Big Brother 6: Why Michael Lost

Once Michael was nominated for eviction, the only shred of doubt about whether he would be going home was if he could win the Veto competition – and Big Brother is known for surprising votes. But while most nominees for eviction do what they can to stick around, Michael went in the opposite direction, seemingly doing whatever he could to make sure he was sent packing! But why was he eviction so clearly foretold? Why did Michael lose?

As always – even in what seem to be fairly obvious cases – we will look for the deeper meaning by going through What Big Brother 6 Houseguests Should Have Learned to see where Michael went so far wrong.

The first rule, of course, is to scheme and plot. Michael, however, apparently didn’t know this little fact. Why? Because he admitted on Tuesday that he hadn’t actually studied past series enough to really learn the game (as was discussed in Tuesday’s live feed recap). If there is one thing that people should understand by now for any reality show, it’s to know what you’re getting yourself into.

Kaysar, Michael’s secret partner, understands the importance of the first rule, and got Michael into the original final four alliance with himself, Eric, and James. But like so many other things, he hasn’t been able to get it through Michael’s thick skull. What’s really weird is that according to Michael in Wednesday’s live feeds, he talked Kaysar into doing Big Brother! I would have bet money that it was the other way around. But anyway, Michael, instead of plotting his path to stay in the game, has been busy flirting and hitting on the women – whether they like it or not. Then, when he was nominated and his scheming should have really gone into overdrive, he chose instead to spend much of his time with the person he was nominated against! What’s worse is that instead of convincing people to keep him around, he has done everything in his power to make sure there is nobody (possibly even including his own partner!) who would want him to remain in the house.

And when he wasn’t busy making people even more certain they want him to go, he was alone with Janelle. One part of the first rule specifically says, “The one thing you definitely do not want to do is isolate yourself somehow.” But as even Julie Chen noticed, Michael and Janelle isolated themselves. And if Julie noticed it, certainly everybody in the house noticed it too. Sure, it was after they had been nominated, and it was probably after it was too late for Michael anyway, but we saw that a few people had doubts about evicting Michael even late in the week – he should have at least tried something.

Incidentally, I wanted to mention something else regarding the first rule. There seem to be a lot of Michael fans on the message boards. I haven’t figured out just why, but to each his own. Anyway, many of these fans (judging from e-mails to RNO) despise Eric in part because he is leading the “sheep” of the house around. They seem to have forgotten that Big Brother is a game and the goal is to win. So if Eric truly has that many people under his control, good for him! He has learned what Michael did not about the first rule, and we should applaud him. (Honestly, I don’t think he has nearly that much control. Time will tell.)

Getting back to Michael, he certainly didn’t have to worry about scheming and plotting too much. But he did have a problem with keeping even the little bit of scheming he did a secret. Nobody was supposed to know that he and Kaysar were a secret pair. Eric had a problem with Michael hanging out with one of the women too much, and he mentioned it to Kaysar. Kaysar tried to protect his partner by telling him to knock it off. What did brilliant Michael do? He went back to Eric about it! Sure, he didn’t outright say that Kaysar had told him, but Eric is no dummy – it was obvious. Michael revealed the fact that he had some sort of bond with Kaysar and he damaged the alliance that had been formed. Michael was given a loaded gun and shot off his own toe.

The third rule, however, is where we saw Michael shooting off the other nine toes. The rule says to pretend to be nice and to act like an adult. Michael has been incapable of doing either.

I have already discussed much of where Michael went wrong here when I took a look at the Eric/Michael fight. In brief, he acted like an immature brat, a rebellious child. He refused to acknowledge that other people besides him might have feelings and because he couldn’t see anything wrong with his behavior, he figured it all had to be somebody else’s problem. Behavior like this would be bad enough in the real world, but it’s much worse in the reality TV world!

Michael’s behavior – especially making some of the women in the house feel uncomfortable – was the main reason for being nominated. But then he failed to obey the part of this rule that notes, “you will almost certainly be nominated – deal with it. … Being nominated is not the end of the world, if you play your cards right.” Michael most certainly did not play his cards right. Instead he folded, then took all the cards and threw them at the dealer while calling him names and belching at the other people who still wanted to play.