Big Brother S 16 E 38 type TV Show network CBS genre Reality Where to watch Close Streaming Options

We began with a short flashback. The year was Yesterday, AD: Frankie’s final day inside of the Big Brother house. Frankie went to talk to Derrick. Derrick was his closest friend in the house; he knew there was no way that Derrick would ever lie to him. “Am I going home?” he asked. Derrick told him the truth, and the truth wasn’t “No.”

Frankie did not go quietly into that fair night. Oh how he raged, raged against the dying of the light! He assembled his team together in the HoH throne room: A throne room where once upon a time King Frankie held dominance. From where Frankie sat, he had been a good and noble leader: a leader of his assembled Knights of the Round Rainbow, an honest player.

The claws came out. He told everyone that, the second he left the house, he would become the most powerful person in the Jury House–which is kind of like being the most powerful man in the graveyard. “When I step out of those doors, you are reconnecting me with the jury,” he said. “When I step out of those doors, you are reconnecting me with my millions of followers.”

The alliance was not swayed. “You are not f—ing Jesus in this house,” said Cody. “If it was me and you in the final two, I’d smoke you!” screamed Caleb. Frankie looked at Caleb the way a betrayed King looks at his son the prince, right before the prince cuts his father’s head off: “You don’t know what’s been going on in this game.”

The truth is a dangerous thing. No one knows that better than Derrick, the Master of Secrets, who has wrapped himself in a force field of half-lies for three long months now. He played the role of diplomat. “Bottom line,” he said, “Is I respect you as a player.” Another vote against Caleb, against Cody; another vote for Derrick.

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Big Brother strategy, according to Victoria and Caleb:

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Wednesday night turned out to be Caleb’s swan song inside of the Big Brother house. Knowing that in advance, the demented Estonian psych-ward matriarchs who secretly control Big Brother structured the episode as a veritable Greatest Hits collection of Great Caleb moments. Derrick helped, with a little bit of strategy. He convinced Caleb to volunteer to step up to the block, for an incredible fourth time this season.

Caleb is a simple man. He believes in loyalty. He believes in staying true to his apadres. He believes that he is the biggest threat in the house. He thinks there is a producer waiting outside of the Big Brother house, fully prepared to sign Caleb up for his next army movie. He thinks that, next to that producer, is a huge fitness corporation that wants to sign him to a fitness contract. He thinks that—next to the producer, next to the huge fitness corporation—is Mila Kunis, and she is holding something in her hands, and when Caleb walks over to her, she says: “Caleb, this is my baby. I named him after his father. His name is Beast Mode Kooniz.”

Caleb has done a huge fitness photo shoot, do you know that? He was completely naked. There was a football coverin’ his stuff. Actually, there were two footballs, and they still couldn’t cover his stuff. Some people say he’s too manly for Halloween. The people who say that are Sylvester Stallone and every character Sylvester Stallone has ever played. That’s right: Rocky Balboa and Rambo and Cobra and Tango and Rambo Two and Rocky Four all Purple Rose of Cairo’d off the movie screen just to tell Caleb, “You’re too manly for Halloween, why are you so cool Caleb.” Last Action Hero? That was based on true events, and those true events were Caleb, and Caleb was actually the first action hero, because one time he flexed so hard that he time traveled back to the Stone Age and invented punching.

He could probably write a book and it would be a No. 1 seller. He could probably record an album and it would be a number hit in the pop and country and hip-hop and Finnish dance-metal charts. Caleb could probably make a movie. Caleb did make a movie. It was called The Bourne Legacy and a lot of people said it was better than any of the other Bourne movies, like there was this guy not sure you’ve heard of him his name is Matt and his last name is Damon who totally came up to Caleb like just on the street and said “Bro, bro, bro, Legacy is so good it makes dadgum Supremacy look like dadgern Identity, why are you so awesome Caleb” and then Caleb said “I don’t know Matt Damon, you are awesome too, but it is true that I am the awesome-r.”

I am making up some of this, but I am not making up the fact that Caleb’s father sells dogs that are a cross between the American Bulldog and the Argentine dogo. Nor am I making up the fact that Caleb figured out the special cheat code that lets you play as Luigi in Mario 64. One time, Caleb beat Street Fighter 2 using just the punch button. One time, Caleb discovered the Northwest passage. Caleb was the first man on the moon. Caleb once killed a buffalo with his hands tied behind his back because the buffalo saw how little body fat is on Caleb’s body and the buffalo died of a heart attack and as he lay dying he said “Too awesome, too awesome, too awesome” over and over in animal language so all the animals worshipped Caleb forever. And then Teddy Roosevelt walked up to Caleb and said “Dude, Caleb, you are like the me of a hundred years from now,” and then Caleb told Teddy Roosevelt, “Actually, Mister President, I prefer to think that you are the me of whenever you’re from.”

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A human moment with Derrick: The first time he hears his baby’s voice in 90 days.

You have to cherish the moments when Derrick actually looks surprised. They don’t come around too often.

NEXT: Did Cody just win the game?

Everything was riding on the veto competition. The competition tested players’ memory of the other players in the game. This was a hard competition for Victoria because she doesn’t remember the other players and doesn’t know she is playing a game and also she is feeling terribly troubled because it’s been over a week since last she saw her true love Lord Froggington—could it be that he was injured on the long journey back to the Lilypad Archipelago? This was also a hard competition for Caleb, but Caleb wasn’t too worried, because his old pal Cody was going to win, and then Caleb would be in the final three with Cody and Derrick. (Derrick was Caleb’s closest friend in the house; he knew there was no way that Derrick would ever lie to him.)

