There's a way in which every cast of a season of a vote-off show gets the winner that best represents it. Casts with a critical mass of decent people tend to get winners like Tom or Tina, while casts made up of repulsive hammerheads get winners like Brian Heidik. It's sort of unavoidable, especially because of the final vote. So there's a certain inevitability to the fact that a bunch of really hateful assholes like the ones who populated this season would wind up with Mike as their winner. It seemed shocking when it became clear that he was going to win, but...people who would do this -- people who need to come back to be on a show this stupid for a second time -- this is who they think is cool. Mike owns restaurants where people will treat you like a VIP if you were on Dog Eat Dog. He's part of the whole weird, incestuous sub-industry of making people like this feel important. It just makes perfect sense that they'd pick him. Of course they'd pick him. Why wouldn't they? They're idiots, and he's their leader. Anyway, the jury is a roiling swamp of genuinely embarrassing behavior, led by Janelle, who drops the pretty-princess Betty-Boop game and behaves like a spiteful, angry, cruel asshole in a transparent effort to impress Will. Of course, Will is gross and cruel instead of funny as well, while Danielle self-righteously lectures everyone that it shouldn't be personal, then not only votes for purely personal reasons, but goes out of her way to twist the purely personal knife by trying to make Erika think she's getting Danielle's vote. The show itself piles on by highlighting Alison and egging her on as she ridicules and humiliates Erika in front of her family and her friends, not for anything related to the game, but for being fooled into caring about someone who didn't care about her. Of all the distasteful outcomes and depressing finales that I've had to sit through in 300 recaps, this one is by far the worst, and these people behave the most antisocially and reprehensibly, pretty much without exception. It's a triumph of intensely sexist, moralistic, self-justifying bullshit, and there is not one person who comes off at all well. It's an enormous relief that this is over, because in spite of all the time I've spent arguing that the vast majority of shows like this need to be taken at face value and don't actually suggest that the people involved all need to be sent to a desert island and never allowed to come back, I'd be willing to reconsider in this one special case. Just put them all on their own commune, let them relive their glory days in perpetuity, and spare the rest of us.
So we've been here together for two and a half months, you and I. How was it for you?
Look, I found this entire episode incredibly depressing. Really uncomfortable to watch, really discouraging, really riddled with horrible sexist bullshit, and really much worse than dumb reality shows usually are. When I get really bummed out, I promise to tell you a joke to lighten the mood.
We fade in tonight on Julie Chen, who is wearing an incredibly bizarre pink satin top that kind of looks like her chest has been folded -- or will soon be folded -- into an origami duck. She reminds us that tonight, either Mike or Erika is going to win $500,000 and "be crowned the ultimate Big Brother All-Star." Listen to that again, and you will feel much better about the outcome. What does it mean, really, to be the "ultimate Big Brother All-Star"? Isn't it like being "the ultimate bad boyfriend" or "the ultimate unhygienic roommate" or "the ultimate psychotic boss"? Think of it as not so much "the best Big Brother All-Star" as "the archetypal Big Brother All-Star." The one who best embodies what it means to be a Big Brother All-Star. Really, the winner of the Miss Big Brother All-Stars Pageant.
"The live finale begins now," Julie says, and the crowd starts to cheer, and then Julie starts high-fiving people in the audience. Think about the moment when someone said, "And then, you should high-five some people in the crowd." Because someone did. That's someone's job, to make that call. And dammit, they did their job, because there is Julie, and she's high-fiving the crowd.
A long, long recap of the season follows. Fortunately, if you want long, long recaps, you can read the 250 pages or so that have already been written.
When we come back to Julie, she is still being cheered by the weirdly overstimulated crowd, and she's standing in front of the plasma screen. She takes us inside the house, where Erika and Mike are sitting in the two nominee chairs. He is wearing a cocked gray fedora and a carefully casual-looking tie. "I am cool," his look announces. "Finally, after all this time, I am cool, and you can't say I'm not, and if I die right now, at least this outfit will be in my obituary." Julie says that the jury will be here to cast their votes, and then we will get our "winner."
But first! We visit the jury house to watch the night that they were all sitting around waiting for the last juror to arrive. The first six members of the jury walk into the backyard of the jury house and arrange themselves in a circle of chairs. Marcellas starts the discussion by saying that he hopes it isn't Janelle who arrives. Of course, Janelle earned Marcellas's undying gratitude by giving him a shout-out when she evicted Will. Marcellas is the cheapest of cheap dates. If I said right now that he was awesome, he'd even forgive me. Danielle warns him that she thinks it will, in fact, be Janelle. Chicken George says that, in his opinion, it's going to be Mike. Marcellas thinks that the women can get rid of Mike if they "have a brain," to which James gives a contemptuous snort. Howie says that "Operation Double Date was not a success," and he thinks Mike is the one they're going to see. "Or," Will says, "Janelle walks in, and the success is still questionable." I don't know, Will. It's pretty brave to take the opposing view when Howie and George agree.
