Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! In a game like Big Brother, lying is a cornerstone of almost every successful player’s strategy, but will Audrey’s litany of mistruths and mudslinging finally catch up to her?
WARNING: This post contains Big Brother spoilers from the Live Feeds that have not yet aired on the CBS show. Please do not proceed if you do not want spoilers!
Alliances can be a fickle thing. The earlier the alliance starts, typically, the sooner it will fall apart. In a house full of roving allegiances, solid alliances have been hard to come by this summer but, somehow, a few alliances have managed to come together in some capacity; Sleeper Cell and Sixth Sense being the most successful so far.
With members of Sleeper Cell being comprised of Shelli, Clay, Vanessa, Austin, and Audrey, and the same group, minus Audrey, working with JuLiz to form Sixth Sense, Audrey’s safety was all but a given when JuLiz and Shelli won co-Head of Household last Thursday night. This meant that Audrey could sit back, kick her feet up, relax and watch the next houseguest leave, getting herself one week closer to jury and that $500,000 check! Whatever could go wrong???
Paranoid Audrey is Paranoid
Step one down Audrey’s Path of Doom; annoy the heck out of the Head of Household. While Audrey’s Modus Operandi has been to wait until after the Power of Veto Ceremony to start stirring up drama, with Shelli becoming Head of Household she was emboldened to get started early this time.
The problem with Shelli being Shelli (and Head of Household) is that it is very difficult for her to come up with the precise group of the same handful of houseguests, who have been nominated each week, to put on the block. Will it be Meg and Jason on one side, with John and Jackie on the other? Will it be James and Jason on one side and Jackie and Meg on the other? Will it be John and James on one side with… well you get the drift! With such hard decisions to make, we feedsters have had to endure hours and hours of circular debates between Shelli, Clay, her co-HOHs and allies to come up with just the right configuration of pawns, targets and Battle of the Block throwers to put up. Even through all of that, what always remained clear was that Audrey was never the target.
The problem with Audrey being Audrey is that she is incredibly obstinate and feels as if she needs to be involved in every aspect of everything that happens; and there is absolutely no amount of explanation or reasoning that will change her mind about it. While she knows that she lies at the speed of light, and that she throws allies and foes under the same worn out bus, she plays her game as if she is innocent of all she has (and has not) been caught doing. So, while she was not being considered as a target for eviction this week, her paranoia took over and compelled her to act out in ways that would change things.
For one, Audrey definitely wanted Jason up as her target (telling Shelli that Jason would go after her to avenge Da’Vonne), so that part of Shelli’s nominations Audrey agreed with. The problem is that she did not agree with John being up on the block, as Shelli had already nominated him before. Not quite understanding the relationship between John and Clay/Shelli, Audrey feels as if he will take out revenge on them for the nominations. She could be right, but John has done a great job of making the showmantic mother/son-like duo feel at ease. The thing is that Shelli is not the type to want to hear repeatedly how she made a mistake. She also does not like to think 2+ weeks into the future about scenarios that may or may not come to pass; and it stresses her the fudge out.
The thing that ultimately tipped Audrey over the edge, and triggered the avalanche that may bury her game, is Shelli spilling the beans to Jason about what Audrey told her (regarding Jason targeting Shelli).
After the nomination ceremony, and James, Jackie, Jason and John were put on the block, Shelli and Audrey had a long heated discussion about all the things that is wrong with their gaming relationship. After James went to Shelli and told her that Audrey was being vocal about how displeased she was, Shelli started to realize just how unreasonable Audrey could be and how she would ultimately be bad for her long term game. After all, she had forgiven everything Audrey did the first couple of weeks of the game, worked hard to keep her safe/rehab her image and was not even going to nominate her this week, yet Audrey could not forgive Shelli for the mistake she made with Jason.
The giant boulder, atop the tumbling debris of Audrey’s Avalanche, turned out to be Vanessa. Once Shelli told her that Audrey had been throwing her under the bus, Vanessa was all aboard the Evict Audrey Express. (Watch out, Becky!)
The kicker is that just about everything Audrey told Shelli about Vanessa was true. Vanessa definitely had a conversation with Audrey about how it was her that she could trust the most; even over Shelli. They definitely had a conversation about how Shelli would always pick Clay over anyone else in the house to take to the Final 2 (totes obvi!) and talked about how they needed one another. It took Audrey no time to carry that conversation back to Shelli, which begs the question, did Vanessa set Audrey up? Was it a test to see if she would divulge everything to Shelli? If so, Audrey failed miserably!
What Audrey did not get is that telling Shelli what Vanessa told her, right after Vanessa protected her from the block, made her look like an even less trustworthy ally.
Audrey gets Out-Audreyed
Vanessa went from Audrey’s biggest advocate, using herself as being a gay woman as a reason to keep Audrey in the house, to leading the charge to backdoor her in a matter of a week. Impressive turn of events!
As the Power of Veto wielder, an extremely aggressive Vanessa, along with other houseguests, agreed that Jason would be the best person to use the POV on because there would be no way the house would flip to take out Johnny Mac over Audrey.
