Even when they were putting him on the block, they're like, do we have the votes to get him out? I mean, cause he's walking around, like everything's fine. Everybody will check out, you know, check our notes a little bit to make sure we're going to get them. Um, because he just gave the air that he knew what he was doing, even though he definitely did not at certain points. Um, you know, uh,

[01:46:20] [SPEAKER_01] I think that Barrett kind of had the opposite of this, I think, but, but I'll go back to what I was saying about Drew. Uh, I mean about Devin's, um, he said a blind side can really help you because you have to know the old things that I think are, I believe are not true. I need to be able to see it. Somebody needs to pull back the curtain a little bit so I can see what the true, true North is. And that I can navigate better for him. It took so long for them to actually betray him. Even when they put them on the block, he was like, they haven't betrayed me yet. So why would I think that they're lying to me now? It's like, no, you're so close.

[01:46:50] [SPEAKER_01] You're so close. But he, he could not see a world where that was possible. And I think that that, that certainty really made people feel like, well, there must be something else going on here.

[01:47:01] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Now the thing is with him, almost everyone on all sides of the house believed that drew was a snake. Only most of them were right. Because as we discussed, he really was loyal to the icons, but they suspected him probably more than anyone else, especially paranoid Angela. However, his FAP allies were absolutely right that he kept doing things that impacted their games negatively, even as he was suspected by the icons of doing the opposite, because he spent so much time with his little group.

[01:47:29] [SPEAKER_02] I think I talked about it back in July. And then you mentioned it earlier. It's often something I talk about in survivor. You have to figure that anytime you spend that much time talking to people, others are going to assume it's about strategy, no matter what it's actually about. Aubrey even talked about it in an RHAP interview, how there are so many more conversations in big brother than in survivor.

[01:47:57] [SPEAKER_02] And it's hard for some people to wrap their heads around the idea that he wanted to hang out with one group, but work strategically with another. This goes back to what Devin said in that interview with Taryn, where he said, we would talk to him and then he'd be back there whispering. Well, he was whispering. He wasn't telling them your secrets. He was whispering sweet nothings to melody or talking about God knows what with some of the others. It was not that he was telling on you.

[01:48:26] [SPEAKER_02] It was just perceived that way. And he did not recognize how it was being looked at.

[01:48:32] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And they're projecting too, because they would do that. They would be, they would be doing that. If it was them, they would be doing exactly what they thought he was doing. So they're saying, well, if I would do that, he's definitely doing that. Right. In survivor, if you go on a journey, it doesn't matter if you come back with something or not. People are automatically going to assume that you came back with something because they'd rather be safe than sorry. Okay. Well, you know, got to watch that person. You might come back with nothing, but we don't care. Cause in our minds, you left, you, you left my eyesight. You can have anything. With Drew, it was the same thing. Yeah.

[01:49:01] [SPEAKER_01] You say you're in there talking and it's not strategic, but what are the odds that you sat there the entire time and didn't have a strategic conversation? You mean to tell me FAP didn't have any strategic ideas that they wanted to run past you regarding us? We are the biggest threats in the house. And no, you did nothing. Nothing came up. So I don't believe it. I don't believe that nobody's talking about us. And so, and he was giving back good information when they were talking about him. But again, with him having so much ammo on them,

[01:49:26] [SPEAKER_01] they couldn't just trust him to walk around the house with so much ammunition and so much to, to use to bury them. And he was able to do that the entire game and they just couldn't live with it. Yeah.

[01:49:37] [SPEAKER_02] Now, of course, the real key person when it came to the separation of strategy and friendship, friendship, was Melody. In the September 16 TV episode, Drew said, I'm tired of my name being attached to Melody's. But if he didn't want his name attached to hers, maybe he shouldn't have been so almost literally attached to her.

[01:50:04] [SPEAKER_02] Being an obvious duo can catch up to you as it eventually did here. Now, Drew wasn't the one who paid the price because he won the veto, but he lost a key ally in Melody.

[01:50:14] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. And then if this is, if this is your final two or somebody you expect to beat, which I think Drew probably should have been really considering Melody as a in-game option a lot earlier. I think once he got to the dream phase and he's looking around, D has Devens and Yasha has Taylor and he's like, ah, Barrett's on the block. And, you know, he's like, I got to go somewhere. And I think that really solidified him and Melody a lot more. Cause I think Melody probably was more pro pipe queen first. And maybe even at times pro Barrett.

[01:50:44] [SPEAKER_01] But by the end, she's all he got. And he had done, like you said, if he wins that veto, he saves himself. But there was a good chance that someone could get in Melody's head and be like, Drew's still lying to you. You know, Drew is like, he had betrayed her so many times for this to be his friend and ally that you start to question, should she even be considering going with him? Like I said, last time, I think I was like hindsight being at what it is. You could look back and say, well,

[01:51:10] [SPEAKER_01] maybe Melody should have just targeted Drew because then she wouldn't end up immediately end up in the block next to him as a, as a pair, right? Let them go. I mean, sure. He would take you to the end, but you're probably going to lose to him. And maybe, maybe you could beat him, but your odds of getting to the end are a lot worse with him in the house. And so, yeah, of course, she was thinking along those lines, right? Let me target my number one right now. So nobody will talk to me later, but he wasn't a great ally. So not at least not for fab.

[01:51:38] [SPEAKER_02] No, no. All right. We can move on to rule three. See, I told you they'd be shorter rules now. Yeah. And it talks about the need to be flexible. Now, Devin's frequently talked about the need to pivot in the game, but some people questioned if he really did it that much, because, you know, like the examples he used in response to a jury question about it, he seemed to basically say he pivoted back to his original alliance. What do you think about how he did here? I agree.

[01:52:08] [SPEAKER_01] I think there was a lot of waffling every week. Him and D they get together, Angela. Hey, what if we do this? What if we do this? What if we do this? What if we do that? But it never, it never became, you know, I'm not going to work with Angela and D anymore. I'm about to go find different inroads. I'll let them get targeted right now. His, his strategy from day one was grab those three and we're going to, we're going to bring in other alliances and we're going to kind of float between them as we move through the game, winning power whenever we need it. Right. And that's what he did.

[01:52:37] [SPEAKER_01] It was a strong strategy and it worked. And I think if anything, his flexibility might've been to his detriment sometimes, you know, where he's letting people convince him to do things that he probably shouldn't be doing or acting in ways that he shouldn't be acting. So yeah, I wouldn't say that he was like inflexible, but I wouldn't say flexibility is one of his strengths.

[01:52:58] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, we discussed the multiple alliances Devin's had in the first rule. So we don't need to rehash all of that. Now I do think he gave himself multiple different options. Exactly. But he kept going back, you know, it was like, well, I could have this ice cream Sunday or I could have this apple. I'm going to go with the ice cream Sunday. Every time. Yeah. And, but those were also the most trustworthy group. No, I said it earlier,

[01:53:28] [SPEAKER_02] give me two other icons to work with instead of multiple randos any day. But then he used those randos to his advantage, such as appearing to make an alliance with Yash and Kamu, the Bermuda triangle, which did keep him off the block. When Yash put D and Angela on it, this was Yash's mistake that we talked about earlier. He and D appeared to flip to Yash and Taylor later after Barrett went after them. And those two saved D and so on.

[01:53:57] [SPEAKER_02] He kept coming back to the OGs, but he used other relationships along the way.

[01:54:30] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. They're constrained in her ability to be flexible. I feel like she wanted to be. She tried. The problem was in finding someone to be flexible with, as we talked about in the first rule, you know, she was often shut down by others. So what did you think of her here?

[01:54:48] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I think the attempt to be flexible was there. Even like when she would go and pitch these alliances and people weren't feeling them, she still tried to pitch them. You know, it wasn't like she's like, well, I give up now. Don't, you know, talked about how she got dejected a few times where she was like, I don't know if I'm a campaign, but for the most part, you know, she was trying things. Now the inflexibility probably comes at like, all right, the tethers thing is not going to happen. It's not a thing. You know, like she was like, this is the alliance. This is what we're going with. And then when they betrayed the tethers, she's like, what about the tethers?

[01:55:18] [SPEAKER_01] Like, Hey, it's not a thing. But, you know, she goes from working almost like exclusively with Lala to she gets Yash involved at one point. And then they bring in Kamu at some point, you know, they, she had motion. And at one point, but like you said, she kind of gets iced out at others. Once Yash's ability to win comps is neutralized and Lala is gone.

[01:55:44] [SPEAKER_01] She's really in a corner and she's just waiting on people to pick off these bigger threats and hoping that it doesn't land on her because she, she doesn't have the ability to win a challenge to where she can ensure her safety until she did. When she did it, we saw where exactly what she was planning to do all along. So, so yeah, she tried to be flexible, but I think in practice, it wasn't as productive as she would have liked. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:08] [SPEAKER_02] So now we have drew. He came into the game saying he didn't have or want to preset strategy because it depended on who was there with him and he wanted to stay flexible. At the time, I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit because it seemed like he was just trying to avoid the question or didn't really know. And in some ways, I think he, that, you know, he probably was doing that because it's clearly been his lifelong dream to play the middle in big brother. So why didn't he say it? I don't know. He just, he was avoiding it.