At this moment, Janelle appears at the door leading out into the yard, wearing a tight red dress and her prom-queen crown, which I am nominating for Most Self-Fulfilling Prop Of The Season. She pauses, poses, and says to them, "Hello, guys." Marcellas yelps in pain. Not another victim of surplus awesomeness! Janelle comes over and hugs Danielle, then everyone else. She sits down to talk. She explains how Erika won, and then Mike won. Will jumps in to say that he predicts Erika and Mike made a deal and Erika threw the last competition, and Janelle nods knowingly, despite the fact that she has no idea whether that happened or not. Perhaps she's so used to having competitions thrown to her that she assumes all victories are the result of backroom deals. "Erika is a backstabbing B-I-T-C-H," Janelle says, too pure to swear. Of course, I seem to remember hearing her use that word without spelling it, so I'm not sure she's going to sell this. "Erika is the ultimate floater that I pray to God will not win," Janelle says melodramatically, waving her arms for effect. "Please, God, do not let Erika win." (God: "La la la la la la la, I can't heeeeear you.") "She's horrible," Janelle nearly spits. Remember, Janelle has no idea whether Erika threw the competition or didn't. Erika lost by one question, which does not provide very solid evidence. "Do not let a floater win this game!" Janelle demands, poking her finger at Marcellas.
A joke for you: A raisin walks into a bank. He says to the bank teller that he needs a loan, because he wants to buy a car, like one of those cute little Miatas he sees all over the place. The loan officer asks him whether he has any collateral. "What's collateral?" asks the raisin. The lady explains that collateral is what secures your loan. "Do you own a home?" The raisin explains that he's a renter. "Do you own any jewelry?" she asks. The raisin says no. "Do you own any expensive electronic equipment?" The raisin says no. "Well," the lady says, "I don't know if we're going to be able to get you a loan. Is it possible you could go and ask for an advance at your job?" The raisin looks at her. "My 'job'? Lady, I'm a raisin."
Danielle, who was an early floater herself, points out that this entire anti-floating thing is ridiculous. "What's the difference between a 'floater' and somebody who has multiple alliances?" Marcellas wonders, finding a truffle of wisdom as a blind pig will always do from time to time. Danielle then points out what will be the elephant in the room for the remainder of this episode, which is the enormous crush of gender politics that are seeping through this whole discussion. She notes that they're sitting here talking about the way the two of them played, and it seems to her that when a woman is perceived as "the villain," she's a horrible person, and when a man is the same way, he's just considered a good player. In pointing this out, Danielle joins everyone who has ever noted that men are never called "shrill," that "bitch" is used both for women who are nasty and for women who do their jobs, and that of the twelve people who have won Survivor, there have been seven men who have won, more than half of whom were controlling "leaders," and five women, none of whom were "leaders." Marcellas waves his arm in agreement. Danielle points out that everything Erika did -- lying, playing both sides of everything -- is the very same stuff that Mike did. Erika got herself to the final two, and it seems that people are mad because they fell for what she did and never bothered to get rid of her. "That's not her fault; that's our fault," Danielle says. Marcellas points out that Erika was repeatedly on the block and didn't go home.
Janelle has decided that this is still all about who's a good person. "At least Boogie was loyal to someone," she snorts, in the same tone in which you might point out that at least Erika didn't shoot and eat your particular dog. She adds that Mike was loyal to Will, and Erika wasn't loyal to anyone. I have no idea what the ethical import of that is supposed to be. Seriously, what does that mean? You can backstab ten people as long as you choose one that you don't backstab (Mike), but you can't backstab two people if you never commit to another particular person? Which ethical principle is that? It's also incredibly strange, to the point where it's almost amusing, to see Janelle go on this enormous fucking rant to the effect of how awesome Mike is and how much Erika sucks, when Mike is the one who was aligned with her and then evicted her. It's just so uncomfortably clear that she's doing this because she's sitting to Will. That's the irony of this entire thing. Janelle is snorting with contempt because Erika didn't play honorably, but she is doing it because she wants a boyfriend. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, or with acting on it. God love her for wanting to have her toes sucked by Will Kirby, you know? But the idea of trying to pass this off as the upholding of ethical standards and ideas about loyalty when she's under the control of Will just as much as Erika was ever under the control of Mike is just...kind of funny.
The other great thing about the "loyalty" thing is that loyalty only has meaning if you put yourself at some risk. Mike wasn't "loyal" to Will any more than the raccoons on your back porch are "loyal" to your trash cans. Mike stuck to Will because it benefited him, not because he chose to put Will's interests above, or on par with, his own. I don't think any of these people can claim to have shown "loyalty" in the sense that you give up something for someone because you said you would. I know one person on one reality show who has ever done that, and that's Colby. Everybody else is trying to win, which is as it should be. Everybody wanted to win, and I don't get how it's a character flaw that you weren't "loyal" to anyone.
James isn't buying the "loyalty" argument either, which is only one of many times during this hour that I am uncomfortable being on the same side as someone. "It was not a team sport, though," he points out. Danielle basically says the same thing -- that there's no rule against floating, and there's no rule against lying. Of course, if there were a rule against lying, Mike would have broken it approximately four hundred times as often as Erika. Marcellas agrees with Danielle, saying none of them can claim to have gotten out without lying to somebody. Incidentally, if we're giving Mike credit for all of his and Will's game play, shouldn't he be dinged for all of his and Will's lies, meaning that not only has Mike incessantly lied, but he's on the hook for the way Will incessantly lied?
