’Big Brother’s Big Yikes: Did Lying Jared Take Advantage Of Matt’s Deafness?

Like every reality TV show, Big Brother definitely has its fair share of arguments. Viewers love to see the houseguests thrown down with some rapid-fire words, and last night’s episode — Episode 20 — had the biggest knockdown, drag-out verbal showdown of the season. But imagine if you were literally in the middle of a heated conversation with major ramifications for the game — and you couldn’t hear it. Even worse, what if someone tried to hide their own lies under the cloak of your disability? That’s what happened to Big Brother houseguest, and former Deaflympian, Matt Klotz ahead of last Thursday night’s eviction ceremony. Only now, after seeing the argument in question finally air in Sunday night’s episode, do we know the context.

As revealed in Sunday night’s episode, there was a seismic shift in the house’s power dynamics mere hours before Thursday night’s eviction, where the house voted almost unanimously to evict Izzy. It all started when Cirie, Izzy’s closest ally, felt that something was up with Cory and Matt and asked Jared (her son, but no one in the house knows that) to go see where their heads were at regarding voting. Jared went to Cory and Matt and… well, this is where everything started to unravel.

In order to justify the check-in, Jared lied to Matt and Cory and said that Jag had said that they were flipping and planning on voting Izzy out. “Jag is telling me we’re going to keep Mama Felicia,” he said to Matt and Cory. Jared was looking directly at Matt when he said this. When Matt repeated it back to him, “Vote to keep Mama Felicia?” — Jared responded with a “Yeah.” Mind you, while Matt was born deaf, he is able to hear some with the help of hearing aids and he is an expert at lip-reading, even from a distance.

Matt and Cory were shocked to learn that Jag would tattle on them like this, and Cory couldn’t figure out what Jag would get from telling Jared about his attempt to blindside and evict Izzy after everyone had agreed to evict Felicia. That’s when, after even more back and forth, Cory went and brought Jag into the conversation. Cory told Jag what was going on, that Jared had been putting words in Jag’s mouth, and an incredulous Jag looked straight at Jared and asked, “Did I ever do that?” To which Jared immediately responded, “No. Never said that to me.”

Has there ever been a more lying liar to lie on Big Brother? Cory and Matt catch each other’s eyes and are like, “WTF?” Cory said, “Didn’t Jared just come in and tell us that an hour ago?” Matt added, “You said that to me.” And then Jared, having caught on to the fact that he was caught in a lie, says, while pointing directly at Matt, “You must have misunderstood.”

Cory’s reaction says it all.

Pointing to the deaf person and saying, “You must have misunderstood” in order to cover up a lie that you and everyone else in the room now knows you told. Viewers are reminded of it too, because the clip of Jared lying to Cory and Matt an hour ago is replayed.

The argument continued in circles for a bit more, but Matt did not forget what Jared tried to pull. In fact, he went and told Blue — Jared’s closest ally!

Matt tells Blue that Jared tried to take advantage of his disability #BB25 pic.twitter.com/H9PnkB3NI1

— Bradley Michael (@Aleut1) September 15, 2023

“I’ve caught him multiple times lying now,” Matt told Blue, recapping what I just recapped. “He’d take advantage of me because I have a disability, basically. And Jag was pissed and everyone saw it happen when we were all meeting today. He reversed his words and said, ‘You misheard me.'”

This isn’t the first time that Jared’s gotten into trouble, at least with fans. Two weeks ago, fans caught Jared using the R-word on the live feed — an incident that was completely left out of the edited narrative. Big Brother itself has been put on blast by fans for its treatment of Matt, particularly having him compete in a listening challenge. It should be noted that the Big Brother producers have spoken about the changes they made in order to accommodate Matt.

The next new episode of Big Brother Season 25, wherein the houseguests will play for the Power of Veto, airs on Wednesday, September 20 at 8 p.m. ET.