[01:56:38] [SPEAKER_02] He was not only doing it for strategic reason. He was truly having a blast, but fun or not, how do you think he did?

[01:56:49] [SPEAKER_01] Um, I mean, he's a vet pet from beginning to end, you know, um, that is his story. Uh, I mean, if you try to narrow his game down to a few sentences and I know you will at the end of this, um, I mean, so much of it is, and I kept coming back to Devin's and I, and I made sure I was loyal to the icons and it's okay to have a sound strategy. And he's like, it's like you said with Devin's, you have an ice cream sundae. Why would I deviate from that? If I have an ice cream sundae, you didn't have quite an ice cream sundae. It was like,

[01:57:17] [SPEAKER_01] he was eating the crumbs of somebody else's leftover, uh, uh, dessert. And he's like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. But had he pivoted earlier, had he made a move that was in his own best interest and not in the icons interest, maybe he's sitting here, uh, $750,000 richer. So I definitely think he could have been more flexible.

[01:57:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. He, he said in the recap episode, there's a strategy since the beginning was to not pick one side. He made friends with the icons and the newbies. He was in the crossovers and fap. He collected information from every side. He wanted to make sure that no matter who was in power, he had a connection. I do think that was generally true. True. But like you said, he always reverted to the vets. Even when he said we saw him on live feed saying my, I've made my choice. I'm going with fat.

[01:58:06] [SPEAKER_02] And then a few weeks later, I've made my choice. I'm going with crossovers. You know,

[01:58:12] [SPEAKER_01] that's why I don't think he would have cut devins.

[01:58:15] [SPEAKER_02] I know.

[01:58:16] [SPEAKER_01] I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't see it, David. I can't.

[01:58:21] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, the fourth rule says players should not let their emotions control them. Now, it seems like almost a silly question to ask after the way the season ended, but how do you think devins did in this rule? Woo.

[01:58:33] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, he was wrapped up in some emotion. Okay. Like, don't get me wrong. He made the move. He made the correct move at the time. He got drew out, but man, it was like, he had to take old yellow out to pasture. You know, it was like, Oh God, you know, it was a gruesome moment, but he was able to use that. Now there are definitely times again, where the questions had come arising in his head. And those were due to emotion, right? Like, okay, I'm so connected to drew that whole week. He's like, nah, I'm going with drew.

[01:59:03] [SPEAKER_01] That's an emotional decision. He's like, I can be true and still keep this relationship with drew and never have to betray him. Those are emotional thoughts. When you, if you're thinking purely logically, you're saying I need to go where the numbers are. And the numbers will be in my favor. If drew is on the jury, and you know, like, so it's like the pool of emotions was working on Devin's throughout. He formed such a close alliance with drew to where, you know, father, son, we've said a million times. But that said,

[01:59:30] [SPEAKER_01] he was able to still cut drew when it mattered the most. And so for that, I have to give him a lot of credit.

[01:59:35] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. He, he had a huge decision to make for literally all the marbles and he cut the person he was closest to in the game to ensure he won. He told Mike bloom, I just tried to take all the emotion out. I let emotion get the best of me on season 38 of survivor. When I gave half an idol back to Chris Underwood and Chris Underwood's a good friend, but we don't talk. He's not the best friend in the world. We're good friends. We love hanging out. And I think we'd be that anyway, but I regret every day,

[02:00:04] [SPEAKER_02] giving him that half idol back because I would have won a million dollars. So I'm going, this is that situation all over again. I don't want to hurt drew, but we all signed up for the same game. My family is my closest Alliance. I have to do what I can to bring the money home to them. I think that's the perfect answer and the perfect way to think about it. And I can only imagine that he's been torturing himself for all these years about that decision that he made. And you know,

[02:00:33] [SPEAKER_02] but here he got close to drew, but he's known drew for what? Three months. We often see players, a big brother or survivor seemingly forget their real lives in favor of those they're playing with. You think that drew would have done that. I mean, that's basically what you're saying that he would have valued this, this over his own home relationships, but especially with his previous experience,

[02:01:02] [SPEAKER_02] devons was not going to let that happen.

[02:01:04] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. But that's that inherent advantage to being a vet. Right. He has lost. He has experienced that loss before. So that's in the back of his mind the whole time. He's like, ah, I might have to cut D because he thought D was going to be the Chris Underwood. Then it was, Oh, Devin's going to have to cut drew. He's the new Chris Underwood. But that thought is always in the back of his head because he still carries those scars from when he played survivor. Um, D on the other hand, don't have survivor scars. She got survivor 51,

[02:01:34] [SPEAKER_01] 50 scars or whatever, but they might the same. She already won her money. Right. She goes into that game with a huge massive target on her back. No one's going to let her win another million dollars. It's fine, but she's coming in. She's used to being in charge. These used to running games. And so that's what she comes in and does again. Um, so Devin's yeah, he put, he was putting a spot where he had to put his emotions to the side and I have to come in and for it. Yeah.

[02:01:54] [SPEAKER_02] I think his final decision was like icing on the cake or cherry on top of the ice cream sundae. Since we use that already, that's what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I, he did an excellent job in this rule generally throughout the season, uh, way back. Well, I guess it's not that long ago. Uh, a few weeks ago in the September 17th episode, seems like long ago. He said, I can separate personal from game. I can target Barrett and still like him. And that was a key. He kept telling people we'll be friends after the game, but in the game,

[02:02:23] [SPEAKER_02] he did what he needed to do. He even admitted it to Barrett later saying on the live feeds, you did not ruin any personal relationships. Everybody loves you. We made it more uncomfortable on purpose. Okay. This is why Lala told Mike Bloom earlier in her exit interview, the Devins was quote scary because he will separate personal and game and not blink. But could he,

[02:02:49] [SPEAKER_01] what do you, what do you, he said that about D what do you think now? Cause we already did the exercise with drew, but we saw him teary eyed and all. He took him out. Would he have been able to do it with D who had a lot, I mean a deeper, stronger connection with that was even last prior to the game. I'm going to say yes.

[02:03:10] [SPEAKER_02] Because, because D was more of a threat. Drew, he could argue drew. I'm going to be drew at the end. Okay. Taylor got into his head and said, but are you, are you sure? What percentage chance are you willing to risk? D had threat written all over him. Her. So that would make it easier for him to do it because there's no way he could convince himself. Oh, she'll be easy to beat at the end.

[02:03:37] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I mean, based on what we saw with him do with drew, I have to lean in his favor on that one. But you know, like you said, both of them, depending on what day you asked him would say, Oh no, I could never have cut him. I can never cut her, but I would like to see it. Did he say that? I don't know. I mean, I don't think he said that after the game, but I think in the game for sure, he was talking about not cutting D for a little bit and then it's shifted. I got to cut. Yeah.

[02:03:59] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Final four or three. Right.

[02:04:01] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. It shifts. It definitely shifts, but I just, I would love to see, I like more outcomes where you can see, you know, if they gun to your head, make a decision, right? Not so much like, if it comes to it, it might not ever come to us. I don't really have to explore it. But he did it with drew. So he might be doing it. Anybody. Yeah.

[02:04:20] [SPEAKER_02] You know, looking back on the season, Devin's told Mike bloom, I've been so closed off emotionally this whole season. Honestly, I'm going to watch a sad dog commercial and just break down at some point. I have not let emotions come into my game very much, but I was so scared that my story is going to be Sisyphus. I'm going to be the guy who comes up short every time, but this time he got that boulder to stick at the top of the mountain.

[02:04:42] [SPEAKER_01] He would have been so sad. Had he gone to the end with drew and did happen all over again. You know, like you think the first scars were bad, dear God, you know, it just would be, this would be your identity at that point. So he's able to rewrite the narrative. Yeah.

[02:04:55] [SPEAKER_02] The therapy bills would have eaten up the $75,000.

[02:04:59] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, easily. Yeah. Yeah. He would have to hit Mr. Beast up or James Gunn.

[02:05:05] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Moving to Taylor. How do you think she did here in terms of not letting her emotions control her?

[02:05:12] [SPEAKER_01] I think Taylor did fairly well. I think there were definitely moments that we talked about earlier where, you know, she's hitting some walls and it's not easy. Right. And so she retreats. But I think that the fact that she was able to retreat and still be tapped in on what was going on in the game is very important. I think that she also felt very oppressed by so many different things in the house, whether it was the way people were talking about her, talking to her, you know, her and Lala constantly cleaning because they didn't want to live in filth, but realizing that now I'm cleaning and like almost being servants to these

[02:05:41] [SPEAKER_01] people who don't mind living in filth, or at least waiting until we do it. I think that all those things could weigh on you emotionally. That can make you snap and make you just start going off on people. You start acting like Angela, you know, but she did it. You know, there was a lot of times where she didn't. Now definitely she got her a fair share of blowups as well. You know, we saw her at the table, you know, when drew was throwing them under the bus, but even on the last week, all odds are against her. Everything is saying that Devin's going to take drew to the end.

