Saturday. Previously on Big Brother 3: The malodorous Josh was spared eviction when Tonya was bounced out on her...well, that one's just a little too easy. Roddy became HoH after guessing the weight of eleven people to within twenty-five pounds. You know, there are carnivals where you can make money doing that. In fact, if you can muster an adequate "huzzah," I think you can do it at the Renaissance Festival and meet your fill of chicks who think crossbows are groovy.
Black-and-white (actually blue-and-white, as was recently pointed out to me) footage of Tonya's eviction blares away on Big Brother Rehash-o-Vision (patent pending). Again with the rip-Orff music, complete with Mournful Chimes of Banished Hooters, Gone, Gone Forever! Chiara boo-hoos in the diary room about how deep and meaningful was her love for Tonya. Of course, I also consider myself very close to all the women I have ever allowed to smear me with peanut butter in an intimate manner, so I understand just how she feels. Josh tells us that he's shocked that he's still in the house. I'm sort of shocked also. You know how sometimes there's a bug in your bathroom sink, and even though you feel guilty, you turn on the water to make it disappear down the drain, but it just circles and circles and circles and appears to be trying to engineer an escape worthy of a 1950s prison-break drama? That bug isn't nearly as reluctant to leave as Josh. Or as likely to spread disease. Amy, meanwhile, is "tickled pink" at the eviction of Tonya. She didn't hug her, didn't say goodbye, and as usual, doesn't give a rip about anyone except herself, so it's all good with her! Yee-ha! Whatever, Tupelo Barbie. I'll look forward to your departure. When poetic justice finds you, may it have many stanzas and a complex meter. And onomatopoeia. Bzzzt!
The blue-and-white houseguests return to the living room after escorting Tonya out the door, and then we finally escape our blue period for a while, although the slam to color is not associated with any particular important event, as has sometimes happened in the past. Josh continues pacing. Kiki, in bed, sobs the pathetic honks of the broken-hearted fugitive from justice.
Josh is currently considering lifting his tail and spraying Lisa, because his laser-sharp math skills (he mastered "five" this week, just in time!) have led him to the unavoidable conclusion that she voted to evict him. He says that he never trusted her anyway, as we get a hilariously distorted shot of Lisa, eating something, in a grotesque overhead close-up that evokes that subtle convenience-store-security-video ambience. He knows that he's still in grave danger (is there any other kind?), what with the fact that everyone in the house hates him more than athlete's foot and everything. He and Amy retreat to the Aquarium Room for a powwow, and if you want to know how I concluded that she is exactly the obnoxious, pointless twit she appeared to be in the first episode, despite her flashes of funny, her buddying-up with Josh did the trick quite nicely. He thanks her for her "support." Josh then goes out into the living room and works Jason over for a while, talking again about the having of backs and the loyalty and all that. Josh also tells Jason how much it meant to him -- just speaking from a purely vermin-to-virgin, Judeo-Christian viewpoint -- to have Jason's vote, or non-vote, or whatever. Oh, good. Now Jason is a twit, too. Not to mention the fact that they are still doing that dorked-out Big Brother Shake thing. Let me know when they build the treehouse with the "KEEP OUT" sign and start hoarding G.I. Joes.
Talk between Josh and Chiara. I have no use for either of them, so this is a good time for me to crack my knuckles and make other ergonomic adjustments. Ah, that's better. "The guys have to understand that the women cannot be trusted," Josh tells us. He twitches as the faces of his old girlfriends flash against the blank screen that is the frontal lobe of his brain.
Marcellas explains that he's unhappy about the presence of Josh, which I think is a little easier for him to take because I think he's very nearly jaunty about the absence of Tonya. I don't think he plans to miss her from a personal standpoint. And since the pool isn't really deep enough for anyone to require a flotation device, they should be fine without her from a practical standpoint. Also, she was a fire hazard. Marcellas goes on to say that he and Josh have "made an uneasy peace," after Josh kept himself in the house through "sheer will." No, actually, Josh kept himself in the house because he was such a pitiful dink that Roddy thought it was advantageous just to let him hang around, and because Tonya went all Fisher-Price My-First-Diva on Amy and Marcellas in front of everybody, and because Amy let envy get the better of her. Sheer will was really not the issue. We see Danielle tell Chiara that the reason she voted to boot Tonya was that in addition to the confrontation Tonya had with Amy, Danielle doesn't have any respect for Tonya "as a mother." Well...I don't either, but I don't think that's why Danielle voted her out. (The folded-cuff denim pedal-pushers Tonya was wearing during the confrontation with Amy would have been a good reason for voting her out, though.) The moral reasons for voting are getting a bit silly. Nobody wants to say "This was my vote, and my reason was that I thought it increased my odds of winning $500,000, so if you're mad at me, you can go suck soap." That would have been cool. Chiara whines for a while that Tonya never should have been nominated at all. The injustice! The pathos! Oh, my darlings, the very Susan Hayward of it all! Danielle diary-rooms that it's all about the money, better them than her, and so forth. Oh, look at that. She wasn't moralistic about the boot, and I didn't actually like that any better. She also refers to the money as "five hundred Gs," which annoys me. That does it. Everyone sucks.
