Warning! The following contains spoilers from the Big Brother live feeds as of Monday, July 29th. Watch the feeds with a Paramount+ subscription or on Pluto TV and read at your own risk!
Matt Hardeman's time in the house was short-lived, but I'm beginning to believe him when he said he could've gone far in the game. Now, he's streaming Big Brother with the rest of us, and I assumed he was feeling really good when Kenney Kelley won the Week 2 veto and moved Angela Murray one step closer to eviction. Matt explained to me why it'd make sense to keep her in the game, and I was shocked he was actively advocating for it.
Hardeman spoke to CinemaBlend days after his eviction and, much to my surprise, advocated for the Big Brother Houseguests to keep her in the game. That said, he made it clear how he felt about Angela staying in, considering she's responsible for his eviction:
I wouldn’t be mad about seeing Angela go, but at the same time I don't fault anybody for not taking that move yet. She's gonna be a shield. I know currently for where the game stands that Lisa's got a lot of bad blood in the house, you know, whether that's, wrong. Angela has a lot of bad blood in the house, which we know is right. So for both of them, I think people are looking at it like, ‘Why come at them now when the only people working against them is really their own selves in terms of the longevity of their game.’ So I think it's interesting some people are thrown around, maybe they should put Mackensy up to flush out her upgrade, who knows what could happen?
Listen, he might've made some missteps in the game that led to Angela's blow-up and his eviction, but that's some damn good strategy. He's also correct that while Chelsie Baham's Week 2 Head of Household began with the intention that Angela or Lisa Weintraub would be targeted this week, it may not hold.
This is especially true after Tucker Laruriers volunteered to go on the block and realized too late that he had put himself in a bad position. He's the well-liked Houseguest next to two others who have burned all bridges and have little chance of advancing deep into the game. Tucker talked about it and echoed Matt's argument above:
Tucker- I am nervous if it ends up being me and Angela up there that people would kick me out. Leah- Are you nuts? Tucker- No, it's realistic. Why not keep the person that is mentally weaker and less of a competitor? #BB26July 30, 2024
Tucker learned one of the hard lessons that many who win Big Brother know to avoid: never, under any circumstances, volunteer to be a pawn. Pawns go home all the time, especially when they stand a better chance at winning the game than the people they're up against. He might have to win that A.I. Arena competition to successfully avoid an unexpected eviction or hope that he has enough allies who like him that they want to keep him for the long haul.
Credit to Matt for clocking that, and I do wonder how he would've done had he survived the Week 1 eviction and Lisa not won the Week 1 veto. Perhaps it took being evicted for him to see the error in his game, and he'd do better with a second chance?
All we know is that Big Brother airs new episodes on CBS on Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET and on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Hopefully Tucker didn't just make one of the biggest mistakes of the season, and we'll see Angela or Lisa go out of the game instead.