[02:06:09] [SPEAKER_01] She was able to lock in when it mattered the most and say, I'm going to get myself to this into that second place spot. And she was able to do it.

[02:06:15] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. I would say of the final three emotions affected her the most. That's not to say it hurt her game. Right. Well, there was obviously an emotional element in her wanting to help Lala and keep her around, but I understand it completely. And I think in many ways it helped her because she didn't really have many other allies as we discussed. And you mentioned, she did get emotional at times, you know, but like that blow up, it was,

[02:06:45] [SPEAKER_02] it happened after people said that she and Lala were going to blow up and they kept poking at them until they did. You know what? She lasted a lot longer in that situation than I would have. Yeah. Okay. It is a normal human reaction. If people are going to keep doing it to you. And even when things like that happened, I don't think it affected her overall game in part. You know, unfortunately because she was already seen as being on the bottom due to the reasons we've discussed. And in part,

[02:07:15] [SPEAKER_02] because however emotional she got, she didn't make her decisions based on those. She made the best choices for herself moving forward. You know, when she had the options to do so.

[02:07:26] [SPEAKER_01] Even the idea that she would target Lala, there was moments where her and Yash were talking about, do we need to cut Lala loose? She's kind of a loose cannon and she's doing weird stuff. That's a, that's a logical game decision that you're trying to make, right? That's literally saying I might be emotionally attached to Lala, but if she's bad for my game, she can go. And it's good to see people thinking along those lines. So I agree. She definitely had emotional moments, but she wasn't, her drink, her game wasn't driven by emotions.

[02:07:49] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. As for drew, he found himself in several emotional situations this season. He had his friend, melody. He had his dad, Devin. He had his big sister. D it was a whole damn family, but I do think he handled most of that pretty well. The thing was, he was never put in a position where he had to really make a decision between

[02:08:16] [SPEAKER_02] keeping someone that he was emotionally tied to versus someone. He wasn't at final four. Of course, he had to choose between D and Devin's. According to him, he made the choice based on factors. We've already discussed mostly because Devin's promised to throw part one of the HOH comp and take him to final two, but we can't see inside Drew's head. Human beings are complicated. It's not always exactly one thing or another. Did his emotions make him want to keep Devin's?

[02:08:45] [SPEAKER_02] And then he consciously or unconsciously looked for reasons to do, do so. Maybe we will truly never know, especially if it was an unconscious situation. All we can really say is, well, that's about all we can say for this particular situation.

[02:09:03] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Cause I think his strategy was aligned with his emotional interest as well. You know, it was, Hey, I want to work with the icons. Oh, also the icon is my dad. So here we are, you know? And so at, at some point you can't tell where, uh, the snake ends and begins. Uh, now with melody, you can even say he had control his emotions with that. Cause melody is making emotional pleas at him all the time. Right? Like you can't treat me like this. We're like, we're, I'm trying to get close to you and you, and you, and I feel like I can't trust you. And she's really harping on like his emotional side.

[02:09:32] [SPEAKER_01] Cause she tried logic and it wasn't working. And so she's like, she's trying to guilt him. She's begging him, please put me on the, please use the, uh, the veto on me. Is there any world where you would use the veto on me? I respect the mood trying, but he was able to say, I like you, but I'm going this way, you know? And is that because I'm more emotionally connected to Devin's or is it because like, that's my logical strategy that I've already identified and that's what I'm sticking to. So yeah, I don't have any reason to believe that emotions drove his, uh, game because I don't think we can separate the two.

[02:10:01] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Yeah. There were some other situations related to Devin's and D earlier in the game where his emotions, I think did likely play a role. Uh, and you just mentioned it. That was the overall attachment to the icons. And yes, it was part of his game plan. Like you just said. And he even said in the recap episode that his loyalty to the icons was a strategic one because they had a three person alliance. And if he proved, he'd always do what they say it would be in their best interest to keep him.

[02:10:30] [SPEAKER_02] But there's a big, but there was more to it than that. I think a young super fan of reality TV like him was overwhelmed by the idea that he was playing with and aligned with the icons to the point that he simply could not see what was actually happening when they would get paranoid and start treating him differently. He believed they trusted him enough to be their spy. He had no idea. They all had thought he turned double agent at various times.

[02:10:59] [SPEAKER_02] He was blinded by their stardom and his own excitement.

[02:11:03] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And I guess, that admiration is enough to get them on your side. Uh, and the, and it worked, but you know, would he have gone a different route if he didn't know them? Right. If they came in and drew wasn't a fan of their other games and say, okay, the icons are here. I don't know them, but I do know that they're brought, they're brought here for a reason. They're probably going to get some powers. Do I still align with them? Right. At that point I can say, okay, well he don't even know them. So maybe that's not an emotional decision, right?

[02:11:32] [SPEAKER_01] But because he did know them again, you can't really separate the two. It's like, Oh my God, the icons are here and it benefits me to work with them. Thus I will continue to work with them moving on. And then, like you said, it was just some blind trust after that.

[02:11:45] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Like what if Jason had come in as another icon, but still didn't connect with the first three? Like then we could have said, okay, here's another icon, but drew doesn't know him. Right. So, you know, how does that play into everything? We unfortunately never know. Cause nobody found out he was an icon until after the votes were cast. Yeah. Now the fifth rule says players need to pretend to be nice. And play the social game. I mentioned in rule two,

[02:12:15] [SPEAKER_02] that Devin's didn't win because of his big moves, but rather somewhat in spite of them. And then other aspects of his gameplay helped him overcome those. The social game was definitely a key part of that. We talked earlier about his strategic relationships with almost everyone, but he also formed social bonds with them as well. Mallory told Taryn in her exit interview, Devin's has a way of making everyone feel like they have a special connection with him. Like some type of working relationship. Yash told Mike Bloom,

[02:12:45] [SPEAKER_02] socially, he is a magician. Haley told Dalton Ross, his social game is immaculate. He is in with almost everybody. He has a personal connection with everybody. Taylor said on the live feeds a couple of weeks ago, that Devin's was the nicest person in the house to her. And so on. These bonds allowed him to be that great big personality. He wanted to be without getting some of the repercussions that we often see when others try to do things like that. Like I said,

[02:13:15] [SPEAKER_02] not everybody can be Rick Devin's.

[02:13:17] [SPEAKER_01] No, it's tough. He's a, he's one of the shiny people as Shannon calls them. And there were people that he didn't, he wasn't very fond of in the game that he still had good relationships with despite not really loving them. You know, like we talked about this before in the past, but Chagmu was in an alliance with these people and they were actively like, I don't even think they're pleasant. You know? And so, but again, he had to, you know, keep up appearances when it was time. By the end of the game, he was sick of Taylor's shit, you know, and he was, you know, actively telling Drew, like, I'm sick of her.

[02:13:45] [SPEAKER_01] But when she was around, he wasn't really like Taylor, I'll never take you to the end, you know, like putting a target on his back. He knew when to, to pretend. And you, you can be nice and play the social game, but it's a lot harder to do that. When you do, when you dislike somebody, you got to pretend. And that's the part people forget, right? Like, they're like, I'm so real. I can't be fake. I can never be fake. You don't want to win this game. At some point you need to at least let people think that you respect them. If you don't like them.

[02:14:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And of course we do have to talk about one particular relationship he had because of all the work Devens did with Drew and how it paid off in a big way. He was closer to Drew than any of the other icons were. Drew trusted him more than probably anyone in the house, including Melody. And just a few minutes ago, we discussed how it's certainly possible that this connection impacted on Drew's decision to bring him to final three. Yeah.

[02:14:41] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, that's the thing. There were times where he didn't trust Drew, but he never let him go. You know, like, like you talked about earlier, he's a weasel to D. He's a snake to Angela, but that's my son. You know what I'm saying? When it's Devens, that's, that's a different relationship. He's like, yeah, I could easily throw him to the wind and say, nah, you're not like, I don't trust you. You know, son of mine, you know, but that's not what he did because at the end of the day, he's still banking on. But if I'm at the final two with him, I don't want him to be able to look at me and cut me.

[02:15:11] [SPEAKER_01] I don't want him to be able to separate emotions. I want him to make a logical decision, a capricious decision, if some would say. Right. And so, yeah, that's what he was trying to put himself in a position of doing. And it really leaned on everything that he was doing with Drew. Drew was able to advocate for him around the house when Devens wasn't in the room. They knew not to say things about Drew. Not it's hard to target Devens with Drew in the room too, because you think, okay, Drew's probably going to run it back to him. You know,

[02:15:38] [SPEAKER_01] he kind of built a line of defense by using his personal relationship with Drew. And so I thought that was one of his better, you know, tactics in the game.

[02:15:45] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. So moving on to Taylor, how do you think she did here? Huh?

