A (2:21)

I mean, I think we would be disingenuous for all our viewers. There were times I was worried for our, our, our winner, to put it at least. But to be honest, there were times she got worse in some very sticky situations where it did not look very great for her and the end looked very far from where she could make it there. But like, that's the cool thing about big brother. It's a long game. It's a marathon. And what I truly love, season in season, get to see players adapt, work their way through the game. And they might not always come out shining in the beginning, but at the end we might see a crown place on their head that showed all the hard work it took for them. And as she's a player that adapted, changed through the game and it really was a nice cherry on the top for a great season.

B (3:08)

Yeah. Yeah. So. All right, well, we have a lot to talk about here and you know, including definitely a lot about Ashley. And since this is a triple podcast, yes, people, if you haven't looked at the time, it is going to be longer than usual. Especially like last one when we did Keanu and Ava, we had one very active player and one sleeper. So these are three very active players. And this means once again we will unfortunately have to drop out some of the examples we otherwise would have used. Condense some things a bit for our especially second and third place winners. And I know people have said I really want a full why Vince lost podcast. I'm sorry, we, we, we lump them all together. So we will still get the point across though. I have no doubt of that. Now, even with three players to discuss, we will follow our usual path of comparing how they played to a set of guiding rules I originally wrote way back in 2004 and have modified ever since. We'll analyze their actions using what we saw on tv, live feeds, interviews and other information. And if anyone you know wants to do homework now that the season's over, you can find the most recently published version at. Rob has a website.com Big Brother Rules. Usually we have some other things to discuss about the week in general, but we're at the end so there really isn't anything besides talking about the winter runner up in third place. I do want to mention that before we get to the rules. Survivor season has started and there is a Survivor version of the rules on a poster and you can get that at Rob has a website.com yx lost feed. Scroll down to it, click on it and order it. You can also order the poster on a T shirt and the checklist T shirt which in honor of the win I am wearing backwards because it has the Y blank one on the back. So with that, Ashley came dangerously close to being voted out of the game in the first week. Vince wanted her gone the whole time because he felt she didn't deserve to be there. Morgan was going to take her to final two if she won the last HOH because she had been convinced that Ashley would be easier to beat than Vince. But while Vince and Morgan played good games of their own, or at least partially good games. Neither of them had any idea what lurked below the surface of Ashley's game in the finale. She showed them, she showed the jury, and she showed the rest of the world. What did Ashley do so right to get an essentially unanimous win? Where did Vince go oh, so wrong? And how was Morgan's game overall, even though she didn't have a chance to compete for the grand prize? Let's dive in and find out because at rhap we know big brother and we know why Ashley won and Vince and Morgan lost. Now, the first and most important rule is of course to scheme and plot. All three of our finalists recognize this and did a good job, but they also did it differently. Before we start off, I, I feel the need to explain something here because lots of people on the show this season and sometimes off the show have lumped everything that's not a comp win into, quote, the social game. When Ashley was practicing her speech on live feeds, she was talking about her social game and included some things that weren't social game at all, but strategic game. She also made that mistake somewhat in answering Will's final two question by saying her social game was her strength and then talking about her strategic positioning. But then she brought it back around to note that it was strategic alignment in the game. So. Okay. And then when Rachel asked her final two question, she said they agree Ashley played a good social game but wanted the specific strategic moves she made. And one of the things Ashley talked about was co creating the judges alliance as part of a way to save Morgan. But even in the jury roundtable, while talking about Ashley's social game, when Cody asked for specifics, the jurors actually gave strategic game examples. Ava said she aligned people herself with people who who would go to bat for her. Rachel noted Ashley using her as a shield kept her off the block. Will pointed out that she was in a dominant alliance. Keanu said he respected the move she made in the background. Unbeknownst to him, every single one of those were scheming and plotting. Was she able to do some of those things because of her social game? Yes, but we'll get to that in Rule 5. Okay, that out of the way. Now we could talk about Ashley unless you have anything to add about that differential there.

A (8:00)

No, I think it's a good differential because I think there's many different purposes you can use your social game towards and it encompasses a lot. But you want to. When we break it down from scheming Fun. There's a strategic purpose for each of those parts, and I think you said that.

B (8:16)

Well, all right. Well, then let's talk about what Ashley did strategically, though, of course, I've already mentioned a few examples. One of those was, as I said, the major move she made by pushing the formation of the judges. This helped bring together some of her disparate allies and also saved Morgan, her closest ally, who's also helping her through her own connections and by winning comps and keeping her safe. Now, of course, the judges was not the first time Ashley had succeeded in making new allies or bringing people together. Earlier in the season, she had done some things that turned Mickey and even Will somewhat against her, and she decided to face them head on and she would not give up. She talked to them until they eventually came to understand her position and became allies. She was basically the opposite of Lauren, because when Lauren heard, oh, someone has a problem with me, she'd be like, I'm scared. They're scary. I don't want to talk to them. When Ashley heard, she was like, okay, I'm going. I'm going in there and I'm going to talk to them. And, you know, again, this wasn't the first time she pushed for her point of view. I mean, talking about Lauren. Think about her first hoh, where the guys wanted Lauren to put up Ashley as a replacement nominee, but wouldn't outright tell her that Ashley found out, marched up there, and ensured it didn't happen. She offered specific deals, you know, saying her group wouldn't nominate Lauren before the jury, etc. And now I. I don't remember much of that, if any, being on the TV episodes at the time. My recollection is Mickey. They showed Mickey talking to her, which was part of the, you know, the work that they were doing. But as Corey pointed out at the time, through one of the podcasts, Ashley was evidence that even if you're a little messy, being active is so much better than being passive 100%.

A (10:25)

I think that when we watch Ashley's game, you see there's a level of committed purpose to each thing she's doing, and regardless of whether it's for the long term, because week in and week out, we're like, is this going to work out? We see her, she's trying to survive for that week. And that's what I really love and I think truly shows the story of her game is that she goes from survival to thrival. I don't know if thrival is a word, but I'm Going to say it's a word right here because it sounds good with that. Because she in the beginning is just. She sees an issue. She knows that she is in a vulnerable position. So she needs to go do something about that. And you love watching a player do that because sometimes it works or sometimes it burns and fails. Either way, you're watching a player work and you want to see that when you're signing up for Big Brother or you're watching somebody sign up for it. But then there is starts to be a thought process behind okay from doing this move will set me up for later on when we make the judges, when we create this alliance. This can help me set me up next week, not just this week. So I mean we see those different moves with her. And again, I think it's funny. I mean Lauren still gained strays here, but it's, it is truly the dichotomy of it from one person who had so much potential to act in certain positions but did not actually really took all the potential positions that she could act on and did so.

B (11:45)

Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the thing is that makes this difficult. Well, not difficult for us, but difficult for some people is a lot of what Ashley did. In fact, almost all of what Ashley did wasn't shown on tv. So, you know, that leaves the TV only viewers rather confused what what was going on here, how did she win and but the live feed viewers know not only what she did, but what her plans were because she talked to the cameras throughout the season. For example, she talked about her decision to play dumb. And you know, she could tell it was working because of how people treated her. And then even so, she wanted to be Morgan, Rachel, Mickey and Will's number one so they would each take her to the end. As time went on, she told us she was aligned with everyone in the house but Lauren. As she pointed out in her answers and speech to the jury, even if she wasn't directly aligned with someone, she had protection through someone else. For example, she told Dalton Ross, I knew as long as Morgan and I were good, Vinnie and I would always be good because Vinnie was going to do what Morgan told him to. And all through the season, she was the opposite of Keanu. Her reads in the house were extremely good. She just didn't walk around shouting them to the rooftops. His were extremely bad. And he did, you know, and so this was one reason she got mad at him several times when she just couldn't take it anymore when he insisted he. He was right and she was wrong. She Was playing dumb in the game. He was just dumb in the game.

A (13:37)

And I think that there's two versions when we think about scheming and plotting. Right. And there's probably more. But the way I break it down, I think of it is there is reactive scheming, and then there is proactive. And I think we see that first half of the game. And that's why some people, I think, have found some difficulty grasping some of Ashley's game, because initially she was reactively having to figure out strategies to counter. Whether she's on the bluff or there's people coming at her, what does she do? And that's a portion of it. And we see players do that a lot of times. Players stop from there. And we see that a lot this season where they're reactive about things that they're not proactive. And later on, we see her take charge and be proactive for it to make sure that she is good going forward. And I think she says it really well when she's talking to a jury and she kind of redefines it over and over again. And each question she does in her final part is about insulating herself. And like you said, perfectly how she was. Let's keep Morgan here. So we have Vinnie. I know we're not super connected right now at this point, but I know if I have her, I have him. Same way who she had with Rachel and, excuse me, Keanu. So then, even though Keanu is not the biggest fan of Ashley, she knew or felt that through her relationship with Rachel, she can ensure that he doesn't target her later on. I mean, this is really smart gameplay to ensure that you are covered from all bases when even they're not your allies.

B (14:57)

Yeah, yeah. And you talked about proactive versus reactive, and you're right, she was reactive. But she came in proactively with plans. It's just that first thing, right off the bat, she had to react. She was put into a position I don't think she expected to be in that early. Yep. Now, as we move through the season, another great example of Ashley putting in the work was Will's eviction. Because we heard him say in under 48 hours, he went from being completely safe to out the door. Well, that was because of Ashley fighting hard to stay. You know, he gave her permission. He was like, sure, fight for yourself. But I don't think he expected it to go the way it did. You know, she flipped Morgan. She flipped Keanu. Morgan worked on Vince like we just discussed, and even Lauren came around that Wasn't happenstance or luck or them being pissed off at will or anything like that. It's. It was Ashley working her ass off to stay in the game as the most likable person in the house.

A (16:02)

And you know, I want to emphasize this portion you said because I think this is a example of true positive strategy influencing the house gets around them. And by that I mean there's certain things like we talked about, we'll talk about Vince doing, Morgan doing the strategic things, but they burn the players around them. This was a strategic move she did that players can look at and be like, I don't feel burned. I respect that. She worked with me to get something happened. She has examples of point ad that show, hey, I saved myself. I worked with you strategically. Now we have a relationship to move forward. But also super important near the end at jury time, you can point at examples to show that, hey, strategically I played this game and your feelings and we'll talk about this later on, but your feelings aren't bitter towards me in this way. You don't feel burned by any shape or form. I mean, it's. There's layers to Ashley's game.

B (16:52)

Yes, yes. Now, she discussed some of the other moves she made in her answers and speech to the jury. So I don't want to go over each one. We don't need to repeat her speech. But the point is she worked. You know, she stayed in the background. She was, you know, moving the pieces around, aligning with people to keep herself protected as she moved through the game. And this was a big reason she wasn't nominated for so long after that first week. As she said by final six, she was aligned with everyone in the house. And while people like Vince and many TV only viewers thought she wasn't doing anything, she was doing quite a bit. But keeping it on the down low. She said it perfectly. She turned enemies into allies.

A (17:37)

Enemies, allies. And it's one of those things where she. It's impressive that she was able to. I mean, we look at Vince from where they started and where they came to be. You know, he was the one who initially want to get her out. He was gunning for her, didn't feel like she belonged there to be in the house and then there a whole, I don't even want to say karma, but a whole flip up where we see at this end portion of it, I mean, it's impressive and I think that it's Ashley's game perfect. You know, people are going to be like, well, why no, I don't Think so. I mean, there's reasons why we were worried. There are certain times that certain strategies would get conflicted because she would say certain things that would upset other people. Right. But we have to look as a whole and how that player adapts to it. I really think she was her most impressive in the end game, the way she strategized the nature. Everything was so intentional. When Rachel left the house, a flip switched and he started gaming. And I, you know, I mean, it looks purposeful in the fact that she talks about Rachel being a shield for her for so long. And when that shield was gone, she realized, oh wait, I need to figure out a different way to move. And again, this will impact a lot of the other rules we talk about. But I think her true strategy, when we look at it, there's a very lay low game throughout the whole periods where she has to do what she needs to do. But that final end game is where she takes it on and it's very impressive.

