The Funeral Explained

After playing Big Brother the first time on Season 10 the most asked question I received was:

“How do I get on Reality TV?“

This inspired me to create the HowToGetOnRealityTV.net website and podcast to help answer that question.

The second time around playing Big Brother the new question I get all the time is:

“How did you come up with the Funeral?“

Since I have just finished all of the commentary for each of the episodes, I can take some time to finally answer that question in detail.

Creating The Funeral

While I was trapped in solitary confinement I knew two things for sure:

Number one: I was in trouble, a lot of trouble. After seeing that everyone not only wanted me out of the house, but were also so well accepting of the fact and not willing to debate it, it made me realize something drastic had to be done.

Number two: No matter what, I was going to be trapped for 24 hours and I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone effectively through a door. Instead of trying to force conversations through the bottom slit of a door, I wanted to keep silent until I had a plan figured out.

Those were my only two absolutes. I was willing to accept the truth that I was going to be locked into a room for 24 hours, but I wasn’t willing to accept that I was going to get evicted.

When thinking of the best way to get out of the bind I was in, I thought back to what was successful for me in the past: talking to the entire house all at once.

In my mind, when trying to plan my way out of this situation, that was the only foundation I had to work off of.

Seven Funeral Targets

From the foundation of needing to speak to the group as a whole, I came up with seven targets. These seven targets were the basis for the entire Funeral. The only chance I had to survive the week was if I could hit all seven targets in one shot.

Target 1 – Involve Everyone

In the Big Brother house, a normal conversation can get twisted, turned around, and misconstrued within five minutes of the conversation ending. The reason this happens is because there is room for it to happen in the game. Conversations need to be rehashed over and over for people to make decisions for themselves in the game.

The reason the conversations get twisted is because whoever is usually rehashing the story, twists it to the listener for their own selfish interest in the game (Big Brother 101).

Because of this reason, I knew if I wanted any chance to stay in the house, the message that needed to be delivered could not afford to be twisted around.

The only way to prevent this from happening was to involve everyone in the conversation, thus requiring a the house meeting.

Target 2 – Disarm

Some of the Houseguests left in the house had seen what I did during Season 10. They would surely be expecting me to attempt to cause chaos so that I could stay in the game. Because of this, I had disarm the Houseguests of their skepticism.

The best way in the game I know how to disarm people is through acknowledging them, complimenting them, and being authentic. I decided I would go around the room and thank everyone for something they (truly) did for me. I wanted to mention something I learned, enjoyed, or realized from just being around each person during the Funeral.

When I said something about each Houseguest (for the most part) it was me being completely honest. Ian really did make the experience a lot of fun for me, and I really did relate to Britney since we were both the newly married in the house.

Target 3 – Wrap An Act in the Truth

Sometimes the best way to lie in the Big Brother house is to wrap your lie in the truth.

For me the truth was how much I enjoyed being around everyone in the house, the lie was that I was done playing the game. Essentially this allowed me to hide my true intentions (of desperately wanting to stay in the house) by distracting people with my true emotions.

Yes, some of the tears were real (pulled from the thought of me leaving the house, sad I know ) and some were fabricated. The truth is, if you go back and watch the Funeral it is even hard FOR ME to tell which of my tears were real and which were forced.

Target 4 – Hide The Relationship

I attribute my success in winning Big Brother 10 to the fact that I had a secret alliance with Memphis Garret. The key word is SECRET.

From the beginning of this season, from a strategic standpoint, I was always uncomfortable with the fact that the alliance between Danielle and I was public knowledge. It makes everything in the game more difficult. Ducking nominations, acting weak, and portraying a facade of being alone is impossible when everyone in the house knows you are in an obvious alliance.

The only way to hide an alliance that has been made known to the entire house is to fracture it publicly. This would only be convincing if it wasn’t pre-planned (like a fight).

Of course this was a huge risk in jeopardizing the trust of Danielle. Not to mention the chance of bringing the alliance back together, but this was my best out. Driving the point home was essential to leave no doubts with the other houseguests that Danielle and I were done. (hence the strong words, “you’re dead to me”)

Out of the seven targets, I felt like this was the one that the entire Funeral hinged on. If people didn’t believe it they would see through the whole speech. If they did believe it, I had a window of opportunity within the game to strike a deal.