Blue-and-white Roddy wins HoH. He says that he was really happy to win, and it's a "freebie" for him this week. This is actually his first strategic misstep, in my opinion. I think Will was on to something in ducking HoH all last season. Any time you're HoH, you inevitably wind up with at least one person in the house when it's all over whom you nominated but didn't successfully evict. In fact, the way it is now, with the veto, you potentially have two such people. I'm not sure about putting yourself in the position of nominating three people of the nine that remain other than yourself.
Danielle diary-rooms that Roddy is a "huge threat." Said huge threat wanders into the HoH room to check out the goods. I'm distracted by what he's wearing, because it's sort of an unusual choice. He's got a black long-sleeved shirt on and these tan low-slung flares...I can't decide if I like it or hate it. It looks like the way your uncle who you secretly thought was kinda hot would have dressed in about 1972. As Roddy and Eric check out the room, Eric tells us that having Roddy as HoH is swell for him, because Roddy is his "#1 ally in this game." Hey, look! They've given Roddy a Beethoven CD in the HoH room, among other things. Tragically, it's not the Fifth, because if he had been able to do that idiot nomination ritual while blaring "DUM-DUM-DUM-DUUUUUM!" from his headphones, that would have brought the whole thing to new levels of synthetic drama. "I'm here this week," Roddy diary-rooms. "I have a pretty good idea who I want out, who I'm not afraid to offend, and who I need to solidify support from." Now, like him or hate him, that is how a strategist talks. He and Chiara sit on the hammock discussing how he feels "like a king," and then she tells us that she, too, was thrilled that it was Roddy who won. Counting Josh, who reacted with obvious excitement, that makes three people who think the idea of Roddy as HoH is the most bestest thing ever! Yay, Roddy is HoH! And he's going to make recess longer and make the teachers give less homework!
Amy looks right into the camera and says, "Chi-whore-a hates me..." Ugh. Go away, Amy. Pack up your cheese and your tiara and your Puritanical declarations of moral superiority and go home. Chi-whore-a, indeed. When you let competition over men drive you to call women they like better than you "whores"? Step back. God. She snots that Roddy should make his own decisions and not let "other people" influence him. You know, because of petty personal issues. This is, of course, nothing like the way Amy tried to bribe Josh to nominate Chiara because of petty personal issues. Yep. Totally different.
Outside, Chiara leans on Roddy to put Amy up, but he's relatively tight-lipped about his plans. "The bloodbath is gonna start," he says gravely. Yeah, yeah, and then the dead feed upon the flesh of the living, and the screams of the innocent haunt you in your dreams...just another season spectating at America's favorite real-time psychology experiment. I've got the Junior Mints -- who's got the air horn?
Marcellas and Danielle meet in the Big Bed Room. He asks her if she thinks there's a chance Roddy will put him up, and she says yes. He diary-rooms that he's afraid he'll be put up by Roddy to avenge Chiara's tooth-gnashing about Tonya's early exit. He tells Danielle that he made it very clear to Roddy that he thinks "the people who should be nominated are the people who are threats." So much for nominating people because they're not making the game "beautiful," huh? There is no beauty left. It's all filth, I tell you! Filth and deceit and peanut butter!
In the HoH room, Roddy bends over to put what I think is his laundry basket behind his big chair, and this shot is basically there for you to appreciate those pants and all they have to offer, if you know what I unfortunately mean. I apologize. I think the problem is that his butt is actually less butt-like than most of the rest of these people's entire beings, so I am oddly drawn to it. Gerry comes into the room, appearing to have been summoned. He has a seat and closes the door. Roddy asks him whether, if Gerry isn't nominated this week, he'd be willing to consider himself to owe Roddy a favor. Gerry says yes. Roddy tells him that in that case, Gerry's not going to be put up. Translation: Roddy was never going to nominate Gerry, but he knew Gerry thought he might, so why not get mileage out of it while you can? No point doing this routine with anyone who feels safe (it would only alienate them), or with anyone you're going to nominate, but with the people you consider and decide not to put up? Yeah, this is how you play them. Outside, Marcellas compares Gerry to the "prison bitch," going around to the various big guys and begging for mercy. It's so appropriate that he makes this snotty comment while Amy sits there brushing her hair a hundred times. I've lost all the love for them. If there's anything worse than tacky people, it's tacky people who think they have a monopoly on class. He goes on to say in the diary room that he won't do what Gerry is doing -- go and "beg for [his] life." He's "bigger than that." Certainly his opinion of himself is bigger than that. It's looming over me right this minute, panting and drooling.