B (18:58)

Yeah. Especially when she got to final three. I mean, it was sooner than that, but, you know, like you said, but she, she went into overdrive. I, I don't want to spend too much time on it because it didn't end up mattering. But Ashley worked on Morgan to ensure if Morgan won the final hoh, she would bring Ashley instead of Vince. And she told Mike Bloom, I worked overtime to plant every seed I could about Vinnie, every single thing I could find and think about, think of about Vinnie talking about how he's the best social player. I mean, if you can convince someone that Vinnie's the best social player, okay, you know, hyping up his game. When Morgan started talking to Vince about this, because they literally talked about everything, he got mad and said someone got in your head and convinced you. And she denied it. But if this had been a scripted TV show, when he said that, they would have cut to Ashley in the background going, winking at them. So, yeah, I, I mean none of this ended up mattering, but it, it deserves mention because it was important. It was, it showed what she could do. It was a continuation of what she'd done all season long. As Taryn pointed out into. In his second to last live feed update. Through the whole season, Ashley has kind of played a backseat driver role of telling Morgan things and prodding her into action and, you know, directing her and, and that prodding got a lot of results along the way.

A (20:39)

Yeah, I think we see how she worked them and I think also before when we talk about like the Ava portion of it she made sure that she was in a position like insulated where people thought, okay, we can take Ashley to the end and what will happen? She had to convince other people. When we have a lot of big hitters this season too, where it was, people had resumes. I think maybe outside of some of the players we talked to about recently, most people had some form of resume that they go in there and win the house. And even the people who may have a less of a resume, they could make a convincing argument at the end. I think what's impressive is as she saw that she was able to be on the block with people or people who wouldn't want to go against her. Her friends, like we talk about will we see Ava where they don't really necessarily want to campaign super hard against her. And she can take advantage of that because she wants to play Big Brother. And that's what I love, is having a winner who wants to play the game and win the game. And she didn't just decide at the end, let me do this. She was consistent through that house and through the whole season, okay, this is how I play now. This is how I want to play now. And she tried different strategies out, but overall, I mean, straight up scheming and quarreling through it all, she didn't take a backseat.

B (21:48)

Yeah, well, sometimes she took a backseat when she was trying to get Morgan to drive, you know. Now, before we move on to Vince, I do want to mention one special part of this rule because there's a corollary that applies directly to Ashley. It says in part, as much as players need to keep their scheming on the down low, they have a balancing act. They shouldn't keep it so secret that the jury doesn't really know they were playing the game and punishes them for that when at times it comes time to vote for the winner. This could be even more important in Big Brother than Survivor because the so called jury questioning is cut so ridiculously short. Now, I was worried this would be the case for her, but she saw that coming as well. She told Mike Bloom that when Keanu at one point near the end told her she was playing for second because she'd never done anything in the game, she realized maybe I'm playing this dumb card a little too much where people are thinking I'm so much not a threat that they think I'm not doing anything if I make it to the final two chairs, that's a pretty hefty load to carry to try to get people's votes. So she took actions to begin rectifying that situation. We'll, of course, talk more about that in Appendix A. But she continued to Mike that that's why she left goodbye messages for each juror to reveal some of her strategy and moves and who she was aligned with. So she would plant the seeds and they could start to grow.

A (23:20)

Yeah. Again, like you mentioned, I don't want to go too much into our jury face portion of it, but I think it's impressive that there was such a concerted effort to do it. Just really quickly talking about, like, how she mentioned she was a lawyer to Will to go in there, and I know a lot of people are like, oh, man, Will took away the reveal that she was. She wanted. I think that was great, actually, because, yes, it puts in their head that is intentional. Ashley has been intentional because at the end of the jury phase, when you're answering these questions, like you mentioned, David, you don't have that much time and a lot of people's mind, you don't want to. You don't want to weigh your chances at the end to be, oh, this here's a big bomb vote for me. No, you want to put in their head before, wow. Every move she did was calculated, and I love that by her.

B (24:06)

Yes, me too. All right, well, we could move to Vince, and there is no doubt he schemed and plotted a lot. Some might say too much. But we'll wait a rule to talk about that. We saw several times on the show that he had so many final two deals, he actually forgot about some of them. His tightest were, of course, Morgan and Lauren, and I think he believed he would and could go the furthest with Lauren. But other factors intervened. Of course, it's good to have options and allies, and he had plenty of both. Even as some people were already catching on early in the game, they still kept him safe, such as when he was nominated up against Zach. Some people wanted Vince gone because he had too many alliances, but he had a lot of alliances, and those people saved him. Of course, the tide eventually turned. Like I said, we'll. We'll get to that in the next role. But even when Cody asked the jury who thought Vince had played a good game, almost everyone raised their hands. And Keanu said he felt like he did a good job of making you feel like he was on your side. Lord knows, if anyone felt like he was on Vince's side, it was Keanu.

A (25:22)

Very much so. And I think, you know, there's a classic Big Brother question. I think they asked a Lot of the house kids before I did interviews before it. I don't know if they still do it, but it's. Would you love to win Big Brother and be hated by everyone or lose Big Brother but be loved by America? I think the unfortunate reality is that Vince tried to have his cake and eat it, too. He wanted to win Big Brother and be loved by everybody because he could not own up to the game he played in the actions he did. Because I truly think Vince played very impressively in this position of scheming and plotting throughout the entirety of the game. Of course, there's going to be some issues here, but he really made things intentional when he did himself. He didn't really do that. He didn't make it to other people in the way also near the end and don't want to bleed too much into stuff later on, but he convinced people that a lot of these moves were emotional and not intentional. I mean, he scheming, applauded with each player and, I mean, he reminds me very much so a little Tyler Crispinesque where he, you know, had final twos with so many people and made them feel wanted, made them feel like, this is a person I'm going to take again. And that's very impressive. And that was intentional. I don't know what he's saying now was trying to be each person's number two was something he's like, all right, I'll take it. It's. I'll write key. Understood. You could write a blank check and you don't have to cash it.

B (26:38)

Yeah. Well, what he's saying now is that he never emotionally manipulated anyone. No, that was all real. Okay. Now, yeah, you're right about him working hard. We talked about Ashley putting in the work, and Vince did as well. Even when he was an egg, he wasn't always sunny side up about it, but he scrambled to get the votes that he needed.

A (27:02)

You've been holding on to that one, huh? You've been holding on to that?

B (27:05)

I just came up with it. I mean, it's not hard, but, yeah.

A (27:12)

Keep going. So.

B (27:18)

Now, of course, we know that when Rachel nominated him and Lauren won the veto again, he worked hard to get her to use it, even though Rachel pushed back those. These are just a couple examples, but when you have as many alliances as he did early in the game, you can't rest. And some of the work he did was even somewhat subtle. When Keanu pulled Vince into the gym and ripped him a new one, yelling at him, calling him a liar, etc. My first thought in that moment was Vince needed to get a backbone, stand up, tell Keanu he's not going to sit there and be yelled at and walk out. Instead, Vince turned it around. He sat there, he listened. And, well, he at least pretended to listen and said, yes, Keanu, you're lifting me up by yelling at me. And this somehow kept Keanu on his side.

A (28:20)

You like the op? He was the evil version of Will in this house, where Will, when you talk to him, he would just take all the good things you. He was listening to you, and he just, like, put it back just fine, you know, and then Vince would be able to take that and manipulate. And here's the thing is Vince manipulated everyone in this house. He should have owned that. There's nothing wrong with that, truly. There's certain things he did that were a little icky, that were outside of the manipulation portion of it, but that's another ethical question. All right, that's his relationships in the house, though. He was able to manipulate play players to think that maybe they should use the veto that they won on himself so he could be off the block so they would be in danger. I mean, he was able, the way he was able to make war and make different decisions that were bad for a game. Same way for Morgan, too. It wasn't until later in the game that I felt like Morgan was playing for herself, too. But a lot of times she was playing very much so for Vince. I mean, and he was doing this all across the board. I mean, there was no reason Ke should have given 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 chances. He kept burning him. He burned all his players, even Kelly. He burnt Kelly multiple times. And she still was like, well, he kind of still is my final two. It wasn't until she got banged in the head with a punt that she realized, oh, man, Vince really might not have me as his number one. Number two, or maybe number three. No, you're at his bottom of this list. I mean, that is impressive in itself that he was able to do that. But I hope he stops lying to himself that it wasn't intentional, because that takes away the greatness of what he was doing. You know, he was playing Big Brother. He's been a fan of Big Brother, and he was playing it how he planned it to be. And the only difference now is he doesn't want to own that.

B (29:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, as. As we've been, as we know, as the game went on, everything started catching up to him. As I said, we'll talk about that. You know, in Rule 2 and others. But not all of it was over scheming. Some of it was just bad scheming. An important example is the way he gave up control of his HOHs to Morgan, including, of course, nominating Lauren so she'd be voted out. Vince kept denying it, but other players saw it to the point that Lauren told Vince if Morgan made it to the end, she'd give Morgan her vote for taking control of Vince. And of course, part of the problem was also a different way. Vince handled strategy poorly. He hemmed and hawed and delayed and denied and whined and cried with seemingly every vote. At some point in the Lauren case, if he was going to nominate her, he just needed to do it. Don't ask and ask and beg and cry and then do it anyway. When she held her ground, he took a bad situation and he made it so much worse. And he didn't learn because he kept on doing it. He did the same thing to Keanu. He did the same thing to Ava. If he just owned his moves, he would have ended up looking so much better, which is going to be somewhat of a theme this podcast, 100%.

A (31:26)

I mean, I think we've talked about, and I'm a. A bit of a bigger fan of him than maybe you are of Keanu. But there's a reason why when he does actions in the house, regardless of what they are, a lot of the house kids are like, they still have a good feeling about him because they feel like the intentions behind he's intentional what he's doing. He might be wrong at it. He might get the math wrong, he might get this thing, but he means what he does. All right? And I think that's what's so frustrating with Vince, is that, yes, he is doing A, B and C, but I think a big part of it, it's, you know, I will talk about my great days as a basketball player when I was the 20th man on the bench in my eighth grade basketball team. You got to follow through with your shot. And he would never follow through with his shot. And by that, I mean with Vince is he would do all the steps of strategy. He would figure out the time to talk to them, get him in the room, convince them what to say, and at the end of it, he would balk about taking the, you know, the accountability for it. I think that's what a lot of players at the end wanted to see. And I was going to wait to say this portion of it, but I'll say it now. I think People want to see what his strategies. Because I really do think he did a lot of it really well. But they wanted to see justification for why he did these moves versus excuses. And I just don't understand why he was not able to say those things. Now we're there.

B (32:47)

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change your basketball thing. I don't think it was the follow through.

A (32:52)

Okay.

B (32:53)

I think he is the guy that we yell at. Who he's out there, he's dribbling, he has a free shot. But no, he decides, I don't want to do a three pointer. I'm going to do a two pointer. So he, he dribbles some more and gets closer to the basket. And then he realizes, oh, nope, I. You know what? I do want a three pointer. So then he dribbles back and each time he has an open shot and he doesn't take it, and then the buzzer goes off and the time runs out. And does he take the shot at that moment? Does he not take the shot? I guess he takes it for the purpose of this metaphor and he makes it. But in the meantime, he's pissed off everybody by running around and hogging the ball.

A (33:37)

Okay. All right, Dave. And I see you're with your basketball analogy. I will raise you that when you. That is a much better analogy right there. 100%. It's just so frustrating because I truly think typically sometimes when we see this was a lopsided boat, right, for the winner, for Ashley. But I think it does a disservice to. I think Ashley's warranted to win. First of all, I'm going to say that. But I also think Vince played a much better game than he was able to describe and that we were basically able to see. It should have been. This should have been a tight battle. The vote should have been very tight. This should have been a type of. Type of vote. Whereas full. How many people could vote? I think it was 7 or 6. 7. This should have been 3, 4 vote. Because they both played really good games. And jury management was not insisting. But his scheming plot. I mean, I think people still looked at now all of Vince's moves as Morgan's moves. And that's not true. They played still very different games. Yes, they were connected near the end, but he did a lot of his own moves and stuff. But like you said, he kept making everyone frustrated with all the moves he tried doing.

