It’s been a long road, but we’re finally at the end! And yet, at the same time, I feel like the game just started yesterday. A lot has happened in the past couple months, and now we have a winner, but more on that in a moment.

First, we’ve got to get rid of one more house guest. Nick and Phil have won HoH and have nominated Cass and Tim for eviction. Who goes home hinges on who wins the Veto comp. It’s an interesting one too – a jury doll house has been set up in the back yard, with six “for sale” signs out front, each with the picture of an evicted house guest. The players have to find clues throughout the house and match them up with the evicted house guests. Each has three clues, for a total of eighteen. Each player has some issue getting through this challenge. Tim didn’t study, so he doesn’t know his stuff. Kelsey can’t find the last clue. Cassandra mixes up a few clues and wastes a few precious minutes trying to figure things out. And Nick can’t find the key to get to the balcony. After all is said and done though, Nick ends up winning the Veto, which was my worst nightmare. Dammit! I wanted Tim and Cassandra to go to the end, but that’s not going to happen, since Cass is the brothers’ target. They keep the nominations the same and Kelsey votes Cass out. Not shocking. She’d really tried to stay in the house, even trying to get Tim to sacrifice himself for her, but she just couldn’t pull it off.

The final HoH competition, as we all know, is in three parts. The first part is called Tip of the Iceberg. Players have to wade into freezing water to find puzzle pieces to create their path to the top of the iceberg, and once that’s complete, they have to grab their mug and collect water from the lake and transport it to the tube at the top of the berg to fish out their flare. This competition is a very close one between Phil and Tim, but in the end, the brothers win. Dammit. I was really pulling for Tim.

The second part, called Holy Craps, involves flipping giant dice with pictures of house guests and competitions on them to solve questions on the poker chips. Both Tim and Kelsey do well in this challenge, until they get to the last question, in which they have to name, in order, people who were evicted on an even day. It takes Kelsey about half an hour just to finish this question, which really upsets her, but it’s nothing compared to Tim forfeiting the game when he can’t get the last question right. Great. I was really hoping he could have won this one, but Kelsey pulled it off.

The final question is a typical A vs B quiz about the evicted jury members. Phil makes a valiant effort, but Kelsey has been studying this stuff since the beginning, and she easily wins the challenge. So Kelsey is our final HoH! Tim puts up a bit of a fight, trying to save himself, but it’s all for nothing, as Kelsey evicts him instead of the brothers, possibly costing her the big money.

Most of the final episode is filled with flashbacks, which I fast forwarded through. We’ve already seen this stuff! Who cares! But they need to fill two hours, so we get flashbacks. The jury members vote (including Ramsey, who gets to vote on Canadians’ behalf), and then we’re treated to more flashbacks. More fast-forwarding.

Finally though, we get to the vote! I thought for sure that Kelsey was going to win, but boy was I wrong! Not only did she not win, but she lost by a LOT. As in, the only two people voted for her were Jared and Raul. So the brothers win Big Brother Canada 4! They’re both very emotional about the win, obviously, which is kind of endearing. I didn’t want either of these two to win the game – I wanted it to be Cassandra and then, when that couldn’t work, I wanted it to be Tim. Dammit, Tim! Why did you have to forfeit the challenge! But that’s just what he does. He’s the wild card, so he has to be unpredictable, which seems to suit him just fine. He’s already won a season, so maybe it just wasn’t as important to him.

Some thoughts on the season:

I really liked the idea of some of the wild cards. Much better than the twists we were promised in the American version that never panned out. I loved having the international house guests in the game, and I wish they’d do something like that more often. And as much as I disliked the brothers in the end, I thought their twist was interesting, and I say good on the show for not splitting them up at some point.

I was, however, not a fan of the wild card involving Loveita and Kelsey. I’d much rather have seen someone from the jury come back into the house. I know it’s been done before, but I definitely think it’s more interesting to see someone come back in when you’ve known them for longer than a few weeks. I would have loved to have seen Mitch make a comeback, for instance, because we got more of a chance to get to know him than Loveita or, at that point, Kelsey. I also was not a fan of the fact that the house guests got to decide who came back into the house. I fully believe that Kelsey came back because Raul wouldn’t have accepted any other answer, and it had to be unanimous. If they’d made it a competition or if Canada had been able to decide, I think it would have been more interesting. Even if they’d had a regular vote, it would’ve made for better game play.

I do wonder where they would have stuck another double eviction if Ramsey hadn’t left the house. Or would the double have been a triple? I’ve never seen that before, but it would be interesting.

Joel’s face when Cassandra joined the jury made my heart break a little, and it broke a little more when he saw that Tim had been evicted too. He looked so disappointed and upset that his alliance members had been voted out, and I just wanted to reach through my TV and hug him. I feel you, Joel. I wanted one of them to win too.

I do not understand the obsession with Jared. He wasn’t a competition beast, and I thought he acted childishly numerous times throughout the season. I wonder if he and Kelsey are going to try to make a go of a relationship. I can’t see him being too happy when his friends and family tell him just how close Kelsey got to the brothers, especially Phil, who I thought seemed kind of slimy when he was flirting with her. I’d love to see an update a year from now to see what happened to them.

I’m really not sure why everyone in the jury thought that the brothers were that much better than Kelsey. Yes, they were decent at challenges in the second half of the season, but I definitely don’t think they had anything over her strategically. This is why the final two was such a letdown – because neither finalist was especially good at the game, really. Kelsey definitely portrayed herself to be much more of a friendly person than I think she actually was this season, and maybe that turned some of the jury members against her. Maybe, given the two choices left at the end, the brothers were sort of the lesser evil. I have no doubt that if Cassandra or Tim had been in the final, one of them would have won it all. So close, guys! I weep for you.

I can’t wait to see what they’ll have in store for us next year! It’s a long way off, but hey, I’ve got three seasons of BBCan to catch up with before then. Here’s hoping we’ll be able to see some people come back for another season at some point soon. All-star seasons are my favourite. Or, they could do what they did on the American one and bring in a team from Amazing Race Canada. That would be fun too!

Well, that’s it for this season! Let me know your thoughts on the finale, of the season and on the winners! We’ll see you in the summer for the American version!

– This article and other Big Brother-related stuff by the estimable Rebecca Griffin