BB28 Roundtable Week 8

0:00Hello, everyone and welcome to the big brother 28 round table podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about everything from the feeds and we rate the players from 110 based on how well we think they're doing in the game and we rate all kinds of other things. We rank them. We rate them. We talk through all of the decisions and a lot of decisions to talk through this week. I'm of course your host, Aaron Armstrong, and with me, as always, it's Melissa. How do you, Melissa? Not good, but that's okay. It's been a bit of a rough week and I am so sad that I had to miss RehabCon. I was like so looking forward to it and it looked so fun. So, you know, and then of course, no feeds and everything. It's just all of it compiling at once. So,

1:02yeah, very glad to be here and back on the round table and talking with everybody. Yes, and joining us also, somebody who also was not in Milwaukee, not to rub it in, but Chappelle as well here. How are you doing, Chappelle? I'm good, Aaron, but you all these nice people in apology because you told them I was going to be in Milwaukee and I tried to correct them, but they rather believe you than me. All I said was that we were going to roll, but we were supposed to roll in the one or where. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm very excited to be here. Very excited to be here to talk about Big Brother. I don't do the round table often. And so I thought, yeah, I missed RehabCon. Let me come spend some time with Aaron and Melissa. Yes, and we will have quite the time here tonight. Of course, like I said, we're going to talk about the week and the feeds. There obviously was a little bit of a gap in the feeds. Less of one than we anticipated, it seems because they couldn't edit the episode in one. But we will be talking

2:07about what we do know the last time we spoke on the round table, Mallory was in the game. And Barrett was just in the room. And now he's more than in the room. And Barrett was in the room. So of course, by the end of the last week, Barrett had flipped on Drew and the crossovers. He was prepared to vote Drew out over Mallory. He was also prepared to vote Drew out over Taylor. However, Drew won the blockbuster. And Mallory was evicted. The pipe queen gone, which led us into the, I don't even know what to call this. It doesn't even have a catchy name. The medieval contests twists, like, I don't know, which is what we saw last night in the episode. It was a bit of a disaster clearly. And the end result of it, as we saw most of it in the episode, in case you

3:15I guess basically they competed in four contests. I'm not going to give you the details. Totally weird and irrelevant. Anyway, D won the first one and saved Devons, Drew won the second one and saved Angela. Barrett won the third one and saved Melody and Taylor sending Yash into the final competition at Yash's behest in order to defeat Haley and Lala in that final contest. And then he had the decision to eliminate either Haley or Lala from the game and he eliminated Haley. So Haley is now also gone, which brings us to the final nine, which means we are now in the jury. Then we had an HOH competition and we don't know the full details of this either, but we do know that it came down to a tiebreaker between Drew and Melody that Drew won, Drew became this week's HOH,

4:15Drew then nominated Taylor Lala and Yash for eviction. They then competed in the video where Yash came away as the winner. Yash then pulls himself off the block and Drew has a dilemma. Who does he name as a replacement nominee? He's still loyal to the crossovers, but he also doesn't want to put Melody up because he knows the crossovers will vote Melody out if he does. So his only other option is to put up somebody who isn't the crossovers either Barrett who flipped on him but he doesn't know it or one of the icons. If he puts up one of the icons, Barrett along with Taylor Lala, Yash Lala Melody, whichever combination of them is off the block, will vote that icon out. So which icon it is is pretty important as well. You would assume that given the events of the previous week with D as the HOH nominating Drew causing all this mayhem would mean that D is the obvious choice for Renoam. However, Devons volunteered for the block, meaning Devons was Yash's

5:22replacement today at the Vito ceremony and Devons is now the primary target for the week. Unbeknownst to both Devons and Drew, if Devons loses the blockbuster, Devons will be evicted. If he does win the blockbuster, the current target is Lala over Taylor, but that is about where things stand here, Alyssa. Yeah, a lot has happened since I was last on your pass table. Yeah, obviously the twist thing is not what we like to see, but at the very least, like I thought it was interesting how you I think it was you and Puyah said on one of the morning updates where you were like, what is like the best case scenario for this twist? And you guys said that the best case scenario is the scenario where like it doesn't really affect the game that much, it doesn't really change the game that much. And you guys got your wish, which is Haley going. So I guess that's a good thing. If we're going to

6:27have a twist at the very least, like let's make it like out the minimally like relevant. So I guess great. I've been really interested in the Barrett of it all. It's very exciting seeing him turn. I honestly did not expect it. And it kind of makes me feel like it's like, you know, you're always hoping that the person is just biting their time and that they're actually just like waiting to make the move when it's right for them. And then a lot of the times we think that's going to happen and then we're so disappointed because then they just don't they just don't do it. And then they just go out and you know, a whisper instead of a bang. And so this is really, really exciting to see this sort of thing happen. Now obviously like I don't love the idea of one of the icons going out on like they volunteer to go up. I just feel like it's like that just seems so lame. But that's not what I want to see. I want to see some fight. I don't want it to be like a trick

7:31or whatever I would have loved to have seen, you know, them actually know they're in danger because I like to see them fight for their life. And I like the idea of someone back into a corner and being able to pull out of it. I'm not the I'm not the kind of person who's like, I just want one of the icons to go out. It doesn't matter who I just want one of them to leave. They've had it too easy. Like yes, they've had it too easy. But I would like to see them have to try and get their way out of a situation. Like that's the kind of gameplay I like. So I would much refer it if Devon's this week hadn't volunteered to go up obviously. And then also if you know, if he if it becomes known to him that he is the target and there's a chance he'll go home like needing to get himself out of that situation would be really fun. So yeah, it's been even with the twist and everything. It's been a really exciting past two weeks for me. And so, you know, it's yeah, it's it's it's very exciting. I thought it was kind of the excitement was over and I feel like

8:32it's it's just it's just beginning. So in many ways, yeah, I should tell how what are your thoughts on this this whole situation? Huh. Okay, first let me take my glasses off. Not like as like a demonstration of anything he's just that the glare is kind of killing me too. It's my I'll get an old okay, I can't see. And so let's let's talk. Love with me. I get it. I understand it's time the icons haven't really had a lot of adversity. And when they did, they had some ridiculous twists to help them out. This is not anything we haven't seen in Big Brother before. So I'm not just like, oh my God, that's the worst thing in the world. I get it. But yeah, I kind of agree with Melissa in that just the volunteering for the block does take a lot of the like the entry out of it because as I think you said yesterday, Terran on your life, be the way that if he goes on the block and doesn't win the blockbuster, he's going home. There's like almost no suspense to this except, you know, waiting to find out when they're going to find out. Now that said, they did this to themselves every that he did this to himself. You do not have to volunteer for the block. I have

9:35a very strong opinion that Drew didn't even want to do that and that Drew would have been willing to put up some of the people that he's betrayed in the past, namely Melody, maybe even Barrett, you know, he had license to put up D as well. And so I don't feel bad for Rick Devon's at all. As a Rick Devon's fan from watching him on Survivor, I would love to see him play better, but he's playing really bad. And if you bought Devon's stock last week, I'm here to tell you that this is not a good week for you. Hug them closely because it's about to go down. So that's kind of hard and great. Exactly. A lot of that and not a lot of praise for the icons this week at all, but Barrett himself. For me, I wish this was Barrett's plan all along. I wish Barrett had been cultivating these other relationships with the other Alliance so that when we get to jury, I can boom, flip over and we do the things, right? But this really came at like almost like because

10:36of the icons horrible Alliance management because they've been playing this weird voting block strategy where they bounce over here, screw these people over, bounce over here, screw these people over, come back to them. It pissed them off. They made him vote out the pipe queen and he loves the pipe queen. And so because of that, he like, no, I don't want to play with y'all anymore. I don't want to work with y'all. I only want to work with Drew because y'all are making me turn on my friends and I don't like that. And so they pushed him into doing something that we've all been waiting for Barrett to do. But it wasn't like Barrett's idea was, okay, if I just lay low long enough, I can gather these troops. It's like, it's kind of what happened, but it's not the way that I would have wanted it to happen. So I'm really just hoping that now that we've in the jury, we're in the jury phase, people start getting a lot more aggressive with their gameplay. I don't like just like looking up on the right nominee ending up on the block because they were too dumb to not realize you shouldn't volunteer that going to block. I want to see people making the moves that are going to advance them to win the game. So that's kind of where I stand right now, Sarah. Yeah, I mean, if this had been Barrett's plan the whole time, it would have been a pretty bad one.

11:38Considering he threw HOH on the week that Mallory left, that's still pretty bad of him to have done. But at least he was able to be pushed into doing something. It's reminding me a little bit of like season 18 where like basically Paulie just kept pushing his allies further and further, and they just kept taking it like Paul just kept taking it like, oh, it's BP all the way until eventually Paul was like, you know what, screw you, man. And flipped. And that can work out really well, right? Like, reactively flipping against somebody is a good thing a lot of the time because if you are being pushed enough to feel that way, and you're probably not in a good position in the game. It's a little bit similar to how the leftovers were formed where like Kyle and Monty were just pushed a little too far. And then they reacted and flipped. They were a lot more proactive

12:44about that. But, you know, so yes, Barrett is in this position. Ideally, he would be in this position in a better with more leverage, right? Like with Mallory in the game and with maybe Yash not in the game or Taylor or Lala not in the game. And so he actually has like a strong standing to work from. Ideally, he'd also have drew like in lockstep at the very least or at least like on like actually on board so that he can actually snipe out the proper threat here. Maybe Devons is the bigger threat than D, but D is so far perform better in competitions. And ideally, if you were in a snip one of these icons out, it would be D considering they do have a better relationship with Devons in the first place. But, you know, that's all kind of nitpicking at this point. The point is that Barrett is where he needs to be now and he's doing what he needs to do, which is convinced the icons he's with them until the opportunity arrives, which is theoretically

13:49Barrett or sorry, Devons losing this blockbuster and then evicting him. And just like that, Devons might be gone. And yeah, I mean, I think we could all say like, oh, you know, seeing Devons on the back foot, that would be really entertaining. But I feel like I've seen Devons and Big Brother at this point. What could he really do, you know, and Big Brother is not the same as Survivor. There's no bag of tricks you can pull out if you're not gifted, Diamond Powers of Vito. I think if you're going to volunteer for the block and then get blindsided on a Viction night, yeah, that's plenty exciting to me. But I don't know if I agree with you that there's nothing you can do, right? Like the scramble because I think that Rick Devons plays, he's so used to playing from the bottom that he doesn't know. This whole season, we watched this man play from the top and it's just been a mess. Everything has been, it's been just clumsy. You've had piss of people off for no reason. You've been making grand displays, but not all the way. Everything's like a half measure with this man. He wants to be cut throat, but he also wants to be the cool dad at the same time. I kind of wanted to see what it looked like if he was put in a survivor situation where he had

14:54to, you know, without all the stops. You know, we've seen crazy things happen on Big Brother where, you know, Vanessa survives back doors, Dan Geesling does, Dan Geesling things. Like Devons, this is your moment to show us what kind of player you are. And I think at the end of the season, I won't have a good read on if Rick Devons is a good Big Brother player. You know, he's had a good moment, obviously. He's been able to be social in the house and have people on his side. He's also had a lot of crazy advantages to help him out. You know, he's got a built-in alliance with D. These are not things that are abnormal to Big Brother again. I've said this before, like some of this stuff that we've seen before, but as far as I'm going to be evaluating his skill set, like, is he always going to want to be the cool dad every time? Is he always going to waffle when he should just be making, being more decisive about things here? So yeah, seeing him volunteer to get him on the block of like, man, I would love to see what it looked like if he had to use his teeth a little bit more. And we just haven't seen it. And so that's why I'm disappointed. Well, I'll tell you this, Dan Geesling, Vanessa Russo, they're not volunteers.