B (34:42)

Yeah, yeah. Now, one interesting thing that struck me was when Lauren asked her final two question to Vince about Things he could claim credit for that Morgan couldn't. So the thing that you were talking about, his first example was going with the judges alliance. Bad example. I guess it's technically correct that he decided to but he had to be persuaded to join that alliance. He did not want to. That's why it was. It's so funny that that's the alliance that got him to the end because he never wanted to be a part of that alliance. And Morgan was the one who fought so hard to keep that alliance together. So for him to say that it was his work, not Morgan's, Anyone who was familiar with what happened with the judges alliance should have just been shaking their head like you've got to be kidding me. You know. Now Lauren, the one who asked the question, technically she had no idea. And I think the others who were in the judges alliance, I don't think Will and Rachel were going to vote for him anyway. So it didn't matter. But it was just a terrible, terrible example to lead off with. Similar to how he led off when Keanu said we think you've been doing this. Explain yourself. And the first thing he said was I haven't been doing that. And it's like no, you can't just deny it when they say that you, they think you've been doing it. You have to explain. You don't just say no I haven't.

A (36:14)

Vince, I truly think and people are going to watch back the season later on that wow, he did all these moves that are really impressive. He must be known as a, you know, a hall of fame big brother player. You know, he must be. No, like he must be one of the. I'm just don't like he hasn't owned any of his moves because he had, he truly had a resume in the way he worked these things to be able to talk about this down the line. And I mean I really think when Ashley said I have made my enemies to allies, Vince should have been able to come back with saying yeah, I had enemies because I played such a strong game. The game I played, played going forward is going to make people upset. I had the backstop. I had to manipulate people from the start because I was in power. So I had to keep going. If I didn't hold on to power somebody would come and struck me. But I had to make deals with A, B, C, D, E and F. But I still made those enemies. Allies to enemies and allies again. I mean he had so many chances but I like I said he wanted to have his kick and eat he wanted to be loved by everybody. But I truly think. And you've said this, too, if he just accepted his role as a villain, I think people would have had a lot more. They would just been impressed with this game, acknowledge that. Wow, okay. You played a villainous game, but that's impressive.

B (37:30)

Yeah, yeah. And I think. I think it's appropriate here. Corey Wurttenberger said on one of the podcasts, he said, somehow Vince managed to get none of the credit and all of the blame, you know, And I, I. Yeah, it's. It's perfect. But it's because of the way he acted. And again, we'll. We'll get to more of that later. But it's his own fault. You know, he shot himself in the foot. No one else. He did 100.

A (37:58)

And I think that again, as we transition, if you want to. To Morgan.

B (38:03)

Yes. Yeah.

A (38:05)

Morgan, she played a very strong game in many different ways, but her game was actually, I feel, intrinsically different than his. But she became the benefactor of a lot of the decisions he decided not to take accountability for. She was able to. And people saw Morgan both for her own game, that she had really strengths, and a lot of what Vincent's game was, the positives were all accounted for. Morgan, because she took credibility, too. And they saw her. That their connection there start to really add up that. But to Morgan's point, you know, we see Vinnie, where there's a lot of frustration. Right. I feel like he needs to be accountable for it. I feel the opposite for Morgan, and I appreciate that from her, that I feel like she was. I think. I feel almost wrong that we didn't get to see a final two of Ashley and Morgan because I would have been really excited to see how she tackles these questions, because throughout the game, she utilized strategy in a different way. She had different alliances. And, you know, both you and I felt at some points, maybe me so. More so that I felt like she cut certain allies a little too early. When we talk about Jimmy or we talk about how she was like, okay, really quickly taking out Mickey, but we see it. She was able to always stay a step ahead of the game.

B (39:13)

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, she worked very hard. You know, we talked about the. The judges. You know, we were talking about that and. And other things that she did to stick with the judges for a minute. When Vince wanted to nominate Rachel as revenge, Morgan stopped him. You know, I mean, you. You said she got a lot of the credit for some of his moves, but she really did take over his hohs. You know she told him how Rachel had been in a bad. Well, she had been in a bad spot with Rachel after their fight earlier in the season, but they had come back together and if you're with Rachel, she's loyal to a fault. So Vince needed to do the same thing and she noted he needed to talk to Rachel rather than making assumptions. And of course that was one of. I talked about it with Lauren, but it was one of his problems early on as well. And she won the day there. And that's the thing we saw that she almost always got her way when it came to Vince and she held that alliance together almost through sheer force of will. Not will, the player will. But going back to something I've already mentioned a few times, it that control just stayed. As Ashley told Dalton, Russ Morgan not only played her game, she played Vinnie's game and she controlled a lot of Vinnie's moves. And the other house guests saw that, as did we regular listeners know my feelings about Kelly, but I think the funniest thing she said all season was she was playing chess with Keanu during one of Vince's later HOHs and made a comment. It sure is nice of Morgan to let Vince sleep in in her room during her hoh.

A (41:14)

Exactly. I mean she was able to run so much of his game too. And I think she also was able to do a lot of what as she talked about herself doing insulation, she insulated herself from the get go of the game. She was able to ensure that whether it was the judges or whether it was her alliance with Mickey and Jimmy or moving forward, she always had somebody there that could take the blame for something and she cuts them when she needs to. And when I think about it, she was very intentional throughout the whole game of it making these moves and how can I come to the end? And with the fact that she can win competitions and utilize those, I mean she tried to not let many of her shots go to waste, but knowing that, hey, this is the thing I think is the strangest and more, more. I don't want to jump ahead too much, but her relationship with Vince and Lauren and knowing that Lauren is close with Vince, but Lauren is not really going to take the shot for things. Vince is not going to call to take a shot. So Morgan knowing that she has the upper hand because she's the one who will take the initiative. I thought how she played that relationship, that weird thruffle of people beautifully.

B (42:20)

Yeah. And that was part of her taking control of his hoh, that was the perfect example. You know, she Told Dalton Ross. People have been saying for weeks that he was playing my game. And truthfully, he was. I had a lot of strategy in Vinny's HoHs. I learned a lot about him and knew how to properly communicate with him and kind of weigh out the options. But I weighed them a little bit more in my favor and it just so happened to work. I mean, I got his number two on the block for real. I love how she still calls Lauren his number two even though she was his first number one, you know. But earlier in the season, yeah, Morgan had an interesting path. She was in a super tight duo with Mickey. As time went on, she started making other classes, close allies like, you know, Vince. This annoyed Mickey because she didn't want Morgan to have split allegiances. But Morgan kept that relationship going and eventually jumped all in with him when the time came to get rid of Mickey because of, well, everything we discussed in the Y Mickey Lost podcast. So, I mean, I have to say I worried in the pregame that Morgan would be playing too hard and, and doing too much. And sometimes she did. But in a house full of strategic dummies who were too scared to make any moves, the person who is pushing the action has a much better chance of succeeding. As we discussed about Ashley earlier, and Morgan was always pushing. She went through so many bags of M M's as she plotted out strategies using them. And I mean, I was sad because they were wasted when she flushed them down the toilet so they wouldn't be found once everybody knew. Oh, if you see the M M's, that means Morgan's been strategizing.

A (44:03)

Yeah, it's, it's funny you see it, but there's a level of awareness that came with her game of how she'll be perceived and how her strategy had to adapt to that. I mean, yes, we were both. I think you put the alarm on it that like this, she, she was a self, self professed gamer and she really wanted to play the game part. So, okay, this is strategy. This makes sense, but also like this big brother. Can you make that work for essentially 100? And to her credit, she essentially did. I mean, the only thing she floundered on was that last part. I mean, she, you know, you strip right at the end and. But to her credit, all her strategy got her to that part. And she also made it so that in the.

B (44:44)

Her strategy and her comp wins.

A (44:46)

Let's, you know, the cop wins help. But I also think, I mean, I.

B (44:49)

Mean, she was safe every week in jury.

A (44:52)

Yeah, I believe it's a problem. But I think, like, having you can't not help that part of it. We can't knock her strategy based on that because she was. It's built around that. You know, I agree with you. It's not exactly Keanu situation where it's like, okay, if you don't win right now, you're going in. I do think Morgan would have been one of the players. She would have been in danger, but she had a better likelihood of being able to convince somebody there because of her social strategy.

B (45:19)

Right, right. That's true. Definitely true. Now, one thing I, I wanted to mention before we leave this rule is the uniqueness of the Vince and Morgan relationship. Whatever is going on there, let them figure that out. They're out of the house, the cameras are gone. You figure that out. But they were number one allies who told each other almost everything. But they were also more than that in at least some ways, whether they admit it or not. So as each was trying to position themselves for the final two, they talked to each other while also being in opposition to each other. And it's. It was weird because it is not often we see such honest conversations weighing the pros and cons of taking the person you're talking to to the end. Normally you don't sit here and say, well, Ovie, I might take you to the end, but here's the reasons that I wouldn't take you to the end, you know? No, you don't. You're. You're not normally that honest. But because they had whatever it was, they talked through literally everything. It was just very interesting to watch.

A (46:28)

Yeah, I think we'll be hard pressed. And I will never say never. Right. To see that type of conversation happen much more in future seasons because it has to be a perfect storm of having allyship. But also this over the game, past the relationship type of weird showman's thing. But it's not because there is a small little obstacle in the middle. And that being somebody's actual relationship outside of the house, where, I mean, they're talking about code of like, where should they be together or not. I mean, a lot of them, it creates this ability to be honest with one another. But also, like, even it's almost a safety net to feel like I can talk about burning you, but also I know you have these feelings for me and that's. I'm just saying that out loud. I feel like that's the case. You have these feelings for me and I know you won't really, truly burn me without Saying, I think she was able to clock that with me. I mean, we make time and time again with Vince. We realize, like you mentioned, he'd run around, make everyone upset. He wasn't able to justify his moves to the person he wasn't able to go through. He wanted to be the good guys and I think he wasn't the good guy with everybody else, essentially. But with Morgan, he had. He wouldn't be able to cut her without saying so. I think she knew that. And I could be wrong here, but I do think she. He felt potential when he sacrificed $750,000 for her. There's a question maybe would she do that for him? No. And I think she knew that and was able to take advantage of that.

B (48:00)

Yeah. Okay, well, we can move into the second rule which says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret. I, I think it's pretty clear that Ashley did a very good considering the bigger concern I mentioned earlier was that she might have kept it too secret. However, there was a time when Ashley had a problem with this rule in a strange way. Back on day one, the infamous shower gate. I mentioned this because her shower was really only about 20 to 30 minutes and the rest of that two hours was talking to Vince. But she used the shower to cover all of that talking and it came back to bite her. In everything that followed, she managed to turn Catherine against her and then seemed to get upset with her position and, you know, to the point that she was repeatedly interrupting Vince's meetings with other house guests and she just seemed to spiral. Now we don't know what all she discussed with Vince in that time when she was supposedly showering because the live feeds didn't turn on that, which is annoying. But we do know it didn't end up making him into an ally because of everything that happened afterwards. And indeed it was somewhat ironic that they ended up as the final two because I believe you mentioned earlier, he really wanted her gone after that and it carried through the whole season.

A (49:19)

Yeah, I mean, to say Ashley played the perfect game is probably a stretch in ways because there are parts of it and I think overplaying her hand sometimes bit her and then she had to react towards. I mean, that's a great example you brought up. I kind of think about the time when she over shared with Mickey essentially with her relationship about Rachel. Everyone knew they were close, but she basically talks about, all right, what are the potentials of what Rachel has said about other players and that kind of gets back to Mickey. And other people she would share a little bit too much, thinking that maybe a strategy to connect it with it, but she would burn her own allies. I also feel like potentially when she was with that whole. I know a lot of people loved it, but also that speech about Keanu when they kind of go at it, I think she is thinking this strategy. Let me make this a move here. Again, some of these things turn. It's hindsight's 2020 and we'll look like the winners, like the history. Right. But I also think if she didn't win, we would be pointing at these as options as this could have gone another way. We could have seen Keanu very upset at her and hold that grudge against her. That didn't happen. We could have seen the thing with Mickey biting her in the back and Rachel not trusting her as much. I mean, these are certain things that she could have lost. Allies she didn't. And it worked in her favor. But there was a little messiness with her gain of those puns.

