Big Brother 5: Why Marvin Lost

From HOH to evictee in a matter of 48 hours, Marvin may have been on the quickest Big Brother roller coaster ever. He had previously been nominated three weeks in a row, and had survived them all. But this time, he ran out of luck. What happened to cause his downfall? Why did Marvin lose?

As we always do, we will answer that question by looking back at What Big Brother 5 Houseguests Should Have Learned to find out what Marvin did right, and where he was digging his own grave.

We begin, of course, with the first rule: scheming and plotting. For most of his stay in the Big Brother house, Marvin was a man without an alliance. Indeed, even when he thought he had alliances, he really didn’t. The Santa Monica Van Boys? Really just the Four Horsemen plus Marvin when they needed him. His most recent alliance with Diane? Yeah, that lasted long.

Instead, Marvin was more of a floater. He would lend out his vote to whomever needed it, so he could stick around for another week. He was even willing to be the pawn nominee when necessary, just to show how useful he was – as in Nakomis’ Reality TV Hall of Fame Moment – the six-finger plan.

But the best floaters are those who make other people think they are their side. Marvin never really accomplished that. He was always the outsider, and never a part of anybody’s plan for the end. It’s hard to go through the game this way, as eventually somebody is going to want you gone.

Indeed, Marvin really has Will to thank for not being gone sooner. If Will had bucked up instead of f***ed up when he was nominated against Marvin, I suspect Marvin would have been the one booted. Instead, Will reacted immaturely and forced Adria’s hand.

Ironically, while we would conclude that Marvin didn’t scheme and plot enough, we can also conclude that he schemed and plotted too much, in violation of the second rule! Why? Because Marvin was always available to help an alliance in need, so everybody knew he couldn’t necessarily be trusted to stand by them. This made him dangerous to keep around.

In particular, he was dangerous for Michael, because Marvin had made it known that he wanted Michael gone – but he really didn’t work hard enough to make it happen. That left him vulnerable and indeed Michael was a voice definitely in favor of booting Marvin when Drew became HOH.

Another area in which Marvin failed was pretending to be nice. Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that Marvin did indeed pretend to be nice to people he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten along with. But at the same time he often made his feelings known, as when he was nominated by Adria. He was lucky that Will reacted even worse to the nomination than he did.

When Adria was evicted, he got into a heated goodbye argument with her as she was walking out the door. Then he kept ranting about it after she was gone. It was clear that everybody else was over it, but he kept going on. Several other houseguests noted how happy they were about that, because it drew attention back to him and away from them. That is not the kind of attention a houseguest should covet.

Then there was the way he acted with the women. Early in the game, several women found him a bit creepy and thought he was coming on to them. He made it past that point but then started up again with Diane, in particular. In fact, he went so far as to kiss her in front of Michael, in hopes that it would break up her relationship with Drew. Unfortunately for Marvin, Drew was the next HOH, and he didn’t appreciate Marvin putting the moves on his in-house girlfriend!

The fourth rule is to not let emotions control you. As we’ve already mentioned, Marvin did indeed allow his emotions to get a bit out of control several times, such as when he was nominated by Adria. Even though he made it past that point, it was something that the houseguests all remembered – especially when he lashed out at her when she was evicted.

Fifth we have the rule to not be too much of a threat. As I mentioned earlier, Marvin was seen as a threat because people didn’t necessarily know where he would throw his vote. Drew noted in his nomination speech (whether you fully believe it or not) that Marvin was a threat because he could convince people to lean in a certain direction. And finally, I’m sure Drew viewed Marvin as a threat to his bond with Diane.

Marvin wasn’t lazy and, other than those already mentioned, didn’t have any particular bad habits that came into play, so we’ll move on to the seventh rule – being flexible. As already discussed, Marvin was very flexible – since he didn’t have any alliance to rely upon. In fact, he was almost too flexible.

Finally, we see that players should trust pretty much nobody. I don’t know that Marvin really ever did trust anybody, though I think he pretended to at various points during the game. In any case, it doesn’t have anything to do with him being evicted.

So what did cause him to be evicted? As we’ve seen, it was a combination of factors. Marvin never hooked up with an alliance, but was seen as a constant threat to help some other alliance. He voiced his opinions often and loudly, making him stand out while others were trying to hide under the radar. And perhaps Marvin’s fatal mistake was a ploy to split up Drew and Diane that backfired right in the kisser when Drew became HOH. That is why Marvin lost.

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

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