Danielle wants to talk now about the way Mike played the game. She asks Will to explain how Mike played. Will starts talking a mile a minute, hoping that maybe you're not really listening: "He did exactly what he needed to do to be in the final two." (Check. Exactly what Erika did.) "He rode coattails when he needed to." (Check. Exactly what Erika did.) "He dodged bullets when he needed to." (Check. Exactly what Erika did, especially since she was repeatedly on the block.) "And when he needed to win competitions, he did exactly that." (Check. Exactly what Erika did. Actually...which person are we talking about?) So even called upon to give a speech explaining Mike's game play, his own best friend and ally can't think of one thing to say that distinguishes him from Erika. You'd think the rest of these people might have noticed. James goes on to say that Mike might have ridden the coattails of Will, but Erika rode the coattails of everyone. "She didn't orchestrate anything," he says contemptuously. Of course, this is patent bullshit, because she orchestrated the departure of Will and the breaking of the lock that he and Mike had on the game up to that point, which not one single other person had managed to "orchestrate." So "anything" is obviously dumb. I'd also be interested in what Mike is seen to have "orchestrated" that wasn't, in fact, orchestrated by Will.
Marcellas takes an interesting approach by arguing that Erika was presented with a game in which it was being run by Will and Mike because of everyone else's failure to do anything about it, so she played within that framework. Janelle goes back to waving that lecturing finger. "Chill Town ran this game," she says. "And for us to deny them a winner? It's not really fair, because they played a better game." Ha! Oh, my. Oh, Janelle. I mean, if they (and she means "Will") "ran the game" and Erika was the one who finally toppled Will, then how is it "not really fair" to vote for her? It's like saying if one runner is ahead for the first twenty-five miles of the marathon and then somebody else passes him, it's "not really fair" to give the trophy to the person who finished ahead, because the other person was in the lead the entire time. The game isn't about who looks like they're in charge in the middle; it's about getting to the very end. Will's entire game is for nothing, because he didn't handle F4 the right way. Why does he have some residual entitlement to something?
You can sort of tell Marcellas doesn't appreciate the lecture on what are the fair and unfair ways to vote, so he says that "everybody gets to decide how they want to vote and how they want the game to be played." He adds, just in case I was tempted to like him, "Boogie played a dirty game." Marcellas, of course, is doing what he always does, presenting the game as some sort of enormous moral test of what kind of a person you are -- the nasty versus the nice. I certainly would not want to be put in the position of endorsing Erika on a personal level, either -- I found her return to Mike after the ousting of Janelle horrifying, and the fact that she chose Mike to be her boyfriend doesn't speak at all well of her. None of my discomfort with this is about liking Erika -- I don't like Erika at all. But I like all this grotesque, sexist pile-on even less.
Now, it's time for Will to summarily dump all of his likeability for the season. "Do I respect the way Erika played this game? Absolutely," he says. "She played a phenomenal game. However, as a person, she just kind of disgusts me. I'm not really sure why; I can't put my finger on it. Am I biased? Absolutely. They played a very similar game if you look at it. And the bottom line is to me, Mike Boogie's was superior." There is no "because" at the end of this sentence. Marcellas isn't liking this "disgusts me" thing, but he certainly wouldn't choose Erika as the most disgusting, and says, "I'm disgusted by the boys more than I am by the girls, because I don't think boys should ever manipulate a girl into doing anything, especially using the lure of a relationship." Janelle holds up the "no one talks except when I say it's okay" hands. "Marcellas, it is a game," she says condescendingly, sitting to...well, the guy who manipulated her using the lure of a relationship, making her not the most impartial source on this point. "They played a bigger game on us than we did on them. And shouldn't you recognize that they did play a game on everyone here?"
So, to review what just happened: Will just told the group that in his opinion, Erika played "a phenomenal game," making all of Janelle's "she didn't do anything" propaganda a little questionable. He also said that he thinks Erika and Mike played very similarly. But what he added was that Erika "disgusts" him. Not that he dislikes her, not that she makes him uncomfortable, not that he distrusts her. That she disgusts him, but he cannot think of the reason why. Try to think of the last time you sat around with a group of people and said that someone "disgusted" you, but you couldn't really say why. "No reason. He's just disgusting." And how does this fit into the enormous Madonna/whore situation being played out here, in which it is not so much an Erika versus Mike finale as an Erika versus Janelle finale? Well, Will knows that Erika has a good argument that she played just as well as Mike, because she's the one who blindsided Mike and Will and arranged -- orchestrated, if you will -- their downfall. So he needs to "plant the seed," as he always says he does, that Erika is, on a personal level, "disgusting." And how do you go about that? You keep it vague. While you don't even have to say it out loud, everyone knows what "disgusting" means in this context. It means that Erika was trash. Wrap it up however you want; that's what Will wants to plant in the back of these people's heads; that she slept with Mike even though he didn't give a shit about her. He says "I can't put my finger on it" because he knows better than to say, out loud, "she's a slut." I think that's what it means when you say a woman who slept with your friend is "disgusting," but you "can't put your finger" on what's disgusting about her. It's sad; I liked thinking he wasn't quite this, but he is.
A joke for you: A string walks into a bar. He orders a margarita. "I'm sorry," the bartender says. "We don't serve string." The string leaves. He comes back a few minutes later and orders a whiskey sour. "Hey. We don't...serve...string," the bartender says, more insistently. The string leaves again. Out in the alley, he decides to put on a disguise. He loops himself around and ties himself up, and he messes up his ends a little bit so that he looks scruffier. He walks back into the bar and orders a white wine spritzer. The bartender starts to make it, but then he turns back around slowly. "Heeeey," he says. "Aren't you that string that was in here a few minutes ago?" "No," says the string. "I'm a frayed knot."
