'Big Brother' mastermind breaks down and shows (real?) emotion for the first time

On Wednesday night’s episode of Big Brother, puppet master Paul Abrahamian decided to finally be honest for once — well, kinda — when he let Alex Ow know that their secret alliance, which they formed in the very beginning of the game, is over.

“If I make this move, I’m securing my loss in the game. You would win,” said Paul to Alex. “I have family and friends watching, and they’d look at me and go, ‘You made the same mistake as last year.’ If I didn’t take Nicole to the end, I might have won. If I make this move, I lose. But if I don’t, I think that I actually have a chance to win this year.”

So maybe he didn’t tell her everything — for example, about his new secret alliance with Josh Martinez and Christmas Abbott — but at least she got the point. Friendship does not exactly mean loyalty in Paul’s book. “Paul can say whatever he wants, but if I was in the same position as him, I wouldn’t screw Paul, ever. Friendship? No. Gumpy, yes,” said Alex in the diary room. “I freaking held your hand through this whole game. You wouldn’t be here without me, and you shot me in the back.”

We’ve seen Paul lying to and manipulating people in the house this entire season, but one thing we hadn’t seen was some actual emotion from the show veteran — until this episode, when he unleashed what we hope were real tears and sobbed all over Christmas’s shoulder following his heart-to-heart with Alex. Later, in the diary room, Paul shared, “I’ve had to choose me over everyone this entire game, because I know that they wouldn’t choose me over them. There’s nothing else I can do. I can’t help everyone. I can’t save everyone. I have to strip somebody else’s chances of winning for my own.”

Ultimately, Alex was evicted from the house and, in her post-eviction interview, she revealed to host Julie Chen what was really going on in her mind when she found out Paul had betrayed her. “I’m going to choke him, but I’m on national television, so I can’t. But that’s what I really wanted to do. I wanted to slap the crap out of him.”

Big Brother airs Sundays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m., and live evictions air on Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.

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