By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 10
You may recall that Helen nominated Aaryn and Kaitlin, which was a total no-brainer move. Now, however, Helen says in the Diary Room that while Aaryn is her target, she is also the most hated person in the house and thus might be worth keeping around in favor of a bigger target. Helen, no! That's how people like Rachel end up winning! Kaitlin DRs about all the awkward "sympathy hugs that no one wants to give you," but she's determined to win the Veto. Aaryn says she expected her nomination because she's a "straight shooter" and a "strong personality," which are words that mean you can't say "asshole" on CBS.
Kaitlin talks to Jeremy, who has come down from Sunday's euphoria over not being nominated himself, because now he's decided that Elissa is going to win MVP and nominate him again. Kaitlin cheers him up by saying everyone wants Aaryn gone, and if he just wins the Veto, he can save both himself and Kaitlin and they're all good. Until week, when they're yet another vote down.
Helen starts calling meetings with her peeps to figure out how they're going to try to steer the MVP nomination this week. She starts with McCrae and Amanda, telling them how Howard confessed to voting to keep Nick. So now she's thinking they'll take another run at backdooring Jeremy this week. Helen considers Spencer as the MVP pawn, but Amanda points out Spencer wouldn't beat Jeremy in the PoV, because she's gunning for Howard. She seems to think he's the second biggest threat in the house. I think these people are confusing size with ability, because so far Howard has lost at everything. Mostly on purpose, but still. Helen confirms with McCrae whether Howard was in the Moving Company, which of course he was, and now Helen knows for sure Howard lied about it. So that seals the deal for Howard to take on the pawn role and McCrae volunteers to pass the word to Elissa. And Helen decides to shake down Spencer to find out what he'll confess to.
That answer turns out to be "everything," making Howard the last member of the Moving Company still in the house who hasn't come clean. Helen says she was wondering when Spencer would start telling the truth, and considered nominating him. She adds that Howard denied it, and starts crying again, saying she looks like an idiot for having trusted Howard and Spencer more than anyone else in the house. "No you don't," Spencer lies. Helen DRs that the crying is strategic, just like at home to get her kids to do what she wants. Wow, better hope they're not watching. She agrees to give him a second chance and Spencer DRs that now Howard needs to confess as well. He also says that to Howard, informing him that Helen knows everything, including that Howard lied to her. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to fix this one," Howard DRs. Hey, you broke it, you bought it.
By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 10
Someone goes into the Diary Room, and yep, Elissa is the MVP again, even though she barely got any air time this past week. She's pretty happy about it, again, though she's running out of ways to say it.
McCrae has indeed approached Elissa about nominating Howard. It's more like a suggestion coming from him, but when Amanda joins the conversation she starts making the hard sell, like Howard's the only option and it's already a done deal. Suddenly Elissa is annoyed that there was an MVP nomination strategy meeting and a decision made without her, not to mention the fact that now she has to be the one to do the dirty work. That last part didn't seem to bother her the first two times. Apparently she only likes secretly nominating other people to save herself… and when she's already safe that's just a pain
Howard visits the HoH room and admits to everyone in there -- Helen, Spencer, Andy, Elissa, Judd, Candice and Jessie -- about his part in the Moving Company. He regrets his association with the bully in that alliance (meaning Jeremy, of course) and swears his allegiance to them now. Helen makes with the waterworks again, asking if there's anything else he wants to tell them. He assures everyone that's it. Elissa decides this is the time to ask for a private audience with Helen, wanting to confirm that their alliance is real and that Helen isn't just using her for the MVP power. Helen smooths that over quickly and says they need to backdoor Jeremy. Elissa's on board with that part, but they need to figure out her initial nominee to make that happen. Or at least pretend to, since Helen already decided with Amanda and McCrae that it would be Howard. Elissa would rather ding Spencer, whom she doesn't like as much as she likes Howard, but Helen says they're going to need to sell that to Amanda and McCrae. Or -- in other words -- to Amanda. When those two join the conversation, along with Andy, Elissa remains resistant about nominating Howard, to Amanda's growing frustration. Basically Elissa resents being told what to do and Amanda resents people not doing what she tells them.
Time to select players for the PoV, which is preceded by the monitor showing who the MVP's nominee is. And it's Spencer, who isn't entirely surprised. He says both he and Howard tried to fix things with Helen and the others, "but apparently Howard did a better job than I did." Which Howard did, but too late and it was Elissa's decision, after all, which is what she tells us in the DR. So Spencer joins his fellow nominees Aaryn and Kaitlin at the front of the room with Helen. GinaMarie is selected as the first random player, and Jeremy DRs that even though he isn't nominated, he still wants to play for the Veto because he suspects (correctly) that he's being backdoored. The other player ends up being Candice, so Jeremy might actually be screwed, which we can tell by the excited smiles of all the women still on the couch. Helen names "Judd the Stud" as the host for the Veto completion, which should get her summarily evicted.
By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 10
After that, Helen takes Candice and Spencer up to her room and tells them to win the PoV so they can boot Jeremy. Spencer is relieved that he's not the target, but he still wants to win PoV to keep himself safe.
