#9: Big Brother: Win, Place or Show I
2009



Winner: Memphis Garrett (I LUV TIJUANA)
Runner-Up: Travis Wall (extra tasty)
Third: Bo Bice (green taxi)
Fourth: Ronnie Kroell (Vaelinarei)

The Cast:




Ali Vincent / dragonlady640 (8th)
Analeigh Tipton / saraholic (5th)
Bo Bice / green taxi (3rd)
Cassandra Franklin / CatLurvesDorothy (9th)
Daniele Donato / s 17 gabon (6th)
Eric Sanchez / wellmabk (7th)
Jordin Sparks / nelehrocks (12th)
Lisa Donahue / survivorluver999 (11th)
Memphis Garrett / ILT (Winner)
Piers Morgan / KillahNine (10th)
Ronnie Kroell / Vaelinarei (4th)
Travis Wall / extra tasty (Runner-Up)

Description:

Big Brother Win, Place or Show is the second most recent game I've hosted, and one of the first games hosted on NewFGC. (It's still on page four of Game Heaven, for anyone who wishes to reminisce.) By this point in my hosting career, I think my challenges were pretty sophisticated and the game itself was very clean. This is the game where I introduced the Hostage Nominee twist, in which the replacement nominee was decided by nomination points given out at the beginning of the round. The simple reason why this game isn't ranked as high as the other games on this list is because you could see the ending coming a mile away.

From the beginning, the foursome alliance of Analeigh, Memphis, Ronnie and Travis completely dominated the game. They went for the biggest threats first, taking out Piers, Cassandra, Ali, Eric and then finally Daniele (who I must say won the VIP award for making America's Sweetheart Daniele into this pathetic, whiny, desperate attention-whore... wait, nevermind, he just copied the real Daniele). By the time the final five came around, it was just the foursome alliance and Bo as the only outlier. I don't think anyone in the game took Bo seriously as a threat, because (I believe) he's from a different country, he didn't speak English particularly well, and was nominated something like five times throughout the entire game. However, Travis made a good move by approaching Bo and offering him safety if Bo promised not to turn on him. While the other people in the foursome ignored and targeted Bo, Travis worked out a deal with him.

When Travis won HoH at the final five, he nominated "Memphaleigh" (Analeigh and Memphis), the clear "showmance" from his own alliance. The plan was to backdoor Bo. However, this all fell apart when Bo was the only person to compete in the final five Power of Veto challenge. Obviously, he won it and left the nominations the same. At that point, the foursome was going to be broken up. Travis knew that Analeigh was a bigger threat than Memphis, and he and Bo evicted her, leaving a complete sausagefest in the final four.

After that, Bo won the next Head of Household and kept Travis safe. Memphis came out of nowhere to win Veto, however, and took himself off the block. By then, it was clear that Memphis and Travis had formed a final two alliance. I think they wanted to be in the end together because they thought they could beat one another--Travis thought Memphis was too under the radar to win over a jury, and Memphis knew Travis was sort of the strategic villain of the game and people might be bitter toward him in that regard. Once the F2 was hatched, it fell into place perfectly. Memphis evicted Ronnie, and then Travis won the final HoH and evicted Bo, leaving Travis and Memphis as the final two.

I will admit the ending of the game shocked me. I think Memphis played a solid UTR game, but in my mind, Travis was almost a lock to win. He had made a few very smart strategic decisions (especially aligning with Bo), he had competed in almost all the challenges and won several, and he gave what I thought were very solid jury answers. Then, however, I started getting the final votes. Memphis had been right all along - the jury was extremely bitter at Travis's lies, and they were not willing to forgive and forget. While Ronnie and Bo voted for Travis, the other five jurors all voted for Memphis, winning him the game.

I wasn't disappointed in the ending because I believe that any member of the foursome alliance could have won fairly, since they were so dominant together. However, it was a little bit like Survivor Palau--you know that the person who wins is going to deserve it, but it doesn't make it a thrilling ending. Because of that (and little incidents like the final five Veto), WPS1 comes in at ninth place on this list.