[02:15:54] [SPEAKER_01] So Taylor had a lot of reason to not be nice. Like, yeah, a lot of reason to not be nice. And I think for the most part, she was able to be pleasant with everybody. I don't think we heard her say too many crosswords about people throughout the game, at least not to other people where they could get it back to them. You know, she's had some slick stuff, but they all talk trash. But for the most part, it wasn't like, oh, I think Taylor's coming for me. She hates me. All this other stuff. It was, most of that stuff was aimed at her as opposed to her aiming at other people. You know,

[02:16:23] [SPEAKER_01] even when she's in the final three with a guy and his son, you know, she's like, all right, well, I still got to interact with these people to some extent. She hides in her pod a lot when she can't pretend. But I think she tried. She gave it a value and effort. Right about there. Yeah. Yeah. That's our safe space. But you know, by the end, I don't think people were saying, oh, you can be Taylor because we all hate her. They were saying, you can be Taylor because she hasn't made the moves that y'all made. Yes,

[02:16:48] [SPEAKER_02] exactly. Now, Taylor talked in her interview with Rob and Taryn about being reserved. And indeed we'd heard her say things like that before with the reason being that the way she was rebuffed so many times in the game, it's, it's hard to be outgoing when people don't want to be outgoing with you. But we also heard her say previously that there were some other reasons on August 20 live feeds after the eviction had taken place. Lala talked to her about not being nice to a holes. And, and,

[02:17:18] [SPEAKER_02] and, and Taylor said, I stay silent. I can't be fake. I just shut down all the time. And then a few days later, she told Lala also on live feeds. That's why I withdraw because I hate talking to dumb people. What's the point of talking? They're not listening. They're not understanding. So that was also part of why she was reserved. I don't think it quite meets what my intent is and telling people to pretend to be nice.

[02:17:45] [SPEAKER_02] But it did stop her from being not nice, which is certainly a positive. Yeah. Better thing in these games than to tell people what you really think. If what you really think is there a dumb a hole.

[02:17:58] [SPEAKER_01] But if she had pretended to be nice a little bit more, maybe people would have been more willing to work with her. You know, like you said, it's huge rebuffed a couple of times. And so she retreated. That sounds like a logical thing to do, but this is a game for $750,000. You know, you retreat it, but get back out there, give it another try. Try to work it on people. Try being nicer. You, you thought you were nice, be nicer, go above and beyond, you know, really lay it on thick. Now, you know, I get that. You're like, I can't be fake, but again, being fake could have been the difference between you getting first and second place.

[02:18:28] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Now I feel like drew was in an interesting spot with this rule because on the one hand, I think he tends to be a fun guy, but on the other hand, I'm not sure spending 24 seven with him. Well, I am sure spending 24 seven with him could turn quite annoying. So how do you think he did here?

[02:18:48] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I just try not to spend a lot of time with people in their early twenties. You know, I'm just, okay. Okay. Got it in me. You know, like it's just, that's a different breed of person. That's a different, you know, they got, they got unbridled energy and they, they like making loud noises.

[02:19:01] [SPEAKER_02] Even my own kids aren't in their early twenties anymore. So yeah.

[02:19:03] [SPEAKER_01] He's like, yeah, they make, they make too much noise. They, they move too much for me. I just, I be still. And drew is everywhere. He's everywhere. He's like, uh, you know, seasonal depression. He's all around us. And he's just going around from person to person and just being, you know, a ball of positive energy, but there was definitely times where he was being negative behind their backs. The point is, you're not supposed to be a negative in front of them. Right. Uh, there were times where he did it purposely for, like when he was throwing Lala and Taylor under the bus and they were kind of yelling at each other, uh, in that moment.

[02:19:33] [SPEAKER_01] Um, but for the most part, you know, drew can stand there with Yash and convince Yash that, Oh yeah, he's being honest about not targeting you. Despite that. Yash has been trying to throw in Drew's names out for weeks. And that it's clear that they're targeting each other. He was able to play nice. He was able to fake it. Uh, and so I, yeah, I got to give him credit for that too. Um, there are some people that he didn't put in a lot of effort with, if it be at Lala, be a Taylor. Um, but for Barrett, for melody, uh, for the three icons, basically the jury,

[02:20:03] [SPEAKER_01] he didn't even have to pretend to be nice. They all liked him.

[02:20:05] [SPEAKER_02] Those were his friends. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does seem like he had some haters in the house, but I think that was something of an overlap of his player personality with his human personality. If that makes sense. For example, Mallory told Mike bloom, drew is one of the most disliked people in the house. Melody is furious at him. Barrett's furious at him. Yash Taylor. Lala. I think he's the biggest liar and want him out. Haley doesn't even really like him. So he's only kind of left with the icons and he's at the bottom there. Now,

[02:20:34] [SPEAKER_02] when she started by saying he was the most disliked, it sounded like it was a social game problem. But when we look at the reason, it all goes back to rule two issues. When it comes to him, I think it's hard to separate them. Even if you meet someone in real life and you say, well, they're a snake, you're probably not going to follow it up by saying, but he's also a cool guy. And I like to hang out with him. I had a coworker who was like that once. She and I would talk about some of the jerks we worked with,

[02:21:02] [SPEAKER_02] including some who were stabbing her in the back, in the office as if it was big brother. But then she had a dinner party and she invited everyone in her unit, including the backstabbing jerks. And I was like, why would, why would you do that? And she was like, well, they're jerks at work, but this is social. I never got it. Even today, it's probably 25 years later. I still don't get it when it comes to real life in a game though,

[02:21:31] [SPEAKER_02] people should be able to separate the two, but often can't. And I think that was the situation when it came to how some viewed drew. Of course that didn't apply to everyone because we had like D who in one breath called him a weasel. And another said, she loved him melody who would get mad at him and read him out about lying and playing in her face. And then a little while later be staring into his eyes.

[02:21:59] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. She loves being in his face sometimes, you know, um, it's just, this is drew. This is him. This is him, the player, right? Like you love him, but you hate him at the same time. It's, uh, you hate the way he moves around the house, the things that he's doing, his tactics, his way he, uh, the way he presents himself when he's doing strategy. And when he's being social with people, it's like, it makes you nervous. And so you go and talk trash about him. But then the moment he's in your face, you talk to me like, oh man, this is his kid. You know, like, uh, I can't, you know, I can't turn my back on this kid. He's good. Now when he leaves the room and you see him talking to other people, you're like,

[02:22:29] [SPEAKER_01] wait a minute. I don't think it's good. You know, but when he's in your presence, he's able to win you over. Um, yeah, I think, and I think that the, his biggest haters weren't in the jury, you know, so had he got to the end, we were all thinking that drew had a really good chance of winning. Not, maybe not against Devens, but against Taylor, you know, we're looking at the votes and we're saying, yeah, Lala doesn't love drew, but the icons do there. You know, it's despite them being some of his biggest ops throughout the game, they put them on the block. They're still going to vote for him. If he makes it to the final two against Taylor, um,

[02:22:58] [SPEAKER_01] Yash maybe won't, but you don't need Yash vote. He needs the icons and he needs melody. And for those people or buried, and he had good relationship with all of them. The jury was stacked in his favor. Um, now there are probably people that wouldn't have voted for drew that you could have made the jury Haley, probably, you know, somebody you could have probably said, okay, that's probably a vote for Taylor. Maybe. Um, but you know, drew, I don't know if, I don't know. I said, maybe, maybe. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. Well, these people, without a shadow of a doubt, you're going to get the three icons and,

[02:23:27] [SPEAKER_01] and melody. I think I was, I was thinking that maybe melody would jump ship, but now the more I look at, I'm like, I don't think she had it in her. Yeah.

[02:23:34] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I agree. All right. Well, the sixth rule says to not to be too much of a threat. And when we start with Devens, he was obviously a huge one, the biggest in the game. Probably. I know. I, I know a lot of people talked about D is the biggest in the game. I think he was, or at least should have been viewed that way. Now we of course talked about how people just didn't come after him, even when they should have some of it was other aspects of the game. As we discussed being aligned with other big players,

[02:24:03] [SPEAKER_02] being friendly with everyone and so on. Part of it was as Yash told Mike Bloom, somehow people don't view him as a threat. He is competitive. He is great at competitions, even though you would not expect that judging the book by its cover. Devens, of course, came in as an icon of that, a sort of returning player, even though he was from another show, a man with a reputation. The problem was that he was obviously safe. The first week due to one of the icons automatically getting HOH.

[02:24:32] [SPEAKER_02] He won HOH himself the second week, and then his allies won the next couple of weeks. Yash left Devens off the block, even though he was targeting the icons, which led to Devens saving D with the diamond power of veto. He wasn't in any danger until like he foolishly volunteered during Drew's HOH, as we discussed in the second rule. And then he won the blockbuster both that week and the next when Barrett nominated all the icons. So even as a threat,

[02:25:01] [SPEAKER_02] he escaped being targeted in the different ways that we have already covered.

