Warning! The following contains spoilers from the Big Brother live feeds as of Monday, August 16. Read at your own risk!
Big Brother Season 23 may deliver something to fans they haven't seen in the history of the United States incarnation of the series. Thanks to the efforts of The Cookout alliance, there's a chance the final stretch of the season could result in a Final 6 comprised of all-Black Houseguests. The alliance looks strong right now, but can it get its entire team to that goal?
While the road looks good for Xavier Prather, Hannah Chaddha, Tiffany Mitchell, Derek Frazier, Kyland Young, and Azah Awasum, there are a few strategies they need to adhere to over the next few weeks to make it to their goal. Fail on any one of these strategies, and it's likely The Cookout may find itself one or two members short before eliminating the other Houseguests.
Prevent Non-Cookout Members From Banding Together Against Them
Currently, The Cookout is still a secret alliance in Big Brother 23. One has to wonder how long that will continue to be the case, though, as the number of Houseguests left in the house outside The Cookout continues to dwindle. Eventually, someone outside The Cookout may put two and two together and set their sights on one of them members.
In fact, Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss jokingly discussed whether or not there was a plan to get out all the white Houseguests but chocked it all up to sheer coincidence. Derek and Claire laughed it off, but one has to imagine it won't take too many more evictions for them to realize they were onto something. Each week will inevitably make the discovery less relevant, though ideally, it's best if Houseguests outside The Cookout remain in the dark until they're headed out of Big Brother and into the jury house.
Remain Calm If A Non-Cookout Houseguest Gets The HOH
The odds look good that The Cookout could run the table on its road to the Final 6, but Big Brother is a game where it's best to expect the unexpected. There's still a chance that someone outside The Cookout can win the Head of Household in the next few weeks. Should that happen, the key for The Cookout is to remain calm and just get to work trying to steer the target elsewhere.
The ideal solution is that The Cookout wins the veto and convinces the Head of Household to put someone not in their alliance up for eviction. If that can happen, they'll have the majority vote every week outside of this one. The only good panicking will do is run the risk of exposing The Cookout, which could make a bad situation even worse depending on when it occurs.
Stop The Infighting Within The Cookout
The Cookout has had some very real confrontations in the past couple of weeks, and each falling out between Houseguests ran the risk of this entire alliance crumbling before the finish line. Whether it was Derek Frazier and Azah Awasum's beef with Tiffany Mitchell, or Kyland Young's self-professed jealousy of Xavier Prather's success in Big Brother, the fighting has to stop. The only thing these players seemingly have in common is their shared want to make this Final 6 happen, but they need to recognize it takes a bit more than that.
A large part of this problem is that many in The Cookout are playing their own game. This is to say they all honor the agreement not to evict each other but are all simultaneously working towards moves that are best for their individual games. It's Big Brother, so that's expected, but it's very hard to keep the peace if one Houseguest's actions hurt the game of another player they're supposedly aligned with. Players will make moves the rest don't like, but ultimately everyone involved needs to understand they all have the same goal for the next few weeks.
Meet More Often
The Cookout has remained under the radar In Big Brother largely because they never meet. In fact, the closest we've gotten to a full alliance meeting was five out of six members awkwardly gathered in the backyard over a month into Season 23. As impressive as it is, the fact that this group hasn't really hung out as a unit feels like a source of some of the infighting and drama.
No one likes being kept out of the loop, especially in Big Brother. So when Xavier Prather and Tiffany Mitchell went about trying to secretly flip the vote and keep Christian Birkenberger over Sarah Beth Steagall, it made sense that the rest of The Cookout was miffed. Xavier and Tiffany later argued the boot order didn't matter because both Christian and Sarah Beth were non-Cookout members, but then why even try to flip the vote period? The two Houseguests went rogue without notifying the rest of The Cookout, and stuff like that is a problem when people don't meet to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Unify On Strategy
The Cookout regularly meeting is one thing, but once they're together, they have to unify on what their plan is. Big Brother's live feeds have featured so much tension between Cookout members mad about players they feel that are important to their game leaving. Everyone is attached to their Houseguest they're aligned with outside the alliance, almost as though they don't trust The Cookout to remain a thing to the goal of being the Final 6.
The fact of the matter is, all of these Houseguests will lose their favorite non-Cookout players for this plan to work. The sooner everyone accepts that, the easier it will be to unify as an alliance and breeze through these next few weeks. No one should be so attached to their non-Cookout Houseguest they're willing to betray The Cookout's grand plan. It's the best plan for all involved, so why not just accept it and move on? Easier said than done, I know, but also absolutely necessary in this alliance's survival.
Big Brother airs on CBS Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Do you think The Cookout will make it to the Final 6? Sound off in our poll below, and stick with CinemaBlend for more analysis on what's happening in Season 23.
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