Anyway, Janelle goes on to say of Will and Mike, "They're responsible for everyone's eviction." Except, of course, according to her own theory, her eviction and Will's eviction, which are Erika's fault. "Erika deserves to win this game," Howie begins, and Janelle jumps in, genuinely shrieking, as if she's genuinely desperate, "No, she does not!" That...is very embarrassing for her. Howie finishes: "... more than anybody in the history of this game. Her game was so transparent, but yet twelve, thirteen all-stars left her in the game week after week after week when we knew what she was doing?" Janelle keeps saying "no" while Howie is talking. She is coming off...weird and unhinged here, not to mention having a very hard time letting anyone else have the group's attention for more than ten seconds. I don't know if she's drunk at this stage, but she's kind of acting drunk. George talks about what a good job Erika did of "whispering in everybody's ear." Marcellas says that he thinks they "shouldn't undervalue Erika's game," because she came into the game alone, which Mike, of course, did not. Erika didn't have her best friend with her to lead and protect her, as he points out. Will jumps in, talking about how he and Mike were this well-known alliance, and they made it anyway, and "that's not luck." I don't think Marcellas said Mike's getting to the end was luck. I think Marcellas said that one thing in Erika's favor is that she didn't have a built-in alliance, which is true, and she got to the end anyway, which is true. The fact that Mike got to the end in spite of being a conspicuous target is similarly an argument in favor of his game, but that doesn't really answer the thing about Erika. Will keeps kind of...not addressing what's being raised, no? That makes me suspicious that he doesn't have a very good argument.
Danielle goes on to ask the jury to please, please not make it personal, because of course (you guessed it), that's what happened to her, boo hoo.
We come back to Julie, who says that the final two will come back to plead their cases to the jury. She also says that the first five evicted houseguests will come back and tell them a little about what they missed. That ought to be...fun.
Back from commercials, we first see Mike's mom and dad hysterically and eagerly clapping in the crowd. I'm sorry...I understand supporting your kid, but did you see the whole thing, there, Mom? Maybe a little less giddiness and waving like you're at Disneyland would be appropriate. I'm not saying disown the kid, but...you know? If I spouted, say, racist bullshit on this show all summer, you can believe my mother would not show up in the audience making that happy face.
A joke for you: Knock-knock.
Well, if you're not going to do your half, I can't do the rest of it. Whatever, slacker.
Now, it's time to see the part where the jury asked questions. Sort of the faux tribal council, and thus another place where the two most common questions are "I WANT AN APOLOGY" and "YOU SUCK." This takes place in the backyard, where the jury looks at the two finalists on the plasma screen. Marcellas is up first. He says he wants to ask them both the same question: what was their best move, strategically? Erika gives the obvious answer that her best move was "convincing Janelle to vote out Will." Janelle rolls her eyes...for absolutely no conceivable reason. Is she suggesting Erika didn't convince her to do that, or is she thinking it's not Erika's best move? I don't even know what that eye-roll is supposed to mean. Mike says that his best move was not using the coup. Now...that is the worst answer ever. He didn't use the coup because he wasn't ever up, and neither was Will, and they saved it in case one of them went up. I mean, can you see how he can't possibly have anything good to say if he chooses to say that, of all the dumb things? He goes on: "I knew that if I used it, I would have only been able to use it on Janelle, or the rest of the house would have figured out that we were working with her." What? What? What a load of doubletalk hooey. That's one of those answers where it isn't true, and it would reflect badly on him if it were true. Good one, idiot.
George's question starts with what I dearly hope is a sarcastic "Congratulations on you two finding the love of your lives." Janelle "laughs so hard" that she "happens to fall" into Will's "lap," where she stays for quite a while. Oh, it's so hard when you lose control of yourself and accidentally lie all over people. Janelle thinks making fun of women being played by phony relationships are hilarious, because she doesn't know yet when this is taped that it happened to her. If Janelle were sitting where Erika is, you could put together just as embarrassing a montage about the way she was played. George asks Mike whether he's going to propose to Erika on the final show, as he did with Krista. And here goes George, same as always, trying to make the cool kids think he's cool too, joining in on the party to laugh at how phony this all was and how much Erika fell for it. Mike wink-winkingly says that he will not be proposing. "Yaaaaay!" Janelle cheers, and...it's just hard to watch her during this whole thing. She is trying so hard.
George asks Erika about how she kept telling him that he was safe, and then she voted him out. How does she think he feels about that? Erika tells him, using a preposterous and icky-sounding overload of "Georgies," that she had to keep Mike in the game for her own good. My favorite part is that Mike makes this disbelieving, "bitch crazy" face -- not eye-rolling, and not angry, but like she's a nut, like he can't imagine she would claim she kept him in the game out of self-interest, even though it's fairly obvious that she did. It's amazing how hard he's working to ridicule her for claiming that she did anything because it helped her in the game and not because of her personal feelings. He'd rather have these people think she did what she did because he made out with her and was a horrible, dishonest piece of crap than because she acted out of self-interest. As Erika tries to answer, Janelle is spazzing out again, doing this dramatic thumbs-down while Erika is talking. Pay attention to meeeeeee! Stop looking at her! Pay attention to meeeeeeee!
