If you’ve watched even a second of competition reality TV, you’ve probably heard the expression, “This is a numbers game.” The latest episode of The Anonymous took that phrase literally with a brain-rattling challenge that seemed straight out of an elementary school math class.
Before that headache of a challenge, a player with the power of The Anonymous sent another competitor packing. Plus, the entire house finally started to recognize that having a Big Brother winner in their midst might not be a wise path to victory. Here’s what went down during The Anonymous, Episode 6, “The Price of Safety.”
See you later, Wayne
Per the slightly frustrating tradition of The Anonymous, the episode started where we left off last week, with the elimination up in the air. This show always leaves us on a cliffhanger, pushing the elimination to the next week to make sure you stay hooked week after week. Well played, USA Network.
On the dial, DANI announced that The Anonymous chose Detective Wayne to leave the competition. That wasn’t too surprising considering how he completely went off the rails during the face-off challenge. What did feel surprising was the fact that once again, Jack won the power of The Anonymous. What in the world?
In a flashback, we see Jack in his hideout win the power for the third time in this game. At this point, everybody else should just pack it up and give him the cash. He’s dominating this thing, and he explained the justification behind his latest move.
“If I take out a big player, the other players are going to feel uncomfortable,” Jack explained. “What I want is for everybody to feel safe and like they can beat me at the end of the game, when we know, in reality, they cannot.”
At the dial, Wayne confessed that he wasn’t really a janitor but a detective, which left everybody gagged. Xavier couldn’t believe he went head-to-head with a fed and won.
Jack is dominating, but can it last?
After Wayne’s exit, Jack explained in a confessional interview his plans for the next few days. With Wayne out of the way, he said his next targets were Bismah, Dillian, and Lilly. Look out, y’all.
Meanwhile, Jack also put Xavier on his radar, but he explained that he wanted to keep him around for just a little bit longer. He’ll strike when the time is right, and part of that strategy involves getting Victoria to go after Xavier, too.
Watching at home, we can all see how Jack is dominating the competition and pulling strings left and right. In Episode 6, we finally see some of the other players catching on to him, too.
Nina, his roommate, said that she noticed most nights he would be tossing and turning in his sleep. The night after Wayne’s elimination, he slept like a baby as if he had nothing to worry about. Add that to the evidence list!
Elsewhere, Xavier and Chris also talked about how they were starting to have suspicions about Jack. They can feel him scheming. Even Victoria took a moment from cuddling with Chris and acknowledged Jack’s cunning way of maneuvering the game. The walls are closing in on Jack, but it might be happening too slowly to make a difference.
Sum it up
For this week’s challenge, DANI had the players divide themselves into teams of two. Obviously, Victoria and Chris partnered up together before anyone could even process what DANI said.
The other pairs were Lilly and Bismah, Andy and Nina, Xavier and Jack, and Dillian and Marcel. The winning team would get to choose one player from their team to be safe from elimination.
Once they got to the challenge, DANI told them the rules, which might have been one of the most mind-boggling challenges yet. They were presented with a table full of puzzle pieces that had numbers and mathematical symbols, plus a screen with a bunch of dollar amounts listed.
Their goal: pick a sum and then build a tower out of the puzzle pieces to equal that amount. The first team to finish the tower would win safety.
The options varied from easy ($50 and $140) to complicated ($19,999). Bismah and Lilly wanted safety, so they opted for the easiest sum of $50. Dillian and Mracel went for $140. Meanwhile, Jack begged Xavier to go for the larger amount. The lovebirds also went for the larger amount, even though they both seemed completely unsure of their abilities. Jack at least had the fact that he’s a math tutor going for him.
The players only had 12 minutes to do this challenge, and it immediately proved to be way tougher than it looked. They didn’t give them calculators, not even an abacus. On top of that, their towers had to stand still for three full seconds.
Ultimately, the only two teams to complete the challenge were the people who took the easiest options: Bismah, Lilly, Marcel, and Dillian. Everyone else failed, which meant they made a whopping $140 for this challenge. That’s barely even a drop in the bucket.
It’s revealed that Marcel and Dillian won because they completed the challenge first. There’s only one person who can get safety, and Dillian nobly gives it to Marcel. That’s a diplomatic move, but it’s going to bite him in the ass later.
Anonymous Mode didn’t go well for Xavier
Although the rest of the cast failed to even complete the challenge, they were all majorly in their feelings about the teams that took the easy route. Bismah, Lilly, and Dillian all walked away from the challenge with major targets on their back.
When DANI sent them into Anonymous Mode, the botched challenge was top of mind for several of the players. Meanwhile, a few other people were solely focused on getting rid of threats. Why harp on the challenge when you can drag Xavier into the chat?
Immediately, Popsicle aka Dillian dropped into the chat and declared that Xavier would be going home next. Nina and Victoria jumped in on it too, under the guise of their secret avatars.
Elsewhere in the chat, Andy said he wanted to target people who didn’t contribute to the prize pot, which is ironic since that’s what everyone has been saying about him since Episode 1. Regardless, he threw out Bismah and Lilly’s names into the chat, with hopes of them picking up nominations.
Mastermind Jack used that as an opportunity to throw everybody off his scent. As Flamingo, he reacted to Andy’s message in a way that made everyone think he was Lilly. Smart move. It’s that level of strategy of misleading and confusion that keeps giving him power every week.
Who is up for elimination this week?
After the chat, it seems pretty clear that Bismah, Lilly, and Xavier would be up for elimination. However, when DANI started revealing the nominations, there were a few really odd choices in the lineup.
Of course, Bismah, Victoria, Nina, and Dillian all voted for Xavier. No surprises there. What was surprising is that Scissors aka Xavier, voted for himself! That’s a power move, folks! He’s desperate to get people off of his scent and win the power of The Anonymous. That might be his only route to safety.
Chris wound up nominating Bismah because of her performance in the math challenge, and Andy nominated Lilly for the same reason. Meanwhile, Lilly randomly decided to nominate Nina for the second time without any clear reasoning. Then, moments later complained that too many women were up for nomination. Okay, girl.
The biggest backstab of this episode arrived via Marcel. Although Dillian gifted him safety this week after they won the challenge together, Marcel still nominated him for elimination. Yikes! Then, Dillian got another vote from Jack aka Flamingo.
After the nominations and the test to see who would become The Anonymous, DANI gathered all of the players back around the dial for our weekly cliffhanger. She teased that it would either be Dillian or Xavier going home, depending on who The Anonymous chose. No matter how it shakes out, this next elimination is about to be a major blow to this game.
The Anonymous continues on Monday nights at 11/10c on USA Network. Episodes are also streaming on Peacock.
TELL US – WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE ANONYMOUS EPISDOE 6? WERE YOU SURPRISED TO SEE JACK WIN THE POWER OF THE ANONYMOUS AGAIN? DO YOU THINK XAVIER OR DILLIAN WILL GET SENT HOME NEXT?