Josh and Amy (who certainly do fill a room with their gargantuan egos) sit and discuss what Roddy is going to do. Josh says he feels safe at last, and they both hope Gerry will be nominated. They're both stupid, so they're boring. !
Roddy and Eric talk in the HoH room about the fact that they like Josh, but that he's so paranoid that he's grating on them. No, he's really grating. He's grating like a Pampered Chef mandolin. Just then, the Grater comes in to sit with them. He's wearing little slide-style bedroom slippers, which make him look like he stole Ward Cleaver's feet. He thanks Roddy and Eric for helping him stay in the house, and talks about how great it will be for the three of them to be "the three." Roddy diary-rooms that he's keeping his strategy close to the vest, because alliances are shifting constantly, and "people are starting to defect," so he's making "the best deal possible" and "playing for the very last week of this game." I actually think that's the biggest challenge of the whole game -- figuring out how to balance your short-term interest in staying in the house this week with your long-term interest in allowing people to vote for you in the very, very end if you're one of the final two, because that will limit the amount of outright backstabbing in which you'll want to engage.
Danielle teaches ab class. She laughs her ass off at Gerry, who's trying to exercise in the pool. Well, that's good, because God knows, the one thing a really skilled fitness instructor does is mock the efforts of everyone who isn't already in shape. I have news for you, Bitchard Simmons: he's the one guy you should probably admire most for being willing to do this on national television and in front of a bunch of twenty-five-year-old hardbodies, so you might dial back the level of contempt just a smidge. Everybody agrees that Gerry has lost some weight, although this doesn't stop them from laughing at his efforts to work out. Oh, how fair. You know, I heard something said the other morning during the episode of Happy Days that was on while I was ironing my favorite pants, and it's been with me ever since: "It is time to put an end to the tyranny of creeps." Amen to that.
Monks sing on the soundtrack as we are introduced to Roddy. The theme of this segment is that Roddy is The Thinker. Of course, in this house, anyone who can speak in sentences and zip his fly without a tool kit, a Sherpa, and a schematic drawing is likely to come across as The Thinker, but it appears that Roddy has indeed impressed everyone with his diverse body of knowledge on topics such as weather patterns, parables, and herds of buffalo. No, really. ["Which makes me think that Roddy should have applied to appear on Jeopardy! rather than Big Brother." -- Wing Chun] "He just got a hell of a lot more out of college than I did," Eric says. Hee. Lisa says she hopes other guys learn that "it's good to...know something besides how many beers are in a six-pack." I'm taking that as intentionally funny, because if I don't, it will make me cry. Furthermore, they also seem to find Roddy amusing, and Jason thinks of him as an "older brother." Later, Jason, Josh, and Roddy sit in the kitchen eating ice cream. "This moment right now is arguably the best moment of my life," Roddy says. Wow, I hope not. If you have never had a moment of your life that was better than a moment involving Josh, then I tend to think you have spent a fair amount of time tied up in a closet being gnawed by rats. Marcellas, meanwhile, has a huge crush on Roddy, and gives him a manicure. Marcellas diary-rooms that all he wants now is to win the money and have Roddy write his life story. Ha! "That would be the amazing moment! That would be like Marcellas hitting the lotto!" he gushes. Later that night, Roddy broadly propositions Marcellas, but Marcellas and the Big White Robe poutily turn him down. "Kiki would scratch my eyes out," he says sadly.
