Snake Joke 

Do I get credit for this? Last year, I picked “Sneaky” Steve Moses to win Big Brother 17and this year I picked Paul Abrahamian to win Big Brother 18. That would make it two consecutive winning predictions for House of Mirrors. OK, so Paul didn’t win. Solid point. But I didn’t even know Nicole was going to be on this season. How could I account for that? Aw man, I can’t claim this can I? Julie Chen is not going to give me a shout out on Twitter, and there is no way Paul is gifting me a gratis “Polite as F**k” T shirt now. We were so close. 

Pissed. 

Nicole Franzel won Big Brother 18 by a nail-biting 5-4 vote. I imagine that Big Brother is pleased with this, for Nicole completes the redemptive veteran arc: She traded up to a superior showmance partner[1], and although it took her a moment to wake up and plug in to the goings-on of the house, once she did, she did not falterNicole played a very intelligent game and is a worthy champion. 

If you couldn't glean from the manic way she was bouncing around the stage, this win means the world to Nicole. She has so much respect for Big Brother, and the money is going to have a significant effect on Ubly’s favorite denizen’s life. How could this not warm the cockles of your heart? What kind of miserable screwball wouldn’t feel good about this? 

I don’t feel good about this. I mostly feel confusion. How? How could Paul win his way into Final Two, receive James’s vote, and still lose? I thought it was over in that instant. But then here come the shots: Natalie, Paulie, Zakiyah, Corey, Da’Vonne. Da’Vonne? Didn’t she just tell Julie that she hopes Paul didn’t get voted out?  

I don’t understand the motivation behind these votes, and that is a major problem. For example, why did Paulie cast his two votes for Nicole? Or how about Natalie? I can’t recall a single conversation between Natalie and Nicole in the Big Brother house. How much do Paulie and Natalie resent Paul? And how big a factor is Paulie and Nicole’s BB16 connection in the vote?[2] 

Curse these lingering questions! This is the Finale; I want resolution. But the baffling way that Big Brother organized this episode didn’t leave time for resolution. We still had to wrap up Part One of the Final HOH, a anticlimatic flop of a comp that Big Brother drew out for five days only to edited through unceremoniously! 

By the time we get to Jury discussion, all we get are cryptic arguments for why each person does and doesn’t deserve to win, and the obligatory Big Meech emotional meltdown. It was a funny, enjoyable segment. But if we don’t have time to really dig into the ethos of the jury, why even bother? Is it all just a big tease? Can we at least get a follow up with our jurors and non jurors? 

Nope, everything gets short shrift because, oops, there’s no time. Here’s what we do have time for: “Why do you deserve to win over the person sitting next to you?” I said it last year, and I’ll say it again: This is a redundant jury question. There’s a reason why the Final Two is allotted time for a final statement to the jury and it’s primarily to answer that question. 

“And a lot of the time, things were going how I wanted them to go, so I just sat back and let it happen.”—Nicole  

Nicole played one of the best games of the season. I really want to emphasize that. But in those instances when Nicole was sitting back and letting dominoes fall over in her favor, Paul was a tornado kicking dominoes.  

Paul came into the house with no knowledge of the game. He never cared about Big Brother. And as a superfan myself, I’ll admit, I found it rather distasteful. But he was a quick study and undeniably became the most influential houseguest on Big Brother 18. Was his style of play at times unnecessarily risky? Absolutely. However, it's hard to fault him for that when he sitting in the Final Two. 

If I had a vote in the stead of, let’s say, Zakiyah, I would’ve voted for My Boy. He would’ve won, I would’ve received that “Polite as F**k” shirt in the mail, and there would be Friendship. Sweet, sweet Friendship.

 

Now That’s What I Call Out of Context Quotes Volume 4 

Bridgette: “Oh my god, I’m forgetting what money looks like!” 

Paul: “Once you go commando, it’s hard to go uncommando.” 

Frank: “You little shitty bootyhead motherf**ker!” 

Paulie: “. . . a lot of wrestling moves require your hand in the crotch for control and all that stuff.” 

Tiffany: “What the hell did I just eat?” 

Victor: “Did you know Napoleon Bonaparte had hemorrhoids? And uh, that’s actually one of the reasons that they lost that last battle of his, because he couldn’t sit on his horse long enough to watch the actual battlefield.” 

Paul: “I import all my absinthe from either France, Czech Republic, or Sweden.” 

Jozea: “If everybody stuck together in this f**kin’ world, there would be no armies, no fighting, no wars, no nothin’. So why can’t we do that here?”  

Natalie: “You’re hot. You’re like Tomb Raider.” 

Corey: “I love Christmas music. I live for it.” 

Frank: “Ow! F**k! I just, like, popped myself with a rubber band straight to the testes. Ow, I did not expect that to hurt so bad.” 

Nicole: “I think Corey is the best looking guy ever.” 

Bridgette: “I was definitely a weird kid, you know. I still am.” 

Michelle: “What’s Madison Square Garden?” 

Michelle: “What’s WNBA?” 

Paul: “I’m gonna Human Centipede this!” 

Paulie: “[T]he way that this game is set up to, like, lock you down, deplete your sleep—it leaves your mind susceptible to brainwash. You know what I mean? But, like, I’ve—I’ve gone through, like, camps where, like, they’ve done that stuff. So I’ve, like, learned how to train my brain to, like, not f**kin’ do that stuff. . . . I would say, like, my brain is like a wolf. It’s, like, stubborn So it’s like—you can never fully train a wolf to be domesticated, because eventually it’s always going to want to f**king act out.” 

Zakiyah: “I just thought about having Paulie's babies.” 

Jozea: “I’m a whole different ball of gay.” 

Paul’s dad: “I’m Paul’s father. We are Friendship, we are buddies and for life!” 

Bridgette: “When I was a kid, I was a clown. Like, literally. . . . I was Hardy the Clown.” 

Frank: “Hey, you know what I say when someone’s upset, missing home? There’s the door.”  

Paul: “Sometimes you just gotta buy a lava lamp.” 

Michelle: “I’m super afraid of North Korea, so this competition is kinda skeeving me out.”  

Paulie: “Me and Cody have a f**kin’ code that we don’t f**kin’ cross.” 

Nicole: “I’m not a kisserbutter either.”  

Tiffany: “Do you ever go to Walmart in the middle of the night and, like, f**k shit up?” 

Natalie: “I love makeup. It’s my favorite thing.” 

Paul: “Every time my barber cuts my hair, he tells me I look like Zangief from Mortal Kombat.” 

Jozea: “We’re going to be known as the masterminds of the house.” 

Frank: “What’s Star Wars? . . . I’ve heard of Star Trek.”  

Paul: “F**k quotes.” 

 


[1] Need I remind you that Corey’s momma “didn’t raise no bitch”?  

[2] I hate thinking about tainted juries but, again, this is the inescapable corollary of Vets vs Newbies.