Big Brother 21 Week 12 Power Rankings: Loyalty Over Money

The biggest Final Four deal that was made this season is now a reality. But man, was it sooooo close to falling through. Cliff and Nicole had a GOLDEN opportunity on their plate to take down one of the heavy favorites in this game. The duo held all the power to knock out Holly, but they honored their quad deal with Holly and Jackson (Michie). And via (another) unanimous vote, Tommy Bracco was sent packing. There is a ton of information to unpack from this week, so let’s start with the biggest events that occurred and break those down:

Tommy Tells the House He Knows Christie: I really don’t understand this one from any angle. I guess Tommy was hoping to show his honestly card as a last-ditch effort, but if anything, as Michie said, it solidified at least one jury vote against anyone in the Final Four should they have sat next to Tommy in the end. And with Christie’s negotiating specialty, she could have been lounging in the jury house with openly supporting her friend. That’s playing with fire there. And that was the dilemma Cliff and Nicole had to deal with all week: Burn their bridges with Holly and Michie or keep Tommy in the game. Tommy said he would have stuck with Cliff and Nicole, which I don’t doubt one bit.

The Heated Verbal Exchange Between Michie and Tommy: This happened to be one of those rare episodes when Julie Chen went live on CBS at 9 PM ET and the houseguests were still scrambling on the screen in the background. Since the aforementioned exchanged occurred live, we really didn’t get to see much of it, aside from a quick tease at the end of the episode. From that, we learned that Michie was creating a straight up, fat lie in order to keep Holly in the game. Clearly, it worked for this week. But seeing how devastated Tommy was in that moment, I have a hard time believing he’d give Michie a jury vote should he be sitting in the Final Two.

So, better late than never. We finally got an alliance larger than two that actually kept their word till the end of their deal. Four people left, two power couples. This reminds me of a 2 v. 2 Mario Party mini game. Because as far as I’m concerned, the HOH and veto competition are all that matter this week. There is literally zero chance of a blind-side from either couple. In that case, whoever wins the HOH competition is of course officially onto the Final Three. But the veto comp will pretty much determine who goes home. And since there is only one vote this week, whoever is in that position says gets evicted. The only major, potential social side I could see coming out of this week is assuming Nicole puts up Michie and Holly and the veto isn’t used. Then, it’s up to the dating couple to lobby towards Cliff who should come with Cliff and Nicole to the Final 3. If Michie or Holly win the veto, Cliff goes home. That’s pretty much what this week boils down to.

Crazy to think about it, but this is our penultimate edition of the BB21 Power Rankings. Let’s do it.

1. Holly (1)- You would think with her boyfriend in charge, Holly would have had an easy week. You thought wrong. As mentioned above, one of the strongest players this season was very, very close to getting evicted last night. Now that she avoided that, I am keeping her at the top because I believe she is a heavy favorite to win the endurance HOH competition that started up as the episode went to a break. All season long, both Cliff and Nicole have shown that these long tests of strength are not their strong suits. We will see on Sunday night.

2. Jackson (2)- As is the case with Holly, Jackson’s fate this week will most likely be decided in Wednesday’s veto competition. Since he was ineligible to compete for the new HOH, he needs to pull through in whatever competition it may be. Regardless, it’s a tough look for him after going to the limit he did to ensure Tommy was sent packing last week. If Michie does make the Final Two, he’ll have a lot of work to do in terms of pleasing the jury.

3. Nicole (4)- The bottom line is this. After relinquishing the chance to knock out Holly, Nicole can easily neutralize that mistake by outlasting her in this HOH competition. Unfortunately, it’s a huge long shot for Cliff to outlast both of those ladies, so Nicole needs to just hang on that rope for as long as humanly possible.

4. Cliff (3)- It seems as if every episode throughout crunch time over the last few weeks, all Cliff has done is make deals. That’s been his strategy throughout, and he of course has been on a second life this whole time after getting evicted all the way back in Week 4 and winning his way back into the game. The issue with Cliff winning this game is I just think his resume is weaker than the three names above him on this list. A shocking HOH endurance win would certainly be a step in the right direction.