Big Brother 17 will wrap up in less than four weeks and we still have eight Houseguests remaining including a “strong fortress” trio that seems to just now be coming to the forefront of Vanessa Rousso’s attention and concerns. This week her moves may be jeopardizing any last chances to turn the odds.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time considering the situation of this week’s nominees in respect to Vanessa’s game position as I had just written about her pushing ahead to the end with her alliance consisting of a showmance and twin sisters. Not a great move, I’d argue. Could keeping James Huling around be what she needs to correct the crash course she’s on?
James and Meg are up on the Block with one guaranteed to head to Jury unless they can pull off a Veto win, but maybe someone else would save them. Or at least maybe someone should save James. Here’s why I think Vanessa needs James to stay.
Vanessa knows, or at least she should know, that Austin won’t be betray Liz and likely not Julia by extension. Liz won’t betray Julia and probably not Austin to help Vanessa. Julia will not betray Liz, but I think she would go against Austin in a F3 with Vanessa over him. Those aren’t good odds for Vanessa especially when her entire game could rest of Julia winning something.
This week Vanessa decided to win HoH and promise the Austwins complete safety and no visits to the Block instead of letting JMac take it after he already told her he’d be ready to make a big move. That big move could have been going after the Austwins.
Now with Vanessa promising to keep Austwins out of danger this week she kicks the can one round farther down the road. Realistically it wasn’t just the promise she made but the game she’s playing. She can’t be the one to pull the trigger on them. So if she can’t do it this week then she won’t do it until it comes down to either her or one of them walking out the door. That means she needs someone else to win HoH and do the dirty work.
Who is left that could do that for Vanessa? Right now she’s got JMac and Steve. Steve has suggested he’d be willing to make a big move, but I’m going to agree with John that John is the one who would be willing to do it sooner. Would anyone be surprised if Steve won HoH next week, panicked, and then put up Meg with JMac?
That leaves John as a near sure shot to get the Austwins targeted next week. John vs the Austwins. Not terrible odds if you cancel out Julia, though she’s bound to eventually trip and fall in to a victory at some point. Of course that logic would cancel out Meg too, assuming she survives over James. That would keep it at 1 (JMac) vs 2 (Liztin) is still a tough gamble. But guess how Vanessa could make that 2:2? Yep, by keeping James.
Vanessa needs James for more than just targeting the Austwins though. Say Vanessa’s plan fails and an Austwin wins HoH next week. Would they target Meg? No, they’d go after JMac, Vanessa’s best chance of breaking up the Austwins. Now what if James was still there? James and JMac would go up then Vanessa could work to sway votes to keep JMac over James and try again next week to get John in the HoH room. It’s an extra round to try and make the Austwins split happen.
Something not helping Vanessa’s hopes of working with James is her jerk attitude to the Goblins yesterday after the nominations. She berated James and Meg for nearly 45 minutes listing off all the terrible imaginary things they had done to victimize her instead of playing it cool and waiting to see what happens with the Veto or what are her needs by the end of the week.
After Thursday’s near vote flip, even if Vanessa wasn’t serious, the Goblins felt good about Vanessa and James seemed very tempted to try and work with her. Well she may have flushed all that for little to no gain in her post-ceremony verbal beat down of the Goblins. Yet again much of Vanessa’s game could be summarized in one word: unnecessary.
Anyway, the advantages of keeping James this week for Vanessa’s game outweighs sending him to Jury in exchange for keeping Meg. Both Meg and James would be isolated and in need of a new ally, maybe she can recover the remaining one’s trust, but even if not she could use John or Steve to do that for her and disassociate herself from any attempts on the Austwins.
Of course there is the risk that James stays, remains bitter at Vanessa, and goes after her instead of the Austwins. We know the told Meg earlier this week that if he won HoH he was going to make a big move by putting up Austin and a twin. Vanessa doesn’t know that though so it’s a risk for her and that treatment she handed out isn’t helping.
Overnight it seems Vanessa has begun to make the same considerations. She spoke privately with Steve and echoed some basic elements of what I plotted out above, but without going in to too much detail. Flashback to 12:28 AM BBT 8/29.
Vanessa leaps from talks of Ken Jennings (Jeopardy) with Steve to “if we get to F5 with the Austwins, are we f**ked or are we okay?” Steve doesn’t know or at least he sure as heck knows not to trust opening his mouth about a major move like that with someone like Vanessa. Again another issue with her game.
Vanessa has been so untrustworthy that those who know her know they can’t be open and honest. That explains why players who don’t know her methods, like Meg and James, find themselves trapped in her web for foolishly speaking freely in front of her. Or someone like John who has nothing to lose and is living on borrowed time already.
Steve tells Vanessa that he has actually considered it, but stalls on giving her an answer. “You’re looking at me for info right now?” Vanessa promises him she’s not but rather looking for “strategical insight.” I think we all know she’s doing both.
Steve again resists commenting telling Vanessa that they need to take it one move at a time and wait to see what happens with Veto. “You don’t trust me!” says Vanessa. No kidding. If Steve says “we need to split up the Austwins” then Meg wins Veto would anyone be shocked to see Vanessa tell Austin that Steve was plotting against them and needs to go up and out so she could keep James? Of course not. Steve is smart to keep his mouth shut here.
We’ve now heard three conversations in two days with Vanessa trying to sort out how to handle the Austwins in a F4/5 situation. Vanessa is worried, as she should be, and now she needs an exit strategy and she needs it fast as we’re about to be at 6 HGs by the end of Thursday’s Double Eviction.
Keeping James at least one more round gives her an extra player in the force to split up the Austwins and another buffer in case that attempt fails. Meg is unlikely to be a supporting factor in either of those two scenarios. If things hold still with the nominations after today’s Veto competition then Vanessa needs to evict Meg and keep James. That’d be my plan.