15:55They're not volunteers for the blind. I mean, they're not volunteers. It is tricky, right? Like, I think Devons probably has at least, you know, and I'm working on like trying to like, can we stat out the competitions? Can we kind of try to predict based on their previous performance? And the answer so far, I think is no, not really. I think the competitions are too random. Too many people throw and it's really just difficult to predict. However, theoretically, Devons has performed pretty significantly better than both Taylor and Lala, despite Lala's wins. Lala, I think, has basically performed where like, she either wins the comp or like, comes in last. Basically, like, she has some really, really strong strengths. But if she's not in her strength, then it's probably not going to land. Devons performs pretty consistently decently, but hasn't picked up many wins. And then Taylor is a little more all over the board

17:02in terms of her own performance, even just like looking at the blockbuster from Thursday. You know, drew obviously guest correctly. And then it's like, okay, Drew is a better competitor than the Mallory in that competition, even though his was a guest. And then Mallory came in and hit the right button after him, but realized it was gone because he guessed it right. He flipped the right coin, which maybe was its own strategy. And then Taylor came in hitting the right button as well. In third, so it's like, who knows? So theoretically, Devons should have the best chance of winning this blockbuster. And then this maybe becomes a blip on the radar and the ultimate story of Devons in the game. But it's really, really bad and should not be forgotten that no matter how dominantly he may or may not end up like playing this game, maybe eventually even winning this game, that this is a terrible, terrible, unforced error that he has no business making and no big brother

18:04great would have made it. So, okay, so if Devons does win the blockbuster, then who's, who's in danger? Like, as of right now, Lala. Okay. Yeah, because she's the bigger copter, right? Right. They're worried that she's the bigger copter, which again, like, by the statistics, theoretically, she's actually not. Just if you go by placement and competitions, she's one more than Taylor has, but Taylor has placed better in competitions overall. So it's, I actually don't think it's quite as dramatic as they think it is. I think they, in their minds, Taylor's like, can't win anything. And Lala is like, wow, she really wins some things sometimes. Kind of forgetting the fact that like, Taylor was second in that veto competition that they played in that Lala won, right? So, you know, but that is the current sort of perception is that Lala is the bigger com thread. And therefore, the bigger thread to take out, I actually really think that's a mistake on their end, in part because of this competition thing. Like, and maybe this,

19:10again, the stats aren't necessarily important because, yeah, technically, Taylor's like placed better. But again, if Lala, what matters is who wins? And Lala is really better at the com, kinds of competitions that she wins. That makes sense. Like, if you get stuck in a competition where Lala is really good, she's going to beat you. Whereas if you get stuck in a competition where Taylor's really good, she plays as well. And so it's like, you know, that has to be factored in as well. I'm still working on this whole thing as we go. But, um, but what I do know is that Lala and Yash don't really get along much. Yash doesn't really like Lala all that much. The connection is through Taylor. Taylor is really the person who holds that quote unquote side together. And if they took out Taylor, I think they'd be in a better position to sort of like maneuver their way forward through the game. But they see Lala as a bigger com thread, which may be a correct read on that. So they are

20:11looking at Lala at the moment here, Melissa. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Well, we'll see. Yes. I did want to bring this up because obviously Thursday was the thousandth episode of Big Brother. It made me curious, um, about how many episodes of the Big Brother Roundtable there have been. Uh, and so go on. Funny enough, last week's Roundtable, according to my very probably wrong count was the 200th Big Brother Roundtable podcast. Wow. Okay. This one, 201. Okay. That excludes survivor roundtables. Okay. Big Brother Roundtables. And it includes a couple of postseason roundtables, which we used to do occasionally. But, uh, okay. That includes like before we did this version of the stock watch, like before, even before, like I got there. Um, that's good. I started. I, uh, you

21:18started after 19. I started. Yeah. Yeah. After 19. Yeah. It was after OTT. Mm-hmm. Right. Which, which was after I always forget when OTT was 19. I did 19. Was OTT was between 18 and 19. 19. Yeah. It was a did do. I did do. I always remember that this is how I remember that OTT happened in between 18 and 19 because Paul guested on OTT. He guest hosted an OTT competition. And Paul was still beloved, beloved at the time. And then. Yes. Yes. Take me back to BB19 here. Melissa on the round table. She was not feeling it. Okay. I love it. Oh, Matt. I was like, this is the worst season. Oh, man. Yeah. We should go back and watch the roundtables. Please. So, yes, Melissa, starting BB19, I think is when I started the count. Oh, wow. That's so exciting.

22:22I did it. I think this is my guy. Round table. So go me. You know, that's pretty good. Yeah. Coming up. It was pretty good. All right. So anything else you wanted to talk about from the week, Melissa? Gosh, I don't even know. I feel like I'm so like lost. What did you think about the 1000th episode, Melissa? I haven't watched it. Oh, I've literally been like, I'm like, I've been trying to catch up on the I've been watching the feeds, but I haven't been watching the episodes. So then today I was binge watching the episodes and I didn't get to that one yet. The I had so many binge watching the beginning of the 1000th episode is so fun. It's, you know, the mother. I listen to it's so funny. Like I listen. I'm like one of those people. I like listen to the podcasts about them. So I heard about it. So I know that it's like a good montage. And then that it's there are some parts that are not not doing a 1000th episode just this,

23:30but I'm going to I'm going to watch it. I'm going to watch it. Guys, I am trying to get caught up. But yeah. Hey, Katah, you got to work. Yes. Yes. Chappelle any any thoughts from you from the week anything else that we should like talk about? I mean, not pertinent to these people's stocks, but I just don't think there was enough Daniel Reyes on the 1000th episode. I just don't understand what they were doing there. I was like, this is not this ain't it. I was very happy to see, you know, the things that we did get to see. But I really feel like, man, it just to have it tied into the exit, you know, for the pipe queen. It kind of feels like, I don't know, I feel like you could have dedicated an entire episode to something like that, right? Like I just, I don't know. Maybe it's because, you know, I read your book and stuff, but like, I remember doing the retrospective with you and, you know, how we all took turns doing different seasons with you and just looking back on all the things that made us fans of this insane show. Right? Like we talk about the joint psychosis of this show, but it's bad when the host is

24:31telling us to go outside when Julie and then the big brother contests are making content saying, like, hey, stop watching the feed for like five minutes and we're like, no, no, you ain't my mama, Julie, you know what I'm saying? So like that's the type of energy that we have toward the show. And I want them to celebrate it a little bit more, right? Like it's like they tiptoed and like touched on it a little bit, but they need to dive in. You know, they need to get some, like one of those like VH1 documentary style things where you get people doing professionals and talking about where they were when Keisha's birthday happened, you know, what was 12 year old Terri doing when we got kicked out the house, you know what I'm saying? Like that's the type of stuff we want I want to see big brothers celebrate. That would have been so fun to like go back at like certain moments and then have people talk about like, oh my god, I remember what I was feeling at the time and did it. They should have like a that one of those VH1's like, I love the 80s. Yeah, I love it brother. Yeah, and it should be like talking about like the biggest moments of big brother come on. Terri. It's a work. Terri and get to work.

25:33Yeah, you start working on this. We can help, but you know, we can't do it. Do it. Just call me when it's time to do it. Do it though. We will help you do it. Yeah, exactly. I'm open to investments in this project. I'm this time. I mean, I got you, you know, I watched some I watched some seasons. You don't got to twist my arm. I do agree that it was pretty wild that they put out content that was like go touch grass if you're mad about the feet being down essentially. Like, I'm sorry that we like your show so much that we want like that like we want to watch it. Like I'm sorry that we're, I guess you don't seem to hold very high opinions of the people that consume your show. Right. Julie, I thought she got other jobs. Girl, this is it. You need to look like lucky. Lock in. Tom's is hard. Have you seen the economy? Baby, we keeping this afloat. We have family here. So yeah, I did have an issue with that because again, if I want to touch grass, I'm a touch grass. But I'm like touch grass while watching the feeds on my phone. How about that?

26:35So I didn't like that. And then what else did I want to complain about? Because I did have, now that you mentioned it, I do have some things on my mind. It'll probably come to me in a second. But yeah, I definitely could see them dedicated a little bit more time to the people. Oh, that's what it is. I did watch the big brother, the chat BCC, big brother games that they did. Oh, it was messy, messy, messy, messy, messy, messy. Alyssa Riley, hey, that lady, that's TV. That you put that lady back on TV now, okay? Now it's bad when Janelle is like clutching her pearls. Like, oh my god, Alyssa, please. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of drama. It's on YouTube. Did I clean it up? But if you want the cheat code, let me give it to you because everybody ain't going to tell you this. If you want the cheat code, you start it. And then about two-ish competitions in and right before they get to CupPong, you stop the episode and then you go to Davon's Twitch stream and then watch it with Davon. She puts it on the screen and Davon is Davon for the next two hours. Grab a glass of wine and some popcorn and just enjoy it, okay? Because

27:41she was lighting everybody up every two seconds. And who the hell is that? Now they got fans like that? Who is, and what are you doing? I held no. I look at the drunk, you know, so go do that. Enjoy yourself. Yeah, it was good. To me, that felt like a celebration of Big Brother because all the people that we watched over the years was in the same spot. That's amazing. I'm going to check that out. I'm going to show you all that stuff. It's amazing to me that there's been a thousand episodes. Like, and I, oh well, okay, I want to say like I've watched every single one of them, but now I just told you I didn't watch that one. So like I haven't watched the thousand. I watched 900. 99. So that's so crazy. And then when we were people were talking about like, oh, like 26 years of Big Brother. I'm like, I'm so old. I've literally been watching since season one. Like, that can't be right. There's 26 years in there of me watching Big Brother every year. Like, that is so weird and wrong and strange. But I guess it's true. Throw in OTT, throw in celebrity, you know,

28:46crazy. I've been doing a lot of heavy lifting around here for this show. And so I'm glad we got to celebrate it for a little bit, but I just feel like the celebration could have been a little bit bigger. Yeah, they guys don't more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. On the 30th season or something, maybe they'll, they don't respect us. We should wait till the 50th season and then they'll do it. All right. Should we get to the survey data? Yes. Let's do it. All right. Let's talk through some of this stuff. This is of course the favorite rankings. So this is where we look at who is everyone's, the audience's favorite, with the audience's favorite players. And last week, Taylor was on top. Taylor number one. And Melody was number two, followed by Devon's Lala Drew Yash Angelady and then Barrett at the bottom

29:49here. So this is, this is where we were at last week. That was pre-barrett flip, right? That was pre-barrett flip. Okay. I feel like Barrett's gonna like jump up. I don't know of number one, but I think he's pretty sure to jump up. It would be clear. Haley was technically at the bottom. She's just now gone. Haley was left in 11th place. Mallory left in second place. So the question is, who do we think is in the top spot this week? Melissa, you normally have a good idea for this. What are you thinking? I feel like I don't know right now. I wouldn't have said Taylor is number one. So I think I would have gotten that one wrong. I feel like maybe, well, I don't know if Melody's done anything to like push her up. So maybe Taylor would stay. I feel like it's gonna be like

30:50everybody up here and then the icons and Drew lower. That's, I feel like it's just gonna be two groups. I could see that. I want to know. I think it's Yash. I think Yash has found himself kind of like, if the icons are the bad guys, he's one of the good guys for sure. He's the opposition to them. And then he's working with these other people who are the fans, right? He's working with Taylor. He's working with Lala. And so if the icons are at the bottom, I think Yash is gonna find himself toward the top. Yash certainly does have quite a vocal fan base. They get mad at me every time I don't say that he's the best player in the world. But is he does they are they vocal enough to have the top spot? Not quite. Melody. What? How is she doing in the back yard and stuff like that? Yeah, I really go up for that. That's what's really good. Y'all love it. Y'all love it. That's cool.