[02:25:06] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And I, and I know why people thought D was the bigger threat. It's because she comes in with the, the winner title as well. Right. Like you said, Devens, okay, he lost survivor a couple of times, you know, but you got to be worried about D because she won the first time she played. Now D did an amazing job of downplaying her threat level, but Devens downplayed his as well. You know, they, they weren't looking at him as the primary that they, if anything, very early on, we're like, if D sits next to Devens, D is probably going to go. Devens has the backing of the people. But again, those are the reasons why,

[02:25:35] [SPEAKER_01] why he's so much more threatening, right? It was because you, the idea that you would vote D out over him makes him more attractive to vote out. And, you know, so for him, he did a really good job of managing his threat level until he couldn't anymore. Once it got to the point where he had to use the diamond power of veto. Oh, it's a wrap. At that point, he needs to take a, like a stranglehold over the game. And it starts with winning challenges and, you know, being able to save himself. He did the foolish, foolish thing of putting himself on the block when he didn't have to.

[02:26:03] [SPEAKER_01] But even then winning another blockbuster makes him a little bit more intimidating as a player. It's like, Oh, why would I put up Devens? He's probably going to win again. Maybe I need to back door or something, you know? So yeah, yeah. His threat level was through the roof, but he didn't come in with the highest level threat. It's like his game kind of dictated that at some point it was going to get there.

[02:26:22] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, as I said, more people talked about going after him at the end of August when he volunteered for the block and they were thinking, huh, it is quite the opportunity to get rid of the guy who was best placed with good relationships to drew. And they thought at the time Barrett, but boiled by the blockbuster, which really only added to his threat level. Like you were saying, Barrett said in the September 10th TV episode, the Devins was more threatening as the game went on,

[02:26:50] [SPEAKER_02] but no matter how threatening he got, he still stuck around. And then we got to final three. And after losing part one of the HOH comp, Devins knew he had to win part two because neither of the others would probably take him to the end. I know that's still debatable with you. Um, that's where another one of his clutch performances showed up hurt back and all he did it. And that is exactly what made him such a threat.

[02:27:19] [SPEAKER_02] He is the exact type of person you have to take out when you have the opportunity. And although those opportunities seemed few and far between people just didn't take them when they showed up in large part because of how he balanced it out with his social and strategic names.

[02:27:35] [SPEAKER_01] It doesn't help or it doesn't hurt. I guess I should say that the first three votes of the jury phase, Yash can't target him because of the bribe. So it's like, he's a threat, but like, I mean, who's going to go after him? You know, if Yash can't win the challenge, you got to beat him. And he's pretty good at saving himself when he needs to.

[02:27:52] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Which again, goes back to Yash should have just burned that by trying to burn it.

[02:27:57] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[02:27:59] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Moving to Taylor. She said that not being a threat was a big part of her strategy. And, you know, in the recap episode, she literally said that straight out. We discussed it earlier. And she even specifically told us in that little game summary that the house was full of huge personalities. And that wasn't her goal. She played with the specific intent of trying not to draw attention to herself.

[02:28:21] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And it was successful. I think she made it to the end. People did not find her threatening. The big argument people had like week after week is if you sit next to Taylor, you will go home. Um, and it was true. She, she got on the block and the person next to her went home. Uh, not that she was just up there, not doing anything. There was a lot of campaigning that was going on. Taylor was active. A lot of the times that she was on the block. Um, and so she was definitely making herself an asset to people, you know, and, and,

[02:28:49] [SPEAKER_01] and throwing people under the bus so she could save herself. Um, but nobody looked at her as like, we have to get Taylor out now or she will win. Even though they talked about her, like she was a winning threat, you know, Angela saying she's just like Chelsea. Um, I was like, nah, not really. She's just like, she's just like Ashley. No, not, not, not even. She's just like Taylor Hale. She's just like, no, no. I mean,

[02:29:08] [SPEAKER_02] there was one way she was like those three.

[02:29:10] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, just, just maybe, maybe two, you know, but I guess, yeah,

[02:29:14] [SPEAKER_02] I was encompassing, but yeah,

[02:29:16] [SPEAKER_01] but you know what I'm saying? It's, it's, it's there if you squint, but that's the thing. It was never so much to where it's like, and now we need to get her out immediately. Right. Right. Now,

[02:29:25] [SPEAKER_02] of course she did so well in this rule that, like you said, if someone was nominated against her, they went home. It's interesting because when she was up against Lala, well, Lala had the same reputation. So they use that reputation to get rid of Lala, but then they ended up causing the same situation with Taylor instead. Now, of course, the problem with being so good and not being a threat,

[02:29:52] [SPEAKER_02] and you've referenced this earlier is when you get to the end, well, you're still perceived as someone who's not a threat. And that means people are not likely to vote for you. We see this all the time in both big brother and survivor. It's good to be kept around because people don't think you can win, but then it's not so good when you get to the end and people still don't think that you can win because now they're the ones making the decision.

[02:30:18] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. It really, it really hurts her game that she's not able to get into a powerful alliance toward the end. As I mentioned earlier, the people who win this game are often in the end game decision-making, you know, that, and that's where you really can highlight your threat level. Let's say you've been laying like Ashley Hollis, Ashley, last season, she was looked at as somebody who we could probably target Ashley. She worked her way into alliances by the jury phase. She's in the judges.

[02:30:46] [SPEAKER_01] And that is the alliance that will ultimately rule the day. So although Morgan is leading the strategy because she's winning all the competitions, Vince is also winning the competitions. Ashley is still in the conversation because she's a part of the core alliance. So nobody can get to the end and say, well, Ashley wasn't doing anything. It's like, no, she was in the core alliance because the other people in the core alliance are on the jury. They know it. They can speak to that. Taylor's core alliance was Lala. And at times she had Yash. I say at times because at times she did not have Yash. You know?

[02:31:16] [SPEAKER_01] And so for her to get to the end without being a part of core alliance, it's impressive, but it also is not the, I don't think it's the optimal way to win the game. No.

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[02:31:57] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, the question of whether Drew was seen as a threat is a more complicated one. So I'll toss it to you first. What do you think?

[02:32:04] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, um, yeah, I think people thought Drew was a threat, especially because of, I mean, look at how we outlined the jury. It's all his friends. All his friends on the jury. Yeah. So even if you thought like I could be Drew, if you squint, maybe you can't, you know, that's the thing that got Taylor to the second place. She said, Devin, are you sure? And then he started to count the votes and he said, Oh, Melody's there. And Barrett's there. Drew worked really closely with both of them. Maybe it'd be smarter if Devin to try to get Barrett out prior to, you know, jury, but whatever.

[02:32:35] [SPEAKER_01] Maybe in the thog spot, maybe thog would have been a great juror for, for that moment, but they let Barry get, I mean, Drew get there with two of his closest friends. Then the allies were his other closest friends. Right. So, I mean, just from a number standpoint, he's automatically a threat right there. He could win challenges as well. And he had this, uh, like weaselly persona that people thought they couldn't trust him throughout the game. And so they like inherently felt threatened by just the way he was moving around the way Devin's was making his threat level smaller or

[02:33:03] [SPEAKER_01] trying to drew was making his threat level higher existing just by the way he would take information and move around the house. Um, even his attitude sometimes like when he's slow walking back from that blockbuster kid, what are you doing? It's like, you, why are you making this moment about you? You know, it makes you look like, again, like you have something else going on. Like you have like this level of confidence that makes you say, okay, well maybe you can win the game. So yeah, I think he was a threat to a lot of people. I think he was not a threat to the icons.

[02:33:32] [SPEAKER_01] I think that they identified that this is our, this could be our goat. And although he had to make some hard decisions, sending a D hall, I think they were fine riding it out to see how long they can make it with him as kind of like their fourth member. Yeah.

[02:33:46] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And then it just turned out there was someone even less threatening than him in the final three with Devin's. Um, yeah, I, sometimes I think his threat, him being seen as a threat during the game was valid, such as Yash and Taylor feeling that way. Sometimes it was not such as Angela and D getting all paranoid about him for no reason. And he did win a fair number of comps, especially later on, but he was not really labeled as a comp beast because there were other people

[02:34:15] [SPEAKER_02] ahead of him with that label. And, you know, people were more worried about Yash. And by the time drew voted Yash out and won a couple right away, but the being seen as a comp threat, it wasn't as much of an issue in people's minds at that point.

[02:34:30] [SPEAKER_01] No. And then, you know, Yash was just the bigger threat, you know, like again, if you're able to hide behind somebody and they're a bigger threat, yeah, you could be a big threat, but if there's another big threat, you know, right. He supersedes you. And so, yeah, everybody look at Yash, you know, don't look at me. Look at Yash. Yash is the big deal. Yes. Get Yash. Let's get Yash. But we can also get drew, you know, if you want to like optimal strategy, you should be sitting at the end with Taylor, Melody, Angela. Like, you know, those are the people, maybe even Lala.

[02:34:59] [SPEAKER_01] Those are the people less likely to come in and sweep a jury vote against you. Drew is not in that number. You know, Yash is not in that number. Devin's is not in that number. D is not in that number yet. They made it so far. You would hope that you would get those people out earlier, but they just weren't able to.

