Big Brother 4: Why Jun Won

As I’ve already noted in both my recap of the finale and “Why Alison Lost”, the final two of Big Brother 4 was a battle between bad and worse. Or maybe worse and worst. In either case, Jun came out on top by a landslide. We’ve already looked at what Alison did wrong, so now let’s look at what Jun did right – short as the list may be.

When Jun was asked, both by Alison and in the Diary Room, what her best move of the game was, she said it was allying herself with Alison. She couldn’t be more right. Jun started as part of the Original 8 alliance but quickly saw the same thing I said from the get-go: an alliance of eight is simply too large to realistically hold together (more than that, it was based on the flimsiest of reasons for an alliance, being that they all just happened to be there at the time). She became a floater, like Alison, going from alliance to alliance as the strategies and holders of HOH shifted.

Within that floating, though, she made separate secret alliances with both Jee and Alison, figuring to use whichever one worked best to her advantage. She and Jee did a great job of hiding their alliance by faking fights and the like. And when the time came for her to knock him out, she did – and even managed to do so in a way that didn’t totally piss him off, which is one thing that set her apart from Alison.

But as mentioned above, her best move was her alliance with Alison. This is the case for several reasons. First, as another floater, Jun knew that Alison did not have any allegiance to other alliances. With Jee, for example, Jun could never be sure he would pick her over his buddies the Stooges. With Alison, she could usually be pretty sure that she held no other allegiance.

Second, Alison knew that she had to bring Jun along to the finals because Jun was the only person she stood even a small chance against. As discussed in great detail in the “Why Alison Lost” article, Alison pissed off everybody else. If anybody from an alliance had still been in the game, Alison knew she would lose in a landslide. Her only chance was to go against fellow floater Jun. And Jun knew that too.

Finally, and most importantly, Jun knew that her own best chance was against Alison for much the same reason. While she had not gathered quite as many hated foes as Alison, the fact is that she did stab people in the back, she was accused of being a snake, she was not nice to the others, etc. She had to find somebody even worse than she was – Alison fit the bill perfectly.

So it was an ideal alliance for Jun. Alison had to take her, and it was best for Jun to take Alison. It was an alliance fueled by both members knowing they could only win against the other.

But in many ways, Jun is also lucky. We saw numerous comments in the final episode from people who grew quite sick and tired of all the personal attacks launched from Jun’s filthy mouth. And that was before they saw the Diary Room sessions! But even with all of that, Alison was still worse.

Jun did not do a great job of answering the jury’s final questions – in one case earning comments about a horrible answer from Rob and Erika. But she did do one thing right: she pointed out that she didn’t act like Alison did. That was her main strength, or perhaps lack of another weakness.

She didn’t “play the game” as hard as Alison did, but as I said in my portion of the RNO Roundtable discussion on who would win, Jun put herself in a position where a lot of negative attention was focused on Alison. She did indeed allow Alison to do the dirty work. She did throw competitions. But it was all part of her strategy.

Luck certainly played a role as well. Without an Alison, Jun would have been in trouble – just as without a Nicole, Dr. Will from Big Brother 2 would have found winning to be more difficult. But Jun saw that Alison could be her Nicole and went with it.

When all is said and done, Jun was the lesser of two evils. She was smart enough to realize that she needed to align herself with the greater evil in order to not only reach the final two but also win it all. And that is why she won.

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

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