B (50:36)

Yeah, I mean, yeah, she definitely had that, that situation. You know, Morgan told Mickey that Ashley might not make jury because a lot of people don't like her effing mouth. And it was talking too much. Not like being mean or anything. Zach didn't trust her because she spilled information. Ava said similar things. She eventually locked it down. But yeah, for a while, like you said, that's what she was seen as. And so, yeah, I mean, nobody I don't think would say she played a perfect game and, you know, we need to bring up those things as well. Now I don't have much, you know, more in terms, you know, for her in this rule because she was mostly trying to hide it. So of course she wouldn't have, you know, too much. But then we have Vince. Of course we know many of his problems stemmed from this rule. Dalton Ross said it well in asking Vince an interview question, he said, I remember early in the season watching you make a lot of promises to a lot of people and thinking to myself, this is a good way to get really far in the game, but it's almost impossible to win that way because people then always feel burned. That was just the question. Vince said in response. He was in such extreme self preservation mode where it was like I would say anything just to make sure that I make it past one more eviction. One more eviction just to go as far as I can. But then I knew once the jury started, I would probably have to cut that out. Except here's the problem. He didn't and that's the thing. He kept identifying the problem but not fixing it. Back in mid to late July, he told us he knew he was digging himself a hole, but he claimed he didn't have much choice at the moment. That's the trouble with day one or week one deals, he said. And yet, like I said, it continued. He admitted to Sharon Tharp that he made too many final twos and told too many lies and basically panicked because this was his dream and he didn't want to get out early. And Sharon said at. At times it looked like he just couldn't stop. And he agreed, saying there were times he would lie and then leave the room and wonder why he had done that. Like with Keanu, he knew he should have just told him he was a target, but he didn't.

A (52:54)

Yeah. And I think that this overuse of this, where it's, hey, I had to trick you this game, big brother. I backstabbed you a little bit. Really sorry about that. But we'll figure out a way to move forward. That is a way it works. Acknowledges. And the issue with Vince is he would double down. Essentially. Yes. He would say, I cannot believe I did that, too. I cut you. And you're right, I am the worst person here. He would literally double down with them and be like, yes, you should call me out even more. So the issue was that he did it again and then again and again. I think with Kelly. Right. We said this in the beginning of the season, I feel like maybe three weeks. And I was like, it's a very interesting household because, like, people are saying stuff to each other that maybe other houses wouldn't, and they get much more upset. They're kind of taking things on the cheek this season where they get in a fight, it's not the end of the world. They move on. Vince continually use that potential to advantage, but there's only so much road you can run till you run out. And he continually made each player more upset. More upset. More upset with all his strategy because he kept working in circles around them. That's how good of a player he can't be. But then he wouldn't own up to it again and just keep doing it. So they just felt it was so disingenuous and it really hurt his game.

B (54:10)

Yeah. Going back to the beginning, even as I mentioned in Rule 1, people noticed Vince was everyone's friend. You know, Rachel told Ashley at the time, he is so bad at this game. He's aligned with everyone. She. She similarly talked about, literally everyone thinks they're working with him as his number, as number one. Everyone thinks they're best friends with him. Heck, even Keanu and Kelly, of all people talked about how strange it was that so many people considered Vince as their number one. As we watched him through the season, you know, again, he lied more than necessary and was such an obvious liar. It was so weird to me that it worked and. And yet it did for a while. But even as he knew would happen, it eventually caught up to him. As he kept wheeling and dealing, he complained to us yet again, I'm in a position to piss off. I can't do the voice like. Like Taran can yet again. I don't want to do that to people. You know, I'm in a position to piss off one side of the house or the other. And as he said that, I was, like, yelling at my tv. Yes, Vince, that's the way the game works. You can't make everybody happy. There are two sides. If you choose between them, one side will be unhappy.

A (55:37)

It's impressive how much he was actually in power throughout the entirety of the game between him and his allies, but felt that he was in survival mode over and over and over again, some will say. And maybe some players will also come out and talk about the fact that there's so many competitions in which people have to be nominated. You have to be nominated three times. So he's. Yes, you're putting all these people up there. He feels like he's making bad blood over over and over and over again. But also it leaves it to be where it's like, I have no choice in the matter. Like, this is how the game, the season is made, and I have to do this. Like, you're going to be put in the exact same situation when you win power and you have to put three people up there and you have to make these decisions here. That's how I'm not working. But, Kim, he just could never own up to it. And I think that's the reason why. It's his inability to own up to his moves and make excuses versus justifying. It made him make 20 more moves than he had to to try to appease people, where he would have another conversation and turn around, have a different conversation with somebody else, then that would go around to the other person. He has to go back and do damage control, I mean, over and over and over again. I mean, the worst weeks were when he was in power, essentially because we're like, oh, man, he's about to hurt himself again. Like, can you Just chill. Can you just not do nothing and maybe you will be off better?

B (56:56)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Rachel noted, you know, about midway through the season that Vince was always either crying or lying to her. You know, Kelly got credit for that pithy saying in the jury round table, but Rachel had said it long before. Ava similarly noted at one point that Vince put himself in those positions and then cried about it. That was part of the problem. First, that the jury thought he was being emotionally manipulative with his crying, but beyond that, even if he wasn't crying, when you get caught over scheming through your own actions, that is not an admirable trait. Nobody wants to reward that.

A (57:40)

No. He cried so much, and I.

B (57:45)

We.

A (57:46)

No one will know other than him whether it was intentional or unintentional. But how these conversations would go. And also the fact that it seemed like he could turn it off at points, too, when no one is in the room. It just made it so sus. And I think it's. If that's part of your strategy, that's perfectly own it. Own it. That's the type of player and the game you're playing. And even if it's not part of your strategy, it's the reality of it. And we know in Big Brother, what matters is the perception of people. It doesn't matter what's true or not. So if this has happened, make it part of your strategy. Hey, y', all, like, you have a better chance to win. Saying that I had emotion to manipulate you guys, I used every tool I had in the bag. The person next to me is a lawyer that we've just found out here. They're working with everybody here. I'm unemployed. I have to figure out what tools I have in the bag to help myself in here, and I use every tool I can because I. I am a fan of this game. I've been watching for a decade, and I've been wanting to play this game. So I'm so sorry for you guys to have to do these things for you for these three months, but after this, we can be friends. I had to make. Make it part of your strategy.

B (58:51)

Yeah.

A (58:53)

Because this ruled end wouldn't be so bad for him because we'd be like, all right, well, he did over scheme, but then he was accountable for it. But the difference is he over schemed and wasn't accountable for it. So it was all for not. Yeah.

B (59:06)

All right, well, I think we need to get into a bit of a sticky area here, and that is the obvious duo between Vince and Morgan because part of this rule is don't make an obvious duo. It started out slow, but of course we saw that it really ramped up live feed viewers saw their very long hugs before tv only viewers did. But it got to the point that the show couldn't ignore it anymore. Putting aside the weirdness of Morgan and Vince hugging all the time, including in public, it showed the whole house how tight a duo they were like literally hugging each other tight. Even before the term cheat mans was coined by fans, I was typing in my notes that they were so obvious they might as well be a showmance. Keanu was upset about Morgan monopolizing Vince's time. Even back then. Other players like Ashley, Will and Rachel talked about how it was getting worse, but it continued and kept getting more and more obvious because they were allies in the judges and because all of the comps that they won between them. So they were always protected even though they were this threatening duo.

A (60:20)

Yeah. And again, I don't know if I want to. I was going to talk about this later on with it, but I think it's still very viable here in this portion is that I think with the type of game he was playing right where he wants to play this whole some more. The reason why I had to manipulate arm crying is because I'm so passionate and I really care about everybody there has to. That argument works when you're playing what you would try to argue is an ethical game. And I think the actions we saw that were basically achievements with Morgan really put it in the eyes of a lot of the juries. Like how. How ethical are you being Vince? Because I mean we as viewers have those questions and I truly think a lot of players towards like this is icky. This is not right. So when somebody does those type of things, you then have in your mind, okay, what else are they capable of? What type of thing? So if you're. He's going to try talking about I'm playing this virtuous game. The reason why I'm doing this is because I care so much about you all. I'm a good person. And then you do this and this is your relationship with it. I know this might bleed into some of the other stuff, but I just. It's not a good combination. Just outside of you being a strong public duo too.

B (61:29)

Yeah. And to further that ickiness, we have the situation when Morgan and Vince were nominated against each other by Keanu who wanted to save Vince because, you know, he only put him on the block to teach him a lesson. And it was all Morgan's fault anyway in his mind. After Morgan won the veto, Keanu came up with a crazy plan to convince Morgan she should use the veto on Vince and he would nominate Lauren as the replacement, thus ensuring Morgan would be safe. And Morgan seemed to consider it in part because Vince knew about it and played along. Luckily she came to her senses and even more lucky for Vince, she never found out, at least while they were in the house, about the truth behind the plan. But I'm talking about it here because it showed how far Vince was willing to go if Morgan found out what he had done. He was in deep, deep trouble. Not to mention circling back to the ickiness factor, he was doing this to her while they were sharing their long hugs and whatever else at the time. Now I think what he will tell her is, if he even remembers this. I think what he will tell her is, oh, I was always going to tell you about that. I was just, I, I was just playing with Keanu there and letting him go off. But I was never going to let you do that. Of course. But I truly think he absolutely would have let her do that to save his game.

A (63:04)

100 and I think that it's ironic that Keanu never really brings us up against spins down the line essentially with Morgan because it so easily could have blown up his face and I think match with that. And then he has this other public duo because they didn't really make it a secret either with him and Lauren. I mean game wise these are so known by each person. It. It's so strange that I'm surprised it didn't have much more of an impact on his game earlier on. But I do think it was because people are so insulated slightly and then the fact that it was a weird trouble where Morgan was actively trying to get against go against Lauren that people are like, okay, it's not a full trio. Yeah, it's, it's. It's bad gameplay overall but also it, it's a bad narrative gameplay. It's bad strategy in that part. Because if the narrative you're trying to strike like we talk about is that you are this type of player who is not manipulating people, who's just doing things. He has to, he has to survive. It's icky when you do those things when you don't need to survive. There was no point he needed to do that. He was just doing it just kind of. Cuz he thought he survived. He.

B (64:10)

Yeah, he thought he needed to do it to survive. But yeah, like you said you know, he. He fought hard to keep both his number ones in that throuple, like you called it, Even though they were in opposition to each other and those two had zero interest in working together. They each wanted him as their number one ally. And when he would spend any amount of time at all with Lauren, Morgan would get upset. When he would bring ideas to Lauren, she would get upset because they clearly came from Morgan. He was trying so hard to keep both around even when he caved to Morgan and nominated Lauren. But as Kelly said in, you know, another. In a rare wise moment, and it doesn't even need to be that wise. It's just this is how dumb he was being. When he complained to Kelly that he wanted Lauren to stay, Kelly said, well, then you shouldn't have put her up then.

A (65:06)

No. 100 was kind of almost. If he gave a little ounce of, like, effort into their relationship at the game and kept and stopped backstabbing her, she easily could have been that the fourth person in that. I don't. I think it's crazy to say, like, force them at that point, but like, this group of this quadrant. That's what we'll call it, you know. Yeah. I mean, he had a lot of things that worked in his favor strategically. He did certain things. But this is a part where I think when you don't put your foot down and create certain boundaries within the game and work within your alliance to ensure that they would work with you. Because for Lauren's side, if she never trusted Morgan at all in this point, is because it looks like Vinny has something more with Morgan. It doesn't look like it's a relate like an actual relationship like. Or. It doesn't look like it's just a alliance. It looks like it's something extra. And I wonder. I wonder how much that would have been if he truly kept this game related only with his relationship with Morgan. The platonic thing. If that's how it really was, I wonder how that would have changed the perspective of the jury and the other players that wanted to work with them.

B (66:14)

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, speaking of Morgan, we can. We already talked about her in terms of the situation with Vince, but that wasn't her only issue in being too obvious and showing where she stood. Because there was also Zach earlier in the season when. When both Zach and Vince were nominated, she went into something of a tailspin, complaining endlessly about how hard this all was for her because her two close allies were on the block. She showed all her cards to the whole house. But as with, you know, just with Vince alone later, it didn't end up biting her because of the other things she had going on.

A (66:54)

Yeah, I, I think Morgan truly did overplay some hands or did a little too much when she didn't need to. It just didn't come to fruition because some of her other allies were also doing it way more than that. I really go back to that Jimmy, Mickey and her situation that I still don't. I mean, we can say Hindsen 2020, it worked out in a way for her, but I don't think it should have. I think cutting Jimmy the one it did out of the blue, when you have a strong ally and you're like, oh, I think don't trust him more. When she talked at the end, again, it's finale. She needs to watch back. I don't blame her too much, but she's like, yeah, when I feel like an ounce of distrust there, I knew I. It was really. He was. He was playing less distrustful than you were. And there's certain moves like that that didn't catch up to her because Mickey was also playing all over the place. And later on where she, you know, we talk about her over, but overall, it's truly not as bad as her counterpart.