31:54I could see. Okay, so then I think because Taylor was so up high, I bet it will be Taylor next. But then I could see Yash. And then I could honestly see Barrett because I think people are are like pleased that Barrett is, you know, woken up or whatever. Yeah. Taylor is in fact in second. Yes. Um, um, parents though. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. In third. I mean, that's a huge job. Look at that. Good for him. Good for him. And I think that's been apparent in the way people have even been talking about Barrett outside of, you know, like everybody's like, finally, he did something. And so I think he's being rewarded for that for sure. Yeah, look at this, look at this chart for a bit. What are recovery here? Look at that. He originally, he started the game in third place. And then steadily kind of dropped down into seventh over a couple of weeks. Then fell all the way

32:54down to 10th only above Haley. Now he is back up to third. Quite the turnaround there for Barrett. Taylor, of course, mostly maintaining her newfound position at the top of the list. Mallory, Mallory has been quite high here on the board for a while. And so I think that her just kind of like being activated. I think she also gets a lot of like the Mallory, you know, posthumous support. Poor one out. So fourth, I'm going this quickly because Melissa, you almost had it exactly correct. Yash in fourth place. Also a pretty big jump here. Yash, she had been really toward the bottom of the list for much of the season had a bit of a rise last week and then another rise this week. Steadily on the rise is Yash. Would not surprise me if he continues that trajectory, but we will see. The question now is who's next?

34:03I honestly, it's got to be like, it must be Lala because I think people are going to be upset that Devons volunteered himself. Yeah, I don't think that is true. And then I think Devons and then Angela and then D that's what I'm thinking. You are both incorrect. Yeah, it is a drop, but it is not as far as you might have thought. Yeah. Then probably I think the remainder just stays the same. So Lala drew Angela D in that order. I think so. I think Drew's probably at the bottom at this point. I just think that like with Barrett going up, I felt like he was going up at Drew's experience. Actually, that's a good point that like yeah, that because people are pleased that Barrett woke up and they're like probably equally displeased that Drew has not. Mm-hmm. Well, Melissa, you shouldn't have let him talk to you. Oh, damn, my bad. Lala, Drew, Angela D. I never committed. Yeah. Never changed officially.

35:10She didn't change. I never said anything. I still get it. I still get the credit. Look at all of those downward lines. It's almost everyone went down except for Yash Barrett and Melody here this week. Devons down by two. Lala down, Drew down, Angela down, and D now the first time at the bottom. She started at number one and she is now in the last place. She took out the precious pipe queen and now they have to punish her. You know, Mallory said she's one of the worst people in the world and all this stuff. And so it looks like her fan base is going to speak out against that kind of thing. For sure. So huge, huge improvement, of course, for Barrett. Devons, despite having what it's calling the biggest drop of the week, also still managing to be the most consistently ranked player of the season,

36:11not dropping quite as far as you might have expected. I have to imagine that that is in part due to just like the, I would say, probably overrepresentation of survivor fans that listen to this podcast. But that certainly did not help the so. And look, his popularity might be high, but let me tell you something. I don't want to jump to good. Yeah, stocks. You're in danger, sweetie. So let's look at where they actually landed numbers wise. Interesting. Wow. Okay, so it actually was quite close there at the bottom. Melody does come away pretty clear number one. But then it's a bit of a cluster here, Taylor, Barrett and Yash right behind her. Then a big gap before Devons and Lala and then Drew Angela and Dee are like real, real tight there at the bottom. Wow. So I almost got the big split, right? But I said Lala would be in the top, but I guess not.

37:16Yeah, I'm surprised honestly that Lala is this low. I thought she had a great showing in the Wednesday episode when she won the veto and she had like a great moment, like she had a great few moments there. And it's not like she's, I think, done anything recently to like, so like last week, yeah, last week she was in fifth place and she was like not that far behind number, like the first cluster. And she even had like, I guess her number is actually better. The spread is a lot tighter. Hayley really messed with the relative positions we put into the craft last week. Oh boy. So technically Lala actually, Lala's number improved. It's just that other people's numbers improved even more. So I guess that makes it. Because basically it feels like she's kind of the same. Like it's not like she's done something really good or something really bad. It's kind of just like

38:19Yalala is there. No offense to Lala, but it just doesn't feel like when I look at the board, sometimes I like forget that she's still part of it. So I feel like that's not a good time. Basically what happened is Barrett and Yash jumped over Lala and Devon's almost fell behind her, but not quite. And so she ends up technically falling, but in reality, she mostly stayed the same, I think. Yeah, the problem is Melody. I know y'all voted for her or whatever, but I don't see it. I don't know what y'all voting for. You know, is she a good gamer? No. Is she great TV? Is she funny? No. So I'm like, okay, go on, girl. Give us screaming. I think it's the screaming. And I guess that I think it's the Mallory stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, bestowed her fans on to Melody. And look, she's up there now. Let's see if she does something with her newfound fame. I think it's like she's the underdog too. Like, you know, she just

39:22lost Mallory and it's, you know, she's in this tough situation. And like, she doesn't really have a lot of like strong allies. And so I do feel like, you know, plus I think like, I think she is funny, but yeah, I don't think she's like favorite player status or anything, but I do think that like, I enjoy watching her. I want her to stick around. And like, I think the underdog thing certainly helps her for sure. Oh, yeah. I forgot. She has good DRS. Sorry. Well, whoops. The bar is in hail, y'all. That's all I'm gonna say. She spells brave man. I'm for the audience favorite. I do know. Wow. I did at me. It's at Terran Armstrong. Yeah. You're like, it's not my name, but sorry. Let's talk through some of the questions from the survey as well. We've got

40:23the episode ratings. Now, this is going to be interesting. I think that Wednesday's episode was actually really good. I think Thursday's episode, the thousandth episode portion of it was pretty, pretty nice, pretty okay, at least, followed by not the most exciting blockbuster in the world, and certainly not the result of a lot of people were looking for. And then a terrible announcement at the end that felt like a slap in the face. And then last night, we had a disaster of an episode. So I'm curious to see where this falls. Now, week eight is not exactly known for good episodes. The average is a 5.6, which is lower than any week of this season would have been, or has been that week seven last week. This season had a 6.0 this week. 4.3. Wow. That's very low. That's like that is quite low.

41:25Yeah, especially for the lowest that low. Yeah. That is the lowest episode rating for a week eight since we've been asking this question since Big Brother 21 yikes. And it was the one thousand episode. Like it's crazy to think that such like a big like showcase episode or whatever, like is part of a week that's that low. Not good for them. Yeah, that's not great. It's not great. It is one of the worst ratings for a week of episodes just overall. They get pretty bad toward the ends of seasons, but not usually this early. I think this is going brand, you know, because the thing about Big Brother is that we remember all those great moments for the thousand episode, right? We had to monetize. We had all those cool things that happened. But a lot of times in Big Brother, we're in hell. We are in hell for many a season for for seasons, decades. We were

42:25in hell. Okay. There are seasons that I would like we go back and watch them. And you have to be like, well, excluding the racism and the misogyny and this, this, this, this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and the 18 twist and blah, blah, blah. It was a good season, you know, and so for us to be like a thousand episode. And try and, you know, like I think I think this feels about right. Like you have the high highs, but the low lows hit a lot harder in Big Brother. And also look, it's all downhill from here, because all the other, all the red after this week. So great. That's fun. We have that to look forward to. Yeah. Yeah. Look, Big Brother 21 weirdly has a few good weeks of episodes toward the end. I don't know. I don't know. I never see that one. I'm sorry. I'm like, well, let's ask if the few. I don't know. All right. We also have the feed ratings. Now, these ones can get real low. Big Brother 24's week seven had terrible. That was, I'm sure, dire fest. And week eight is had a great

43:28rating last season, 7.3. Big Brother 26 had a good one, 6.5. Big Brother 25. This was, I assume, zombie week. So 2.9. It's pretty rough. And Big Brother 22 was at a 3.6. Not because of anything I think in particular, but just because look at all of those ratings. That's a great season. Tell us your dear. I'll know what you're talking about. Great season of TV. Riveting. So it's an average of 5.4. Last week, the feeds were a 5.8. This week, 4.3. Same as the episodes. Look at that. Oh, wow. Okay. We're consistent. So you know what? It's pretty bad. It's the worst rating of the season by decent margin, but and it's below the average for week eight, but it could be worse. It could be zombie week. Or it could be BB 22. You never want to go BB 22. Yeah, 4.3. It feels a little high to me, but I get it, right? Like the bear it stuff really did wake up the fan base a little bit. Now, I guess these votes were kind of tallied and like consider it prior to them saying,

44:32okay, what about no feeds? How do we rate no feeds for two and a half days? How do y'all look? How do we feel about that? You know, I think for me, that tanks this even lower. I would definitely say this is a lower week in whole. Yeah, I mean, it's it's tough because like the bear it flip is part of this week. Yeah, the feed outage is part of this week. And the I mean, the feeds having come back, the feeds are fine right now. Like we've got a blind side coming up. Like they're a little slow, but like nothing out of the ordinary for a final nine. So I think this is largely just coming from the feed outage, which obviously is quite annoying. Yeah, I think it's just like a punishment because it's like you didn't give us feeds. So now you get a low rating. That's what I think. It's honestly like the bear it flip, the blind side stuff, like these things are interesting things. And it like, it's not like, oh, well, this was a four-gun conclusion week and nothing happened. Like there were fun things that happened. There were just two days of movies. So

45:34yeah, yeah, they get what they deserve. All right. Season as a whole. This is the real, this is the big one. This one is like, all right, we've had it down week, but how much damage has it done to the season as a whole? And you can look, the average ratings are pretty consistent across the entire season. They slowly kind of go down often over time. But, but like, especially over the last like five years, the season rating has been pretty decently okay. 6.7, 7.8, 6.4, 6.8, 7.0. It's really only the BB-22 and the BB-21 ratings that have ratings in the red at this point. Big Brother 28 has been struggling in that department. Big Brother 28's rating last week was a 5.6, which was considerably lower than those previous five seasons. I can't imagine that the rating has gone up from there. So let's find out.

46:35Fowl, well, yes. It has. 5.7. Just a teeny bit. The rating did go up despite the individual week ratings going down. And it is apparently just barely enough to avoid the red. Wow. We did it guys. We did it. I don't hate this season. I can still remember those big moments, the blindsides. Don't you remember the blindsides? Those are fun, right? I like them. I like them. I'm sorry. You all can never take away the way I felt when Angela won that black was doing. I just injected it to my veins daily. I'll be okay. This is about right probably for this season. I think also because even though there was a bad twist, obviously we don't twist and blah, blah, it really went home. It was not open. It wasn't like one of the icons went home and now what?

