In Case You Missed It:

The six houseguests who stayed at the Jury House at Puerto Vallarta, Mexico made their way back to sunny California. They will be joined by third place finisher Robert Roman to make up the seven member jury panel. After examining each houseguest with questions of their choice, they will cast their final verdicts as to who will win the fourth season of Big Brother here in the United States.

And so, as summer has moved into early fall, and after just short of 2,000 hours of play, it comes down to this. For Big Brother fans across America, tonight is their Super Bowl.

Two surviving houseguests vie to win the vote of the jury. At stake is a $450,000 difference in prize money. Alison Irwin, the beauty pageant regular from the Keystone State of Pennsylvania, and Jun Song, the Big Apple investor, are the two winners. But whoever can get to four votes first will capture what they've been waiting all summer for, the elusive $500,000 grand prize only one of them can have.

Tonight, one more houseguest joins Eddie McGee, Will Kirby, and Lisa Donahue as masters of Big Brother, as we...

COUNTDOWN TO A CHAMPION

Julie Chen welcomes us to tonight's grand finale, Day 82 of competition, and more importantly, the final hour of play. Tonight, we begin with two winners, but tonight, one winner will have an additional zero in their paycheck for a summer's worth of work.

The "catch up to speed segment" of this past week has Alison, in a different colored shade of lipstick, already talking about her "examination" by the jury wouldn't happen. However, each think they have the edge over the other. Alison thinks Jun's comments about some houseguests will hurt her, but Jun believes Alison's overall fakeness will hurt her.

We then see comments from the first six jurors as they await the seventh, which as we all know, was Robert. They discuss the game in depth as a group. Justin and Nathan seemed the most displeased that these were the two finalists, with Nathan feeling the most played of them all. Jack makes the case that Alison may have played the best, since she remembered that most importantly, there are no rules in Big Brother.

After brief comments from the jurors in the second Diary Room, the "Shadow Diary Room" if you will, let the jury examination begin!

The most notable questions were like none other seen in the previous Big Brothers. Robert is clearly shaking his head when Jun is asked by Justin about whether or not cooking is a strategy, with her reply that she could adapt to certain houseguest's eating habits. When Jee asks Jun why she should win the grand prize, Jun, hesitating slightly, replies that she did use her persuasive powers to win, as Alison did. This got most of men oohing and aahing, since this was as pretty much a putdown of Alison.

Another key moment came when Erika asked Jun if personal attacks were part of her strategy. Jun replies that dealing with stress is humor, and it should be viewed as such, which Erika and Robert both thought was a horrible answer. In their final statements, Jun credits her position to making risky choices, while Alison pleads to the group to define the definition the word player.

After the jury makes their final statements in the makeshift Diary Room, they cast their votes. But the fun was just beginning. In a new twist, the jury gets to see all of the shows as-is. And, just to make things even more interesting, the jurors were joined by the first three to be evicted, Amanda, Michelle, and Dave.

Michelle, the Florida State student, makes no bones about it that she was hurt by the betrayal of most of the houseguests, which has Dana and Nathan scrambling to explain. Dana calls Jack and Erika out for the name-calling, for which both apologize for. Jee then takes Erika to task for a racial slur she gave in the second round when Erika had been nominated, which has Erika apologizing again. This time, Jee accepts the apology gruffly.

Robert brings up the Dave/Amanda hookup, which has Michelle wiping away tears. Michelle tells Dave her father doesn't want Dave in his house ever again. Dave, in a Diary Room segment, finds it disgusting that Michelle uses the word disgusted.

After Julie briefly interrogates the 10 houseguests (less of Julie, and more show is ALWAYS a good thing), the group moves into the house for the moment of truth.

Dana starts it off by voting for Jun, putting Jun up 1-0. Justin, being a key vote, votes Jun, and not for Alison, making the vote 2-0. We wouldn't wait long to see another turning point in the vote as Nathan votes Alison, making the tally 2-1 for Jun.

But then, yet ANOTHER turning point comes as Jack votes Jun, making the tally 3-1. With Jee up next, all the votes now have to start going Alison's way...

BUT THEY DO NOT!!

JEE VOTES HIS EX, JUN, AND...

JUN SONG HAS WON BIG BROTHER 4!!!

Erika and Robert vote for Jun, making BB4 another final vote runaway, 6 to 1 in favor of Jun Song.

Alison and Jun sprint out the door, Alison to meet her parents, and Jun to meet boyfriend Bob.

When Julie Chen questions both Alison and Jun, she first points out there seemed to be almost a sadness about the vote. Ali and Jun comment that these are people who are unhappy they didn't win. Julie then relays a note from Alison's boyfriend, Donny Patrick, the Bloomsburg State football player. In short, the note says that Alison never ceases to amaze him.

Alison responds that she's speechless.

The houseguests gather with Julie to say farewell to another season of Big Brother 4, but..

Inside sits our friend from a few episodes ago, the mime, with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Analysis:

And another season closes. For Alison and Jun, BB4 was a battlefield, a nuclear war. They probably think there were no winners, but only survivors.

First off, I think Arnold Shapiro and Allison Grodner deserve a round of applause. This was the first Big Brother I actually heard talk about in the supermarkets and Laundromats. How many of the franchises in this vast Reality TV wasteland were actually better the fourth time around? Not too many!

It was a neat twist to show the houseguests what actually occurred after they voted. It made for some interesting comments by the houseguests as they revealed their verdicts. In fact, it was a better twists then the "new twists" that were actually variations of old ones.

My hearty congratulations to both Jun Song and Alison Irwin, and for their sake, I hope they are MUCH better people in their personal lives then they were in the 82 days we saw them.

For all of you disappointed with BB4's outcome, have faith in the show, and you can't go wrong. I was disappointed when Will Kirby won BB2, but with any reality show, that's the way it is. And if the show makes you angry, there is this wonderful invention out there called the remote control. Don't be afraid to find the show that fits you.

For all of you who think you can play the game better, borrow a video camera, tape your audition, and send it in! Maybe you can be the next winner of the Big Brother series.

I also want to thank Strkaholic and Jokerette for giving me the forum of posting updates on Joker's Updates. For those of you who don't know, I "simulcast" these updates on my own PJ's History of Big Brother site, where you can also find episode-by-episode updates of Big Brother 3 last year. Perhaps if the DVD's of BB1 and BB2 come out, I'll get to add them!

And so, if I'm alive and well in nine months, I'll be back for Big Brother 5 in July of 2004. Let me be the first to ask what Arnold and company will do for opening twist: perhaps reunite original players with distant relatives?

I can see it now: Big Brother 5, The Relative Theory...