B (67:46)

Yeah. Okay, we can move on to the third rule, which talks about the need to be flexible. We've already talked about Ashley, you know, and how she made different alliances, looked at the field of play, determined who she needed to get close to, etc. Expanded on that in response to her first final two question from Rachel by noting she was able to adapt to the game each time someone left. Like when Zach left, she saw an opening to attach herself to Morgan and Vince. We were just talking about them. In addition to her duo with Rachel and her alliances with Will, Ava and others. And then she had protection through Rachel's relationship with Keanu. She put herself in position to be protected almost no matter what happened. Which is the epitome of being flexible.

A (68:32)

Exactly. David. I think we, when we talk about the rules, what's most important for each player's game? And I think it's fun to see. Okay, is there a portion of a rule that I feel like a player is maxed out that they. This is a big contributor to the game. And I really think this portion is for Ashley. I mean, we talk about her social game, but her social game came from her being flexible, from her deciding, okay, I need to figure out change. My, my, how I'm tackling like this, or I heard this. Let me Change up. I mean, early on you mentioned about how near the end of the game where Keanu's like, hey, these are the things I would look for a winner. And she's like, oh, interesting. I'm not showing enough of this. Let me show this. We see about when Rachel goes out. Okay, what do I need to do now to ensure that my shield is gone? I can be seen as a player or with Keanu, hey, I don't like this guy right now at all. But I didn't make sure I keep him here. She was able to maneuver here. I mean, that's our most impressive part. Entirety of the game, I think.

B (69:30)

Yeah. Now I will say she did hit a couple speed bumps earlier in the game. For example, she was trying to stay aligned with Mickey Morgan and Rachel. And when Rachel won hoh right after Mickey had been publicly declaring war on Rachel, Ashley pretended to know nothing about it. Then she tried to argue to Rachel in favor of keeping Mickey. It was a strange situation and a lot of us were, were scratching our heads at the time like, why is she doing this? And eventually Ashley came to the same realization that why am I doing this? I should not be doing this. And she switched. Which shows flexibility to recover from that. Because like someone from Keanu, if he made a decision to go in a certain direction, he's going to keep going in that direction. It doesn't matter if there's a wall there. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense, he's going to keep going in that direction. She switched when she realized it.

A (70:22)

Yeah, I, I think it's, it's like you said, it's like another great example for flexibility. I think, you know, that's the thing is when you have a player like that, they're going to that you're going to find what the ways you have to do something wrong to then come back to it. Right. If you're never pushing a situation, you're not going to find if you're flexible. She found out weekend and week out. And again I, I love seeing that storyline of her from surviving to thriving throughout the whole thing because she knew that, okay, this move I did was bad. I mean from the get go from shower gate, she is just on the block essentially. How do we move from here? And we saw week in, a week out she had to play a different game.

B (70:55)

Yeah. All right, so how do you think Vince did here?

A (71:02)

I think it's pretty bad. It's bad and good. Okay. Because he, he was flexible in the moves he made because he didn't have a backbone. He did not. He was unable to make a decision, so he would have to keep floundering back and forth. It's one of those things where it's, like, so flexible that it's just spinning all around. But I don't think it was for his benefit. I think if he actually stayed rigid and straight, like, he was like, okay, I will justify my. I will figure. Tell you exactly why I'm doing this, and if I made you upset, here's why, and how do we work with them. That would have benefited his game. Unfortunately, though, anytime somebody would say he had a damn issue with this, he, look, okay, you're right. And he'd go. And then keep doing the same thing over and over again. So in a way, I almost feel like he was inflexible. I know this is crazy to say that, because he kept making the same mistake over and over and over again.

B (71:57)

Yeah, I mean, he. He wanted to be too flexible, working every angle with every person, but he couldn't stop. So he didn't have the flexibility to stop being so flexible. But, you know, part of it is, he came into the game claiming his plan was to wing it and adapt. But the problem was, like I said, he winged it too much, and he never really adapted. We talked about both of those things in Rule 2, how he kept making promise after promise, even when he knew he shouldn't, and how he kept also recognizing the need to fix that, but never did. He told Keanu in the game that he was acting that way to get him to jury, but then he needed to change because he'd upset people, and he didn't want to be weaselly anymore. And at the time, my response was, sure, Vince. And he showed that I was absolutely right not to believe him. Then after the game, Mike Bloom asked him if he thought about changing up his strategy, and he said, yeah, I definitely thought about it. I'm not sure I knew how to go about it. But, yeah, clearly, in hindsight, probably should have adapted in a more productive way.

A (73:04)

Yeah, it's. Maybe he didn't expect his strategy to actually work going into the house, and he thought he would have to adapt, but he kind of hit gold the way he was playing initially. Whereas, like, this is working out for him. And then he continuously kept doing that without realizing. This strategy is only good for such a portion of it without burning so many people around you. And if you're gonna burn everyone around you, you need to take accountability for that. I mean, that's the thing, is that there's so many things we can say, yes, good job for Finns, but at the end of the day, if you don't own up to it, those moves don't matter to you. Like, then you just get the negatives. You don't get any of the positives for it. So all that work you did, all this flexibility doesn't matter because there was no purpose behind it.

B (73:49)

Yeah. So then what did you think about Morgan for this role?

A (73:54)

Morgan is interesting because I think that, yes, she was flexible in parts, but I think her primary reads a lot of times were correct. So she stuck with her game plan and it worked out. I think where we see the most flexibility in there is working with the judges and trying to figure out how to maneuver things. But I think, yes, she had challenges for her, but then, you know, she won competitions when she might have been on the burner, so she didn't have to face out her stretch. Her strategy didn't depend on her being flexible is what I think. I think she had the ability to be it, but it wasn't like she was having to do that throughout the entirety of the game.

B (74:34)

Yeah, this was a tough one for me too. I had literally no notes for her specifically about this. On the one hand, she did flip away from Mickey when things got bad. On the other hand, she stuck by her through. Through situations that I don't think she should have, like when Mickey was absolutely ripping on her for daring to not tell her every single thing about every conversation she had, game related or not. And once she did make the switch to be all in on Vincent Ashley, she obviously stayed there. But like you said, she wasn't penalized for it because she became a compist.

A (75:10)

I think we would have had a definitive answer if she won the final hoh seeing that final decision of which. And I think that would have been able to be able to see that. But I think it's one of those ones where I say it. It's hard to tell their flexibility if they're not challenged as much in it. And I think that was the case for her.

B (75:27)

Yeah. All right. Well, the fourth rule says players should not let their emotions control them. What did you think about our winner here?

A (75:36)

I mean, here's what I'll say. I don't think her emotions controlled her. They influenced influence, certain decisions of her. But I think she built that into her strategy. You know, like, I think she knew she would react. Like we talk about conversations with. With Keanu, we talked about conversations early on in the game, but then she had a purpose behind that. Like, she. She planned out the conversation, that whole speech. She was gonna have her killing him, call him out. It wasn't like she did that, oh, I'm gonna just do that. Reactionary. She thought it out, took what she felt, and let me enact on it. So I think with Ash, there was a purpose behind most moves, intentionality with it, whether they were always right or not. She let her emotions guide her, but I don't think they controlled her.

B (76:19)

Yeah, I. I definitely didn't see any problems with her here. I mean, like you said, she planned out her moves and decisions. She put emotion aside. In one of her camera talks, she mentioned how she needed to work on getting closer to Keanu and Catherine, even though she didn't like them as much as other people. Now, Vince, on the other hand, fell completely into his emotions by the end of the game. I mean, really, he was always emotional, especially if. If we believe him. As to the reasons for his crying, I'm not sure that I do, but we definitely saw him often making decisions based on having the fewest people mad at him, which was a terrible way to handle it. And of course, this often made things even worse and more emotional by dragging out his decisions. As we discussed previously, instead of just would rip off that bandage, he would basically torture people by slowly picking at it and pulling it and yanking on the skin and the hairs and just dragging it out.

A (77:27)

Yeah, it's. It's a long burn was the way he enacted those relationships. And I. I mean, we. I hate to say, but it compasses that we have two of the three players that were in this weird, cheap pants, and I think that part of it controlled so much his moves there. And I. I don't think it was in any benefit for it because maybe we'll make the argument for Morgan that she was able to utilize it for her benefit, but for him, I don't think so. I think that relationship that turned into this emotional affair hurt his game in so many ways in that eyes of a lot of other players there. Her ability to make logical decisions and ultimately was a big reason why she was one, maybe the only vote that voted for him, but also why a lot of people didn't vote for him, because I don't think they respected him either, as a player, but also as a person by the end of it.

B (78:16)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, once we got to the end game, he was deep in his emotions. He could talk all he wants in interviews about how he and Morgan were just allies and Friends. But we saw the live feed discussions where they talked in code about what. What would happen when they got out of the house. I mean, one of them even made it to TV with added captions. He flat out told Morgan he didn't have the heart to evict her and admitted he was throwing away his game to keep her. He knew he would lose, but what were his other options? Was he going to vote her out after essentially giving up his girlfriend for her? Now, of course, none of that ended up mattering because he completely BW the final HOH Cup. And we might say it wouldn't have mattered anyway because Ashley beat him when they faced off at the end. But we heard from at least Keanu saying if Vince had been the one to win that final HOH and actually make the move of evicting Morgan, at least Keanu would have probably voted for him. I don't know if anyone else would have. But again, the point is moot. So there's not really, you know, it's not really necessary to debate. But the thing is, he was never going to do it. He was so caught up that there was no way he was getting rid of Morgan, even knowing that she was going to beat him at the end.

A (79:34)

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's. If he was able to make that decision at the end, that was a cap on it. Like, okay, actually his emotions didn't control him. He picked actually over her. And now we give it as a plus that you were able to use, manipulate your way through. And you. When the time mattered, you didn't let that stop you. But that wasn't the case. We didn't get to see that. And I think the other thing I. When in all these interviews or they're talking about this platonic relationship, it doesn't matter if the other house gets to view it differently. Right. So you're saying it's platonic, but, you know, the people in the house are viewing you guys all as like a. Like, they're like, all right, let's leave the room. When y' all are together, you guys are hungry and they're talk. They're having actual conversations with you. You had Zingbot come in there and basically make fun of the fact that y' all are in this weird relationship here, an affair, so you can say how much platonic you want to be, but when we talk about these rules, we talk about how it impacts in the house, and everyone viewed it badly. So it doesn't matter if they're saying it's platonic. Or not from the house guess viewpoint, it isn't right. This episode is brought to you by.

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B (82:55)

Now of course, because of that, Morgan was also in her feelings at various times in the game. And you know the funny thing is at an earlier time she really got overly emotional. It wasn't with Vince, it was when Mickey was verbally beating up on her. And Morgan was so attached to her that she said she would never do anything to hurt Mickey's game and she would even let Vince go if she needed to back then. And then there was the way she acted with Zach. So she definitely had plenty of these emotional attachments. But then she also voted out Zach and Mickey, so she was able to put those aside for the game. And you know, when it came to Vince, okay, yes, obviously she was worse in the emotions department, but would she have voted him out? I, I, I don't know. Well, I do know. I, I do think she would have. But in the meantime, when he was spending what she felt was too much time with Lauren, she told him, I'm going to crash out if I don't get more time with you. I've had barely any time with you for the past two days. Which was ridiculous because she had plenty of time with him. But she truly sounded like a jealous girlfriend no matter what they both said about the situation.

A (84:11)

Yeah. And I, maybe I wonder if she was using that to manipulate him a little because she knows how she can do that with him. Yeah. There are points definitely throughout the entirety game. I don't, I think it would be wrong to say that motions did not impact Morgan throughout her game, but when the decisions came to it, I will say that like you mentioned those examples there, I think about the Jimmy stuff. They're really close with Jimmy and they still are able to kind of cut him because she at that point thinks he is wrong. I don't think it's the right read, but she at point thought it was the best thing for her game, let's cut him out. But we see it on and on with her that she's able to kind of turn on. There's a version of Morgan here and then there's a version of Morgan when it's on the game. And when it came time, the game time, she was ready to cut throats. So I feel like she was able to control her emotions to level that it didn't hinder her gameplay.