Target 5 – Cause Chaos

Mass chaos in the game is like launching off fireworks in a quiet neighborhood. It will bring the neighbors out of their houses to talk, complain, and figure out how to stop the fireworks as a cohesive group. While the neighbors are figuring things out, the robber is sneaking into the backdoor of their homes and going to work.

In essence, chaos can be the greatest diversion in the game. The risk is, you can’t always control what the chaos will grow into.

Lucky for me, EVERYONE in the house was very compassionate towards Danielle, which allowed me to do what I needed to do.

I was banking on the fact three things would arise from the chaos.

One: people would now strongly dislike/hate me in the game.

Two: Danielle would occupy everyone’s mental energy and capacity to see what potentially could be going on around them.

Three: Create confusion amongst the houseguests as to exactly why I was “mad” at Danielle. (Questioning each other as to “what did Danielle do?” Opposed to “what is Dan up to?”)

This was the most unpredictable and risky part of the funeral for me. Although it led me to my next target (#6) it also isolated and brought together everyone in the house. If they started to compare notes on what they thought I was doing, it could have backfired completely.

Target 6 – Opportunity to Mend Fences

In a situation where people encourage enemies to stay enemies, opportunities to call a truce are few and far between. People will feed into this type of disconnect between two people, especially when the presence of opposition benefits them.

While the fireworks were going off, it was important for me to build in a reason to meet with Frank (my enemy at the time) alone. Taking the high road of having to “apologize” for something (of which I had nothing to apologize for) gave everyone a reason to understand why I wanted to talk to him alone.

Getting one on one time with anyone in the house is a tough thing to do without any sort of suspicion. Even if you proclaim loudly that you are not talking game with someone one on one, it makes things seem even more suspicious.

To get through the Funeral to even have the chance to sit down with Frank was tough. So much had to go right to get to this point, mending the fence with Frank was almost the easiest part.

Target 7 – Playing Possum

The final target of the Funeral was to trumpet out the fact that I was dead in the game. No more scheming, no more alliances, no more game talk.

Having people think that I was no longer willing to compete in the game took disarming the houseguests one step further.

When people think you are surrendering, naturally they want to expend less energy. They drop their guard feeling safe in their enemies defeat. Keeping up the charade of lying dead by the side of the road lasted well beyond the Funeral. This happened for the next 24 or so hours.

I was cautious of having people see me talk to Jenn alone. We only talked briefly very late at night and very early in the morning to confirm any questions she had.

How I approached these two critical conversations with Jenn (reminiscent of the conversation I had with Memphis in Season 10 the morning prior to him using the veto on me) is a whole other blog post.

The bottom line: when people thought I was dead, it allowed me to continue on very carefully undetected.

Further Funeral Explanation?

Behind every move I made in the game, there was a thought process.

I rarely shot from the hip throughout the season. If you enjoyed this analysis of the Funeral and want more, you’ll definitely enjoy my Big Brother 14 Commentary.

Today is the official launch of the Commentary!

While creating the Commentary, I wanted to provide some additional value to those who purchased the 30 Audio Episodes, so I added two things to it!

1. Exclusive Members-Only Website

A community has been created for you to interact with other Big Brother fans who are has hardcore as you, myself included!

In the community site you can post questions on each individual episode. I actually go on the site to answer your questions along with other members of the community.

2. Video Episodes

During the recording of the audio commentary I video-recorded every Episode. So if hearing my first reaction to the Funeral wasn’t enough, you can also see the look on my face when I’m laughing.

I had a ton of fun creating the Commentary and those who pre-ordered currently are enjoying it (based on their feedback!). If you’re interested in purchasing it, you can click here to watch a video on how it works, or click here to buy it directly.

Finally

The completion of Coach Dan’s Commentary also marks the end of my Big Brother 14 blog posts and videos (I may release 1 or 2 more posts, but that’s it ).

Some future posts may tie Big Brother related scenarios to new content I will be posting, but for the most part the Big Brother 14 content is over.

Of course I will still be answering questions regarding Big Brother 14 in the Members-Only site, but that’s a given.

If you’d like to help shape the future of this blog take a quick minute and e-mail me what you would like to see me cover or write about in the future on this blog.

I really appreciate all of the feedback, because at the end of the day, I want this blog to be of value to you.

It is not just my personal sounding board.

Oh and one more thing, if you hadn’t noticed I moved all of my Facebook activity to one page. I no longer have a private page, or a Fan page (yuck). You can connect with me on Facebook by clicking here, once and for all.

Take care!