So Cody won the veto. He listened to Caleb talk about honor, and loyalty, and friendship. And it all fell on deaf ears. In these final days of game playing, we are beginning to see a new Cody. A ruthless Cody. A Cody who sees all too clearly the bloody path left in the Hitmen’s wake. “We brought Caleb in tight so that he could get rid of a player he probably should’ve been loyal to,” said Cody. “He needed to get used to get Frankie out. Now that he did, he’s no longer needed.”

This is, of course, the central tragedy of Caleb—the ticking time bomb at the center of this season. In his exit speech, Caleb made a big show of poking fun at the ridiculousness of Victoria. He insulted her. He said she hadn’t shown any loyalty. He said that she was not a real Big Brother player, that she had never won any competitions. Queen Victoria was shocked:

Here’s the funny thing, though. Caleb and Victoria: They’re not so different. Many moons ago, some very clever people started to use Caleb as a pawn. He was a very special kind of pawn. He could win competitions. He could sit inside of the Head of Household throne room, laying back in the HoH throne bed, declaring himself Lord of All He Surveyed. He could tell himself all along that he was the greatest player in the house. But he was a pawn: for Frankie, and for the Hitmen.

Caleb is a very particular kind of Big Brother player: Someone who thinks that winning competitions somehow earns you the right to win the whole game. But the competitions aren’t Big Brother. Many of the best Big Brother players would probably argue that the competitions are a smoke screen; certainly, the best Big Brother players are the ones who figure out how to turn every competition loss into a net positive for their game.

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And Cody is a great Big Brother player. I wouldn’t have said that 24 hours ago; I wouldn’t have said that at any point in this entire season until now. Cody is good in competitions, and he plays a good social game, but up until now I assumed that he was the lesser member of one of the finest Final Two alliances in Big Brother history. And there’s no denying that Cody is the lesser strategist, compared to Derrick.

But if you want to pick a moment when this entire season change, you should look right to Cody’s speech. First, he carefully refuted the idea that a vote against Caleb was a vote against loyalty: “You’ve both been loyal,” he stressed. (This might just sound like speechifying pablum—but no one is more vulnerable to speechifying pablum than Caleb.) Then Cody turned the funeral dirge into a story song. “On Day 2, this guy came to me and said I want you to be my Ride or Die. We’ve never gonna cross each other.” This was all news to Caleb, news to Victoria. “We made a Final Two Alliance called the Hitmen,” said Cody. Derrick was Cody’s closest friend in the house; he knew there was no way Derrick would ever lie to him. And then, the killer: “We’ve made every decision together.“

How smart was that move? In one sentence, Cody reconfigured his vote. This was not Cody sending Caleb to the Jury; this was Cody and Derrick sending Caleb to the Jury. And more: This was Cody being honorable enough to tell Caleb that to his face, while Derrick never got a moment to explain himself. Afterward, Caleb admitted that he was more disappointed in Derrick than in Cody: “Him and I have had something that no one else in the house had.” Now Caleb will go off to the Jury House, with a story to tell. And that story has notably been retconned: Cody clearly established that everything that has happened this season was a Derrick and Cody collaboration.

Is that true? Reply Hazy. I don’t think there’s any way Cody gets this far without Derrick—or anyhow, he wouldn’t have gotten this far playing this kind of game, close to the vest and lingering in the shadows. (If Cody ever comes back for a future season, I bet he plays a much more aggressive game.) But it doesn’t matter how well you play if you come in third place. If Cody wins Head of Household, would he bring Derrick with him? And if the votes were to come down to Derrick and Cody, would the Jury hand it to Cody? Keep in mind: Caleb is probably going to be a loud Anti-Derrick voice in the Jury House.

Then again, it seems likely that Frankie will be a loud Anti-Cody voice in the Jury House. And the other angle on Cody’s speech is that he may very well have doomed himself. If Derrick wins Head of Household, I can no longer imagine him taking Cody with him to the final two. It’s too dangerous; Cody has too carefully claimed Derrick’s final argument. Did Cody just earn himself $500,000? Or did he just hand Victoria $50,000?

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And what does Victoria think? This:

Derrick has made a pact with Cody? But that can’t be true. Derrick is my closest friend in the house; he would never lie to me. Perhaps it is Cody that is lying. Or perhaps all of my life is a lie. Perhaps I am not the fairest princess in all the land. Perhaps I have not spent these past few months living in the world of talking grasshoppers and penguin butlers dressed in red tuxedos and a man in the moon who plays love songs on his harp. Perhaps I never sailed with Lord Froggington across the oceans of the sky. Froggington, oh Froggington, can it be that this has all been a dream? Can it be that I have been a mere human girl, locked away inside of a madhouse, imprisoned far away from the outside world, just like in that one episode of Buffy? Could it be that I am… the WORST PLAYER IN THE HISTORY OF PLAYING THINGS?

No! I refuse to believe such lies! I refuse to fall victim to this living nightmare that you call “reality”! I shall fight for what is beautiful, for what I know to be true! I shall become the Head of Household, and I shall smite all my enemies, and I shall emerge from the chrysalis of my imprisonment reborn as a beautiful butterfly angel of beauty. All shall know my name… AND ALL SHALL TREMBLE! I shall become Death, Destroyer of Worlds, the final horseman… and my horse shall be a unicorn… and the unicorn shall be named “Pretty” because it will be PRETTY! Froggington, my love, I shall rescue you from the lair of Zach the Malevolent, and then I shall TRIUMPH!

Follow me on Twitter: @DarrenFranich