Let’s be honest, Big Brother 21 had been edited to promote Jackson Michie for weeks if not the entire season.
It isn’t disputable, just fact.
You just need to review past episodes and witness how Michie’s Diary Room sessions guided the narrative week after week.
The final Power of Veto competition was built for an athlete (there was never any doubt who would win of the final four) but it turns out production even interfered there and helped Michie win.
“I knocked down fucking five faces,” Jackson told his fellow houseguests, admitting that he initially misinterpreted the instructions. “They (production) kept saying ‘did not receive a punishment,’ and I’m like ‘yeah, I know, I know.’ And they go, ‘did not receive.’ And I’m like oh shit!”
Those watching the livefeeds were stunned when they realized how production had guided such an important moment in the game.
From the first week, when Michie immediately nominated three of the five non-white players for elimination, it was clear this would be no Kaycee Clark type season.
Kaycee proved once and for all last year that the perfectly decent social Big Brother player can win.
She played the game with integrity and strength with little drama, while Michie backstabbed and lied, only to later cry and pray.
[READ: Kaycee Clark Reverses The Calafiore Curse]
Jackson was everything the producers wanted in the Trump era, a white alpha male with seemingly little empathy for any diversity in the house, and the complete opposite of what Clark represented last season.
This year the white majority house sent one non-white cast member after another — two African-American players and one Bangladeshi-American competitor — into purgatory before unceremoniously kicking all three out in one fell swoop.
Then they voted out Isabella Wang, a Chinese-American player.
A steady stream of racist comments from some of its members were captured on the 24-hour live feeds, but producers made sure what was happening inside the house wasn’t making the TV episodes.
The growing concern on social media eventually forced CBS executives to release a statement that they shared “some of the viewers’ concerns.”
Kemi Fakunle addressed her castmates’ conduct on Twitter after leaving the game, calling it disgusting.
“I am extremely disappointed and disgusted by the behavior I am being made aware of that occurred thus far in the Big Brother house,” she wrote. “The degrading and threatening comments made by some houseguests and laughed at by others are outrageous and hard to see. I am saddened to be associated with such a negative display of human character and am horrified that this is now a part of my life story.”
During the live finale, Kemi scolded Jack, Jackson, Christie and Nick for saying things that were completely inexcusable.
She added that she hopes “they leave the show as better people than they came in.”
Ovi Kabir was reluctant in an interview to call all of his former housemates racist, but admitted it probably played a role in the early evictions.
“Subconsciously, yeah, I think some things came into play,” said Kabir. “Kemi, David, and I are three people from different backgrounds that don’t share the same commonalities as some of these other houseguests in there. So bonding in certain ways is more difficult for us in those things. And you find whatever you can in the house to single somebody out. And so maybe our differences were the reasons why it played in some people’s heads.”
Host Julie Chen Moonves talks to the evictees: Kemi Faknule, Ovie Kabir and David Alexander.
In the end the white alpha male who dominated the season lying and backstabbing won the game.
He denied in the final moments of the show of being racist or a misogynist.
He apologized, but emphasized he didn’t know what he was apologizing for.
The style of play between Kaycee and Jackson in just one year is striking, and perhaps a reflection of life in America today.
Let’s hope Big Brother casting gets a major reboot before next summer because this was a truly awful season.