B (85:00)

Yeah. And you know. Yeah. When all was said and done, we talked earlier about how Ashley implanted the idea in her that she needed to cut Vince or to win the game if she had won the final hoh. And yes, I, I fully believe she was going to. It would have been the wrong move, but she would have thought it was the right strategic move. So I, I still would have given her credit for it in this rule and taken away credit in rule one. Yeah. All right, we can go to the fifth rule which says players need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. So we finally get to that social part that I mentioned back in the first rule and let's start by quoting what Ava said In jury roundtable, the way Morgan has been a comp beast, Ashley is a social beast. And it's true, as much as she had some problems early on, she got past those and pretty much everyone loved her. But speaking of those early problems, it's not often that I learned something new in a final speech. And I guess maybe she mentioned it while practicing and it slipped by me because I saw some but, you know, nobody can be there 24 7. But she surprised me and I'm sure a lot of other people by revealing she was purposely a bit annoying in the beginning. She said in her speech that she came into the house knowing that the most liked and the least liked person are targeted. She wanted to fall in the middle. So she created annoyances to get a little target on herself. For example, we talked right here about how she was doing things like not washing dishes, saying she didn't even know where they went, cutting in line for laundry, insisting that Rachel was bougier than she was, eating meals prepared by others without helping, and of course, not cleaning the bathroom while making comments to Rachel about how she never had to do chores while growing up. Now, at this point, we don't know if any of that was real, but as we watched, we couldn't believe that she would do and say such things. We were astonished. How can you do that? And now I think it was literally all on purpose.

A (87:15)

I like Ashley. She's my winner pick. And I know you've mentioned that you think it's on purpose. I believe, and I think that's the power of the big Brother. Ending portion of it is in Survivor too, but it's a little longer. So you more cross examination. You can make your reality. You know, you can write your reality there. And I think Ashley is very intelligent, smart enough to if these were issues she knew she annoyed people. Let's take anything that someone has a grievance with and let's put a justification for it. And she did that very methodically. And I think maybe this was a part of it. But this, well, this is maybe something people would not vote me for me for. Let me make that part of my strategy and my end speech. I don't know how much all those moves in the beginning portion were strategy, but what I will say is that I think she learned from, like, certain portions of that and was like, okay, I am. This is frustrating people. Let me figure out how not to frustrate people with certain things there because I think she's aware. I mean, we have a very good example in Kelly from The season where she realized she's being annoying to certain players and was like I know I'm being annoying, I'm gonna continue being annoying. And I think with Ashley she was more so on the other camp we're like okay, this frustrated people let me unfruit people a little less so and let's use that as a strategy at the end it so but still good social game. I feel like to recognize the awareness that I'm frustrate people. Whether that's purposeful or not, I give it to her for, you know, putting it part of the strategy.

B (88:47)

I'm going to give her credit for that until proven otherwise. That's where I'm standing right now.

A (88:52)

Winners, right? History, right?

B (88:54)

Winners, right? Right.

A (88:55)

That's right.

B (88:57)

There were some other non household related things she did as well. For example, she directly asked Catherine out of the blue where she st and who she nominate. Which kind of shocked Katherine. I mean then again it's not like Katherine ever played the game, but also related to Katherine. Mickey at one point told Ashley she gets too messy like trying to get involved in the Catherine and Riley personal stuff. And Ashley said no, that that's personal. If they make a game that's their problem. And we thought she was being oblivious but I think there was another thing she was doing on purpose. And you know Ashley even once Ashley asked Will if he would vote to keep Amy or Adrian in front of Amy, knowing full well that he planned to vote out Amy again I think it was something she did on purpose. Just these, these little things that would throw people off a little bit but not make a huge target on herself. I, I just think she's smart enough that she knew not to do these things. She talked about dumbing herself down and I think all of these were, were part of that.

A (90:09)

That's a very kind perspective on it and I'm surprised you're taking that perspective on it because I just think some of those moves right socially are could be game killers, right? Those could be ones that really bite you in the butt. But for her, if she did great for her I think, I think what I'm most impressed with from Ashley is through the mid game and end game as she was able to ensure that hey one she no one had a dog. If they're annoyed by Ashley, it is what it is. They didn't dislike Ashley though because they doubt she was a bad person or she held a belief that they didn't feel like was, you know, something super contrary. She ensured that, that hey, I apply pressure when I need to apply pressure, but also let me figure out a way to have these conversations with people. I mean, I think just a testament of, like, her speech against Keanu where she basically says all this stuff, calls him out, says, there's no world where you will win this game when I'm sitting at the jury or something of that nature. And she has him vote for him at the end. And I think that's a testament. That's how she was able to still bond relationships with people. And I don't think it's by coincidence that her and Rachel bonded so closely. It wasn't just Rachel picked somebody to like, you're going to be my little mentee, my apprentice. I will work with. No, it was a concerted effort from Ashley also to make a relationship with Rachel and realize, hey, you're feeling these feelings. I'm here for you. Let me work with you. And at the same time, understand, let me balance my relationship with Mickey over here, too. I mean, sometimes. Did she succeed all the time? No. But she kept trying to work and realize, there are so many avenues I can open my way through if I'm just talking to people and working with them.

B (91:52)

Yeah. Yeah. And then we have Vince, who was the flip side. He had an absolutely terrible social game by the end of it, as Ashley told Dalton Ross, he made some really bad moves in the game. He led a lot of people on and gave them hope, even though he knew he was going to go another way. So I knew I wanted to emphasize that. That I suspect she didn't have to emphasize it much, considering Kelly's question to him was about lying and crying. As I mentioned earlier, Keanu's was about emotional manipulation. Indeed. A little while ago, Keanu was ranting to Kelly about him saying, complain, whine, and cry. That's been your game plan this whole time.

A (92:38)

And if he might have taken a book page out of Ashley's book at the end, it was like, this was part of the plan. Plan. It was to do all of this. And then we could have been like, wow, all right, good move. All right. It's their body. If it's human and platinum, you had to do what you had to do. That's not. But he didn't do that. It was all. Because that's the difference is you. You put the. You're pressed with somebody. You know, it's when somebody does a magic trick, right? Like, they show the card and you know it's gone. It's great, great magic. But if then the magician doesn't know how he did the magic trick himself. You're like, all right, well, neither. Both of us are confused now. I'm not impressed with you. We're just wilder. Like, magic's out there somewhere, and it's not because of you. And that was his issue. He had magic done, but he did take credit for it, and I think that's really where it relies. Yes, he had a. Because I think his social game still, even though he made people upset and this and that, because of his ability to conversate with people, make them feel wanted, he was able to get in those positions. He was able to hurt people so badly because he was really good at connecting with people. Like, Vince had that ability. But once you keep cutting people and then you don't relay that back to Gabe, People now relay that personal.

B (93:50)

Yeah. Yeah, I. I will say he actually played well for a while until he didn't, because he got in his own way. If you're going to play the way he did, like we've been saying, you have to go all in. Not back and forth, not whining and crying. But even as soon as Ava's hoh. When he knew he'd probably be a target, he cried to Rachel and Will, and both of them saw right through it. Plus, Will was like, I've been on the block twice, so why are you crying to me? Ava also called it out in a doctor saying Vince barely talked to her for five weeks, and then instead of coming to her, he went to her allies to cry to them. You know, we'll have more to say about how Vince's social game impacted him at the end when we get to appendix A. I. I don't know if you have more to say on him right now, though.

A (94:42)

No, I think I. I have any other parts for a little bit. Like, I'm gonna record it now.

B (94:49)

Yeah. So then what did you think of her in this role?

A (94:52)

I. You know, I think Morgan played a solid social game in a lot of ways where she connected with people. She had to. But I will say, when she didn't feel like they were necessary, she didn't feel like she had to connect with them. I mean, I think about her and Lauren, right? She felt that Lauren was going to try to. She want to get her out. She didn't really make as much attempt to bond with her in any shape or form, and she didn't make it a secret that she wasn't going to work with them. I guess maybe we can say she was pretending to be nice with some of these players. But Morgan had a good social game enough. But I think her strategy and her comp wins backed it up enough where she didn't have to try super hard in this category.

B (95:30)

Yeah. It's interesting because in the roundtable, the jury talked about how Morgan's social game shined in the first half of the game, and then she started winning comps. I've heard that from other people, too, too. And she did seem to be in good with just about everyone there. But I saw a number of flaws in her social game. Even at the beginning. For example, she kept acting like everything was about her. The nominations of Zach and Vince were made to test her loyalty. Nobody asked her how she was feeling, even though she wasn't a nominee. She even went so far as to complain to Zach, who was on the block, had just finished a grueling punishment, was in the shower cleaning up from that punishment, and he just wanted to go rest. And she's saying things like, I just hope I don't have to choose between the two of you guys, because I don't know what the f. I'm going to do. I was very unwell today. I'm still very unwell. Like, I couldn't even go to the doctor today. I. I said I am very unwell today. And Zach is the one who just went through everything and is still going through everything. Everything was about her at that moment. And it screamed main character syndrome.

A (96:42)

Yeah. And I think maybe it's because some people attest, you know, like Zach, even though he felt certain ways about Morgan, he talks about this, but he still. She still had people wanting to work with her. But I, I think it was unfortunately early game. It was because we had bad gameplay by players versus her social game convincing people that he work with me on these things. So, again, I don't think Morgan's social game was bad by any means. I just don't think it was tested very much. It wasn't. Her social game isn't why she made it as far as she did. And that's no this on her. It was her strategic. She was really good at there, and she won competitions when she needed to. If her social game was so great, maybe she would have been able to convince Ashley to take her to the end versus Vinnie. But it's, It's. That would have been like, okay, you really are.

B (97:37)

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Even with, you know, what I mentioned in some other examples, clearly she was in with enough people, at least those in the jury, to make them still feel good about her. By the time they would have had to make a decision if she had been part of that decision. But just as with Vince, most of her social game energy became directed at one person only as the summer neared its end. All right, well, the sixth rule says not to be too much of a threat, and Ashley did an amazing job here. We've already talked about it. Excuse me. A lot. In the individual ways, she avoided being seen as a schemer or being too friendly or the like. She purposely stayed under the radar on the strategic and social side. It was less intentional on the comp side. Though she did say in an interview there was one that she threw because winning would have put her in a bad spot for making a decision at the time. But the main point is, as she said as part of her final speech, she knew she had to hide her true identity to keep the target off her back.

A (98:46)

Yeah. And I think that she played the perfect strategy to make sure she wasn't a threat. It wasn't just concealing her things, but she played the game where I will have shields around me, and when one shield goes away, I need to put another shield around and continuously. So, I mean, she did that with Rachel. She did that with Keanu. We see this moving forward in the game. No one. No one was worried about Ashley end game. They weren't thinking that she would be able because they didn't see the moves that she had made or was making or strategy that she was conducting. And I think that's really impressive because some players do it on accident. Right. She did that intentional. So if anything, it's. I can think on watch that people watching play other seasons down the line really will be. It's a good game to study about how Ashley was able to kind of stay lay low and keep her threat level down. But also, she. And I want to preface this. I do not think she won at the end because people disliked Vince so much. So I. She won because she played a very good game, and she had things to show for that. She had so many things to show for that that the person next to her didn't realize until it was too late. I think that's the impressive part. Yes. Vince might have been able to argue a much better game if he owned up. It might have been a closer vote, But I don't see a world where Vince wins unilaterally 70 against Ashley in any world, even with everything.

B (100:10)

Yeah. Yeah. And then speaking of Vince, you know, when it comes to this rule, he never hid his threat level at all from winning the first hoh. To three more after it. People knew about his comp ability least, and that's even with him throwing at least a couple other comps like BB Comics. But even more than that, Vince was seen as a threat because almost no matter who you were, he could turn on you. Some people kept ignoring this lesson, but others saw it.

A (100:40)

Yeah, I mean, he had so many people who should have also been targeting him early on. But like he said, he may have made all these potential enemies, his allies as well, before they became enemies again. Right. Because I think that's what's impressive is that he was. Yes, he. Most people early on. And I mean, I think if you ask most fans halfway through the game or a house guest that, hey, Vince is sitting at the end, does he win? I think most people would be like, yeah.

B (101:06)

Oh, I was predicting it at that point.

A (101:08)

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's impressive and impressive in its own end that he is a threat, but he also isn't voting out because he knew that if I have somebody, how I can cozy up to him. So, yes, I do think he was a threat in the game, but he also ensured that his threat level wouldn't be the reason he goes out.