47:43Makes it because I do feel like the Haley eviction week was just going to be kind of like a nothing week. It was just going to be like, okay, let's all just like agree to get Haley out. Or she was going to make it all the way to the end, which like I don't love dragging some of the end. So you know, it turns out the result of the twist is like not so bad. Yeah, I think the main thing often for this is like, how do people, how are people projecting the season forward? And they are particularly prone to being like, we really hate steam rolls. We really want to make sure the game is open. And so I think that, you know, compared to this time last week, things look a lot more open after Tara has flipped and Haley has gone. So it's makes some sense to me. And we have the HOH reigns. This week eight HOH actually has some, has some pretty good ones. Quories, HOH is here. Chelsea's HOH from Big Brother 26. Keanu's was not great,

48:46obviously. Not a great one. But listen, you know, people can do all right. The average is exactly at five point. So how do we think that Drew was doing here? Can't imagine it's great. 3.5. Same as Keanu. Do you feel like Drew has been handling his HOH poorly? Aside from, you know, obviously Devon's volunteering to go up on the block. It's a good question. I mean, like I said, it's kind of like, he doesn't exactly have good options. But so it's less that he's handling the HOH poorly, I think, and more so that he has put himself into such a bad position that he can't find his way out of it. Like all of the other gameplay that he's had, that he's had, is has like put him in like a bad spot here. Yeah. Cause I was like,

49:50I was surprised that it was kind of so it was so low. Like I get it. The devon's thing is definitely a mistake for sure. But normally when I'm thinking about somebody's HOH week, I'm like, you know, we're here in nominees, but also what are you doing socially alongside that? You know, that kind of like we'll set you up for the future or that can, you know, we'll make you a big target for next time. And I didn't think he was being awful, but you're right. I mean, it's not like, you know, once Yash wins that Vito, it's really like, all right, you're between the rock and a hard place. And you know, you just got to make sure you don't, I mean, just choose a downright grenade, like devins on the block. Yeah. We also asked about last weeks, H.O.H. and hindsight, what was D's H.O.H. initially they gave D a 4.8 in hindsight, they say a 4.4. I mean, what do we do a little bit lower? I mean, D, I mean, what did they want D to do to make it better? I mean, she targeted one of her biggest ops. Yeah, I think the biggest mistake D

50:54made on her H.O.H. was nominating Drew, which to her defense, Drew did not end up nominating her in response, though, you know, you could chalk that up to Devon's volunteering. But she did lose Barrett. I do think there's a chance that if she had not nominated Drew, that like, because Barrett was like, first she nominates Drew, then she nominates Mallory, then she wants Mallory out, three strikes to her out. If she had only done two strikes on Barrett, he might not have flipped. You know what I mean? Yeah. So who knows? But it certainly was not like, it was not a great outcome, but it was also not like, it wasn't that bad of an outcome until she also lost Haley, which I think was actually the, I think losing Haley was worse than losing Barrett. And that's quite bad for D, but it could have been worse as well if Drew hadn't won that blockbuster.

51:58So it is a tough one to rate overall. So I'm not too mad at like this, you know, for area. Okay, finally, we are going to rate production. Now we don't have a lot to compare this to yet. But we can of course compare it to the hamster wheel week, which was the first introduction of this rating. That was a 1.2. So how do we feel about this medieval contest situation and everything that came along with it? 2.8. 2.8. That's pretty high. Get out. Guys. This is hood. Basically what they're saying is it's twice as good as the hamster wheel at least. Wrong. Everybody is so wrong. Way too high. Well, I mean, it's not even like super red. It's just like little bit red. Yeah. I mean, it's losing dog to a twist twice as good as Loo.

53:00I think this is I think this is such a good representation of exactly what we talked about last year when people are like, you're not going to be like, you're only mad because Rachel left. And in my response, and I've said this before, but like my response to that was, well, people are more mad that Rachel left. Of course they are. Like, did you, you're not going to feel exactly the same about every single player. That's just not how humans work. But that doesn't change the fact that people are also mad about the way it happened. And they don't like that. And I think this is exactly a representation of that. Rachel leaving was a 1.2. Haley leaving was a 2.8. Still really bad. Just not as much. And I think another component of this as well, of course, is that like the first time it happens, it feels especially heinous. The second time it happens, you're a little bit more like, well,

54:06it's happened to me before. That's called living in America at the moment. The 15th time it happens to you, you're like, okay, I guess this is just the world we're living in. So, yeah, I mean, I think a 2.8 is like certainly low, but I think Haley leaving helps. I think that the fact that they brought the feeds back a little early might have helped a little bit. But I can't imagine that cliffhanger helped much. Do you foresee this being a big brother staple now? Because as you pointed out, we are really upset when things happen the first time in big brother. But like we saw with the diving power video, it's like, oh, okay, the first time was like, oh, that's not fair. And the second time's like, that's not fair. And now we see it like, okay, we're like, all right, well, it's part of the game. So at one point, are we just like going to have to pin so in, you know, random elimination challenge for the beginning of jury every season. It just becomes our new thing here.

55:06And didn't they, I like, no, like, didn't they see the fallout from last time and learn with defend the analysis? They said, they said the fans are wrong. They said, you guys are wrong. This was actually fantastic. You're just mad that it happened to Rachel. And, and it's also Rachel's fault for getting eliminated. So they were like, we're doing this again. Yeah, I think what this is is there solve for a double eviction while there's blockbuster going on. Oh, okay. You can't do a double eviction with blockbuster. They want to keep blockbuster going forever on the season. And so instead of doing a normal double eviction and just like eliminating the blockbuster for the double eviction and then bringing it back, they're like, let's come up with something different. And in the case of last year, something different was, let's use what we did on reindeer games to replace the double eviction. And, and it sucked. And so

56:06they tried to improve it this year. And it was a little bit improved, but still very bad. And they're still trying to figure out how to do a double eviction in the blockbuster. And yes, of course, again, like they can just do a regular double eviction and they should. But I think that this is their solve for a double eviction while there's a blockbuster going on. And so I think they will continue to try to figure it out as long as we have the blockbuster. And if that's the case, this is easily the worst thing the blockbuster is done for us, despite the fact that it's otherwise I think a pretty good twist. They should just stop. Like I enjoy the blockbuster in part, you know, I'm not, I don't hate it. I think there are some fun elements that happen with the blockbuster. But I think they should get rid of it way earlier. I mean, at the very least ended at jury, like I just this whole thing feels so crazy. They should end it early so that they can do a normal double eviction that gets us into jury. Like the first people going into the jury should be two. My thing is like, who cares if the blockbuster is happening? A double eviction doesn't need to have

57:10a blockbuster. You can just have a normal double eviction week in the middle of the blockbuster season. Right. And then have it come back. It's totally fine. But I think it's not the idea that they're like, okay, so we'll have three nominees going into the double eviction. They like to tell them on the day of the double eviction that there's going to be a double eviction. So they want to be a surprise. And so they would have to have three people do a blockbuster set up at like HOH, then set up Vito. So that's three competitions they have to do in one night. Yes. Yeah. The problem is they need to do the blockbuster on that night. And so they're like, oh, well, we can't do that. But like, you know, literally this Thursday, you had a 90-minute episode. You could have easily done it. You know, obviously the thousandth episode thing happened. But like, you know, you can theoretically plan for these things, right? Like far ahead of time. And I just feel like it's so much more doable. And I do not think that the

58:14hamster wheel elimination style twist is a good enough substitute for a double eviction. It's just not. It's first of all, lame as hell. Second of all, not big brother. And third, a huge, huge, huge component of what makes double evictions fun. Even when they end up being disappointing is that they are alive. That is the most compelling element to them. It is happening live in front of you. You don't have to deal with a messy stuffed edit that ends on a cliffhanger. When you watch a double eviction, you know you are getting everything all at once. And that is the excitement of it. You get to see really exciting things happen live. Like Andy convincing McCray that it wasn't him. Like, Dan, going off on, uh, Ian and Ian, winning that veto. Like those things happening live on your show. Those are the unforgettable moments.

59:18And like these edited segments that you have to pull the feeds down for in order to keep us in suspense. Nick, it's leaked anyway. They're not the same. They do not produce the same moments. So just do a double eviction if you can't figure out how to do something else live because live is the most essential component of it. It's with it's in the DNA of your show. So please, get up, Terry. Yeah. Yeah. I agree completely. I second that. I'm in listen. I know I say all this and I'm also begging you stop doing jury question. That is not in the DNA of your show. It wasn't. All right. So, uh, how about Drew? Is Drew naming the correct replacement nominee in Devons? Is Devons the right choice? And listen, I don't think there's a good choice here, but is Devons the right one? No.

1:00:1976% say no. I would assume most people would have said that there are two potential correct options. One of them would have been D the proper person to take the right, take the hit this week if the hit was going to be taken or bear it. If he wanted to be able to control the votes a little better this week to prevent a flip from happening in the first place. I could see arguments for either one. If he goes after D and flips to the other side, maybe D if he puts up bear it to prevent bear it from flipping and he keeps the icon safe because he's staying on the icon side, he could pick D. Picking Devons is like kind of the worst of both worlds in that he loses his closest ally of the icons without actually targeting the icons without actually joining the other side. And now he's in like the worst possible position if Devons ends up losing the spot. Yeah, no, this is wrong. This is the wrong answer. You know, just this is just not the right

1:01:20person. You know, like even if they said they wanted to for your game, you should have thought, well, can I afford to lose this person? And the answer is no. You've modeled your entire game around like I'm with the icons now. We saw that on the Sunday episode where he's saying like, I chose my side. Why are you putting your side on the block if you can avoid it, especially in your side that you are actively working with the closest, right? Like with D fine, D targeted you in a way. So it's not like, okay, you have, you know, at least you could say like, well, you put me up, I could put you up easy peasy. But here this is this is nothing. You put up somebody who was not going to put you up anytime soon seemingly. But also to do it now to not have control of the votes and not be able to control whether that they stay or go. So yeah, I think that this is definitely the wrong nominee for sure. You should only put up people on the block that you are okay with losing, right? Because anything can happen. Yep. All right. So and the dude read my

1:02:22book too. That was like the one. Don't read Aaron's book if you want it. The one gameplay recommendation in my book is not a book about teaching anybody how to play the game. But the one thing that was in there very explicitly was ponds go home. I made it so clear so many times. And yet drew, nominating a pawn that's likely going to go home. And apparently somebody should have given Devon's book because oh boy. Who do you want to be evicted this week? Devon's you can go now, you know, at least Lala and Taylor aren't asking to be put on the block. Oh, I don't want Devon's to go. I don't want anyone to go. We're at that point in the game where I'm like, but everyone could be fine. Yeah, but you can't want him to stay more than he wants to stay. And him putting himself on the block is like him saying, all right, well, like you said, if you don't want the person to go on the block to go home, don't put him on the block. Well,

1:03:26Devon's put himself on the block. So, you know, here's your tape, sir. Oh, man. Devon was the answer 68% of the audience wants Devon's out and 20% said Lala, 12% said Taylor. So there you go. Should we rate the players? Yes. Let's do it. This is of course the portions pocket. We rate on the thing. We don't even have to scroll. That's crazy. We are going to rate the players from 1 to 10 based on how well we think they are doing in the game. Let's just I'm just going to like, I'm just going to like quickly, slightly randomize some of these people so that we finally have a different order to go to. Look at this. Oh, look at this. Oh, look at all over the place. Yasha isn't going to be last. Okay. So I guess we're starting with D this time. My god criteria can be anything you want. I like to look at like long-term

1:04:29prospects, short-term safety. And do I agree with the decisions that they're making this week? And primarily over above everything else is not that serious. So let's rate these players. So she won a very crucial competition in this twist situation. We're very good. And I think that that was very important. I think that she made good decisions with the choice of like sending out the competitors for the most part. It turned out to be bad. Obviously she loses Haley. That's very, very bad for her game. Then this week she avoids the block through the HOH. It should be her. It should be her on the block. It's not. It's not largely because Devon's

1:05:34volunteers. She did warn Devon's not too. She tried to prevent Devon's from going on the block, but she could not stop it. She likely would have been the next option. So that's sort of like an interesting thing to look at. There's not like a lot to point to this week in terms of like active mistakes. I think she's currently making, but her position has deteriorated pretty dramatically from last week's six. If she loses Devon's here, they go into next week. Drew can't compete. Devon's is gone. And it will be Barrett, Yash, Taylor, Lala, and Melody, versus D and Angela. That's looking real, real rough. And it all rests on Devon's winning this blockbuster. So it's not great, but worth noting, Yash, who is definitely the best competitor.