[02:35:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Well, the seventh rule says to trust almost nobody. There's obviously one person who really had a bad time with this rule. And that was drew. So let's just go right to him. We talked a lot about it already throughout, throughout the past two and a half hours because of the overlap with his scheming and other things going on. But the fact is that he often had blind loyalty to the icons and even some members of the tool shed. It didn't matter what they did. He came back to them and believed in them time and time again,

[02:35:42] [SPEAKER_02] we saw it happening. I talked about it on an earlier podcast about his belief perseverance, which is the maintenance of a belief, despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Drew was a prime example of that. He had excuses for anything that seemed to show the icons weren't loyal to him or distrusted him. He simply was not ever going to accept it. So he kept right on chugging along blissfully, blissfully. And they kept trying to get rid of him,

[02:36:12] [SPEAKER_02] but never succeeded until literally the very end.

[02:36:15] [SPEAKER_01] In his defense, he hadn't done anything that was untrustworthy. So he, you know, for, you know, it's for him, it's like, you want me to believe they don't trust me, even though I'm being completely trustworthy. It's harder to believe then. Okay. You're just wrong. And so don't get me wrong. He was wrong, but, but I could see why he wouldn't. But on the flip side, once it gets down to these last few weeks, you're looking at the icons and they are the biggest threats on the board. It's you and the icon.

[02:36:42] [SPEAKER_01] So how do you make it through the game when the people you trust the most are the people that you need to get out? And, you know, if you get them out, then what's, who's to say you're not targeted next is really a, a delicate balance of, okay, I need you out of the game, but I don't want to burn any bridges by getting you out. And on top of that, I need you to keep me in the game. Cause if I get y'all out, I'll be the, you know, the biggest threat left. And then, you know, people like Taylor, people like melody, Yash, they'll all be looking at me like, should I just cut them and win, you know?

[02:37:11] [SPEAKER_01] And he ended up being in that spot for Devin's where it's like, if I just cut you, I went. So yeah, he was in a tight, he was in a tight spot with all his trust. But he did himself, you know, he, he really did align with a bunch of people. He didn't have to play the game like that. Right. Like you said, he came in the game wanting to play the middle, well, guess what? This is what happens when you play the middle.

[02:37:31] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Yeah. And you know, the question goes back to what you said. Did this end up hurting him? I mean, clearly being voted out in third place was painful for both emotional and financial reasons. If he had gone with D instead, she almost certainly would have done the same thing. Yeah. She'd won HOH. And you know, I know everybody can debate who might've won what comp if she had been there. But the fact is there's no way to know people were saying drew was easily

[02:37:58] [SPEAKER_02] going to win that log competition and he slipped and fell. You have no idea what is going to happen in any particular comp. Could, could someone have really predicted that the 42 year old guy with the painful bad back would be drew in a slingshot comp. No. So all we can look at is here is whether drew was right or wrong to trust Devin's. I think the generally speaking, he was right. I said for days leading up to that finale, then of course,

[02:38:27] [SPEAKER_02] Devin's would follow through on his promise to take him to the end because there was no reason not to. And as we discussed, there probably really wasn't until Taylor got in his head and made him rethink it all. And as drew himself has said, he understood even as much as it pained him.

[02:38:45] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. And him trusting Devin's, you know, like we say, it's not, that's not necessarily his downfall, you know, because Devin's was saving him in a lot of ways when the other icons were willing to turn against them. He gets, you know, you talk about the competitions at the end, nobody would have predicted Taylor winning part one. And then even last season, Ashley was beaten. She like Vince had already won the, the one,

[02:39:14] [SPEAKER_01] the challenge before Ashley managed to catch up and beat him at that puzzle because he read the instructions incorrectly. That's like, that's it. That's all it takes. One, one error on somebody's part. And that completely shifts the game. So yeah, whether you've gone with D or Devin's, you know, trust is what got in there. You know, sometimes it was to the detriment of his game, but he still survived. And he went back to trusting. So for him, why would he switch up anything that he was doing? Everything was working out.

[02:39:41] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Now I asked for Devin's. I can't really think of any instances where he trusted people and it came back to bite him. Now, of course he trusted Dean Angela and it would have bitten him hard if he hadn't won that blockbuster after he volunteered as a nominee. And sure. Barrett turned on Devin's and the other two, but if anything, that was caused by a visible lack of trust by the icons towards Barrett.

[02:40:08] [SPEAKER_01] I don't, I think he might've trusted D too much. And it didn't come back to bite him, but I do think that, you know, that we're thinking about D as long as like, well, okay, if these in this spot where, where drew is right, did, did Devin's actually think D was going to take them to the end? Um, if you don't think D is going to take her to the end and when did you, when did you plan on getting her out? You said, you know, like, Oh, was it always going to be, I have to beat her in the final HOH and I have to win that. And then I have to cut her.

[02:40:36] [SPEAKER_01] Cause that's giving yourself such a small margin of error in comparison to. Yeah, exactly. And so. Yeah. Maybe just a little too much. Uh, but again, it didn't, it didn't hurt him in the long run. I mean, he does end up winning, but yeah, they came in the game being like, I trust them with everything now. It wavered a little bit, but for the most part, trusting somebody with everything, it's, it's, it's a bold thing to do in big brother.

[02:40:59] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Now Taylor didn't really trust anyone because of the position she was in. She knew better. Uh, so that meant nobody could break her trust.

[02:41:07] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I mean, she trusted Lala and then she realized I can't even trust Lala that much. You know, I'm telling her too much and she's getting out of control. She trusted Yash at points, but then she's like, nah, you talk too much. You know, there've been moments where her and Lala have a conversation and then drew walks, and Lala's like, okay, Drew. So here's what we're talking about. Wait a minute. Hold on. Slow down. You know? So Taylor was really good at, you know, picking and choosing her spots, but ultimately going into like ending the game and knowing that you really couldn't trust anybody. 100%. Uh, you know,

[02:41:35] [SPEAKER_01] it's definitely not a good omen for, you know, what your prospects would have been at the end.

[02:41:40] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. All right. Well, we are at appendix a, which is about the jury phase of the game and deals both with how players were doing and preparing to possibly be at the end, as well as whether the other remaining players did what they needed to get them on their side at the end and how they impacted the jury. I think it's safe to say Devons did well here, uh, without going into every detail because you know, the six to one vote kind of speaks for itself. He even got Drew's vote as he thought he would mere moments after viciously backstabbing him in an admitted betrayal.

[02:42:11] [SPEAKER_02] He had prepared all of those jurors to vote for him through months of social game and showing his strategic abilities. He,

[02:42:18] [SPEAKER_01] he had the jury right where they wanted him. They like they want, they knew he was a threat. They didn't hate him enough to just vote out against him out of spite. And they also respected that they couldn't get it, get to him. Right. So they didn't resent him. They didn't hate him. They acknowledged that he was really good and they were targeting him, but they were unsuccessful. And I think that's the jury that you want. They, they, we tried to get you. We couldn't get you, but also we tried to get you because we thought we couldn't beat you.

[02:42:48] [SPEAKER_01] And then you beat us. So now I have to give you the respect that you deserve because now you can tell us how you were able to do that. Uh, I think that a lot of people get to the end and they don't have that type of, um, gravitas behind their name. Right. It's like, how did you get here? Oh, you won a few challenges. Okay, cool. But like, were you doing other things out the game to, uh, move the game in your favor? Or were you just winning challenges? Devin's had it all. His game had everything. It had, uh, challenges that advantages. It had, you know, it was social.

[02:43:17] [SPEAKER_01] It was such a well-rounded game. That, well, I mean, who could deny it once it got to the end?

[02:43:23] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Now Taylor, unfortunately just didn't have that much to show because of her position throughout the game in the jury round table. We heard some of the players who gave her credit for knowing what was going on all around, but she, she just didn't have the moves to back it up. I suspect that this was the reason the jury round table segment was so short compared to previous years. I mean, yes, it was an hour and a half compared to maybe two hours and in some previous years, but I, I, they could only show so many clips to make it seem like the votes would be up in the air. There's,

[02:43:52] [SPEAKER_02] there's only so much you can do there.

[02:43:54] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And I don't think Taylor did a really good job of pitching her game at the end. I think that she, um, once she gets into the final two, I think when she tries to take credit for the lyric vote, she sees melody and, uh, Angela like making faces and laughing. And I think, and I think even Yash laughed a little bit. I think that rattled her because if in my mind, like you convinced Devin's to take you to the final two, if people ask you, what's your big move? That's it. That's the one that is the one. It just happened. It literally just happened.

[02:44:24] [SPEAKER_01] And Devin's is saying, I did it. Taylor never said that. She never said, I waited. Everything she said in her interview is true. She waited till the last minute. She used what Devin used to get to. Where was that in her speech? So even if she could have changed the hearts and minds of people of against Devin, she just wasn't pitching herself good enough. And I thought that if she cut, if she cut Devin's, she would get some of the goodwill from the jury. I stand by that. I've seen it happen before. So I'm like, Hey, I've seen the proof that that that, that can sway people. But if that's all you have and you can't, uh,

[02:44:54] [SPEAKER_01] I think that it's not so cut and dry that just because she cut Devin, she would win the game. I think she would still have an uphill battle, especially knowing the makeup of the jury.