B (101:27)

Yeah, it's interesting to me because of the way he behaved. There was this inflection point where he went from being a threat to being the person others wanted to face in the end. Keanu wanted to go to the end with him. Ashley obviously wanted to. Even Ava, I think wanted to to. And Morgan definitely should have. But as we discussed, Ashley fooled her into believing the opposite. But he went from being a threat in the game to not at all being a threat. Because despite what you said, part of the reason Ashley did win is because of Vince. Yes, she played her own game, but people looked at Vince and said he is easier to beat than other people.

A (102:16)

I agree with you with that. I. I truly. I think that is a part of it. But I think all those things could have been like, it could have been a very big mistake for other players to take into the end. If he was able to the last week beforehand. I'm not just saying on the job, but to just own up to it. Final five, Final four. And he's like, this is the moves I made. I am a villain of the season. I made these moves purposely. And then he flips it all over on there. So that's why I think it was impressive in this portion of. But again, with nothing, at least from what he says, anything was intentional. So I can't even give him credits for trying to lower his sprint level. Because now everyone to take it to the end. If that was part of his strategy, I would have been like, yes. So impressive.

B (102:55)

But from what he even had the mustache. He could have swirl twirled the mustache. Come on, man.

A (102:59)

Captain Hulk. He is right there. It is truly a shame because he was. If he just took on his it. It's a very cool game to watch and I would be really interested to see what the jury would have said to it.

B (103:13)

Yeah. Now, Morgan, on the other hand, was a threat and stayed a threat. She even told Dalton Ross, I knew almost a month ago that I was going to have to win my way to the end to win. There'd be no other way that I could have made it to the final two unless I physically won. And here, see, that's a problem when it comes to this rule. It showed that she did not do a good job of lowering her threat level. Level. It's like Ashley said, playing the game isn't about winning comps. It's about not needing to win every comp and still being safe.

A (103:47)

Yeah, no, I. And I think that with Morgan, it's. She has a bad trio of people around her at this point where you have. Sorry, I have a little cami on the back. We have a. A trio of Ashley, who is somebody whose threat level is so low. Right. But then you have Vince, who everyone kind of dislikes. So now she's put in a position that if I'm taking this trio to the end, I know I need to win out because throughout the entire game, you have people like Keanu, you have Rachel, you have people like Mickey, who these are shields around you as well. And Morgan knows that. But it. She has to win that whole thing. So kudos to her for doing it. And we talked about it. We don't know how she would have fared if she was able to get out of situation position if she wasn't in danger. But from your right premier, she was safe every week when journey started, essentially. So I guess that's one way to defeat this rule.

B (104:45)

Yes. All right. Well, the seventh rule says to trust almost nobody. And this is an interesting one considering we're at the final three. Each of them had to trust others to get this far, and it worked specifically with among the trees video. But none of them should have trusted the others to take them to final two without doing some work. Ashley was the one who succeeded in that area. I mean, obviously she took Vince, but that wasn't through any work on his part. It Was because she knew he'd be a lot easier to beat.

A (105:19)

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I feel like with Ashley, she played so, like. I mean, I think about with Will, right? She was able to trust in him in that relationship, work with him, but when the time came, she was able to also. I don't want to backset, but able to campaign for herself. And when you don't put your full trust, you know, you put your trust for your house, it's tough for people to either feel one way or the other. Like, if he. He didn't feel betrayed that she was working for herself. Same way with the relationship with Rachel. All these times when she's trusting people, she's keeping a barrier because I think it's. Everything was intentional about her kind of faking who she is in the house. When we talk about how she doesn't want. She wants to dumb herself down. She wants not tell people. It was able for her to not give all the truth because she's already lying about everything else. So impressive about her.

B (106:13)

Yeah. All right, well, we can move on quickly to appendix A. Then it is about the jury phase and how they handled the jurors on their way out the door, plus how Ashley and Vince dealt with the actual jury in person. Listen, we already discussed a little of what Ashley was doing back in the first rule when it came to her goodbye messages. But to quote this appendix, use your goodbye messages to convey what you want them to know. If you have been hiding a big alliance from them, let them know now. If somebody thinks you're you've just been coasting by, you need to correct that in your goodbye message. You need to explain all the secret things you've been doing to be the secret puppet master her. So, like I said, Ashley did indeed follow this with her goodbye messages. I. I have to say that all three of them started putting information about the judges into their messages to explain their actions. Morgan probably needed to do it the least. Ashley clearly needed to do it the most because she first had to explain that she was, in fact doing something. And Vince had to do it to try to justify why he treated certain people like Keanu the way he did. Of course, the problem with Vince was that no matter what he said in those messages, it did not counter the way he had actually treated them in the house with his hemming and hawing and dragging it out instead of just taking ownership, as we've discussed multiple times.

A (107:36)

Yeah. And with Vince in this portion, it's frustrating because a jury message is not Going to undo all the pain. You need to set them up up to be conduits, messengers, advocates for you when they go into the jury house. Somebody who will be able to talk about your game and be like, hey, this is. I'm really happy like you're at the final two. Let me. How can I help you win? Morgan was kind of the only person who potentially do that and she was final two and who knows what she would have felt afterwards or sorry, final three. He needed to do that more with Lord we had a strong relationship with who could talk about his game when it goes back there. He need to make sure that he said Kyoto really laid it out like hey, this is how I will feel if you do this to me. This is how I will burn. You know, this is how I feel. Okay, now let's have a conversation now and let's be truthful. You need to talk to him about this. Same thing with Ava. They all felt burned by him when they left and if you don't take onus over that and you don't explain that when they're. There's no, there's no chance for them to have that. What's the word? That realization. The.

B (108:43)

Right now light bulb moment.

A (108:45)

Light bulb moment. Yeah. Really after a relationship you get that closure, the closure. They needed the time to have the closure with him and he didn't get that from him and that's ultimately hurting.

B (108:54)

Yeah, I, I had a half written script for a video I was going to do weeks ago about Vince's woe is me act and how I could, you know, because of that. I was going to say there's no way he can ever win in. I just never got around to finishing or recording it for whatever reason. But it still applies just in retrospect. If you spend the entire game talking about how terrible you are and putting yourself down, how do you expect people to want to vote for you if you didn't even respect your own gameplay? How can I?

A (109:30)

You can't. You can't because you're just making excuses for. You're not justifying it and that's, I mean it's the most frustrating thing. You spend literally three months, 100 days playing this game to play this game in the solid way. You can't just change it up now. This is what you do. This is your work here. Live by it, at least lie by it. I mean it's so frustrating. I think more so he's a fan. He talks like when he was answering those questions to the jury, I was Getting so frustrated because no one cares. No one cares about how much you want. You love this game, how much you want to play this game. Talk about because of that, how you played the game. I always say this to people. It's a small little tangent, is they talk about casting. How do I get on the show or how do I apply for a show? What do I need to do? I always tell them, the first thing you really want to do in these casting processes is that don't talk about just how much you love this show or anything about that. That you can talk about you be your fan. But when they watch you, they don't care about how much you love the show. You want to be on it.

B (110:31)

They want to see people look at the people they cast this season.

A (110:34)

They. They want to hear a story. They want to see you as an individual person. So he knows this going in because that's how he had to condition himself into the game. So now when you finish the game, these players don't care about how much you want. They want to hear about why you did it because of how much you want. And he didn't do that.

B (110:50)

Yeah. So we've been dancing around this subject a little bit. There have, of course, been some people wrongly complaining that Vince lost to a quote, unquote, bitter jury. First of all, this wasn't a bitter jury. They weren't happy with him, but he earned that all by himself through his actions. It's not like they said he played the best game, but we don't like him, so we won't vote for him. Okay. They didn't like the game he played. Some of them, in fact, do like him as a person, but they correctly felt like his game style was terrible. Keanu is a perfect example. You know, I think Keanu is going to want to be bros and hang out with him afterwards, but he still didn't vote for him. That is not bitter. That's the opposite of bitter. That is someone who put aside their own feelings for the person to vote against them. And Vince just lied so much and so unnecessarily that he even managed to lose Lauren. He lied to Ava until the very last minute about the fact that he was going to evict her. Was he ever going to get her jury vote? Probably not, but he ensured it by dragging out the process. We've spent the Last hour and 45 minutes explaining so many of the problems in the way he played. And to add one more, Taran pointed out in his in the finale recap that Vince Made things even worse by sequestering himself with Morgan almost all the time at the end. And as you know, Keanu said recently 23 hours a day. Meanwhile, Ashley was hanging out with and talking to the last few players who would go to the jury.

A (112:41)

He lost votes. He should have gotten clear behind. I mean, Keanu should have been a vote for him. Lauren probably should have been a vote for him. If he literally owns up to his strategy, that's three votes between those two. And then Morgan, Ava, like you said, strong chance. Probably not, but she's still swayable. If there's anybody on that jury that. Because at that point, you have Rachel, you have Will, and. Am I missing somebody else? Kelly. Kelly.

B (113:07)

I know we all want to forget her, but yes.

A (113:10)

And I also think if you treated Kelly differently, there's a chance that you can still garner something from her. This was a very winnable jury from him. And they didn't vote, you know, for Ashley, despite what Vince did. They voted for Ashley. I lost my tr. Thought I was gonna say a really cool statement, and I just missed it. They voted Ashley, though, because she played a better game than him. And she talked about how she played a better game than him. I. I really think that if he was able to own up to it, they would have been cool. Cool with it. This isn't a Big Brother 19 jury where, like, I really think Vince played a very similar game to Paul in a ways where he is manipulating people trying to get them there. The issue with that season is they didn't respect Paul or they were a little bitter about it versus this season. I think they would have given him the win if he is able to oracle. It would have been competitive if he was able to just talk about what he did.

B (114:06)

I mean, Paul is similar if. If Paul would have taken credit, you know, credit or blame, you know, but. And, you know, speaking to that, even if. Even if the jury were, quote, unquote, bitter, Josh Martinez himself popped into the finale recap on rhap and one of the things he pointedly said was if you make a bitter jury, jury, that's part of the effing game. And he of course knows this, obviously, and it is a huge part. And even Vince himself said on multiple occasions that he knew his jury management was crap. A night or two before the finale, he was hanging out with Morgan in the hot tub and jokingly yelled out, say it with me. Jury management. I have zero. Jury management, double zero. They effing hate me. They want me to lose. Then after the game, Vince told Dalton Ross, ultimately, the jury management wasn't there. And that's the key. I've seen some people say he played a great game, but he just didn't have good jury management. So they should have voted for him anyway. But as I noted in a video I made earlier today, that's like saying he's a great pilot, but he just keeps crashing when he tries to land the plane. We'll put him in the pilot's seat anyway. No, that's a big problem. You've got to play the whole game if you want to win.

A (115:32)

Yeah. And you're. You gotta keep your strategy for that. You have to figure out because to me, it feels like he didn't have a plan for that going into it versus actually she had a plan for her jury management. She intentionally did what she had to do throughout the entirety game, but didn't forget in the back of the head that, hey, to win this game, the people I vote out have to vote for me. And that's the biggest thing about the big Brother. You have to remember that. But if you make it to the end and that differentiate herself, that's not a just a dis on him. Like because she excelled in this position and he was horrible. So even if he does normal here, I still think she beats him because she did so well here. So again, I think this jury is probably one of the few juries you really want at the end because they felt very fluid like they did in the whole season. Season. Everyone really worked with everyone this season and there were enemies who became allies and allies who became enemies. And I think we saw that in a jury.

B (116:29)

Yeah. Now, one thing related to Ashley's game that I wanted to mention, you actually brought this up earlier, but I'm going to bring it up again. Is her big reveal that she's a lawyer. And part of the appendix that I quoted earlier continues by saying if you tell them now, they might compare notes and decide it's true. If you hold on to that until the final jury speeches, it's too late and you're dead meat. Luckily for her, as you talked about, I'm in total agreement with what you said earlier. She told Will and he didn't listen to her about keeping it a secret because with the terrible way the Big Brother finale is set up, I just don't think a reveal like that hits home home with Will telling everyone. They were able to discuss that at the jury roundtable, talk about it as part of her overall plan to reduce her threat level. It was. It made much Much more of an impact by Will telling them at the time and.