Downstairs, Jeremy, Aaryn and Kaitlin talk about their bleak prospects at the moment, though Aaryn thinks there's still a way to shift power back. "It's not over till it's over," Jeremy agrees dutifully on his way out. Kaitlin tells Aaryn that Jeremy's on his way out, and she's going to have to sit on the nominee couch to Jeremy. They whisper about one of them trying to win the Veto for themselves, meaning it would spell the end of Jeremy's game. "It would literally be the worst feeling in the world," Kaitlin says. I've always wondered what that feeling would be and now I know. In the DR, she outlines her plan for both her and Jeremy to stay in the house together. It requires someone to win the Veto and not use it so that Aaryn goes home. "Someone" being GinaMarie. This plan has a lot of ifs, Kaitlin. But she takes GinaMarie into the storage room and tearfully tells her about the plan to backdoor Jeremy and how it means GinaMarie has to win the Veto and not use it. That puts GinaMarie rather on the spot, since she's friends with Aaryn as well. Oh, the positions one finds oneself when one is friends with only nasty people!
Kaitlin's not done, either; she goes to Amanda to try to talk her out of the plan, appealing to Amanda's own showmance for sympathy. Amanda, unswayed, coldly warns Kaitlin that if she doesn't save herself she's going home. Kaitlin suggests Aaryn instead, whom Amanda dismisses out of hand because Aaryn's already weakened and vulnerable. In short, she makes a strong case for Kaitlin to use the Veto on herself if she gets the chance. Whether that's an empty threat or not.
The Power of Veto competition turns out to be one of those one-at-a-time deals, with each player heading outside one by one for a timed challenge. Candice goes first, DRing that she wants to protect herself and Howard, as well as boot Jeremy. The backyard has been partitioned into room-like areas, one of which has a wall hung with famous works of art that have the faces of the houseguests (and in one case the Zingbot) Photoshopped into them. To see that wall, each houseguest will need to hop on a trampoline, meaning they only get brief glances as they bounce up and down. And then they'll need to duplicate the collection on their own wall from a bin of matching paintings. The one who does it fastest wins PoV. Candice hits the button to start the timer, then begins by carrying all her paintings over before jumping on the trampoline to see what she needs to duplicate. She hangs them all in one run, but when she hits her button, three of them are in the wrong. As she discovers after a closer look, there are some duds in her collection with the faces swapped around. She quickly corrects the three wrong ones and gets it right.
By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 10
Aaryn's up , rushing through in a panic and ending up getting seven of the fifteen paintings wrong on her first try. By trial and error, she gets more right one or two at a time and finally finishes. And she's pissed about it.
GinaMarie's turn and she may not be all that motivated to win, since it'll but her in a position to have to choose between Aaryn and Kaitlin. But then she sees the portrait of Nick as da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (only from the chest up, sorry, GinaMarie) and is inspired to do her best for him. Like he cares. It takes her a couple of tries and a couple of turns on the trampoline, but she finishes, "By the grace of God and Nick." And the editors make the picture of Nick wink at us.
Spencer's first attempt is pretty bad, with paintings overlapping on his wall on the first try. The trampoline also turns out to be the big challenge for him, leaving him winded and sweaty. After he finally finishes, he flops into one of the chairs and admires the painting of himself wearing sunglasses as God from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. "I look bad-ass," he says, adding an additional layer of blasphemy.
is Kaitlin, who's trying to win herself some leverage to negotiate with Helen. Girlfriend is desperate, but that doesn't keep her from getting it wrong on the first several tries. Finally it's Helen, trying to complete her plan to Veto someone and make Jeremy the replacement nominee. She has a little trouble jumping and memorizing at the same time, leading to some wrong guesses. But when she finally finishes, she pants, "Jeremy, you gotta go home this week." Too late: we've already seen the portrait of George Washington with Jeremy's face, and the Nightmare Man is coming to us all.
Afterwards, the houseguests are assembled to see the results. Candice finished the task in eight minutes and forty-six seconds. GinaMarie did it in ten seconds more. Spencer's embarrassed by his time, 12:46, as the houseguests not playing giggle from the couch. Aaryn got it in nine minutes fifty, but Kaitlin has a commanding lead with 7:09. And she holds onto it when Helen's time is revealed to be 8:55. Kaitlin wins PoV. So much for Helen's plan. But now Kaitlin DRs that she's torn between saving herself and losing Jeremy, or forgoing the Veto and risking her own eviction. This is not a hard question, Kaitlin. It certainly wouldn't be a hard question for Jeremy.
After the ads, Jeremy DRs that he's going to "turn on the Cherokee charm and… get her to do what I need her to do!" Cherokees all over the nation are like, "Seriously, we don't even know that dude." In one of the bedrooms, Jeremy advises Kaitlin to pitch a Kaitlin/Jeremy pair to join Helen's alliance. "Crying might help," he adds. They decide their best move is to try to convince Helen to send home Howard. "Trust me, I've got this on lock," Kaitlin assures Jeremy. Jeremy is screwed.
By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 10
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