jeff6286 wrote:A few bits that I caught on the live feed late Wednesday night and into Thursday morning could shed some light on the endgame decisions. For most of the show, the Power Player periods were spaced throughout the day, something like 12-3 AM, then 6-9 AM, then 12-3PM. The players could play along with the live matches for any or all of these periods, and whomever answered the most questions would be that night's Power Player. This was obviously done to make it difficult for the players to get a full night's sleep, as part of NBC's goal of making their time there as miserable as possible.
Andy and Devin appeared to be very evenly matched when both were going for the Power Player, as one day Andy won by just a single question. Well, the last night, they changed the time of the PP and made it 1-7 AM, apparently to screw with the players even further. It appeared that Eric didn't even want to bother, so he was sleeping while the other 3 were playing along, pacing back and forth, walking in circles, helping each other to stay awake. I guess the idea was that whomever stayed awake all night to win the Power Player would be so exhausted that they may not be at their best in the following evening's matches, so the players had to choose how best to apply themselves.
Well, I missed the origin of it, so I don't know whose idea it was, but at some point Andy and Devin came up with a better plan. Andy basically agreed to let Devin have the Power Player, under the condition that Devin would not send Andy, he would send Eric. I guess they must have just let Devin play for a bit longer, then decided to all get some sleep. They wanted to minimize the chances of Eric taking the grand prize when he had just waltzed in there a couple days earlier, as well as eliminating the chance that one of them could be sent home with nothing. I think they considered it a possibility that the show might send out a real heavy hitter in the late stages of the game, as names like Ken Jennings, Roger Craig, as well as some major WWTBAM prize winners were rumored to be in the building in the final days of the show.
Of course the risk for Andy was that if he let Devin win Power Player, he could betray him and send Andy out instead, thinking that Andy was the strongest player and he should try to get rid of him. Even if the person in the Chair was not a great player, the format of the TV matches is highly unpredictable, with lots of random pop culture and current events questions, plus the unlimited use of the doubler, so an inferior player pulling off a huge upset has always got to be a decent possibility. Andy basically told Devin something to the effect of "If you double-cross me, and send me out there, I will win, and then I will destroy you and take the grand prize." He also said that he felt that he was a good judge of character, and that he had gotten to know Devin enough over the past several days that he felt that he would keep his word on this.
I argued this point quite a bit with some people I was watching the show with, as some seemed to think that for a better chance at over 2 million dollars, no one would ever keep their word to someone they've known less than a week. On shows like Survivor or Big Brother, this may very well be true, and who knows, that may have been the kind of thing this show was hoping to achieve with its Big Brother-style setup. But I'm guessing that the trivia players that were drawn to a show like this are mostly pretty different types of people than those that make up the typical Survivor cast.
Maybe if there was someone like Roger Craig out there, it would have made more sense for Devin to betray Andy and send him out, as then he would only have to beat one of Roger or Andy (plus Brandon) to win the money, whereas if he sends Eric out to face Roger, he would then have to beat Roger, then beat Andy, then beat Brandon. But with the line jumper out there, who didn't appear to be anything special, I saw very little reason for Devin to change his plan. It turned out she wasn't too bad, beating Yobob and Eric, and hanging with Devin for a while, but I don't think she would have been much match for Andy.
Hi, not to revive a 2-year old thread about a show that has become a punchline, but I stumbled across this and since I'm the Devin referenced here, I just wanted to say that you were basically 100% spot-on with this. Eric went to bed, Brandon went to bed, Andy and I were battling it out before we realized it was dumb and that we should just go to sleep. We could only talk to each other between matches, so it took about a half hour to convince him that I wouldn't throw him under the bus. For the record, there was a 0% chance of me doing that.
Here's the thing that gets forgotten: we were sequestered, and as far as we knew, this was the biggest TV event of the year! $2 Million! Prime time! Seacrest! So for me, I didn't want to be known as the $2M backstabber. My career is one that has me, not famous, but in the public eye—or at least their peripheral vision—as I progress in it, and my reputation matters a lot. Also, to be honest, neither Brandon, Andy, nor I thought that there was a great chance that we would lose against whomever we were put in against (IF RESTED!), so my theoretical treachery would do nothing but make me look like a jerk. Not worth it. Plus, I thought I had a decent shot of beating everyone else (which, considering I lost to Andy by one point and then he beat Brandon by about forty, I still think I did... I'll remember what a blunderbuss is for the rest of my life). We decided that it was better to get sleep and all battle each other fresh (especially once Brandon decided to go to bed himself...neither Andy nor I wanted to be exhausted going up against him) than to be exhausted and lose on a silly mistake to a line jumper.
Because the lack of sleep was real, and it didn't come across. That's why I'll defend Hayley forever, because I did the same thing in an earlier game in (thankfully) a much lower leverage situation. It was a question about gallons in a barrel or something like that, and I just couldn't line up the numbers in my head, and it felt like I had a lot more time than I did because my brain was working more slowly and I just blew the question. I'm just glad it didn't cost me that match... there's no way I would have handled losing the way she did as gracefully as she did.
Anyway, I'm sure this is the first time you thought about this since you wrote it, but I just finished Making a Murderer and now I can't sleep, so I figured I'd tell you a couple years later that you're right.