1:06:39When doing my statistics, they have not been very predictive for the record. I'm still working on that. But one thing is clear. Yash is at least twice as good as the next best player at competitions. He is just consistently performing significantly better than almost anyone else, and should theoretically have twice the chances of winning any given competition. He is the only statistical outlier of anybody on this cast right now. And he can't nominate Dee. That's okay. So that does matter. And it does even the playing field out at least a bit. So she does still have that going for her. And with Devon's gone, she may also become a slightly less of a threat theoretically. If you're Barrett, are you still gunning for the remainder of Dee and Angela? Or if you're Barrett and you get Devon's out,

1:07:40do you start to think, maybe now I do need to look at Yash Taylor and Lala, because if I can pull Drew back in and Dee and Angela aren't the most threatening two in the world, they're just two people left. Then maybe we could get the mosh fit back together only with me slightly in more power and maybe snipe out Yash, right? Or something along those lines. So I don't think she's dead in the water here. Not to mention the fact that if Devon does survive the week, then she's still in quite a good position forward, especially because Yash can't nominate her. So overall, it's a tricky one, but I do think that it's been quite a bad week overall. I got to go with a four. Yeah. It's not looking good for Dee. I think, I mean, I could see a scenario where Devon's leaves.

1:08:49And then like you said, people start kind of being like, well, is Dee and Angela, like the two of them really the biggest threat here now? Maybe we need to start, maybe there's a reconfiguration of people. I think Dee is good enough that I think she could make her inroads with certain people. Like, I could see her making up with Barrett or I could see her pulling in somebody that maybe she hadn't pulled in before because I think that once the icons quote unquote are less of just like a big block and more just like Dee and Angela, it could be a scenario where people aren't seeing them as this huge group that they need to go against. And instead, it's like, okay, well, let me look at these people as individuals. And I could see Dee finding a way in. But I don't know, she has a lot of, she's made a lot of people mad. And that's not so great for her. And you know, if Devon stays this week, obviously this, this changes. So it's hard, it's hard to say that I like Dee isn't in such a bad spot

1:09:55because if Devon does stay this week, then she's really not in that bad spot. But it all depends if Dee, or if Devon's wins the blockbuster. So gosh, I think the fact that the icons are going to be targeted by basically whoever, even if Devon stays, they'll be targeted by whoever is still there. The people are not afraid now to try and target the yet. The icons, except for obviously, Yash cannot. I'm like between a four and a five because just because I do think if Devon stays, it's a five. If Devon's leaves, it's a four. So I'm like, is he going to stay? Is he going to leave? I guess because the fact that she might lose such a big ally, she already lost Hayley, she is, people have basically outed her. They know what her game is. They know what the deal is. Barrett has turned on her. He is no longer with her. So I do think that in that case, I'm going to

1:10:58give her a four because this has not been a good week for her. Yeah. If you want to give her a five, I would have gave her a three. But I'm okay with four here because I agree losing Hayley's bad. But also she is to me the biggest target in the house now. Like you said, the upside is that I was looking at this as if, you know, and it probably should be, this should be the death flow for redevance, right? But those little blockbuster, he might actually survive for, so I can't give her just the three out, right? But I wanted to. I wanted to. But I would hate to give her a three. And then Devon's comes back. Makes me can now look at them. They're back in the majority. You know, they now know Barrett can't be trusted probably or maybe they don't, right? But they're fine. And there's not a lot of people who can target the, like obviously Devon's in Angela, wouldn't target the Drew wouldn't target D and nor can he win HOH. But then Yash can't target D either. And then Barrett uses move to target D of all people probably not. And so I was like, I can't punish her that much. Even though I wanted to. So I'm going to land on a four as well. But had you given her a five,

1:12:01she would have got a three for me. All right. Well, what does the audience think about? I think they might agree with us on. I think it's a pretty reasonable rating of a four. No, there are a little higher on D they give her a five. Can't relate. Sorry. I just, I don't like it. I just I just feel like she's too much of a target. Like even if you say, like, oh, maybe her and Angela aren't that big of a deal. It's still deep from survivor that, you know, Lala just found out one a million dollars. You know what I'm saying? Like it's going to be really hard to keep that target off her back for too long. And you know what? I almost punished her for wanting to, uh, for leaving Yash in the game. Like, look, I know he can't target you necessarily. But he's also not a number for you. You know, the first chance, like, including this week, if he has a chance to vote against your interest, he is going to do it. And so I think leaving him in the game is also a mistake. But I mean, I could not give her a five. No. All right. Well, uh, it's still a pretty big dip. This is going to be her worst week here. Look at this fall from grace for D,

1:13:04looking not quite exactly like her, uh, her favorite rankings graph. But, um, certainly not great here as she now dips into the red to have a four. Melissa, what do you think about Melody? Melody. I think she's, well, she's, she's, she's saved for this week. So that's good for her. Uh, I think that there are definitely bigger targets around her. And that's good for her. She's got some, she's got Barrett now sort of like working on that side. She's got, there are people going after the icons. Like, those are all good things for her. What's not so good for her is that she lost Mallory. Um, and Mallory was her number one ally. So now, you know, she's, she's not in as good of a spot. Um, and also like, you know, she can't trust Drew either. Like, she thought she had Drew as an ally. Now she knows she can't trust him. And obviously like Drew didn't

1:14:09put her up on the block this week. But still like, I wouldn't trust Drew if I was her. Um, it's tough because like there are bigger fish to fry for sure. But she could be an easy person to be like, yeah, let's get melody out. Why would we not? Um, especially if one of the icons wins next week. And if they're thinking, I'm not going to get out yosh because he can't put us up. And then they wouldn't want to get out Drew. Maybe they don't know that they don't believe that Barrett turned on them or like, there's some way that they don't think that I don't know. It's very, it's tough because she's had some bad things happen to her this week. Some good things. But I don't think she's, you know, the three that she was rated last week, I think. I think things are on the upswing for her. But I don't think that she's in a good spot yet because I truly don't think that she has any strong allies at this point in time. Um, since

1:15:12Malarie's gone. And that was her biggest ally. So I am going to give her a better rating than I did last time. But I just feel like she needs to find her person. And so for me, I think I'm going to give her a four. Yes, to be fair, the last time you gave her a rating, she was a six. Oh, yes. Hey, but that was before Malarie. That was before Malarie's in the block and all that. Yes, yes. So, uh, four from Melissa. Shepelle, what do you think? I don't see how Melody wins the game. And I think that's my issue with her. Like, yeah, no one's coming for her, but they're not coming for her because they also can't see a world where she wins the game. I don't think she has proven herself to be a competition threat yet. So I don't know how she gets to the end and not if if she's not like drag there by somebody who is a little bit more competent in competitions. I also think that although she is weary of Drew, I think him winning HOH kind of brought her back in, you know, and so maybe she's going to have

1:16:16a little blind spot for him as well moving forward. You know, I just don't see what she about to do. You know what I'm saying? And so that for that reason, I can't, she's, she's going to be a three for me this time. I just don't know where her gameplay is. It feels like she's at the bottom of both alliances, no matter what they are. Yeah. I'm with you, Shepel. I think she's a three. It's certainly a better position than she was in last week. I think that she's certainly positioned to go far. Very few people are going to be coming for her anytime soon. I think her worst case scenario is Devon's winning the blockbuster. And then the icons wanting to target her over Yash because Yash still can't come after them. And they don't want a bother targeting Taylor. And so they want to get rid of Melody because of her proximity to Drew. But I do still take some issue with just her, I think I would call it like inability to pull Drew in any direction. And I don't mean like,

1:17:21oh, flirt with him, you know, like, you know, whatever. I just mean like you have a good relationship with him. You've now been told all the information about his game. Use it to flip him to your side, right? Instead of just like saying, I sure I'll vote him out or like keeping him in the dark the whole time, like actually pulled Drew to your side. Because I think that she could if she actually like had a sit down conversation with him and was like listen, Drew, especially now that he's done his, he's done with his nominations. There's nothing Drew can do to her at this point. Sit him down and be like, Drew, we need to talk. We need to talk about all the things that you've been doing in this game. And she's kind of been like circling around the issue. Like you've been loyal to your alliance and they put you up twice. How pathetic. But it's like in the same way that I criticized Drew for not ever being serious, it's the same with her. Like I need her to like be serious

1:18:22and like straightforward with him and flip the man. But it's, it's not happening. The audience gave her four more with Melissa on that one. All right, Chappelle, how do you feel about Barrett? I mean, we, I like Barrett a lot more. And now that he's more active in the game, I think him being able to snipe out Devin's this week would be really good. I also think that it's great that he was able to kind of work his magic and get into that other alliance with Yash kind of pulling for him now. Lala and Taylor, that group, and he should be actively pulling Melody away from Drew. If Melody can't bring Drew in, you gotta leave Drew behind. And so I'm thinking that if he can do something like that, he might have a leg to stand on. I think it's way better than whatever he got last week for sure. Just because, you know, this week, he's not losing a crucial piece at all. You know, like, yeah, losing Taylor is not great for him.

1:19:25Lala is not great for him. But, you know, I think of all things like he could still probably mend Fitz's with Drew or keep him around a little bit longer. If he does end up at the end with Drew, I think he beats him. So, you know, and I don't think D is going to be trying to target him anytime soon because they have a working relationship as well. And so I know he was at three last week, but I'll be generous and give him a five this week. A five. Yeah, obviously, I like a lot of what Barra did this week. I like that he finally kind of like said enough is enough. I'm going to work against the icons. I think that's very necessary for his game. It's what I've been wanting him to do for a while. I think he was very late to doing it. I think that he, like, despite the fact that his game, like his sort of like trajectory has improved, like his, his, like the way he's looking has improved, he's still lost Mallory this week, which is such a huge loss for him in the game.

