Big Brother 3: Why Roddy Lost

Well, it finally happened. Roddy had been put up for nomination twice before, and each time he wriggled out of eviction. His silver tongue made people want to practically just hand over the $500,000 prize to him. But eventually even silver tarnishes.

Week after week, Roddy’s fellow houseguests talked about how they needed to get him out of the house. He was manipulative; he was charming; he was getting other people to do his dirty work for him; he was just too good and would win. But then when they had the opportunity, they voted with their emotions rather than their brains.

When he was up against Josh, Josh banked on the idea that people would want to face him rather than Roddy at the end. But Marcellas and the others just could not stomach the idea of keeping Josh around. Strategically it would have been right to boot Roddy back then, but the others ignored strategy.

When he went up against Chiara, they had another chance. Danielle, Lisa, and Jason all knew it would be right to get rid of Roddy. But instead they promised Amy, who was HoH, that they would side with her. There was no rational or strategic reason to do so – again, it was all emotion.

Then Jason became HoH and had the opportunity to finally rid the house of Roddy. But Roddy and Chiara had gotten Jason to promise, just before the eviction the previous week, not to nominate whichever of them remained. Jason held to that promise even though he knew it could mean handing the game to Roddy, and even though he had a second chance because he won the Power of Veto. But Roddy managed to talk his way out of nomination both times.

Finally, we come to Marcellas’ second reign as HoH. Roddy had been manipulating Marcellas through the use of not only words, but flirting – taking advantage of Marcellas’ crush on him. But Marcellas hadn’t yet decided whose horse he was going to hitch his wagon onto – Roddy or Danielle. When everybody else in the house told Marcellas to nominate Roddy, he gave in. He also put up Amy, but there was never really a chance that Amy would go (unless she had used the Veto she won – which she was smart enough not to do). Yes, the producers tried to convince us otherwise by highlighting her drunken misbehavior, but even those antics could not convince the houseguests for a third time that Roddy should stay to beat them.

But why did so many people want Roddy out for so long? There were several reasons. Danielle and Jason wanted him out mostly for strategic reasons – he actually used his brain in making decisions and could manipulate others. He was competition. He was a threat.

Lisa wanted him out because she felt he had engineered Chiara turning against her, and was manipulating people without getting his own hands dirty.

Marcellas wanted him out in part because the others did – and he wanted to stay in good with them – but also because Roddy was one of the original Group of Six alliance who tried to oust him early on; plus, he sided with Josh and dared to get along with Gerry. Roddy even admitted in talking to Julie Chen that he came out too strong early on, and that was definitely a part of it.

Amy wanted him out because, well, mostly because everybody else did. In fact, I’m not even all that sure that she did want him out – she saved him after nominating him a couple weeks ago. Other than that, she probably would have given in to peer pressure to help get rid of him, even if she hadn’t been up against him.

Throughout all of this, I want to make one thing clear: after Roddy dumped Chiara, I was rooting for him – if only because he was actually playing with strategy while the others were just playing with themselves. He is smart, funny, and a good player. (The fact that he’s a writer and likes Carl Sagan didn’t hurt either.) But he had too many strikes by this point, and an alliance stacked up against him. He thought he could continue to skate by on slick words, secret deals, and manipulation. But all of these things eventually caught up with him. He was seen as too slick, too manipulative, and not quite secret enough (especially in the early going). He made it through some close calls, but you can only cheat the executioner so many times before the court finally turns down your last appeal. That is why Roddy lost.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline, and can be reached at rno@pobox.com.

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