Mike and Will act out another phone call, which everyone agrees is hilarious, because this is the story they've all agreed to. Mike and Will are just a couple of fun fraternity brothers having fun with a couple of dumb suckers. And you know whose fault that is? The dumb suckers. This is the story this little group has decided on, including Janelle, who is happy to be a dumb sucker if it means everyone will pat her on the head and give her a crown, and it makes no difference what happens at this point. Everything Erika does to try to help herself makes no difference, because being polite just makes her more of a dumb sucker. Everything Mike does that's disgusting and smug just makes him more of a fun fraternity brother. This is just how it is this year, and there's no way out of it.
And now, it's time for Janelle to ask her question, and more specifically for her to continue self-destructing in her attempt to destroy Erika. "Erika, was kissing butt and throwing competitions part of your strategy?" Not a question, of course. Just "My question is YOU SUCK." Erika says that the only competition she threw was to Danielle. (Feedwatchers will tell you Erika assured Mike she did throw him the final HoH competition, but also admitted at other times that she hadn't, so nobody actually knows whether she did or didn't.) (Janelle, of course, has no access to any of that information at this point, and thus has, as stated previously, no idea whether that happened.) As to butt-kissing, Erika says that she "had [Janelle's] back and would have definitely taken" Janelle to the finals. Janelle waggles her finger, because she knows what is in other people's heads at all times. Interestingly, Erika said numerous things in the DR that suggested that she did intend -- at least when she originally made the deal with Janelle -- to take Janelle to F2. She talked about wanting to get rid of Mike, she talked about wanting Janelle to win the second half of the competition...she had no reason to lie at those points, that I can think of. The idea that she was making the entire thing up all along is not supported by what we know. Mike goes back to his disbelieving face, but he doesn't know either. He has no way of knowing what Erika intended. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that she probably wouldn't have told him the truth about whether she threw the competition or not.
I hate these people so much.
James is the to ask a question, and he asks Erika how her game was any different from Alison's, with "the floating technique" and "the hookup technique." Okay, whatever about floating, but "the hookup technique"? That is...disturbingly off-base, dude. Alison's "hookup technique" was to hook up with people she didn't actually like and try to get them more attached to her than she was to them. That's not what Erika did at all. Erika liked Mike, whether that's incredibly stupid or not. (It is.) The person who played like Alison is Mike, not Erika. Erika is an idiot, but she played nothing like Alison. It's just fascinating that James interprets all women with in-show romantic entanglements, whether sincere or insincere, as being equally blameworthy. A woman who sleeps with a guy because she likes him is using the same "technique" as a woman who sleeps with a guy to fool him. Because they're both women, and the issue, in case you have not noticed, is not ethics or how you "played." It is what Will said. It is that word: "disgusting." Erika hooked up in the house. Erika gave it up. Erika is, therefore, "disgusting," same as Alison, even though one of them liked the guy and the other one didn't. For James, it's not the kind of sex life you're having or how you feel about the guy you're having it with. It's just the fact that you're having it; that's enough. Erika says that there was no "hookup technique." She says, "I actually honestly just liked Mike." Hard thing to admit, I'm sure, especially now.
Danielle says that she has a question for Erika. "This is going to decide my vote," Danielle says. "Was it your decision, or was it Chill Town's decision, to get rid of me?" There is no way this question is deciding shit, because this question is written to be lose-lose. If Erika says that it was her decision, Danielle will say she's refusing to admit she was played, and will vote against her. If Erika says that it was Mike and Will's decision, then Danielle will most certainly vote against her for refusing to take responsibility for what she did. Erika says that while it's "of course" true that she "made [Will and Mike] believe that it was their idea," she ultimately took out Danielle because she couldn't beat her in a final two situation. This, of course, is both true and bullshit at the same time, because Erika is trying to avoid both halves of the obvious lose-lose. It's completely true that Erika ultimately made that call based on the fact that she couldn't beat Danielle in the final two. It's not true, though, that she only "made them believe" that it was their idea, because it was their idea. But it was ultimately Erika's decision, so she said it was ultimately her decision. Mike and Will get credit for pushing that and causing it to happen, but if Danielle is asking who made the ultimate choice, there's no arguing with the fact that it was Erika. Had Erika denied that, she would have been subjected to a huge firestorm of disdain for refusing to admit that she backstabbed Danielle and so forth. It's not going to affect Danielle's vote; it's just theater. Danielle asked it because she knows she can vote against Erika either way, and still claim to be playing based on "integrity" and "best player," even though she's actually just angry and bitter.
Now, Danielle turns to Mike and asks about the fact that he swore allegiance to her, and then he screwed her over. Mike strokes Danielle's ego by telling her that he's sure she was secretly aligned with everyone in the house -- which is just what she likes to think about herself -- and she immediately starts to smile as if she's being petted. For someone who thinks it's not personal, she votes with her feelings more than anyone I've ever seen, I think.
Howie brings up "bros before hos." He says that Mike should have anticipated that he'd lose Howie's vote by sending him home. Mike strokes Howie's ego by saying that he told Will it was important to get rid of Howie because Howie was so awesome. "I deserve a lot of credit for making that happen," Mike says of Howie's eviction. Would, say, Erika then deserve a lot of credit for making Will's eviction happen? No, no, I'm sure that's completely different. Erika didn't "orchestrate" anything.