Deeee, da da da deeeee...Okay, now I am convinced that this music is being used to intentionally hysterical effect, and that makes it much easier for me to take. Again, it's Roddy and Chiara in the hammock, liking each other. Chiara diary-rooms, however, that Jason also holds "a special place in [her] heart." The music slams to a vigorous tango (which is actually pretty funny), and now she's lying in the hammock with Jason, attempting to corrupt him. He tells us that he's never met anyone quite like her, and I think it's safe to say that's probably the case. Amy busybodies that Chiara's being "all over Jason" annoys her. Because it is totally her business, after all. Shut up, Amy. ["Eh. It annoys me too, and I'm not even there." -- Wing Chun] As Chiara fiddles with Jason's toes, he comments to her, "I've probably never had a girl play with my feet." So if you're worrying that Jason doesn't encourage this whole thing that goes on between him and Chiara, you can pretty much put it down right there, because nobody tied him down and forced him to make that remark, which had no purpose except to encourage her. So he's doing just fine. He diary-rooms that some of the things she says make him "turn fifteen shades of red." Of course, if you haven't seen or read about the live feeds, this remark will not make complete sense to you; suffice it to say that probably the major thing you get from the feeds that you don't get from the show is that Chiara has an extensive and extremely explicit vocabulary that she has a way of using to extremely distasteful effect. Remember that girl at slumber parties who just had to tell you the story about her older sister, and how she and her boyfriend did this THING in his CAR where he...and then she...? Yeah, she's that girl. And she still does it, unfortunately, lo these many years later. Anyway, Jason points out that Chiara says things at other times that are "wonderful" and make him feel terrific and cool. Back in the hammock, they chat some more about sex, and he completely and totally plays along and flirts right back with her, which is good to see, because it would sort of suck if she were actually victimizing him.
More of Jason, Spokesperson for Virgins Everywhere. Danielle asks him whether the girl he marries has to be a virgin. He pretty much tells her that he would prefer it, but if the girl is cool enough, he's not going to pass her up because of "a mistake she made," and that's kind of the big ick. He saves it, though, by turning to Chiara and snarking, "Over and over and over again." Ha! Chiara in the diary room: "There's no better person to have a crush on me than him." Gosh, that's not how I was thinking their relationship worked at all, but...I don't claim to understand these people very well. I could be wrong.
And now, the Second Greatest Love The World Has Ever Known. Eric and Lisa play chess outside. "So, you think I'm cute?" Lisa chirps. Oh, my God, where did she get the Betty Boop voice? That's horrifying. Anyway, Eric says, "You're all right." "You're not too bad yourself," she chirps even more chirpily than she chirped a minute ago. I guess if I'm learning the Art of Boys from the women on this show, I'm going to have to add "sucking helium" to "abandoning banter" on my to-do list. Eric diary-rooms that he wasn't expecting to hook up with anybody, but hey! Here he is. Hooked up. Go figure. Hilarious quasi-porn music wocka-wockas on the soundtrack as they play in the kitchen, cuddle in the pool, and exchange...Meaningful Conversation! They smooch, and then we go to the more serious section of the score that comes from the portion of the porn movie where someone dies in a tragic pool-cleaning accident. Eric and Lisa are snuggled up in bed in night-vision green-and-white. There are a few kind words exchanged, and then the soundtrack switches to the song Chris Isaak's cousin recorded in his garage six months after "Wicked Game." I really can't bear to describe the entire bed scene, because it is so...well, boring and non-sexy. Essentially, she asks whether she's turning him on by lying there in bed with him, and he says yes, and she apologizes if she accidentally grabs anything of his under the covers. I'm sorry to say that I have just captured, relatively accurately, the level of sophistication and romance. Oh, and she mentions that she can have orgasms from having her navel touched. Somewhere, folks, I swear there's a bottom of the barrel. You'll hear a scraping sound when we finally reach it. We are not, apparently, there yet.
Thank God that's over.
Oh, wait, it's not over. Now we have to hear that Eric has a girlfriend at home that Lisa should know about. But he doesn't apparently like the girlfriend that much, what with the sleeping with somebody else on national television and everything. Well, goodness, that's nice. He tells Lisa about it, and she's totally cool with it. 'Cause why wouldn't she be? Whee! I can't tell you how liberating it is to hate everyone.
