Last week’s elimination demonstrated the power of the ‘vote to save’ system. It’s hard to imagine the sulking Lydia surviving the boot in a golden age Big Brother but she managed to garner a strong enough combination of sympathy votes and ‘shit-stirrer votes’ to stay in the house last Friday.
Since the first elimination, the Big Brother house has become a shitstorm of scandal and sensation. Rebecca made a splash (groan) and became the newest housemate, Luke and Ashleigh demonstrated their ignorance of previous series by lip-smacking way too close to their microphones, sausage-gate happened and Chris and Arron became the latest housemates to face the public vote.
The market currently sees Chris as the favourite to go but my instincts fall in the opposite direction. As with the battle between Lydia and Victoria, one housemate has stronger Marmite qualities than the other. That housemate is Chris. If the public were voting to evict, he’d probably go. The public is voting to save and I still think he’ll top the vote. The vote could be for favourite housemate, funniest housemate, worst housemate, even best physique and I’d still be tempted to put my money on Chris getting more votes. He simply merits more attention.
Since learning he was up, Arron has taken every opportunity to catch the camera’s eye, whether through a series of petulant ‘rebellions’ or simply flaunting his chiselled-by-God-himself face and form all over the house. The problem, I worry, is that Arron’s behaviour comes across as entirely self-aware. On the flipside, Chris seems so at odds with himself, so far from composed, that he begins to become endearing. Even his back-stabbing is half-baked and improperly executed. To top it off, his reaction to pizza was priceless. Whilst one housemate spends all his time doing crunches in the garden, the other throws food tantrums and runs around like a lost little boy on helium.
Commenter fiveleaves agrees with me that it’s Arron to go but Tim B reckons the public will save him over Chris. I still think that Tim could well be right and the market seems to agree but at odds like 2.4 for Arron to go, it does look like there’s a little value to be snapped up on the blander housemate getting fewer votes.
What do you guys think? I’ll be around in the comments section throughout the evening and then back with a longer post either pre- or post- nomination announcements. Let’s be ‘avin’ ya then.
On a purely shallow level, I hope Arron stays. There’s clear arguments for both to stay though, with Chris arguably the more entertaining, creating conflict all over the place, as well as his awkward little ‘relationship’ with Caroline. But Arron similarly has the potential to create conflict and arguments.
I wrote a blog post analysing the edits in Wednesday night’s show – http://musingopiningandcriticising.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/arron-or-chris-who-goes-big-brother.html – based on last night though, I would say that the producers are leaning slightly towards Chris in their edit bias. Arron is coming across as quite arrogant, and Chris got a lot of airtime last night, with much of it, if not endearing, at least pulling the audience to want more.
There’s one thing I think you’ve got slightly wrong in your article. The ‘vote to save’ in theory is a good idea, but in practice it only really has its desired effect when there are 3 or more housemates up for eviction. In the last few series (celebrity and non-celeb), a ‘vote to save’ has resulted in exactly the same result as a ‘vote to evict’. The best example I can think off the top of my head being Andrew Stone vs Georgia Salpa. She was dull and he was very entertaining but also incredibly annoying but the GBP picked up the phone en masse to save boring Georgia, not because she had anything going for her but be because they felt he was just too irritating to be kept on their screens any longer.
As I’ve said before, I think it will be Chris being evicted tonight. Winner odds are showing Caroline challenging for favouritism and would probably agreed with her criticisms of Chris after their ‘date’.
Great response and good point about the costumes – one that I should not perhaps have missed. I think you make a fair point and the bookies still seem to agree with you. My only reservations with the eye candy point are that a) the house does have a backup gigolo or two, most notably the less striking but potentially just as fanciable Northerner and b) the comparisons drawn between the physiques of arron and chris could work in favour of the latter. We’ll have to see. I’ve stuck a measly token bet on arron going on the grounds that 2.4 looked like good value for a relatively bland contestant to go. The odds on chris are very tight for what could be a close race. I’ll be happy either way because like you, i’d rather see arron stay. I think he has more potential to develop whereas chris could grate week after week. That and I’ve had too many bad experiences with bouncers and I can imagine chris barring me from too many bars.
Yep, totally agree with you Dug, the physique thing really could benefit Chris – effectively becoming a bit of an underdog in that sense.
There’s also the fact that the eyecandy factor is mostly there to get people watching in the first place. In that regard, Arron’s already done his job – he’s got me to check out the show, and he’s got me hooked. His continued presence isn’t really a factor in whether I continue watching. Especially, as you say, since there’s still Luke and others there to fill the gap.
Chris was evicted! Was pleased to have called this one correctly because I went for Lydia last week too. The crowd was cheering for Chris and booing Arron, so it’s important to note that that’s not always an accurate indicator of who’s going home.
They said on BoTS that Aaron won by 62%.
I think this & the last eviction shows what the voting audience is looking for this season.
I see that you picked up on my comment, from your previous post, on the difference between vote to save and vote to evict. I should have added that, as pointed out above by Tim B, it requires three people to be up for eviction for this difference to apply. In a two way eviction, a vote to evict one person is identical to a vote to save the other, so the two systems will give the same result.
As an example of where it makes a difference, in week 1, Lydia would have been evicted on a vote to evict. She would have got most of the votes, leaving Conor and Victoria each with only a few votes. Under a vote to save, Conor got most of the votes leaving Lydia and Victoria each with only a few votes. In that situation, Lydia could be saved by a relatively small number of voters keeping her ahead of the more boring Victoria.
Even though the difference doesn’t apply to every eviction, it has a significant effect over the series. Under the old system, Lydia would have gone in week 1 so Deana would now have one less person with whom to plot nominations; Arron would have one less person with whom to argue; the targets of Lydia’s nominations would be safer etc.
The cumulative effect can then lead, little by little, to a completely different result. I doubt that Aaron would have won the last series of ordinary BB under a vote to evict, and I doubt that people like Rachel Rice and Cameron would have won earlier series under a vote to save.