Erika begins her closing statement by saying that she came into the game knowing that it was important to attack Will, but not knowing how to do it. She says that she ultimately decided that she would just try to get to F4, and then win the final veto herself. When she wasn't able to do that, she had to resort to convincing Janelle to take Will out. Which, of course, she did. Note that Erika does not, in any way, say that the entire game went as she originally planned, or that she masterminded anything. She says that she originally intended to go after Will, and that failed. So she tried to get to F4 and win the veto, and that failed. Only then, with no options, did she talk Janelle into voting out Will. She doesn't say that she's a genius; she just says that she did that one thing right, and she says that "in pure puppetmaster form, I had his best friend put him up, and his best girl vote him out." It's...what happened, you know? With regard to that one thing, she played it very well, working Janelle to do what she wanted, just as Will would have. Erika frames the question for the jury around "puppetmaster" Will, because that's what they all seem to want to do. She asks them if it's better, essentially, to vote for the person who just did "dirty work" for Will, or is it better to vote for the person who got Will out? It's a fair argument, and if they were actually voting based on the quality of game play, it's not unassailable, but it's the best argument she has.
Mike stands up (unnecessary; dumb-looking -- you're in the house; they're in another house, moron) and says that while none of them knew it, he lied to all of them, brought them all into Chill Town, and so forth. Of course, when he says "he" did these things, he means that Will did them. He also makes the world's most insincere, bullshit, suck-up speech about how every one of them gave him something -- the best part being where Chicken George "inspired" him. It's like...if you were going to vote based on who delivered the biggest pile of obvious horseshit, there would be no way to avoid voting for him on the basis of that speech alone. If, however, you were going to vote based on the illusion that secretly you were awesome, and even the person who won the game acknowledges that he was not as awesome as you, you'd pretty much have to give the money to him then, too.
So Julie welcomes the jury to the live stage, and then she throws it to a commercial.
A joke for you: Why did the rabbit jump ten feet tall? Answer: Because he wanted to be that tall. There is audio tape of me telling that joke at three years old, and I'm fairly confident that I wrote it myself, and I think you have to acknowledge that it's pretty spectacular.
When we return, it's time for everyone to vote. Julie explains that each jury member has a bag, and the bags have two keys in them. They'll step up to the voting box and put in the key for the person they want to win. Marcellas steps up first. He says it's "just a game," and "no hard feelings," and he says that he's voting based on the answers to his question. Of course, if you know very much about Marcellas, you know that he votes for only one reason, which is to assert his moral superiority over others. It has nothing more to do with the answer to his question than Danielle's vote has to do with her question. Howie steps up . He tells Mike that it's hard to give money to someone who owns a bunch of restaurants (or parts of six restaurants) and had to "bully and threaten" all the way to the final two. Howie, of course, would neither bully nor threaten.
Howie turns to -- by which I mean on -- Erika . He says that they used to be friends, but then he says, "I heard through the Big Brother grapevine that you hate me now. I still love you, but unfortunately, I think America hates you." And with that, we are officially in seventh-grade slumber-party territory, where everybody gangs up on one person, and picking on that person just becomes kind of the fun activity of the evening. Saying the meanest thing you can think of to Erika is the "doing each other's hair" of this particular event. The crowd gasps at Howie's gratuitous nastiness, and someone mutters "Howie," but he just puts in his key, giving a pimp for his website as he goes, because apparently, he's not a sad enough case yet.
Danielle is called up to vote, and she says, "I'm not used to doing this!" Apparently, it's important for her to remind you yet again that she was in the finals of her season. She climbs down and walks over to the key box. Danielle tells them that it was a very difficult decision for her, because she "lost Season 3 because it was personal." Had you heard that before, that Danielle thinks she lost for unfair reasons? She may not have mentioned it. She says that she ultimately realized "the past winners played the perfect game." Which is sort of a tautology the way she's using it.
Danielle rattles off a list of generic qualities that she sees in the person she's choosing that could easily apply to either Mike or Erika, and then she adds at the end, "ultimate floating." Now, there is only one reason for Danielle to say "ultimate floating," given the fact that you know she's not voting for Erika. The only reason she says it is to specifically try to fool Erika into thinking she's voting for her. Erika is the one everyone considered a "floater" throughout; no one ever applied that description to Mike. It's a specific piece of bait, so that it will hurt more when Erika finds out she didn't get that vote. It makes this look like a vote driven by some pretty serious personal anger. Not just over the fact that Erika voted her out, in my opinion, but because Erika created a situation in which Danielle subsequently freaked the fuck out, drank herself into a stupor, and acted like a crazypants. She herself said it was the moment she was the most afraid of having her friends and family see, and I don't doubt for a minute that she blames Erika for it, even if not consciously. The entire thing, given her lectures about not making it personal, is perfectly, beautifully hypocritical. As Danielle struggles to put her key in (perhaps she's drunk again), Julie teases her about it, and Danielle sharply says, "Shut up!" Nice.
George. He comes down and goes on for a while about respect for the players and the game. As we've talked about, respect for this particular game is not really a healthy thing, particularly. He insists he's giving his vote to "the player who played the best game." Whatever.
