Posted by I.A.

Natalie wasn't the best player in the BB9 house, but I have a sneaking suspicion she's going to be on the short list of non-winners who is remembered as the most colorful player of her season, despite only coming in fifth.

Because let's face it. We can be honest with each other here, right? Many of us have been looking forward for years to having a "European style" player in the house, someone with few personal boundaries when it comes to sharing personal information or naked flesh. Within a few days, it became clear that the "bikini barista" (does the Labor department track such things) was our girl. Still, in the early stages of the season when her sexual escapades were setting the BBverse ablaze with chatter, helping to make the early season feeds the best ever, it's not like people were speculating on the possibility that she might have much game, let alone have the chance to win. Natalie seemed to be in the tradition of past BB women who were mostly in the house to meet boys, and would be willing to put boys ahead of her game. But Natalie seemed to come alive gamewise after the eviction of Matt, and had she played a somewhat better social game with allies and non-allies alike down the stretch, she might have been well positioned to get to the final two (although actually winning, considering the hard feelings in the jury house from the likes of Chelsia, might have been a problem).

Our first impression of Natalie was formed early the night the feeds went up: she was the half-naked party girl who seemed oddly guileless about it all, possibly because her over-the-top sexuality was combined with what seemed to be a genuine (if somewhat muddled) Christian faith. On some level, you wonder how much the unusually uninhibited atmosphere in the house this season had to do with the tone that Natalie set in there (though James might have been James in any case)--if you're kept isolated from society and the typical standards that govern life out here, Natalie walking around in her G-string might start to seem normal after a while.

Natalie and Matt were part of the first house alliance, which also included the first two house couples that had any power: Jen and Parker (the "power couple") and the first heads of Household, Alex and Amanda. In truth, though, this always seemed more like an alliance only in the sense that they all got along, because there wasn't much in the way of game coordination here. This was proven when Matt and Natalie won the first veto and refused to use it to save Jen and Parker, possibly because Jen still seemed toxic at the time to the revelation of her previous relationship with Ryan. We began to notice something else about Natalie at this time: she really preferred male company to female. Despite their early alliance, she and Amanda quickly grew to dislike each other, and of course she and Chelsia eventually became the bitterest of enemies.

Matt/Natalie were nominated along with Alex/Amanda during the second week (James and Chelsia were the HoHs), and it was this week that set the tone for the rest of Natalie's tenure in the house. With Matt needing to campaign against Alex, who had till then been his best friend in the house, he began to gravitate towards Adam and Ryan a little more, and Natalie was along for the ride (Adam/Sheila were in the same bedroom as Matt/Natalie, continuing a long BB tradition whereby sleeping arrangements are the original motivator for alliances). While there was some wavering as the week progressed, Amanda's controversial nature made it inevitable that she and Alex were going to be jettisoned. The following week, the couple was nominated again although Ryan and Allison (really just Allison) were the true targets, and it became moot when Matt and Natalie won the veto anyway. This would be the last time Natalie would be in trouble until her eventual eviction, and the vote to allow Ryan to stay in the house when the couples format ended left Natalie's position truly strong for the first time, since she was no longer tied to the "threat" Matt, and wasn't getting much respect for her game skills or intellect.

Ryan won that first HoH after he was allowed to stay in the game, but the following week marked her one little bobble: when she was part of the vote to allow James back in the house after he had just been evicted. Matt and Ryan were caught on the other side of that vote, and when James, predictably, became the HoH, there was no way both Ryan and Matt could emerge intact. But the house then embarked on a long stretch where Natalie or one of her allies was HoH every week (in fact, that stretch would last the rest of the game). Natalie played a pretty shrewd social game in this stretch, particularly by keeping Ryan on her side even after Natalie had had to vote to evict him in order to try to save Matt. The whole "Team Christ" thing took shape during this period as well, and while she eventually took all that a little too seriously, it did help to forge a bond with Ryan and Adam (and by extension Sheila, who was along for the ride). Her goofy superstitions and number theories helped keep others from taking her very seriously.

Natalie created some issues for herself with the consecutive evictions of Chelsia, Joshuah, and James, none of whom left with any love lost for Team Christ. But as it became more likely that two members of that team would make it to the end, the social situation for her wasn't hopeless. And Natalie attempted to get herself a side deal with both Sheila and Sharon, one that would have served her in excellent stead had Sharon ever won HoH. But ironically, it was the Sheila HoH week--a HoH Natalie had agreed to give her--that ended up spelling her doom. Sheila had developed her own attitude about Natalie's denunciations of the so-called godless element in the house, and clearly worried that she wouldn't have any protection the following week, when she couldn't play for HoH. Natalie was forced to publicly reassert her loyalty to Adam and Ryan, but the boys weren't buying her act either by this time. Adam and Ryan engineered a tie vote and forced Sheila to dirty her hands and evict Natalie--something that I don't think either man would have been able to do at that stage of the game themselves as HoH.

As irritating as I find "God is on our side" talk on BB or any reality show typically, I thought Natalie was a good thing for BB9 and for our feed experience. She was typically animated and unusually cheerful by the standards of the game, and was without a doubt a unique personality. The casting people did well to find her. They need to spend less time hanging out in casting agencies and more time in northwestern coffee shops, apparently.

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