‘Big Brother Canada’ finale review: An on-the-scene report of that shocking [spoiler]

We are a little bit late in writing about the “Big Brother Canada” finale, but for good reason. We were in the audience for tonight’s show, preparing for some interviews behind the scenes with the houseguests. (More on that soon.)

When we went into the studio where the show is produced, we expected this to be a routine two-hour taping. Emmett and Jillian would probably be the final two, and Emmett would win by a pretty wide margin. Instead, what we had was the craziest thing we’ve ever bore witness to on a reality competition show, and we don’t use that term lightly.

First of all, let’s start this off by saying that as of right now, we haven’t watched the cut of the finale that aired on Slice. There was just no time! In being there, though, we’re not going to bury the lead at all: Topaz’s vote snafu was shocking, heartbreaking, and downright the saddest thing we’ve seen on TV in some time. We don’t know how much this played at home, but when Gary heard that Topaz voted for Jillian, he was devastated. Then, Topaz was devastated, and the minutes that resulted were madness. Arisa Cox really handled it with as much dignity as she could, repeatedly telling Topaz to go back to her seat while she protested the vote and asked for a change.

In a moment that we don’t think made it to air, Topaz told the audience that she was not mad at Jillian getting her vote, since she did legitimately like her, but she just felt terrible that she hurt someone who really was a close friend to her in the game. Before that, she did make a series of accusations about production interference, but she was just acting in the moment because she didn’t understand how she could have made the mistake. She was devastated when the cameras weren’t on, and was clearly still shaken after the show.

The reason this of course mattered was because Gary would have won the season by a 4-3 vote were it not for the snafu. Here’s the question that we’re going to be pondering for some time: Should Jillian have done the right thing and forfeited the win? That’s what so many of us would say for her to do, but also put yourself in her shoes: $100,000 is a ton of money compared to $20,000. She also felt she deserved to win. There really wasn’t that much applause for Jillian’s win, mostly because there was a contingent of furious and/or shocked audience members. At one point, Cox had to ask the crowd to stop booing the show or allowing Topaz to switch her vote back.

Some other assorted notes from the taping:

-The audience was pretty split between fans of the final three, and just about everyone had family present.

-Andrew’s brother got some time in the spotlight during a commercial!

-At one point, Peter nearly started a fight with Jillian’s fans after he called her an idiot, when someone asked him why he loved Dr. Will and then wouldn’t give her credit. This same person was terribly misinformed on what Dr. Will’s real strategy was, which led to him starting an argument with her and then telling off much of the audience for armchair quarterbacking. Awesome.

-If Emmett didn’t want to be with Jillian outside of the game, he had about twenty other women ready to take her place in the audience.

We are still recovering from all of this, so we’re going to have much more thoughts in the coming days. Be sure to check out some more scoop on the show here, and we’re going to have our first take from the post-show interviews up soon.

Photo: Slice