Big Brother season finale: And the winner is...

The inevitable didn’t happen. It was a season of little resistance for Paul Abrahamian. He entered the Big Brother house as a returning finalist playing against a group of star-struck newbies, was given three weeks of safety off the bat by fans, and not once was on the block for potential eviction. So it was no surprise when Paul made it all the way to the end of Big Brother’s 19th season.

But in a shocker even more surprising than final HOH Josh Martinez’s decision to evict partner Christmas Abbot and go against the far savvier Paul in the finale, the jury awarded the $500,000 prize to emotional roller coaster Josh. It was a somewhat stunning ending to an otherwise painfully predictable season.

The evening began with the first part of the final HOH competition, which included — and this is not a typo — unicorns farting in contestants’ faces. Paul won that phase, automatically advancing to part three and forcing Christmas and Josh to battle it out in round two.

Josh won that round, knocking down cardboard cutouts of evicted houseguests to answer corresponding quiz questions. That set up a final HOH competition between Paul and Josh in the traditional guess-how-jurors-answered-questions challenge, which was won by Josh.

That left Josh with the big decision as to whom to bring with him to the final two. And in a surprising move, he chose to evict Christmas and go up against Paul in the end. It turned out to be the right decision, as Josh then defeated Paul to be named the champion of season 19.

Our recap will be up shortly (UPDATE: read our recap of the finale here) and come back tomorrow for interviews with Julie Chen and the final three.