[02:45:02] [SPEAKER_02] Right. Right. I mean, we talked about that. It was, if she had cut Devin's and gone against Drew, Drew gets an automatic three votes period. Yeah. Only needs one more. And one of them was his whatever man's. Yeah. So you can't count on it.

[02:45:18] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I, I just felt like her pitch should have been, I am not a vet pet. You know, like I think, I think honestly, I think if you put Taylor Hill or Ashley Hollis in this position, Oh, they could talk their game up because they, you know, people were not expecting them to come out the gate like that. Uh, Ashley, Julie had to pull Ashley back. Like, Hey, chill out. You know, like how she was doing Devin's like, Hey, Hey, we got, we get it. He's dead. Uh, but with Taylor, Taylor gave one of the greatest speeches of all time. And she was able to articulate herself in a way where like,

[02:45:47] [SPEAKER_01] she didn't have a lot of control during the game. And she was at the bottom a lot of times, but she was like able to rally those people behind her. Even if they were probably, probably predisposed to voting for her over Monty. There was no, uh, no doubting it. You know, once, once that final speech happened, I think that Taylor come in and said, I was not a vet pet. I didn't get any, uh, advantages. I was everything y'all were a vote for me as a vote for you. You know what I'm saying? If, if, if I can't beat Devin's or drew, then what were you going to do? Not that pet, you know, is the,

[02:46:17] [SPEAKER_01] is the only way to win this game to nice up to people who are on their second and third chances of fame. Do you support the idea that they just American, just give them the wind like this, or do you want to vote for somebody who's scrappy, who got it out the mud, who started the box? You know, I thought that's where she was going to go and she didn't. And I think that's, that was the key. You had to, we had to cut Devin's and then you had to get people to want you to win over drew. And I think that with drew, he had friends. He wasn't that popular with some of the people. And I think some of his game moves would make it a little bit easier to

[02:46:46] [SPEAKER_01] get a vote off of one of these other people. Then if he had been able to cut Devin's and say,

[02:46:51] [SPEAKER_02] yeah. And I think we're in a situation where, you know, Taryn has said it repeatedly. It's been years. If ever since a final question, final speech actually changed a jury vote. Um, you know, so, but you still got to try because maybe it does. Maybe it happens, you know, and that's your last chance. Yeah. So you got to put your all into it. And she just, I mean,

[02:47:18] [SPEAKER_02] she was up against a guy who literally sat behind the news desk for years and talked into a camp.

[02:47:24] [SPEAKER_01] He's only been thinking about his jury speech for 10 years, David. You know, he's, he had a jury speech for edge of edge of extinction. He had a jury speech that he was working on for a survivor just a few months ago. Yeah. This man, this is, he's been preparing for this his whole life. It's a cliche saying, but I mean, a good portion of his life, he's been thinking about what he would have done if he was able to plead his case. And Taylor, she was not expecting to be there with him. You know, that last push is like a Hail Mary. Like take me. Now when he did it, I think she was like, damn,

[02:47:54] [SPEAKER_01] now what'd I do? You know? Yeah. Like, Oh shit. I just became the most important person at work today. What am I going to do about it? You know? So I think, yeah, she kind of put herself in a, in a tough, a tough, tough position. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:48:06] [SPEAKER_02] And of course there was drew who probably got the most interesting jury round table thoughts. You know, melody said she hated people who play the middle, which is an interesting take from a long time, big brother fan, but okay. Uh, and she followed it up immediately by saying she still obvious, or he still obviously pulled it off very well. And he then was winning cops. Barrett said he played the most annoying game, but was very aware of what he was doing. Drew was everywhere. Angela added that he was going to be in every conversation. Every time.

[02:48:36] [SPEAKER_02] I still think he would have lost easily to Devons and beaten Taylor. And you know, jury speeches wouldn't have mattered. I think that's what would have happened if he had made it to the end.

[02:48:47] [SPEAKER_01] It's hard for me to know for sure, obviously. Um, but I do think that it's crazy that each of those statements is, it's just encapsulate everything we said about drew. It's like the positive and the negative at the same exact time. Right. His, his game was annoying, but I still thought he did a good job. I hate people who play like him, but I still liked him. So when you say things like that, I'm thinking, Oh, then you can be swayed. Like, you know, so that's why I was never willing to just say like, no, drew Taylor's drawing dead. I thought that if you have people who are on the fence about, you know, I saw your game,

[02:49:17] [SPEAKER_01] but I didn't like it. I know who you are, but I don't respect it. Yash. He knew who drew was. He didn't respect drew. He called drew all every name under the sun when he had a chance to, but if drew, uh, gets to the end and cuts devins, I don't think Yash is not going to vote for him because of that, you know? Um, you know, so that's what I, it's hard to know with the jury, but I definitely think that of the people left, you know, he had the most, I mean, the second most jury, uh, you know, equity just at first glance, I think Taylor would have had to do a lot of work to get those people to flip.

[02:49:47] [SPEAKER_01] Yes. Yes.

[02:49:49] [SPEAKER_02] And I do think she would have potentially gotten Yash's vote if she had won the final HOH and she had taken Devon's. Exactly. I think, you know, but again, she had to get everyone except the icons. That was an uphill battle.

[02:50:04] [SPEAKER_01] Hmm. Yeah. Um, the melody was going to be real tough. That's the one like, y'all, you could probably get, you know, Lala, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe because again, you made the move that drew wasn't going to make. You made the move that he couldn't make. I mean, you just, she should have, she should have talked to her shit, you know, but you know, again, she was up against Devon. So it doesn't really count, but you get there with drew. I think you just go full court press, uh, you know, or you cut drew, I guess you cut Devon. Yeah. You go full court press.

[02:50:33] [SPEAKER_01] You say he rolled coattails this entire time. Whose coattails did I ride? Y'all didn't want to play with me, you know, like, like fight, fight back. Um, it would have been fun to watch.

[02:50:43] [SPEAKER_02] But that's not the game we got. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the way it was, you know, my wife asked me, um, you know, did you know Devon's was going to win? And I said, well, I knew as soon as he won the HOH comp, he was.

[02:50:55] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[02:50:56] [SPEAKER_02] If he was there, he's going to win. I literally, I literally posted on blue sky. I said, congratulations to Devon's for winning final HOH. And in a few minutes, the game,

[02:51:05] [SPEAKER_01] you know, I think I was watching basketball. I think I like turned to TV like, okay, you know, all right. Something else will have beyond.

[02:51:13] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, it is about time to wrap things up. Uh, remember, be sure to stick around afterwards. We don't have predictions obviously, but I have my special message at the end for now. Chappelle, what are your final thoughts about Devon's Taylor and drew?

[02:51:27] [SPEAKER_01] I thought that the final three is so interesting. We have people who plays totally different games, drew playing a game that I don't really think I've seen a lot of, uh, you know, where it was like, it was everywhere. You know, it was, it was strategic. Sometimes it was, it was anti-strategic or social. It was anti-social, you know, it was luck. It was, it was all the things, but he made it to the end. And, you know, I could definitely see where people in the jury would want to vote for him. Taylor had a different type of game. You know,

[02:51:56] [SPEAKER_01] she was fighting an uphill battle against people with, uh, you know, almost insurmountable odds. You know, they have these, um, built-in alliance. They have these, uh, trinkets, bribes, and, um, powers and all kinds of stuff. And she ain't got none of that stuff. And she really don't have a prayer in the world of getting it because the producers decide who's getting the screen time. And so if you're not getting screen time, you know, then you don't even have a chance in hell. And on top of that, these people wear icons and all that stuff. So she also had an uphill battle.

[02:52:24] [SPEAKER_01] And I thought that she fought valiantly to get there. Both of them. I think that commendable effort from both of them. But at the end of the day, this was Rick Devon season of TV. This was not the Rick Devon's one in the last second. He made the move at the right time. This was his season of television. I think that, uh, of all the games that he's played, you know, survivor twice, this, this is the one that will define Rick Devon's. I think that people will look back and he will be, um, an icon and big brother, whether you like or, or dislike him.

[02:52:54] [SPEAKER_01] I think this is going to be a memorable season of big brother that people talk about for sure. I can say, I don't rank the game in my head as highly as I would like to, because I just know that the advantages and stuff like that, I got it. I got it. King him a little bit for that, but on top of all of the things he was entertaining while he did it. So, uh, yeah, Rick Devon's, I think this is, this is your show. You know, you might be a survivor player, but you're a big brother winner now. And, uh, that's how I feel about all three of them.

[02:53:20] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rick Devon's played a huge game of big brother doing many of the things fans say they want to see, like being bold in his decisions and making moves when he had power, he was entertaining, not just to us because, you know, that shouldn't matter when evaluating a game, but also to his fellow house guests. And that does matter because they're stuck in there with you for three months. It can't be ignored that he came in with advantages. He was in no danger for the first week,

[02:53:48] [SPEAKER_02] despite several other players saying they wanted to target the icons immediately. Only an icon could win HOH. And then of course they protected the others that gave him D and Angela time to form a base of power and led to his allies and indeed himself controlling HOH for weeks, further solidifying that protection. Plus, of course he got the diamond power of veto and the bribe that D had.