1:20:28And another thing I'm concerned about with Barrett is like, okay, this is this plan is good. You're going to take out Devons. Then what? That's my question for Barrett. What is his plan after this vote? Because you do still have to like watch out for Yash, right? Like, if even under the knowledge that Barrett has, which is that Yash can't nominate D, he should still be worried about what Yash might do as HOH because, okay, he nominates Angela, Drew, and who, if Devons is gone, who's his third nominee? Is it going to be Taylor or Lala? Is it going to be Melody? It's going to be Barrett, right? Like even, even with only thinking that he can't nominate D, it's just going to be Barrett because, hey, I need you to win the Blockbuster for me,

1:21:31right? And like, that's not great. It's not great. And so like, then also if you look at it, the soon as Drew or D leaves, that Barrett starts to look like Yash's biggest threat in the game. And he is. And he should be the person Yash looks at, especially if Yash still has Lala and Taylor. So Barrett still has quite a long way to go before he can really step into some real power. And I don't know what his plan is. I haven't heard him talk about anything beyond just like getting one of the icons out. And so I have some hope. But I do think that his initial plan to just take out Drew over Taylor was really short-sighted. And if he had gone through with that, would have been a mistake. So who knows? Either way though, his game still has improved. He lost Mallory, but they also he also managed to help take out Hayley, which is huge. Again, his trajectory in the game

1:22:32has improved. And ultimately, I think I will agree, Shabell, with your five. Yeah. I'll say the same because I also think that so if Devon's leaves this week, and like you were saying, it's the whole Yash thing and where does Barrett go after this? Like, I can see a situation where D starts to feel like, oh, I have nobody. Like Devon's is gone. Like, Angela's good, but you know, I don't know, I need something else. And Drew, I don't trust, you know, like Devon's got out on Drew's HOH, you know, blah, blah, blah. I could see a situation where Barrett could like get back in with D as need be like next week or something or even just become like a good pair together. And like, because yeah, exactly like where does he go? So I think Barrett could get back in with D. I do. And so I don't know like, I think there are avenues for Barrett after this, even if it's not

1:23:36just like, we're against the icons and we're going to just keep getting them out one by one. Like, I see a path for him. So I don't know. I see this as a, he's like in the middle right now with five, and like it really could go either direction. So we'll see. Yeah, it's just I do think his path to the end is tricky after losing Mallory. He just doesn't have any like rock solid allies, especially because he's burning Drew. Now if he could solidly pull in Drew and have a bit of a power trio with Drew and Mallory and remove Yash from the table after Devon's. Now he's looking decent, but he still has to worry about the fact that he's with a sort of showman's flirt man as his power base. And so like he just without that like one rock solid ally that he had in Mallory, his path to the end just requires a decent amount of comp winning, I think, which is not amazing. But like the fact that I'm even talking about his end

1:24:37game is such a massive improvement from where he was before, right? So like it's it is a huge jump. I even the two last week it's five this week, but there's still a lot of work to do here. I mean, couldn't couldn't like this is just like me like dreaming about this, but like couldn't there be a scenario where like Melody and Barrett sit Drew down now that knobs are locked and be like, look, right. You know everything we know what's going on. The icons are lying to us. They're telling us XYZ, they're lying to you. They're they're manipulating you like the three of us could make a run for it. Like we need to we want we need to get an icon out now now is our chance. Let's get devins out whatever. And then the three of them could like create the remainder of FAP or whatever. And that that way he's got an ally locked in for like next week. And like I think they could build something with Drew. And I think then they're not burning Drew. They're not you know blind sighting Drew by evicting devins. And instead it's like, Hey, I'm in on this plan.

1:25:42I think that would be just like a fun. It's the move. Sorry. There's that. I think there's also the move where you do blind side Drew. And you just ask for forgiveness. You just come to Drew after you vote devins out and you say, yeah, we had to do it for your sake. Yeah. And Drew, if he doesn't have anywhere else to go, comes to you. I think that also works. But and say like we didn't want to tell you because we didn't want your new to feel like there was blood on your hands or whatever. You know, like that sort of thing. I think the key point in all of it is that they cannot just abandon Drew. He is too valuable to them as a number and a comp winner in a house with still D and Angela and Yash and Lala and Taylor. Like Yash quickly becomes the biggest any everyone's biggest threat in the game if they want any chance of winning. And so I do think you have to watch out for that moving forward if you are barrett. What? Speaking of first of all, the audience says six. Okay. For Barrett.

1:26:46They're just pleased that he he's a woken. Give me a sting. He did something. He did a little some. Look, that's my blue. Okay. I can't stick beside him all the time, but I like this. Yeah. I'm very pleased with him this week. I'll say that it's very exciting. It's very fun. We could have had an icons walk to the end, you know, with no opposition and barrett and Drew just like, you know, we're walking with them and then they just get cut. This is way more exciting. So I'm very happy by this. Yeah. Yes. So speaking of Yash is next on the list. And and man, it's been a huge week for Yash between managing to ultimately like Mallory leaving was actually great for Yash. Drew leaving would have been better, but Mallory leaving is great because of exactly what I just explained with Barrett. Barrett is now a great ally for Yash

1:27:48because he doesn't have Melody anymore and Mallory anymore and Melody and Drew have been kind of split up. So they're not even like a huge threat together. Then Haley leaves and that's also huge for Yash. His biggest problem in the game is that you can't nominate any of the vets, but that doesn't that's actually not a problem anymore. The second Devons actually leaves this week if he does. That would be so phenomenal for Yash's game because he doesn't need to target D or Angela after this. He should target Drew or Barrett after this. And so if he did that, that would be really great for him and he could make a deal with D and Angela while doing so. So like there's all kinds of upside for Yash not to mention the fact that again, according to my statistics at least, he's at least twice as good as the next best competitor in the house. He is going to be winning comps and as we get toward these endgame comps, it really starts to snowball and Yash is the person best positioned to take advantage of that snowball. Not to mention the fact that he is the direct

1:28:51cause of Haley leaving this week. If he had not volunteered to go into that competition, it is very, very likely that Lala or Taylor would have been evicted over Haley at least according to the retails. Obviously, we hadn't had a chance to actually watch it yet. But according to Yash, Haley came pretty close to finishing the stacking competition that they ended up competing in, at least at one point. And therefore, it was likely going to win if she if he had not been competing against her now. What I will say is I mentioned this last night, volunteering to go compete in a spot where he could have been evicted if he had lost that competition had the chance to be a very dumb move. Tired of the chance to be a devins volunteering for the block. But there are some key elements that make it not nearly as bad as the devins situation. Number one, it is not at an end by any means a guarantee that Haley evicts him over Lala. In fact, it's actually a little bit

1:29:53likelier that Haley evicts Lala over Yash in the spot that she competes against the two of them. She really wanted Lala and or Taylor to go in the previous vote. And the icons convinced her to vote out Mallory instead. And she said, I'm willing to do this as long as you promise that it will be Taylor or Lala next. And she was really hoping it would be a double eviction. And it turned out it kind of was and there's a very high chance that she would have evicted Lala now. Yash couldn't be sure of that when he made that decision. Number two, so because of that, it wasn't just that if he lost the competition, he would be out. It wasn't just that if Haley won, he'd be out. Number two, it also wasn't just that if he lost because if Lala had won, she also would have not evicted him. So he had at least a two and three chance, not a one and three chance like the blockbuster is. And that's double the chances at the very least. And he is the best better in the house. So the decision

1:30:53I think is the risk is mitigated. And the reward is really, really high. Haley coming off the board is so valuable for Yash keeping both Taylor and Lala safe is so big for Yash. I can see a world where you say that move is too risky to reward it with a good rating, but it did pay off in the end. And ultimately, I really like, I like it. And yes, I'm going to I'm going to brag on devins. And I'm going to praise Yash. It worked out for Yash and he did it well and his risks were mitigated and the reward was high enough. I'm giving him an eight. Ooh, ooh, eight. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I've been very impressed with Yash and the way that he's been playing this. I mean, even after they just totally usurped his H.O.H. and he would have had a great week that week and then just completely his number one ally gets taken out. And now, you know,

1:32:01he's still in a good spot, even with that happening to him. Like he was able to come out of it. And I appreciate his, you know, willingness to just be like, yes, let's go. Let's do this. Let's take chances. Let's like, you know, go against the vets or let's do this or the other thing. And it's like, that's the kind of exciting player you want to see. Now, I think that while everybody in the chat is like, oh, the bribe. It's, you know, that's a negative for him. Yes, but also, no, I feel like okay, then somebody else, like, puts the one of the icons on the block or like the other, the other icons, like, or the icons remaining, like, will not want to target him because they know that he can't nominate them. So like, it feels like it's actually kind of like a good thing for him in a way because it nullifies his threat level to them. And yet he's still like in the game and playing, I don't know, it just, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Like, obviously,

1:33:04it's a big deal if you want one of the icons to go when he wins H.O.H. But I think that like overall for Yash, it's not that big of a deal. I think that I'm still a little worried about him because I do think that like you said, he is one of the biggest confrots in the house. And I think people know that. So for me, I'm going to give him a seven, but I think it's like an optimist. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm leaning toward what Melissa's talking about here because I think that, you know, Fortune favors the ball. He took a big swing and it worked out for him for sure. But, you know, there is a chance that he loses Taylor a la la this week. And, you know, that would not be great. You know, Taylor being his number one and probably the person he trusts most in the game going out here would be pretty bad. So I'm not a fan of that. But then also, I think if there's ever a time where he is on the block, I don't know if he survives a block next to anybody. I think that anybody, like if he's ever, you know, in a chance where you have to make a vote, I don't know

1:34:05what Yash is going to do. And like he's got a win, you know, and they'll get wrong. Statistically, at least according to Terence statistics, you know, he's most likely to win. But if he doesn't, man is going home, you know, I'm saying, or they would be crazy to not vote him out at that point, right? So I can't give him a, but I do want to reward him definitely for taking the big swing, taking out thog because that would have been bad. It's just that not knowing if Devon's is going or not this week. I, you know, like I think for me, that's a little bit too, you know, it's, I don't know, I don't like that spot because if Devon's comes back, he loses somebody. And then, if any of, you know, I think a lot of people should start looking at him as a threat to go up on the black as well. So there you go. So seven for me as well. All right. The audience I'm assuming is going to be more in line with you guys here. Seven indeed. And just, just again, to make this point, because I saw some, some chatter in the chat about this.

1:35:07One of, one of probably the biggest differences between what Yash did and what Devon's did, aside from the risk mitigation, is that Yash had something significant to gain from the risk he took. Devon's has absolutely nothing, in my opinion, to gain from volunteering for the block. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose. And that is the key when looking at risks that you take in the game, right? Like if you're going to take a risk, you need to get something out of it. And at best, Devon's is getting out of boy like great. We're going to take one for the team, I guess. Melissa, what are your thoughts on Drew? I don't feel great about Drew because number one, he might lose Devon's this week, which would not be good for him. And number two, you know, he's lost melody and bear it. He wasn't a good spot, but now they're in a position where they're not even

1:36:08wanting to like tell him that they know everything and all the information. Like he thinks that he still has them and he doesn't. It's not a good week for him. I don't know what's going to happen for him next week. It just feels like, and not only that, but I feel like it's like the people he's doing this for like the icons, like they don't even trust him fully. Like he would be expendable to them. Like as between like Angela and Dee and Drew, like they're going to pick to have Drew leave over them. So it's just it's not a good week for Drew at all. I think the fact that he has lost like his two potential allies or parachutes out of this like icon group, melody and bear it. The fact that he has lost both of them is just so bad for him. He should be finding a way to be like, he should be

1:37:10like, guys, something's up. What's happening here? Can you talk to me? Like we need to figure this out. Like I'm on your side. And instead he's not getting that. So yeah, gosh. He got a three last. It's hard, but I don't get to see my own scores because I would love to be able to be like, oh, this is what I gave him. And I don't even know what I gave him. Who doesn't count? Because the week before it was like totally different for him. Guys, you love him. We love this position in the game. Stop it. Apparently I love him. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, God. It's either I think it's just a three probably. I don't know. Yeah, I think he's a three. That's my lowest rating this week so far. There you go. Chipel. I do like to give low scores. So three is tempting. But my instinct was actually four. So what I was thinking is that losing devins obviously

1:38:11is bad. Losing a lot of our tailors is not so bad, right? But I think that him being able to kind of bring back, bring melody back in at this point, winning HOH was a big deal. Like I honestly didn't really respect him for a little bit because I thought he wasn't going to be at a bring melody back in. Let me just take you on a journey. So in my mind, we've seen so many toxic big brother players come in, they'll betray their allies and their allies just keep coming back. They keep coming back. I think it's like even like Dan Geesling and Danielle Murphy, right? Like, well, so he's not letting's just take him hit after hit after hit after hit, but she has nowhere else to go. And I'm thinking, okay, Drew, you're getting there. Do a couple, you know, cliche phrases here and there. You should get this one back. Now he wins HOH, which is a little bit better, but I don't know. I really think he was going to be able to pull off bringing back melody. I think that he's in a bad spot in that a lot of people would pick him as either they third nominee or definitely replacement nominee. Like if Yash decides to target Barrett, I don't see why Drew wouldn't sit next to Barrett, you know. And I think a lot of people would end up putting Drew up. I think Melissa's right. He is expendable to his alliance as well. But he isn't as said as well.