Is Vanessa the 1st person to have POVitis? #bb17 #bblf
— JenLea (@My_BB_Acct) July 19, 2015
#bb17 Now that Van has won POV, we might have to add a new term to BB vocabulary: "POVitis- when u expect others to treat u like a god"
— Kim Takeda (@kimnsin) July 19, 2015
While the original plan, as decided upon by Clay, Shelli and Vanessa (who really wanted to wave the POV in Audrey’s face and say something along the lines of “YOU ARE GOING DOWN, BIAAATCH!!”), was to wait until the actual POV Ceremony to blindside Audrey with her nomination, that didn’t quite happen…
…and here’s why:
The problem with Clay being Clay is that he thinks he knows eeeeeeverything. It is true that he is still very young and it is quite possible that his frontal lobe has yet to fully develop (and the fact that he played football had to have exacerbated things in the “lack of brains” department), but it would surely serve him well if someone he respects tells him he has a lot to learn and sometimes it is just better to STOP TALKING. After allowing Audrey to pull him into game talk where he attempted to tell her about herself, without actually being able to say how he knew the things that he knew, the two wound up in the HOH room, verbally sparring it out in front of sunglasses-wearing Shelli and Vanessa. It was during this HOH confrontation that it was confirmed for Audrey that Shelli told Vanessa what she had said.
For Vanessa, knowing that Audrey is the Girl Who Cried Wolf, all she had to do is play up the fact that everyone knows that Audrey attributes her own comments as comments others made. Doing this, it was easy to turn things she actually said around on Audrey and say it was Audrey who said it; thus beating Audrey at her own game. At the end of it all, Vanessa charged out of the room, stating that she could never trust or work with Audrey again, and a defeated Audrey told Shelli that there was nothing she could say to make them believe her because they trust Vanessa more. She is absolutely right on that front!
Is it paranoia if they are really out to get ya?
With her credibility entirely shot to hell with her truest allies in the house, Audrey was at a loss and did not know what to do next. Her grand plan, or Hail Mary, was to tell James and Jackie the truth about everything that was going on. Since James and Jackie are both safe for the week, perhaps she figured that they would be the only ones willing to stick their necks out to help her. The biggest flaw in Audrey’s plan is that she did not simply accept going on the block, and work to flip the votes from that position. Instead, she wanted James to throw Jason – his ally – under the bus in order to get Vanessa and Shelli to keep the nominations the same. This plan was never going to work.
Audrey named off all members of Sleeper Cell/Sixth Sense, shocking James who had not seen that they were working together. All logic laid out there for him showed that group had controlled the last three nominations and the same people have continued to get put up week after week. For his part, James truly believed Audrey when she told him that there was a 6-person alliance that she was part of, however, after talking to Meg and then telling Clay everything Audrey had said, he was convinced she was lying. Of course, Clay had to deny everything and the trio sat around and laughed about how Audrey continues to come up with lies and fake alliances that do not exist. The inherent flaw in Audrey’s game has always been that all the lies would eventually lead to no one believing her, even when she tells the truth.
This reveal culminated in an Audrey-free kumbaya-fest in the HOH room where all of the houseguests sat around and talked about how they were the good people and Audrey was the evil one. Instead of inviting her to the meeting as well, they cowardly sat around and patted each others’ backs for a job well done in finally realizing that Audrey needed to go. Worst House Meeting, EVER!
Most likely realizing that everyone in the house had convened to the HOH room, without her, and that James and Jackie had probably already told everyone everything she said, Audrey disappeared.
Where did it all go wrong?
Knowing her Big Brother life is most likely over, Audrey completely shut down and common belief is that she really wanted to leave, but she was talked out of it and possibly medicated for anxiety-related issues. While this information cannot be confirmed, what we do know is that the rules no longer apply to her. As a Have Not, she is eating regular food, not having to keep her mic on, does not have to sleep in the dentist chair (but can sleep on the floor), and can turn off the lights in the Have Not room during the day. Basically, anything that will keep Audrey pacified until Thursday night, she can do.
To top it all off, Audrey also did not have to attend the Power of Veto ceremony, and was allowed to stay in the Have Not room the the entire off.
Self-sabotage can occur when one gets in their own way by creating problems that interfere with long-term goals. The truth is, everything that has transpired over the last few days is of Audrey’s own doing. After she was caught in the first web of lies, if she would have course-corrected and changed her strategy, she could have survived weeks longer; but she did not. If she would have shown complete loyalty to the side of the house that has kept her off the block, while everyone else has wanted her gone, she would not be on the block right now; but she did not. If she would have stopped needling Clay about how she could not wait until she had Shelli all to herself and making him feel unwanted, he would have felt more comfortable with her; but she did not. If she had admitted to ANY of her lies, including the ones where she brought racism and homophobia into the mix where there was none, maybe she could have rebuilt some of her credibility; but she did not. Absent all of these things, she ultimately sealed her Big Brother fate. If Audrey was looking at this from the outside, she would call it Karma.
In the end, perhaps we can chalk up Audrey’s downfall in the Big Brother 17 house as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even though she was safe to start the week, she never really believed it and her own actions led to her possibly being backdoored. Playing too hard, too fast, going for infamy over the win, forcing her will onto others when they did not want it, all of these things played a part of making Audrey’s strategy a bad one. It is all too bad because with people’s desire to work with her early on, her overall intelligence, and ability to lie convincingly, there is no reason that Audrey should not have owned this game.
While it appears that Audrey is Dead Woman Walking, do you think that she has any tricks left up her sleeve? Is lying down and playing dead her twist on Dan’s Funeral? Or, is she simply down for the count? Let us know what you think!
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