Big Brother 4: Why Robert Lost

Robert was the last of the Three Stooges/Dream Team alliance in the game. In fact, he was the last member of any solid alliance in the game, leaving only the two floaters to fight it out over who the jury dislikes more. But while Rob seemed to have fooled himself into thinking he actually had a chance of sticking around, his loss was preordained the moment Jun beat him in the second part of the HOH competition. Let’s take a look at why.

Last week, Alison voted out Erika. As I discussed in looking at Why Erika Lost, it was a numbers game. Alison wanted her out because she knew that Erika could beat her in the final two. Had Jun been given the opportunity, she would have also booted Erika for the very same reason.

This week was almost a rerun. Once again, Alison was the only person with a vote. Once again, she threw out the person who was a threat to her.

Yes, I know it’s hard to think of Robert as a threat to anybody. He was, after all, the least threatening of the Stooges alliance – that’s why he stuck around as long as he did. However, that same alliance is precisely why he was a threat to Alison (and Jun as well). It’s a numbers game again.

While Rob tried to threaten Alison into keeping him around because he would poison the jury against her if she booted him (and Lord knows that threatening Alison has worked so well in the past – whenever it’s been tried, she has gone in precisely the opposite direction), the fact is that the real way Alison would have assured herself of only second place was if she had booted Jun and kept Robert. Rob would have gotten the votes of his alliance partners, Jee and Justin, and also Dana by default because he was going against Alison. That means he only had to get a single vote from Nathan (who had been stabbed in the back by Alison), Erika (who had been stabbed in the back by Alison), Jack (who had been stabbed in the back by Alison), or Jun (who would have likely felt she was stabbed in the back by Alison if Alison had chosen to keep Robert around per this hypothetical situation). Do you think there was a likelihood that he could have gotten just one vote from one of them? I do. And I’m sure Alison thought so as well. She knew she had to get rid of him and hope for the best against Jun, where more of the votes are up in the air.

If Jun had won the HOH competition (which she seemed intent on not winning), she would have been faced with similar numbers and would also have tossed Rob to the wind.

Rob should have known that he needed to win HOH to stick around. He knew it the week before, so how it escaped his mind this week is simply incomprehensible to me. But that’s exactly what happened. He got it into his mind that Alison would definitely win the endurance challenge and never let go of her key. So when he received her “99%” assurance that he’d stick around, he gave up. Dumb, dumb, dumb. She might as well have said, “But I’m going with the other 1%”! Later, he even admitted that he didn’t really believe her. So why give up? Because he knows she wants it? So what? The were standing in an awkward position with snow and ice dropping on them. She could have slipped and accidentally let go just like Jun did (though whether she really did or whether she threw it and made it look like she slipped is an open question) or like Jason did last year in the pool. Why let half a million dollars go down the drain just because you don’t think you can outlast Alison?

The he had a fault strategy in the second round of the competition, causing him to lose by a wide margin to Jun. At that point, as noted above, his fate was sealed. He could threaten and pose and pretend all he wanted, but the floaters had won the game.

Rob should have done the same looking ahead that Alison did. She knew that he would beat her in the final two. He took the opposite approach and threatened that he would make sure she lost if he was in the jury. Since she already knew she would lose if he wasn’t in the jury, it was a meaningless ploy on his part. The only way he could have made it to the final two was to win the HOH competition. But he gave up. And that is why Robert lost.

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

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