1:39:19You know, he does win stuff occasionally. And like, like, Yash, I have to give him credit for actually being, you know, formidable in the challenges as well. So I won't. But then at the same time, I also think socially, he's probably the worst in the house. I think everybody gets quint and be like, I don't like Drew for whatever reason, right? Even like we seen his allies do it the entire season. The crossover has been like, we don't trust him. Now melody, you know, his showman is like, I don't trust him. His best friend tried to blind sign up side of last week. So I just don't, I think he's playing really poorly. I don't think he's dead yet. And that's why I'm like, you know, I do three again. And so because because I think it would be really hard for him to win the game from this position, I'm going to give him a three. Yeah. I actually think that like, Drew has a pretty good trajectory in the event that Devon's wins the blockbuster. I think that the icons will not go

1:40:23after him before they go after Melody or Barrett or Yash or Taylor or Elala and Yash and Taylor Elala and Barrett and Melody will want an icon out before Drew if they have that option, which they likely would if they won an HOH. Obviously Yash wouldn't be able to. Yash winning is still his worst case scenario. But like he's got an okay trajectory in the short term, especially if Devon's wins. If he doesn't win and Devon's leaves, he's in a lot more trouble. And that is not good for him. And then his long term prospects are just also really bad. He has not yet, I think, won anywhere near the amount of respect he needs if he wants to win the game. And if the move gets taken on, if the move gets taken on his HOH and he's not a part of it and Devon's leaves, he gets he's in a bad position and he still has no respect. And that's a really bad place to be.

1:41:26But he does probably maybe have some time to turn it around. I will also give him a three. The audience, the audience said a four for Drew. Yeah, that was my instinct at first was a four. But the more I talked about it, I'm just like, I just don't see him coming away with the victory here. And so I couldn't give him a three. I mean, a four. So let's talk about Taylor. Chappelle, how do you feel about Taylor? Well, she's on the block. That's not great. But right now, she's not, she probably not going to go home. She's least likely to go home of the three of people that are on the block, because LaLie is looked at as a bigger threat. And so assuming Taylor stays this week, not the worst thing in the world, you know, like LaLie is loyal and can win stuff. But you know, she's, I don't think LaLie is

1:42:26her number one option. I think Yash really is. And so I think losing LaLie would be bad, but not game ending for her. I think that Devon's going away would be great for her. And so our hmm. But the question is, what does she do next? Right? Because if her goal is to go far with Yash, I think that's a losing game. And so, and I really don't know if I can reward that at all. But I think she has a little bit, even though she's on the block, I think she has a lot like higher prospects than somebody like, I guess I'm trying to compare her to Drew. Because when my, with Drew, my instinct was to give him a four, but he's not on the block, right? He's in control. But in control, he's losing probably who he considers his number one ally in Devons. But Taylor is on the block. But her number one ally is like winning competitions and trying to make moves in the game to, you know, to keep both of them safe. So I can't, I don't know, I can't, I don't know if I can parse the two of them. If I gave Drew a three, I don't know how I feel given Taylor a four,

1:43:35because she could, I mean, there is a world where she goes home, right? It's not like there's absolutely no world at all that something could happen. She could, she could, they could flip. Maybe they could decide that, okay, Lyle is, you know, physical, but she's not strategic enough. And then Yash is the real number one is Taylor. And so they could come for her. Oh, man, I just, with her being on the block, it makes it really hard for me. And so I think I got to go with four, again, for Taylor, but I wish I could give her a higher score, but it's just her sitting on the block is just she could go home. So now I can't give her a five. Yeah, I agree. I think the fact that she's on the block here, if Devons wins that blockbuster, and I do think he is favored at the very least in this blockbuster, but that doesn't mean a lot. Then obviously Lala is currently the target. But again, maybe shouldn't be, you know, there's an argument to be made. And again, with this cast, we've talked about it a lot. The votes could flip. They have almost every single week. So it would not

1:44:39surprise me if votes flipped against Taylor when it came to Taylor versus Lala. So that's not great. But right now she is theoretically the safest person on the block. And I do think that I think that they are currently underestimating her in competitions. Again, according to my statistics, she's actually right in there with basically all of them in terms of performance and competitions. So I think that she absolutely has a chance to win some endgame comps if they keep her around long enough. And I think that she could absolutely win this game despite all of the negative opinions on her like social skills. So watch out for Taylor, but she is on the block. I'm going to agree with the four. Yeah, same for me. You guys all said it. There you go. How does the audience feel about Taylor? Let's see here. The audience says

1:45:47a five. Okay, Devon's going up. Devon's going home. I mean, things look up for her as well. You know at that point. So I get it. But you know, she's on the block. Yeah, like if Devon's goes, exactly. Yeah, five is I think pretty high for somebody on the block. Even if she is the safest person, obviously the season though has had lots of votes wins. So I would not be confident here. Yeah, let's talk about Devon's. Let's talk about Devon's. Hey, I'm not done yet. Yeah, I said, yeah. Yeah. What does there to even say? I mean, it's just like so incredibly bad. It's really it's it's one of the worst strategic moves you can make in the game.

1:46:52If not the worst one to actively volunteer for the block when you absolutely didn't need to again, in my opinion, he has absolutely nothing to gain from this. And it absolutely in my opinion would not have happened if he hadn't fallen. This isn't even a case where it's like, well, he might have been nominated anyway. And so he only technically volunteered. It's like no, it was said to him multiple times to him, to the cameras from Drew, Drew did not want to put him on the block. He wanted to put D up. He wanted to put bear it up. But Devon's volunteering made it hard to not put Devons up. And he eventually came around and started kind of pushing to not go on the block. But even then it wasn't by much. And Devon should be last week. He was a seven. He should be a front runner to win this game still even after losing Hayley and bear it.

1:47:53He had the highest rating. Instead he is on the block and going home, going to the jury. I should say if he does not win the blockbuster, it is one of the biggest self-owns in, I mean, I can't unfortunately say in a long time because last season happened. But certainly, I think the biggest cell phone of the entire season, it's worse than throwing the HOH. It's even worse. Yeah, it's very, very sad. It's a one for me as well. And I'm so disappointed because honestly, I really enjoy watching Devon's play. I think he's got a really interesting style. And I like how he keeps things like game related. And I would be really honestly very excited to see him try and get himself out of like a bad predicament. But I feel like this is like, he put himself in this spot.

1:48:54He's probably not going to find out that he's such a, in such danger that he's not, he's going to feel comfortable. He's not going to try and campaign. He's not going to feel like he needs to campaign. And he probably will just go out the door. And it's so sad. That's not how I wanted this season to go for him. So yeah, I'm very disappointed. This feels like a quit almost. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, it doesn't have to happen. There are so many other options that Drew is willing to entertain. He would put up his girlfriend over you. He would put up his best friend over you. He would put up your best friend over you. And you're like, no, I'll do it. I'll take one for the team. But it's not like with the yacht situation where yacht's like, I need to go in and take and be the, be the person who takes these people out because I'm the best odds. Like, yes, he's going into the blockbuster with the best odds. But you know, I'm not going to say that Dee wouldn't have had the best odds against Lala and Taylor had she gone in. You know, who's to say that? Barrett wouldn't have had great odds against

1:49:56those two. I just, it really frustrates me when it just feels like the man is chilling. And throughout this entire game, him and Dee both have just gotten bored and started doing random stuff. And sometimes his random stuff is very entertaining. And we're fine. And we're like, oh, yeah, this is great. The house would have been boring. Otherwise, and then his random stuff that just tanks their position in the game. And I think he's finally flown too close to the sun. I think he'd been playing loose and wild and free. And now this one's going to come back to the bottom. And even if it doesn't, we should never let him forget that he was this close to going home based on his own doing. It's the same thing with the pipe queen. As she survived, we still shouldn't let her live it down. And so she was punished for her hubris or whatever she, whatever she calls it her deciding that, you know, I didn't really know who I wanted to put up in the last second. Whatever the case may be, he needs to be punished as well. I love Rick Devins as a survivor player, but as a big brother player, I think his one of his biggest weaknesses that he doesn't have the longevity required, the stamina required for a game like this is the dream phase. You're supposed to be locked in and he clearly was not he's getting a one. A one all around.

1:51:05How about the audience though? The audience rarely gives out ones, but this is easily a textbook. One, I'm curious to see if the audience can get there. The audience says three, three, it's he volunteered for the blog. The ghetto. Give me a moment. I'm taking directly to you audience. Tell them tea. Tell them tea. Well, I will not be taking a single complaint about our ratings this week. I'm normally happy to let you complain all you want. The Yash fans, the Barrett fans, the go to war with each other. They go to war with how can you give Yash an aid in Barrett of five? How can you give Barrett a six and Yasha to I don't care. I don't care. Normally I take it this week. I'm sorry. We can't take it anymore. Take it anymore. Because what in the world are you doing in the survey? A three for a man that just put himself on the block and getting himself evicted a three.

1:52:09Really? How did you? Yeah. Goatting in the surveys of privilege, guys. Right. See, this was saying you can give people it. It's like that. The three is crazy. It didn't go make us look weird because now he's going to survive. Next week he'll be H.O. H.O. Yeah. I'll give him a one. Listen to me. Damn it. We cannot support this because if he gets away with doing stuff like this, the next group is going to come in and they're going to say, I don't want to play like devins. Put me on the block. And then Taren is going to be out here screaming like Mallory on the live feed updates. Now we don't need that. Okay. So listen to T-dog. He told you. You're in trouble. It's like that stuff. Where everyone's like, I want to play like Tucker and I want to like be bond. I'm like that. I'm happy. Giving the veto for someone else. And like it just, yeah, no, we don't like that. We don't want that. This is going on your permanent record. It is. It's this is it's it's going to live there forever. We're going to look back at this years from now. I'm going to go, hmm, what were the ratings week eight on season 23? And we're going to take a look

1:53:15at what the ratings were that we accept is it's not changing. We want to look actually. We actually won't take a look because my thing is not working. But if it was, we would go back and we would look, we would say week eight, season 28. I wonder what the ratings were. Remember when Devon's just shocked himself out of the game because he was like, it's Chuck time and he just went, we, uh, and we're going to like, yeah, we must have gotten straight ones that week, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Giving. I know what happened. Y'all, but all the Devon stocks and y'all saw what was happening. Like, no, we're not taking this. I can't lose all my little precious coin here. I saw what y'all doing. Y'all ain't slick. You ain't low. We peeped. And I ain't going to get accused of fixing it. We get accused of, you know, no, it's bringing me back next week. When he wins, eight to a wage, I'm giving them a one. Maybe hold up a little mirror audience. Right. I see what's going on. Sounds like me production. Let's move on to Angela Melissa. How are you feel about Angela?