Will votes. He gives a little shout-out to Mike, and then he gets in a snide little dig at Erika as well. Everybody's doing it! Say something mean to Erika and win a prize!
Janelle steps up. Everyone screams and whistles appreciatively. Welcome, good girl, America's sweetheart, this year's Rupert. She gets up and makes the absurd assertion that she's not voting "for personal reasons," at which point she becomes a caricature. Everyone's seen you, dear. Everyone saw the giggling, everyone saw you lose your composure shrieking at people not to vote for Erika. It's...over, really, the idea of Janelle as a game-focused, cool-headed mastermind. It was always a lie, apparently, but now it's kind of laid bare, you know? As with Kaysar, and as with other players in other return engagements, this was a mythology-destroying year for her, and she'd probably have been better off staying home.
James steps up and says something nasty about Erika as well, this time because she "blamed it on everyone else" that she wouldn't "help him" when he was at risk of being evicted. He claims that his vote will be based on "the person who played the game the best," which apparently is solely determined by what he has decided is his opinion of the quality of the answer that person gave when refusing to keep him from being evicted. That certainly seems like an odd way to evaluate "who played the best." Or else possibly "who's a bigger suck-up," but James isn't smart enough to get there.
Mercifully, the voting is over, which means that perhaps we could hope that the horrifying pile-on in which the show and the jury attempt to humiliate Erika may finally be over. Julie promises that when we come back, the first five people evicted will come back to talk about what was said in the diary room. And that's when you realize that it's not at all over, because it's the theme of the night. This is Humiliate Erika Night, and they're going to ride it to the end, because it's the only way not to make the outcome look jaw-droppingly horrifying.
When we return, Julie shows us that Diane, Jase, Nakomis, Kaysar, and Alison are sitting up on stage, and they, of course, have seen all the shows, unlike the jury. She starts with Kaysar, and she asks him what he has to say to Janelle, having seen all the shows. How mean was everyone to Janelle? Let's discuss everything that was said about Janelle! Of course, you'd think that if treatment were going to be fair, you'd humiliate Janelle by showing Will talking about turning her into a "fembot" and so forth, but that's not the script. So instead, the segment shows James calling her a bunch of dumb names in the diary room -- something that makes him look bad, instead of something that makes her look bad. James is unpopular and Will is popular, so the Madonna gets to hear insults about herself by the unpopular guy, not by the guy who actually played her. James tries to defend himself, but Janelle is given first crack, and makes the absolute bullshit claim that she assumed James had her back because they were in an alliance. She keeps forgetting that there were cameras around the entire time, and that she said from the first week that she didn't trust him, so we know it's not the case at all that she was knocked on her ass by his failure to be 100% on her side. She shrugs the whole thing off by calling him "a whiner."
James, looking shifty and unshaven, does his usual babble that he got screwed in the first couple of weeks when he put up Jase and then Janelle refused to put up Will and Mike because of her weird thing about Diane. (That's, incidentally, not looking like such a brilliant move these days.) Of course, the response James has given is a response to why he changed alliances, and doesn't do much to account for calling Janelle a "fat piece of shit." Shut up, James. Janelle being a big phony doesn't make you suck any less. As we are learning all over the place tonight, it's not a zero-sum game. Usually, that means that everyone can win, but it also means everyone can lose, as in this situation.
Jase uses his moment in the sun to make a fake phone call to Diane, which is completely unfunny, in which they reveal what everyone already knew, which is that they were in a pre-show alliance. No one cares anymore, dinks. Neither one of you even made it to the jury. Why would we care if you were in a totally ineffectual alliance with each other? What did said alliance do? Oh, right. Not a thing. ! Julie asks about Will and Mike's game. Jase calls Will "the mayor of Chill Town," which is true, and depressing, and exactly why I no longer ever want to see him on television again. He may be entertaining, he may have been the most enjoyable part of a lame season, but...he's the mayor of Chill Town. King of the dipshits. Not really...such a great thing, that.
Julie plays all the Mike/Will phone calls in the DR, and everyone laughs. Oh, those scamps. Men who lie and laugh behind your back are so funny. Women who lie are so horrible. They're not loyal to anyone.
Now, Julie asks for a show of hands from the early evictees about which of them believes that the most deserving people made it to F2. Obviously, no one does. "Boogie, kind of," Diane says. Of course, if you have a compass that allows Mike to be judged "deserving" of anything other than a psychiatric evaluation or a prison term, it seems to me that there's something amiss in the code you're following. Nakomis says that her F2 would be Janelle and Will, and everyone applauds. Go, cool kids! Maybe they'll let us sit with them!
And now, the show reaches its high point of car-wreck-chasing cruelty when it specifically calls on Alison to fill in "Erika and Mike" (by which it means "Erika") on events from inside the house. "I'd really like to tell Erika that she was played all summer long," Alison gloats. So with that remark -- on that note, on that fuck-Erika, let's-see-her-cry note -- Erika and Mike come up on the plasma screen, sitting inside the house. Julie tells them that Alison has something to say to Erika. "Hi, guys," Alison says cheerfully. She congratulates Erika for making it to F2, and then she says, "Mike Boogie, congratulations. You played Erika the whole season long! Better than Big Brother, you played that girl. Erika, I hope you use that money and buy yourself some dignity."
Erika's parents are sitting in the audience for this. Mike tries to look sympathetic for a split second, but he grins with satisfaction.
