The Rebel Billionaire, Final Six: One Stands Out, Three Behave Badly

In watching The Rebel Billionaire, I’ve noticed a number of the remaining players making mistakes that I think doom their chances of winning, even if it means they stick around a while longer.

I am specifically talking about Nicole, Erica, and Heather. Nicole and Erica fall into one type of bad behavior while Heather is quite different but still heading in the wrong direction.

Nicole and Erica seem to be entirely missing the point of this competition. Being rude to others, being abrasive – being flat-out bitches – is not the way to win Branson’s heart. They can both talk all they want about how that’s just who they are, but I can’t see Richard Branson picking either of them if that is indeed who they are!

Both Nicole and Erica need to learn the same thing that Jennifer M. failed to learn on The Apprentice 2: This is not the type of show where you can be nasty to the other players and expect to still win. This is not just a contest to see who can be the best at business tasks or at extreme activities – it is a challenge to see who can take over the reins of Branson’s company. This is a man who hosts a party each year for 30,000 people – he is not going to pick somebody who can’t even get along with six people!

It’s not clear if Branson has already picked the winner or if, like Donald Trump, this will be done at the end of the run in some sort of live show. But either way, Branson certainly knows about how each player has behaved. If there is any doubt, we only need to look at Nicole chanting, “Fall, fall, fall,” when Candida and Gabriel were doing the cable-walk this week – if other players heard it, as they did, it seems likely that Branson could have as well.

Beyond that, we only need to look at why Branson booted Steve a couple weeks ago. He noted that Steve had “been too Machiavellian for his own good.” Certainly he’s not going to boot one person for being a schemer and a player and keep around two complete bitches!

Heather has other problems. Specifically, she has been trying to play under the radar, letting other people take charge, sitting back and hoping others make mistakes, etc. If Branson is looking for a leader, he certainly won’t pick her! To make things worse, she started playing as if this were Survivor, telling one thing to one group of people and another to a second group. That might work okay on games where you need to get people to vote, but that’s not the case here. If Branson finds out (and I suspect he will), that will not earn her any points.

So who is looking good? Well, we only have Gabriel, Shawn, and Sara left. Of the three, I think Shawn has shown more of the characteristics that Branson is looking for. He has been outgoing, creative, and willing to take the lead – even when he’s not officially in charge.

Gabriel and Sara have not done anything particularly wrong, but they have not stood out either. In fact, as I was writing this, I almost forgot Gabriel was still on the show!

So right now, I would say Shawn is the man to beat. The only way I can see him losing is if there he is brought along to an extreme challenge that causes both people to be booted if they don’t pull it off (which is one reason I don’t like such challenges – it takes the decision out of Branson’s hands). Sara and Gabriel could still pull something off, I suppose, and it wouldn’t be horrible if they won.

However, there is simply no way that Erica, Nicole, or Heather will win. And it will serve them all (especially Nicole and Erica) right.

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

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