Don't put your friends on the jury

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One of last week’s episodes of Big Brother had Quinn talking about how he wanted Joseph to be on the jury and Leah talking about how she wanted Angela to be on the jury. While Leah ultimately got her wish, both Quinn and Leah were going down a useless line of thinking.

Every BB season, and sometimes on Survivor, there is conversation about getting the people you want on the jury. This is some of the biggest strategic nonsense in reality TV competition shows today. Here’s why.

You don’t know what someone is going to be like in the jury. Sure, you get to know people really well in the house. But the house is a high stress, manufactured environment designed to drive people crazy. If someone spends a month in the jury house, not only are they going to decompress, but time might give them a perspective that they wouldn’t otherwise have. The same person you send to the jury may not be the same person voting in the finale. They also might be lying about their career or personal life in the house, two major personality elements that might affect their voting.

Predicting how someone will vote based on events that haven’t occurred yet is absurd. There are too many variables and too much gameplay at this stage to guess how people will respond to something they haven’t seen yet. There are SEVEN evictions to go and that means tons of important gameplay that just hasn’t happened.

Oh you can predict the future? Then play the lottery, not Big Brother.

Even if you could correctly predict the specific group of people who, based on the as of yet undecided events of the future, would be likely to choose you over someone else in the final two, actually determining the boot order is one of the top skills in Big Brother and rarely happens.

You think you’re good enough to influence every HOH’s nominations AND every houseguest’s eviction votes? You must be the GOAT. Choosing your optimal jury is a complete myth and one that only becomes reality when a powerful alliance is steamrolling a season. Fortunately, BB26 isn’t that season.

One of the things that pisses me off is when people say “I don’t want that person in jury.” This is usually because they don’t respect someone’s gameplay. You have no right to make claims about who does or doesn’t deserve to be there. Staying around in Big Brother is impressive even if you don’t respect the competitor. Them getting you to disrespect them by making you perceive them as non-threatening, intentional or not, is a skill itself. 

And while some Survivor contestants may say that no one wants to date someone who doesn’t make the jury, well, it’s not that serious. Like Joseph said in his exit interview with Julie, fifteen people lose and one wins. Whether someone made the jury can feel huge; it really isn’t though.

Houseguests should be focused on their optimal path to the final two, not who they want in the jury. Just getting to F2 is a huge accomplishment in Big Brother and even at that point, sometimes a jury will surprise you. Play your game, know yourself well, tell a good story, and you might find yourself wearing the crown. But you gotta get there first.

In the past few days, the Survivor cast dropped and Big Brother’s jury phase began. While the Survivor 47 winner is already decided, we don’t know who it’ll be or who will comprise its jury. We know who will make up the BB26 jury and final two. And if we were to try to guess who the jury wants to win at this stage, we’d be attempting the impossible. As would the players themselves.

-Kevin

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