I have to wonder...is the suggestion here that Mike has dignity? That Erika compares unfavorably to Mike because he has more dignity than she does? Of course not. Look at him. Look at what he is; he has no dignity. You know who else has no dignity? Alison. You know who else has no dignity? Any of these people. So why is Erika being singled out? Erika is being singled out because she tried to have dignity. She wanted it, and she thought she could have it, and they all love the fact that she came off just as badly and as embarrassingly as the rest of them. She tried to be "nice," to make goodbye videos where she cried over evicting people and prattled at length about how difficult it was for her to boot people she cared about. She got into a romantic situation she foolishly believed was actually genuine in spite of having thousands of reasons to know better, and she basically begged not to be treated like a "ho-mance." Erika isn't being punished and ridiculed because she doesn't have dignity; she's being punished and ridiculed because she made the mistake of admitting she wanted it, and failing miserably at keeping it. Better to be Mike, they all think -- better to throw yourself full-throttle into name-dropping and preening and shit-talking everyone in the DR and never admitting to a genuine emotion. They all love this because she did look at the beginning like she was a little more decent than most -- she did look a little more sane, a little less overinvested -- a little boring, but a little less embarrassing, kind of like Kaysar. Seeing her brought down...seeing her start smoking again, seeing her look haggard, seeing her snuggle up to a guy who is literally laughing behind her back...they love it. Remember, Alison has seen the whole show. Alison already saw Mike gloat about proving to America that Erika is a whore, and nothing about that made Alison like Mike any less, or made her think that maybe it wasn't necessary to grind this in Erika's face. She wanted to pound Erika just as much as before, even knowing what was already on Erika's plate. Buy yourself some dignity, says Alison Irwin. And thanks for giving the rest of us somebody we can treat like trash. It's nice to be off the bottom rung.
And here, we see those DR sessions, particularly the famous one in which Mike announces with pride that he has exposed Erika as a whore. And when he's done watching it now in real time, Mike is still grinning with excitement, knowing that it was his crowning moment. Asked what she thinks of all that, Erika does the only thing she really can, and she says, "Hey, I'm sitting here in the final two. Obviously, it did, uh...we played each other. I mean, that's the Big Brother game." It's a bullshit answer, but I understand her choosing it over "Well, I don't know, Julie. How would you feel if you found out someone you were sleeping with was a misogynist sociopath and had been calling you a whore on television?" Mike tries for a defense by saying that some of the nastiest of those comments happened right after Will left -- which is true, but irrelevant. "Well, I was upset, so naturally I called her a whore" is not a very persuasive way of bringing people over to your side, in my humble opinion. He also throws in "it's an edited television show," which would be much more convincing if there weren't live feeds from the house that run constantly, on which he was seen doing things like discussing how he was going to piss in a bottle and throw it on Janelle. However disgusting he came off on television, it appears to be the case that on average, increasing exposure to his unedited behavior made him appear more revolting, not less revolting, based on my highly unscientific study.
A joke for you: There's a dairy farmer, and he really needs to improve the milk output of his herd. He brings in a series of experts. He starts with a biologist, who suggests a way of breeding future cows to improve their production by 25%. He makes a note of this suggestion. He brings in a chemist, who proposes a new supplement that could be fed to the cows to improve their production by 50%. He makes a note of this. He brings in an economist, who explains how he could change his business practices to make 75% more money with the milk he already has. He makes a note. Finally, he brings in a physicist who claims that he can get the farmer six times the production from each animal that he's currently getting. The farmer is ecstatic. "Tell me, tell me!" The physicist, pulling out a pencil, says to the farmer, "All right. Now, assume a spherical cow."
Julie reminds Erika and Mike that one of them is about to win a boatload of money, and then she informs the jury that Janelle is going to win the $25,000 Rupert Prize. Well...someone is. We're not saying it's Janelle. Hey, at least this time it's not as much as the winner gets.
Back from commercials, it's time for Julie to announce the votes. The short version is that Marcellas voted for Erika, and everyone else decided that of these two people, they'd rather hand the money to Mike. Mike, who played a brilliant game by making Erika believe he cared about her when he didn't; Mike, who slept with her and then mocked her for sleeping with him; Mike, who wanted to throw piss on Janelle; Mike, who couldn't tie his shoes without Will. This is your winner, because it wouldn't be right to give the money to someone who wasn't "the best player." Or maybe she's actually a "phenomenal player," but there's just something about her. Something that's personally disgusting. It's hard to put your finger on it, but she's disgusting. It's one of those two.
Mike comes out of the house and hugs everyone in celebration; Erika follows, and the attempt to show her up still is not over, as everyone initially gives her the cold shoulder and makes her stand there with no one even giving acknowledging her existence until Marcellas, bless his self-righteous heart, comes over and hugs and kisses her. Mike is last seen in the enthusiastic embrace of his apparently unconcerned mother. Congratulations, Mom. You must be all kinds of proud.
We come back to the incredibly anticlimactic moment in which we learn that now that we have adequately humiliated the whore, we will reward the Madonna with the Rupert Prize of $25,000. Congratulations, Janelle! Asked what he's going to do with the money, Mike says that he's going to buy stuff for people and reinvest in his restaurants. Congratulated by Julie, Erika says she's just glad it's over. Me too, sister. Me too.