[02:54:12] [SPEAKER_02] And just the overall idolizing that some of the other players had for them. I will agree with him that he used all of that to the fullest advantage. Not everyone would. Angela didn't. Others in similar spots might also have faltered, but his playing style and personality fit in well with that situation. Some will say his win has an asterisk because of it. That's up to every individual to decide.

[02:54:39] [SPEAKER_02] But other icons or veterans or whatever you want to call them have come into the game with benefits and have not won. He and Angela did not win. But instead of ending up broke, he got the opposite. And with the prize money that, well, with the most prize money ever won on the show. Because he went for broke. And I also agree with him that he was,

[02:55:08] [SPEAKER_02] or at least should have been a target. I just mentioned how he was protected for much of the time, but at least part of that was due to the decisions of others. Chagmu didn't have to work with him. Drew and Barrett didn't have to work with him. His game wasn't perfect. For example, based on his interview with Robin Taron, he now realizes just how bad a move it was to volunteer for the block. But overall, his strategic and social games were fairly masterful.

[02:55:39] [SPEAKER_02] Taylor had a much different story. She decided to go the route of staying under the radar, lying low early in the game. Unfortunately for her, it ended up hurting her in the long run. Because when she decided the time was right to ramp up her game, everyone else already had their alliances and they really weren't interested in her. Some of them had already written her off, despite the fact that she had a lot of information she could have provided. Because she was seen as so little of a threat. She became the permanent pawn,

[02:56:08] [SPEAKER_02] going up just so somebody else could get knocked out, including her own allies, leaving her essentially alone. Heck, even when she finally got close to D, Drew took D out. And then Taylor gave everyone an indication of what she was truly capable of when she picked the perfect argument at the perfect time to bluff Devins into giving her second place money. And then there's Drew. What can I say about him that hasn't been already said?

[02:56:36] [SPEAKER_02] He came in to play a middle game and the icons were all too happy to let him do it until they forgot that they had said that. Even through all of their distrust, he persevered. Even when his newbie allies got mad at him as well, he persevered. He was simply too stubborn to stop playing the way he'd been playing. It got to the point of being so well known that it kind of took the sting off of it. If people call you a weasel, but they still work with you and make deals with you, who cares what they say?

[02:57:04] [SPEAKER_02] He was laughing about being known as the biggest liar in the house while he still made deals. He went to final three with what he thought was the best combination to potentially get himself the win. He just had to either win the final HOH comp or Taylor had to. Except Taylor Handley won part one and Devins beat him pretty soundly in part two. And then Devins won part three. But hey, that was okay because at least he'd get $75,000.

[02:57:33] [SPEAKER_02] Except just as Drew could lie and betray, so could others. Even Devins. Devins, Taylor, and Drew all played very different games to get to the final three. As you said, in the end, Devins' comp abilities and social skills supported his big game play that he came in wanting to show everyone. While Taylor's quieter play allowed her to sneak in and snatch second place out from under Drew's nose.

[02:58:00] [SPEAKER_02] It's been said many times now, you can bounce checks in the big brother house. But in this case, when Devins broke his promise, he didn't bounce a check. He ensured that he earned one. Both for himself and for Taylor. And that is why Devins won and Taylor and Drew lost. Woo! What a season. What a podcast. What a season. What a podcast. We are approaching three hours. We still have a little bit to do here.

[02:58:28] [SPEAKER_02] Let's run through the things that we need so we can get to that message at the end here. Because even though Big Brother is over, you should still make sure to follow us on social media to get our full thoughts about, well, everything. I post videos on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram where I'm at David Bloomberg TV. I've been making two or three videos per day. Fun stuff from Big Brother, Survivor, The Traitors, and more. And speaking of those other shows, Survivor 51 has, of course, started.

[02:58:54] [SPEAKER_02] So Jessica Lewis and I have been doing the Survivor version of Why Blank Lost. I've also been podcasting about multiple international seasons of The Traitors on The Traidar Podcast. That's T-R-A-I-D-A-R. Tuesday, I did The Traitors Ireland post-finale Q&A. Around the same time as this podcast comes out, we'll have a special Q&A episode for The Traitors' U.S. New Blood. Since, because there was no episode this week, they didn't want to go up against Big Brother.

[02:59:22] [SPEAKER_02] Earlier this week, I co-hosted the recap of The Traitors' Canada episode two. You can find all my various accounts at Linktree slash David Bloomberg, including my Blue Sky, where both of us make our social media homes. We encourage everyone else to do likewise.

[02:59:37] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, you can follow me at Chappelle's Kickback on Blue Sky. I mostly only, you know, be on Blue Sky about Big Brother and, you know, sometimes Survivor. I'm not on there as much. Follow me on all social media platforms at Recap Kickback. I had to be more active over there. And make sure you follow David at David Bloomberg. Check me out on RHAP. Check me out on RecapKickback.com, YouTube.com slash at Recap Kickback. That's where I'm doing most of my podcasting.

[03:00:03] [SPEAKER_01] And, of course, behind the paywall, talking about Survivor with Rob Cesternino on Club Condo, which is the sloppy version of the Survivor Recap. There's no strategy talk on Club Condo.

[03:00:16] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. As we wrap up, I want to encourage people to check out the RHAP patron program. Rob has a website dot com slash patron. There are those patron only podcasts, much like, you know, the one you just described, whether it's the slop during Big Brother or Club Condo and others. There's a patron Q&A. There's other shows that Rob does. And everyone should definitely become a patron to support those.

[03:00:39] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Patreon dot com slash RHAP or Rob has a website dot com slash patron. That's how we get to do these cool shows. You know, like I said, I'm behind a paywall. Join the page. Don't you want to hear more Chappelle content? Go join the Patreon. You know, come get behind a paywall and get to see all the cool stuff. Yeah.

[03:00:58] [SPEAKER_02] And make sure you're subscribed to all the RHAP podcasts. Yes. Obviously, Big Brother is, you know, there's only a couple of podcasts left after ours, probably. But you can sign up for next year for we know big brother dot com. And, you know, for Survivor, go to we know survivor dot com or just get everything like I do. We know reality TV dot com.

[03:01:18] [SPEAKER_01] And of course, we want to thank you, Scott, Jess, Rob, making all this positive stuff happen over here on YX loss and for making sure that the podcast go up on time and are edited and that all our viewers and listeners get to enjoy David and I'm using about strategy. And also, thank you, David. I'm so happy that I was able to come and join you for this season. I know I'm no Ovi and I'm not Jess.

[03:01:45] [SPEAKER_01] I get to play a game, so I don't have a lot of experience, but I do like to talk and I like to talk to you about strategy. And I hope that the listeners enjoyed me this season.

[03:01:53] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, I think they definitely did. I did. I want to thank you for an amazing season, not just a great episode. It has been a lot of fun being able to do this podcast with you. I know the fans have enjoyed it. I'm incredibly happy that you jumped on board when I asked.

[03:02:09] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, no, thank you.

[03:02:10] [SPEAKER_02] Now, I do want to thank also everyone who is listening. You are obviously the reason we do this podcast. And none of you know this, but the podcast almost didn't happen this season, not because of Ovi leaving, but because as this season was approaching, I received some very concerning medical test results just a few weeks beforehand. The odds were when you looked at it that these results indicated I would probably need surgery, possibly a difficult, lengthy treatment.

[03:02:39] [SPEAKER_02] It would make it impossible for me to cover the show this season. So when I first asked Chappelle, it was a question of, will you do this with me if we do it at all? And Chappelle said, yes, of course, whatever, you know, whichever, whatever happens. I went through more and more tests as the weeks went by. And the results eventually showed. I mean, we were into the season by the time I had the full results on everything. And it showed I would not need either surgery or treatment.

[03:03:09] [SPEAKER_02] It was that unlikely result I was hoping for. You know how doctors say, if you see something, assume, if you hear hoof beats, assume horses, not zebras. I was the zebra and in a good way. And that made the season somewhat special for me because I truly didn't think I was going to be able to do it. So thank you again to all of our listeners.

[03:03:32] [SPEAKER_02] And again to you, Chappelle, and to Rob and the RHAP crew for being able to, willing to wait and see what would happen.

[03:03:40] [SPEAKER_01] I appreciate you all. Oh, man. I'm so excited that I got to be the one to fill in during the season. I know how, you know, tough that was for you as well. And so, yeah, I said it in the beginning and I meant it. You know, if you needed me, I was going to try to be here as much as I can. We had a good run. And so now you get to take your bill of health and go talk about Survivor.

[03:04:04] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. That's right. And yeah, this isn't just a fill in. I'm fully hoping you'll be back here with me next season, too.

[03:04:11] [SPEAKER_01] So listen, I thought Ovi was going to come kick me out of his chair. So you let me know.

[03:04:15] [SPEAKER_02] I think he's too busy arguing with with Alyssa, you know, on social media there. So, yeah. So for those of you who watch Survivor or the Traitors, of course, you'll continue to see or hear me on those podcasts. For those of you who are Big Brother only, I hope we'll reconnect next summer or on social media. Until then, thank you again and goodbye.