A (117:29)

Exactly. I mean, when you lay in bed, we're thinking about who you're going to vote the night before as a jury member. You start thinking about what each person potentially did. Then you start thinking, well, she did, did this, but actually was intentional from Ashley. Would she do this because she was trying to keep this low and then now they have the time thinking about it and then she still puts the final nail in where she's like, each move I did was intentional dumb myself. That this. Then it's, oh, man. It confirms exactly what she was speaking to. My. It played it out perfectly for her in that way. And you always want to leave seeds there. Don't leave it to the end. Again. Again, Survivor and Big Brother are different. Right. In that you don't really have much of a chance to convince people at the end with Big Brother how they will vote for you for that. So bombshells, things like that, you don't have a chance to put a narrative with it. And then it also consumes the whole thing. You don't want people sitting there, the whole final portion of it.

B (118:23)

Damn.

A (118:24)

She, she was a lawyer. And then does their head go into, well, what else did she lie about? Is she actually pretty dishonest? You don't want that potentially be there.

B (118:33)

Well, and also you don't want them thinking about that instead of listening to the rest of what you're saying.

A (118:37)

Yep.

B (118:39)

Now, I do suppose we should discuss the one vote Vince got from Morgan. It's not a surprise. She was clearly lying to Julie when she said her vote wasn't locked. She was always giving it to him, whether because she was, he was her number one or because of other reasons. She especially gave it to him for sympathy because she told Mike Bloom Ashley cooked him like a well done steak and she was going to win regardless. So that's why at the beginning of the podcast, I said it was essentially a unanimous vote because even the person who voted for Vince knew that her vote really should have gone to Ashley and it was a pure, pure sympathy vote.

A (119:25)

Yeah, I mean, it's a good answer from her to also keep both people happy. Right. It's not actually one. She doesn't want to maybe say anything against her. Yeah, I don't think there's a world where neither of them get each other's votes. And that's how it should be. I mean, it means you really screwed up the end if you really lose that vote, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I, I mean there's really. I don't know, it might be more competitive for sure if Morgan made it to the end versus Ashley. I would like to see how that breaks down there, there. I think, I think Vince loses to both of them. We see at this point for sure. But yeah, I think it would have been. I still think I actually had the chance against Morgan too, if she. She gets to the end. So we'll see how it all went. But what an ending. What an ending. Jury management matters.

B (120:12)

Yes. And speaking of ending, it is about time to wrap things up. So what are your final thoughts about Ashley, Vince and Morgan?

A (120:21)

Well, what a season. What a season we've had. And I think we've had some cool ways to end a season with some great players. And what matters most is how you finish. Right. And the winners write history. And as she can write a very good historical season of Big Brother because she has played a masterful game from A to Z. And what I love most is that there's been mistakes in it. It's a season where you can watch her grow from a player who's making certain mistakes, intentional or not intentional, gets her in the hot seat, where she makes certain blunders, where players put her on the block, and she finds a way to get through it. She gets allies, allies get voted out, allies get eliminated through twists. But she finds a way to be flexible, works with her enemies, makes them her allies, and then all together, she's able to put a beautiful ribbon on it. Through her social game, her flexibility ensuring that her threat level never gets too high until the very end and ensures that the person she's next to you, she bodies them with an incredible jury management, jury speech. And Ashley is a very viable and strong winner of the season. I said beforehand that who knows how this season will end if we have a winner who gets to the end, who's like, I'm not sure about their game. How will this season fare? I think the season will fare very well with a lot of re watches and people will write, you know, Ashley has a great winner. She did good rules. And what I'll say is it give me my, my crown because I, I called it from the beginning. Called it from the beginning. And with that being said, our players who got evicted, I think they're going to be looked at differently. I think Morgan's game will be looked at even more positively as the years go by. I think she'll be one of those unfortunately infamous third player winner or third place evictees who have a strong chance to win but didn't. And I think with Vince, he could have had his name in the history books of Big Brother if he just owned up to his game. And that's what I'm most sad about about. Hopefully we see some of these players play again and if so I'd like to see how they do again. But with this season in the end I'm very happy of how it ended with Ashley.

B (122:21)

Yeah. So there really should be zero controversy about who deserved to win this season. Ashley clearly outplayed Vince and Morgan took herself out of the equation by falling apart in the third part of the final HOH comp. If she had won that, it might have been more of a debate debate. But as we stand, the jury vote shows just how lopsided their gameplay was. The only problem is that TV only viewers won't necessarily know this because production showed her barely at all. But we know what happened. Ashley played this game hard from the moment she walked into the house earlier. Really because she planned it all ahead of time. A lot of times when people come into Big Brother with a detailed idea of what they're going to do, we laugh and say sure, that's going to fall apart and it usually does. People who swear they'll keep their job a secret don't just look at Captain Will people say they won't get into showmances and do people insist they'll play a certain way and don't. But Ashley did follow her plan. Sure, there were bumps along the road. Heck, if she hadn't won that very first veto comp, she'd have almost certainly been gone and forevermore only known as the Shower grand girl. But she won when she had to, then and at the very end. And that is the key that she pointed out. It's not about winning all the comps you can, it's about using strategy and social ability to ensure you're safe so you don't have to win all the comps. Ashley did that through the vast majority of the game. Morgan on the other hand acknowledged that she had to win all the comps to make it to the end. And to her credit she almost it. Yes, she had her number one ally Vince to help so she didn't need to win literally all, just most. And then when he was hoh she just took over so she had control anyway. But the self proclaimed gamer girl fell apart at the final boss and as she knew she was far too much of a threat for Ashley to take to the end. Morgan played a great game and would have been a Very good. Winner. Winner. But that's the problem with relying on comps so much. Even if you have strategy, it has to be perfect or you're in trouble. Morgan told Mike Bloom, Although I did not win today, I left the best player of the season even though I did not win. But that's the thing. Sorry, Morgan. You weren't the best player of the season because you put yourself in that position where you had to win out. Best at computer. Sure, I'll give you that. But the whole point of Ashley's speech was that being the best at comps is not the same thing as being the best at Big Brother. And then we have Vince. We spent a lot of time talking about his problems in the game. Did he scheme and plot? Yes. But he did it poorly and too much, and he let his emotions interfere, and his social game was an absolute mess and so on. All of this added up to some of the worst jury management we have seen in years. He made too many promises, and even when he recognized it and said he'd change, he kept right on going. And the more he did it, the more he got in his own head about it, the more he cried about it, the more he made things worse with other players by hemming and hawing rather than just telling them where they stood once he knew he'd been voting them out or nominating them or whatever. Yes, people need to lie in Big Brother, but as Ava said, so many of his lies were just unnecessary. And as Ashley pointed out, he turned allies into enemies. It's a bit funny because as we mentioned, Vince has wanted Ashley out all season long. Not because she was the threat that she turned out to be, but because he insisted she didn't, quote, unquote, deserve to be there. Sure, because he didn't recognize what she was doing. That's how well she was doing it. She snuck up on him, and he never saw it coming until she was explaining it to the jury and he realized he was cooked. As Ashley said in responding to one of the jury questions, I stuck to strategy time and time again. A Big Brother winner is someone who is able to strategically align themselves so they're safe week after week. Someone who turns their enemies into allies, not their allies into enemies, which the counterpart next to me did. In Ashley's words to the or Ashley's words to the jury obviously hit home to me, especially because it's the same thing I say over and over and over again. Big Brother is not a game about about comps. It is a strategic social game that has comps in it. Yes, even this season with the ridiculous 43 comps, it still wasn't Morgan or Vince who won the game. It was the woman who won twice when she needed to because she was safe through her gameplay all the rest of the time. And that is why Ashley won and Vince and Morgan lost.

A (127:30)

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well put. I, I can't think of a better way to end a great season because this is our final episode.

B (127:40)

It is, it is. And obviously we don't have any predictions to discuss, but I, I do think, and I forgot to talk to you about this, but we'll have some closing messages in a moment at the end. So, you know, wait till, wait till the end, you know, make sure you make it through the rest of the stuff we're going to talk about here and we'll have some, some, some closing messages for everyone.

A (128:04)

Okay, I, I'm excited for this one. I'm here with.

B (128:08)

I'm excited.

A (128:11)

If you miss us, you don't have to because we are very active on a number of different social media platforms where we discuss Big Brother, Survivor and other topics. On Twitter I'm blue on Blue Ski and Instagram I am at OB computer and on TikTok I'm at Basmati Boy. But David is truly all over the place and still going to be doing a lot of podcasting. There are a few ways to track him down though. You can find him on all his various accounts through his link tree at linktree David Bloomberg. Or you can find him directly on Blue sky as at David Bloomberg.

B (128:38)

Yes. And you know, as besides those two, ever since Big Brother began I've been posting well really even before then, at least three videos per day on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram where I'm at David Bloomberg TV. I still have a few more left for Big Brother 27 as I transition to mostly Survivor 49. Plus there will undoubtedly be some from shows like the Amazing Race which is the big brother season UK celebrity traders and the traders Canada. Speaking of Survivor 49, the first podcast of why Blank Lost's 10th anniversary season with Jessica Lewis is posted as we also welcomed special guest Chappelle. And if you haven't already, you should also be sure to catch up on the special wybling class 10th anniversary podcast with me, Jessica and Rob from about a week and a half ago ago. It's filled with fun stuff and info about how the podcast started, behind the scenes stories and even what Jessica thought as she covered the one season of Big Brother.

A (129:37)

Now as we wrap up I Want to encourage people to check out the RJP Patreon program at Rob has a website.com patron Rob has several patron only podcasts from Big Brother plus other perks like the Facebook group and Discord. You can help support shows like ours and everything on the network by becoming a patron at where Rob has a website.com patron.

B (129:54)

And make sure you're subscribed to all of the RP podcasts you can go to. We know reality tv.com select your podcast service of choice. That way you know you get the Big Brother stuff that's still here. You can get the get the Amazing Race stuff, you get Survivor stuff so you can subscribe there if you haven't already.

A (130:14)

And finally, we want to thank Scott St. Pierre and Jessica Scurley and the whole RJP and reality TV wrap ups behind the scene team team for all the work they do editing and posting everything else. We really appreciate everything they do to get from our voices to your microphones and to your ears. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all y' all for tuning in. Before we wrap up though, I want to make sure we get your last things you want to mention.

B (130:34)

Well, yes, I just, well, first of all, thank you OVI for a great season and oh what a season it was. Not just on TV but for you in particular. You got married, you went on a honeymoon, you appeared on a cooking show. Know who knows what else you have around the corner. I, I don't even know. But it was great to be able to talk to you about Big Brother every week.

A (130:57)

I mean this is, I mean truly when I what this is my favorite outlet to be able to talk about this show we love and I wouldn't want to do it with anybody but you, David. Hannah is so thankful that David is in my life because she doesn't have to hear me yapping about it. And I'm super thankful that he is And I'm super thankful all y' all who've been watching this week in a week out because this is prob most fun way to spend a typical usually Friday night when we record and I, I wouldn't want it any other way And I cannot wait for us to run it back talk more Big Brother in the future. But I'm excited to also catch all of David's commentary because we have a lot of Survivor for Survivor for you to cover too.

B (131:37)

Yes. So before we sign off here for the season, I want to thank everyone who's listened or watched the season who commented, engaged in good conversation on social media, etc. Although I've covered almost every Big Brother season in one way or another, whether my old websites or on podcasts in the past five years, this season I was even more tuned into the live feeds than ever, spending a great deal of my time with them on no matter what else I was doing. And I think that was important to bring here to this podcast because as we certainly saw with Ashley, the TV show edit does not tell us anywhere near everything we really should see. So with that, I hope everyone tunes in as Jessica and I cover Survivor 49 and then of course, Survivor 50. And come next summer, we should be right back here again for Big Brother 28. And of course, everyone can find us on social media. In the meantime, I don't know if you have anything else to say as we head out out.

A (132:44)

All I'll say is thank you again so much for the support. This has been, what a wonderful. This has been a really favorite summer of mine. I did get married. I got to cover Big Brother with one of my favorite people this way. Favorite people ever. And what a fun season. And I think truly, like David said, the commentary of all y' all who tune in, send us messages, talk about it in the comments, it makes it so much fun. So thanks for making you know, this is the show is something, but the community is even greater and this show wouldn't be what it is, but it's out the community of all y' all tuning in. So again, one of my greatest summers of my life and it's because of all y'. All. So thank you so much.

B (133:21)

Not because you got married. It's because of the listeners.

A (133:24)

And yeah, you know, one or two, who knows which one's first, right?

B (133:27)

That's right. That's right. All right, well, thanks again, everyone. Bye.

A (133:32)

This is why blank lost. This is why blank baby. This is wildlife lost.