He’s definitely played his ass off in this game. Whether you like his personality or not, Jackson has done a lot of work to get to the end, but will it be enough to win over the jury?

First of all, if you haven’t checked out our posts for Nicole or Holly, make sure to do that, especially if Jackson isn’t your favorite houseguest or you just aren’t pulling for him to win this season. We totally get it.

In the interest of full disclosure, Jackson is not my favorite houseguest. I am not a fan of the things he has said behind people’s backs. I’m not a fan of how he has treated Holly. I’m not a fan of the lack of respect he has shown for his fellow houseguests, his staunchest adversaries, and especially this game we all love.

During his tenure in the house he flagrantly broke long-standing rules, said disparaging things about the people of color in the house, and bullied anyone who tried to go against him. Despite all of that, I can still admit that he’s played his ass off in Big Brother 21. And we will know in six short days whether he’s done enough to win it all.

So, with no further ado, here’s what Jackson Michie has done to win Big Brother 21, and why, if he wins, he won’t be the least deserving houseguest to walk away with the money.

He chose his alliances well

Say what you want about Michie, but he definitely knows how to build an alliance. While Gr8ful and Inde9able may not have lasted as long as all their members may have hoped, Jackson had a lot of very strong allies at his disposal from pretty much day one onward. He and Jack formed a solid duo, he had Holly’s loyalty from very early on, and he surrounded himself with a variety of both skilled gamers and the ever important yes-men (and women). In a season where there weren’t any repeat HOH’s until week nine (when Holly won her second), it’s pretty significant that Jackson’s alliance reigned seven of those weeks.

After Gr8ful’s breakup, Jackson and Holly didn’t waste much time in solidifying a new alliance to get them to the end of the game. They needed to find a pair of people they could truly trust, and since Christy had set her sights on Jackson weeks prior to Gr8ful’s breakup, their options were limited. Enter Cliff and Nicole to form the alliance that would reign on high for the remainder of the season.

He is a comp beast

No one, and I do mean no one, can take away Jackson’s competition record. As of the last show aired, Jackson has won three HOH’s, 4 Vetoes, America’s Field Trip, and got voted Camp Director. He has proven that as far as the competitions go, he is the fiercest competitor around.

And that is definitely a part of his gameplay that he can use to win over jury votes. He never relented when his game was at stake, and that is a quality every good Big Brother player has to have.

Surviving as a target from day one

We don’t get to see the live feeds for the first week or so of gameplay, so we don’t know for sure what the dynamics were before the cameras came on, but Jackson, being the fit, competitive male that he is, was on everyone’s radar from the very beginning. If his alliance hadn’t won consistently for the first 6 weeks, he could have been gone very early on in the game. As it was, the minute the other side of the house got a taste of power, Jackson and Jack were the first two on the block.

Despite the constant threat he posed to everyone’s game, he has found ways to steer the target off himself and onto someone else. He was pretty skilled at helping others see other targets in the house. When the only requirement to keep playing Big Brother is to not get evicted, this skill came in pretty handy.

He knows how to think on his feet

Besides his comp wins and his alliance-building, Jackson’s most noteworthy game move was concocting a good enough lie about Tommy’s motives in the final five to convince Nicole and Cliff to keep Holly in the game. He leaned into that lie hard enough, doubling down on his strong-arming tactics, and somehow managed to convince Cliff that keeping Jackson’s gal pal in the game was the best move for everyone.

That lie is the only reason he isn’t still fighting for his life, so I can absolutely give credit where it’s due. Everyone knows that Big Brother may require you to tell a lie or two, so I don’t fault him for doing whatever he could to keep his fiercest ally in the game.

His biggest downfall

Unfortunately, there is one, rather large empty section on Jackson’s resume: His social game leaves a LOT to be desired. He did not leave a favorable impression on a lot of people, and after his being responsible for sending both Analyse and Jess out the door, I don’t imagine either of them would be overjoyed to see him take the crown.

If Jackson had even tried to significantly bond with anyone other than Holly, he might have had a stranglehold on this game at the end. Unfortunately for Jackson, Nicole’s social game is her strongest asset, and Holly at least tried to make friends in between fighting and making up with Jackson. If the jury can see beyond Jackson’s impressive winning streak, they may have a hard time handing him the big prize.

Ultimately, as it does every year, it comes down to how this jury feels about the game as well as its players. If they decide to look objectively at big moves, strategic schemes, and comp wins, Jackson has as good a shot as any of them to win, which is how it should be. However, you must keep in mind throughout this game that, in the end, your fellow players have to choose you. I think Jackson forgot that somewhere around mid game, and is now just hoping this jury can overlook his sometimes jerk-ish tendencies.

Big Brother is boring when it’s predictable, so I am forever grateful that no one has this game wrapped around their finger. There’s not much “Unexpected” left for us to expect, so I’ll take it wherever I can get it… until next season, of course.