1:54:25Uh, I like, honestly feel kind of good about Angela. But in the way that like, you feel good about a person who like loses all their allies and then kind of gets like forgotten about, like, I could see that happening for Angela where it's like, they get rid of Devons and, you know, that's not good for Angela because he was a good shield for her. But then people are looking at D and people are looking at Drew and people are, you know, there's a, there's a war going on around them and, you know, Yash can't nominate her. And, you know, I could see a scenario where people forget about Angela or they feel like Angela could be a vote for them or she kind of goes to them saying, like, I have nobody. I need, I need an ally. Please take me. And I could see her doing well. I honestly could. Um, I think that if people have the option between who they're going to get rid of D or Angela, I think they'll get rid of D. I just think D's a bigger threat. So, I could see Angela kind of maneuvering her way through and making it pretty far. So, um,

1:55:33yeah, I think I, I don't, I, it all kind of moved to kind of see where it plays out. I'm just kind of like looking at potential in the future and I see potential there. So for me, I kind of think I want to just like give Angela a five because I just feel like I see something happening for her in the future. If, uh, even if Devons goes home, whereas I feel like if Devons goes home, D is in trouble. I think if Devons goes home, Angela, like, it could go either way. I think everybody on the block is going home is good for Angela. I think there are no bad, there are no bad calls here. I think that her relationship with Lala is always on the rocks, even though that could be beneficial for her. I think that Devons needs to go at some point or she's not going to win the game anyway. And so him going isn't the worst thing in the world either. And then of course, Taylor, I don't think Taylor has any love for Angela. Plans don't take her far into the game. So I think this is a net positive for her, even though, you know, she ideally

1:56:36doesn't want Devons to go. I still don't think these picking her over Devons. And so she was going to have to get them out eventually and it's going to get harder and harder as the competitions get more physical and stuff like that. And so, you know, for that, I can't go below a five. But the problem is I don't know if I want to go above a five because I don't know what she does now, right? So of course, she has a little bit of better relationship with Yash. He can't target her anyway. Dee wouldn't target her. If Devons goes, maybe people look at her as a piece they can pick up. Bear it. I don't see him going out of his way to target Angela, but maybe he needs her against in the war against Yash, you know, because at some point people need to start taking Chate Yash. All that to say, I think Angela is not going anywhere anytime soon. Do I think she can win? I don't really know. I think that maybe against the right person, like if she starts winning competitions, which I mean, we've seen Angela before. She's not a net zero in the challenges. So,

1:57:40I can't go with that either. Like I can't say that she can't possibly win herself there. I can, you know, I can see it. But I don't think Angela can win big brother. I just think like on a fundamental level, this is just not a game that she can win. And so I can't give her any more credit than that. I'll just have to go with five. All right. Five. My big thing here is long term for Angela. I gave her five last week because she pulled back Haley and she had Lala. I think losing Haley is really, really bad for Angela. I think that her end game setup loses a lot of strength without Haley there. And so I'm going to bring her down from where I was before. It's a lot of time to change it. And she should likely be sticking around for a while. But I think this week was a really bad week for her to lose Haley in the way that she went. And so for me, it's a four. The audience last week gave her six this week. A five. Look at that. And finally, let's talk about Lala. Chipel, how do you feel? Lala. Man, oh man, it's like the

1:58:48worst version of what I was saying about Taylor, right? Like she's on the block. But she's survived. She's in a decent spot. Like who's coming for Lala specifically when they're a bigger fish to fry. But can Lala win the game? Do they respect her enough to be able to win the game? Because I think she can win competitions. We've seen her win some stuff. If she starts winning competition, that'll obviously raise her profile a little bit. But also might raise her threat level, get more eyes on her. Losing Taylor this week would also be bad for Lala. So don't love that for her either. I don't see her having a relationship with Dee pretty much at all. Drew Hater for whatever reason. Barrett sings roughly indifferent. But I mean, they're working together to some extent just to take out Devon's. So I don't love her future prospects in the game. But I don't, I definitely don't love her position as much as I like Taylor. So I think Taylor has a higher win equity, at least in my opinion, than Lala does. And Lala is more likely to go home sitting

1:59:52next to Taylor. At least at this point, I definitely think that could change for sure. I think if it to me, I'm looking at Taylor as probably a more strategic and active player that I would have to be more concerned about than Lala who could probably win her way there. And so I would want Taylor out first over Lala if I was them, but they don't. Currently they didn't want Lala out more. And so I gave Taylor a four. I will give Lala a three. Yeah, I feel similarly about Lala being a three here. I think that she's right now the second most likely person to leave. But I think that could change. I think she has she, I think that for what it's worth, I think that the kind of competition of the blockbuster is, is not something that Lala is likely to be good at if we're looking at Lala's strengths. So I don't love that for her. But I do think that there's still a chance she does not leave this week. And I don't think she's actively played herself into a bad spot this week. Either in fact, I actually think she's playing

2:00:52decently well this week considering her position on the block. But a three just because she is somewhat likely to leave here. Yeah, three for me as well. Just because I could see a situation where Lala leaves this week. And yeah, I think that her position isn't as good. And so we'll see, but yeah, I think worse off position than Taylor. All right. The audience says a four. The artist is consistently a bit high, I think this is this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's to me, it's high on people who probably, I mean, who could who have a good chance of going home, right? I think that's my biggest issue with the audience is rating is that like, I can't give you that much when there's a non zero chance that at this point in the week, you are going home. And for Lala, you can make a argument why she's like a big threat to go home. And that, I mean, that chances are, Devon's is the one that's going to come off the block,

2:01:56as if we're just going off of like basic like carnival games skillset. We've seen them do it on the survivor. So, you know, we see them doing here a little bit. So for me, I can't be that high on Lala. I really love to see a world where Lala wins this game. But I think she needs to turn up a little bit. So and that starts with winning the blockbuster. And if she's able to do that, then I think she can start to, you know, make some momentum, but she's got a lock in. Yeah, it looks like they're one above basically every single one except for Yash. Yes. Yeah. Yash, the highest red player of the week for sure. I just, I like his chances here moving forward. He's safe this week. The only green player here. Yeah. There's only only only ratings green at all except for the six for Barrett from the audience as well. I'm sure there are going to be people that are like, listen, I talked about the Yash fans being mad. I think the Barrett fans are even more mad. But he's the second highest red player of the cast

2:02:56right now. And I think rightfully so, I think that he is again moved up here. And it's really just like everyone else's game has just been, you know, like Taylor and Lala, they're games have improved, but they're on the block right now. Melody's game is improved, but she still has a long way to go. D's game is tanked, Devin's game is tanked, Angela's game, you guys think it's the same. I think it's gone down a little bit. And Drew's game is still just like circling the bottom at the moment. So, you know, it's an interesting spot for us to be in here. And I think that it is kind of a fun week to talk about because there are so many different opinions on who's doing well and what moves they should be making. And I think that's really fun. So, as I said, don't take it too serious. We're all having fun here. We're all giving our opinions. And yeah, it'll be curious to see how things move from here, especially with this blockbuster competition.

2:04:00Yes. I think there can, there is still a lot more game, I think, to be had. I feeling a lot of the times at the end of the season, or not that this is the end, but like once you hit Jury, sometimes it can kind of be like just like a slog to the end. And here I feel like there's still a lot left. I think there are a lot more pieces of the puzzle. And so, I'm excited to see where the sense of for sure. Well, I think that's the thing is that normally around this time, we found who our comp beast is going to be. They've linked up with the other comp beast and they're about to start running the table. We've seen it with Chelsea and MJ. We see that with, you know, with events and Morgan, you know, to where they normally happens rather Matt and Jag, you know, even throw Boa and Jay in there for a couple of straight wins. You know, this is normally when that happens. Fortunately for us, our big comp beast, Yash, is kind of been said to us to not win HOH all the time because of like he can't target the people who actually wants to target. He'd have to target some of his allies. And so, you know, maybe that'll throw a little wrench into the plan, make it a little bit more interesting. And that probably should do that more often. Like,

2:05:01if you just nerf the person who can just run the table at the end, I think we might get some more entertaining things to come down the line because, you know, there's not a lot of timelines where people who are not as physical make it so far into the end without winning. And so, this is, this is adding an extra layer to the game that I do. I do appreciate alongside the blockbuster. Well, that is what we have for you then this week. We'll see. We'll see what comes. Any final thoughts, Melissa? No, I'm just, I'm excited to see what happens. I'm disappointed that this might be the way that Rick Devins goes out considering how much, you know, I feel like he's brought a lot of fun and excitement and, you know, like fun moments to the season. And if this is just it and he just goes home, that's like kind of lame. But I still think there's a lot more fun to be had. I love, I always love when someone decide, like, realizes their position is bad and it's like, I need to get out of this. And I feel like I was very excited to see Barrett do that this week. And so we'll see

2:06:07what happens. But I do feel like there are a lot of fun moments left in this season. Yeah. All right. Well, I will, of course, be back tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. Eastern to update and everything happens today on the Big Brother 28 live feeds. And then Wednesday, I think they changed it to a, am I, did I imagine this? They changed it to a two hour episode on Wednesday? Oh, no, I heard that. I know. Well, I got so much to fit in. There's so much going on. I'm be quiet. I'm be quiet. I'm doing for that. Yeah. I will be streaming on my Patreon YouTube and Twitch. I did also watch the chat BCC nonsense. I skipped through a lot of it. So if you want to watch that experience with me on my Patreon, I posted that today. We got Jetleg coming up. We got all kinds of fun stuff over there on the Patreon. And that's about it. What do you got going on? It's a lot of Big Brother for me this week

2:07:11for sure. Starting the week off with the round table, but then tomorrow is the slop. And so behind the paywall here on RJP, I will be talking about all the sloppy content that we have. And I'm sure that chat BCC competition will come up because it yielded a lot of slop. And so we're going to talk about that behind the paywall for the patrons only. And so check that out with me in Rob. And then on Friday, I believe it's another Big Brother unlocked if I'm not mistaken. And so we'll be back to do that again. I don't know who the guest is on there with me, but I will be talking about Big Brother unlocked on Friday. And then Saturday morning, you should have this week's iteration of Why Blank and Thog lost because we're just going to throw her right on in the mix too and knock those two out at the same time. And so make sure you subscribe to we know Big Brother feed to get all of that content. And then make sure you check out my podcast recapkickback.com. You can go to youtube.com slash at recapkickback in order to subscribe to the podcast. Check us out on youtube or you could just

2:08:13subscribe to the podcast feed. Mariana are talking about beauty and black with Matt Scott. This for the next two weeks. And so you can catch that content over there. Shantel and I are still talking about the flavor of love cinematic universe, including a rock of love, which we're almost done with. And then preparing for our next live recap of the next series. We do this every Sunday. So check us out over there. And then just make sure to follow me on all social media platforms at recapkickback. But thank you all for having me. Yes. And Melissa still still twitching. My plan was to do it like every Sunday and then everything fell apart. So I have not done it since that first time. But I do want to try and do it this Sunday. I want to get back into it because it was really fun. So maybe I'll watch the thousandth episode or something or maybe I'll watch the chat PCC thing or something who knows what I'll do or maybe I'll just check chat and watch the feeds. I don't know. I'll do something cool. Or not cool. And I do something not cool. And that's

2:09:18fine. That is also fine. Yeah. With three A's. It's it's it's Melissa. Anyway, I'm losing all right. Well, thank you all so much for joining us here tonight. And we will see all of you next time.