Big Brother 8: Why Zach Lost

As I noted Why Jameka Lost, the immediate cause of Zach’s departure was because his last name was not “Donato.” There was simply no way Dick or Daniele would pick him to stick around rather than supporting each other. We don’t need a special article to tell us that.

However, as we saw a couple days ago when analyzing Jameka’s game, a loss is not only caused by effects that happen shortly before the person walks out the door. Indeed, Jameka seems to have agreed with me, as her quote for the final phase of the final HOH competition indicated she understood she should have been looking out for herself much sooner in the game!

So with that in mind, we’ll take another look at What Big Brother 8 Houseguests Should Have Learned to see where Zach went wrong, and what he did right.

We all know what the first and most important rule is: scheming and plotting. And Zach seemed to know it too, at least in the beginning. He was the impetus behind the Mrs. Robinson Alliance (there’s a phrase we haven’t seen for a while). While the alliance itself failed miserably, the idea was correct – as this rule notes, “From the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships.”

Zach got it half right. He did make an alliance. Unfortunately, he went about it in a way that made others in the group feel like they were pressured into it. First he pressured Kail, then she pressured Mike and Nick. It was not an alliance created by common interest, but because people didn’t want to say “no.” So it was not destined to last very long.

But the part of that statement that Zach didn’t get was to cement relationships. We saw from the beginning that Zach had difficulty getting along with the other houseguests. Even his own allies sometimes avoided him or told him to go away. He was a social leper. This made it difficult for him to follow other parts of this rule.

For example, since the first alliance was not going to make it very long, Zach should have been finding new possibilities. But that was rather difficult, given that nobody really wanted to talk to him! He could not follow the portion of this rule that notes, “The one thing you definitely do not want to do is isolate yourself somehow.”

But if Zach was so isolated, how did he make it to the final three? He sat back and allowed competing alliances to fight it out amongst themselves. Sure, he was annoying and odd in the minds of the others, but he was not, at the time, a threat. There was always somebody else.

Along the way, he managed to ingratiate himself with Daniele and Dick. They knew they could use him, and that was their plan. He also made other deals as necessary, such as when he promised his vote to Jessica. People didn’t trust him or particularly like him, but when they thought they could use him, they believed it was to their advantage to keep him around.

There were, however, points when Zach could have changed the game and allowed himself to make it into the final two – perhaps even winning. The key point was just a week ago, when he won the power of veto in the “fast forward” live show. Dick was the HOH and had nominated Eric and Jameka. If Zach had used the veto on either player, he and that player could have teamed up to evict Daniele. Heck, he could have even finagled a promise from one of them to align with him in order to get vetoed.

Since Dick could not be HOH the following week, they could have likely evicted him next. Under such a scenario, the finale would have zero Donatos instead of two, and Zach would have shown some strategic ability that might have carried weight with the jury (not to mention the weight they would have given to getting both Dick and Daniele out!).

But Zach didn’t do that. I’m not sure if it simply did not occur to him when he had such a short time to think or if he really thought it was in his best interests to keep the Donatos around. In either case, it was an error on his part. Sure, the houseguests didn’t know a fast forward round was coming, but they have nothing to do but sit around all day and think about options – one of the options he should have been thinking about was what would happen in a situation like the one he found himself presented with. But he blew it.

I think we’ve spent enough time on the first rule, so what about the second? I think it’s pretty obvious Zach didn’t scheme and plot too much. And he kept much of his scheming secret – Dick and Daniele never knew he promised his vote to Jessica, for example. But did he backstab before he needed to by nominating Dick and Daniele together?

I would say the answer is yes, but it turns out he did it for a good reason (which we’ll discuss more later) and it didn’t matter. Zach was in the final three no matter what, so the only thing that he would have gained by not nominating the two of them together was a little less harassment from the Donatos. So no big deal.