Every year, Julie Chen tells the latest crop of Big Brother contestants to expect the unexpected. In past years, "the unexpected" has included exes, estranged relatives and long-lost siblings. Big Brother — a CBS reality show in which participants play a summer-long game similar to Survivor except confined in a house — usually has a twist, but this summer's installment was pretty mild compared to the talk show topics of years past: high school cliques.
In the eleventh season, the Houseguests were divided into four groups named for Breakfast Club characters (Athletes, Brains, Off-Beats, Populars) and by week three, affable Southern blonde Jordan was the only Popular left. Without any clique-mates to protect her, Jordan was defenseless. She wasn't seen a threat and her sweet, simple demeanor — a bit like Forrest Gump crossed with a tiny little bunny, but in a good way — did nothing to change her competitors' minds.
How To Win Friends And Influence People
The house's stronger players took each other (or themselves, in the case of Chima destroying production equipment and getting expelled from the show) out, while Jordan squeaked by from week to week. Four different times, Jordan sat in the nomination chair, while the Houseguests evicted Laura, Casey, Jeff and Michele: all "bigger fish to fry."
Though Jordan wasn't a master strategist, she's fairly intuitive and has great social skills. Throughout the summer, she generally got along with everybody and she was good at gauging how people were feeling. After winning the last competition before the final vote, Jordan had her choice of whether to bring Kevin or Natalie to the Final 2. She knew most members of the jury considered Kevin the superior player, so she sent him to join them.
Jordan and Natalie were viewed similarly, as weak links who aligned themselves with stronger players. Natalie was much more sneaky and game-savvy, skillfully lying her way out of several corners. When Jeff was Head of Household, Natalie was all set to be evicted until she made up a story about disloyalty within the opposing alliance. She was convincing enough that the group believed her and imploded, sparing her and sending Russell out the door. But she omitted all of that during the jury's questions before they voted on a winner. Natalie tried to sell herself as a loyal person who played with integrity, declining to own up to any of the lies that got her so far in the game. When given the chance, she also chose not to mention that she's 24 and not the 18-year-old she spent the summer pretending to be.
Owning Your Actions, Being Someone The Jury Doesn't Hate
Jordan did a much better job selling herself during the jury questions. She said that while people underestimated her, she did win a few competitions, including the two that mattered most and got her into the Final 2. She claimed her best move was voting Kevin out; it was. The whole point of Big Brother is to make it to the end and get more votes than the person next to you. If Jordan had brought Kevin to the finals, she would have lost. But she chose Natalie and got an extra $450,000 in her pocket.
Had Natalie said, "I lied and backstabbed, but it was all in the spirit of trying to win," things may have ended differently. But Natalie didn't do that. She tried portrayed herself as something she's not, at least in the context of the game, and people felt betrayed by her; two former allies even voted for Jordan out of spite. Jordan said that above all, her strategy was to just to be funny, goofy, clueless and all the other qualities that make her Jordan. The overwhelming majority of houseguests, even those she had a hand in evicting, still had goodwill toward her and being likable goes along way when there's half-a-million dollars to award. She was ultimately true to herself and honest about her gameplay... and it didn't hurt that she wasn't Natalie.
