The first season of Big Brother Canada concluded with drama the producers couldn’t possibly have predicted. During 14 seasons of Big Brother US (and 25 seasons of Survivor US), this has never happened as far as I’m aware. A contestant ignoring the rules emphasized by the host immediately before voting (apparently) inadvertently voted for the wrong person. In what was otherwise a 3-3 tie on a very emotional and bitter jury, this one vote proved to be the deciding factor in determining the winner for the season. Then she proceeded to ambush the host and insist someone must have switched her vote. Imagine someone doing this to Chenbot? Never happen.
Conspiracy theories abound that perhaps Topaz’s vote was not a mistake, but I’m not convinced by that. She was one of the more emotional players, and I can’t see a way in which she would vote against her best buddy just for the sake of honoring the person who beat her fair and square. Perhaps more convincing is the concept that she wanted people to talk about her, and now people aren’t so much talking about who won but who caused that person to win.
At the end of the day, the right person ended up winning. Jillian MacLaughlin may have been an over the top liar with an excessive amount of blood on her hands, but she was personally responsible for the eviction of the majority of the jury, who in turn took it personally that she outsmarted them. Particularly bitter was The Sheyld, an alliance I really liked in the house, but who proved in the end to be unable to overcome the fact that they got beat because they made idiotic moves.
Regardless of what Jillian did, at least that an unsequestered jury member who was allowed to chill in the jury house for a few weeks, returning to the game with full knowledge of what everybody in the jury was thinking and being dropped back into the final five with no effort required, did not win. Hopefully if they do a twist like this again, they are smarter about it. I don’t mind one of the first five evictees coming back or something like that, but to set someone up to come back into the house with just two weeks left is the kind of shameful manipulation we see from the US producers.