More interminable peanut-butter-and-jellyaching, and then it's time for the food competition. Those in charge of this fiasco seem to realize that the food competitions have been rather lame, so in order to add craziness and excitement, they have introduced...big pieces of foam! Ho-ho-ho, big pieces of foam are always good for a laugh! You can't not have fun in the presence of big pieces of foam! The idea is that each piece stands for something (like Meat or Vegetables or whatever), and you drop the pieces of foam into a plastic slot until no more will fit. No, really, that's it. That's the whole thing. It's kind of like Plinko for Morons. And if you know how cerebral Plinko is under normal conditions, I'm sure you know what a meaningful distinction that really is. They end up with meat, poultry, seafood, cheese, sweets (including alcohol), condiments, and a "mystery prize." Cardiac surgeons across America make that face where you pull the corners of your mouth down over your teeth and wrinkle up your nose. Later, they will sleep fitfully, imagining Roddy's chipper-coach voice saying, "Tonight for dinner, we're having steak, with a side of chicken, and a salad -- made of cheese, ketchup and tuna!" But the really big news, from a marketing perspective, is that the "mystery prize" turns out to be...delicious product-placed Subway sandwiches! Wouldn't you like one, right now? They get to eat them for lunch all week! And talk about how delicious they are! Eric manages to specifically pimp the ultra-trendy Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki, which he informs us is "the bomb." (I'm a Red Wine Vinaigrette girl these days, myself, although I suspect my arteries still contain remnants of the BMTs and Spicy Italians I favored in college.) Jason points out that these delicious Subway sandwiches will provide him and his compatriots with needed bread and vegetables to sustain them during the coming days of hardship. He didn't even mention all the scrumptious nitrates and salt! Those tasty Subway sandwiches sure are nutritious! On the other hand, Josh reveals that he used to work in a Subway, which implants in my brain a permanent image of roast beef covered with honey mustard and body hair, so it's ultimately a wash for the marketing department. I guess they'll have to keep hauling Jared out of the Habitrail in which they store him between campaigns.
Okay, I've seen a lot of weird things on television, but little lately that compares to this. It turns out that Eric talks in his sleep. Not murmuring, and not an occasional "muh" like everyone does. This is full-on talking. It may be clearer than he is when he's awake. Here are some of the things he says: "They put one in the waterbed, but...What? In the ocean?" "My tough toes tingle." "Oh. Oh, really?" "At some point in time, that peanut butter's lined up. There can only be one clump of peanut butter." (God, thank you for not showing us any portion of that dream, CBS.) "Marcellas kissed me on the cheek the other day, you know." "Dang! Nice job, guys! Those guys are like ambidextrous, freaking...Nadia Comaneci, or whatever the hell that...unless these guys are working on the side." (This one makes Lisa laugh.) "Good old ass grab." "Eric, you are a freak show." I'm not sure which of those comments I like best, but I think it's a toss-up between "my tough toes tingle" and "good old ass grab." Interestingly, Eric asleep makes about as much sense as Monica did when she was awake.
And now Gerry, Annoying Quote Guy. It turns out that Gerry has sort of a weird and annoying quality of quoting Shakespeare and other sources, sometimes repeatedly. The editors are out to get Gerry, because this sequence makes him look like quite the buffoon. He mangles a quote, and then another one, and then he uses the same one three times in a row. Josh diary-rooms how bad Gerry is to listen to, and the Audiologists of America verify instantaneously that Josh is the holder of a certificate from their How To Speak In a Lilting, Mellifluous Manner program, so he is quite the authority. Lisa says that Gerry "quotes whatever comes out of his mouth." I run again for that English-Lisa/Lisa-English Dictionary. Gerry says three times that the basis for all humor is cruelty. Shout-out! Then he interrupts during a chat among the women to say, "If a man is alone in the forest and he says something, is he still wrong?" Now, see, the girls don't get this, because he doesn't say it right. (And because it's stupid.) (And because they're stupid.) It's supposed to be more like, "If a man says something in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, is he still wrong?" I don't have it quite right either, but that's the general idea. Get it? It's the tree joke. Wocka-wocka, Gerry is here all week. Unfortunately.
Music of intrigue, as everyone sits around thinking about strategy. Or possibly about those delicious Subway sandwiches! Josh sits down with Roddy who, damn him, is in jeans and bare feet again, and now he's got a hockey jersey on and he's eating cereal, so I'm so firmly entrenched in that Sunday-afternoon domestic vibe that I've already written him a list of chores. Josh starts in about how Chiara and Lisa went "against the group" by voting Josh out instead of Tonya. Wasn't Tonya in the group also? Who appointed Josh -- as a nominee -- the decisionmaker about which Goober was to be preferred? Anyway, he spews vitriol for a while about the disloyalty of the girls, not noticing that -- hello? -- Chiara is sort of Roddy's girlfriend, for better or worse, and in my experience, badmouthing a guy's girlfriend is not the best way to get him to come around to your way of thinking. Josh diary-rooms that "the girls are in it for themselves" (Josh, of course, is in it for the Make-A-Wish Foundation), and goes on to say that "you don't reward dissenters. You punish them." In short, he tries to convince Roddy to put Lisa and Marcellas on the block and kick Lisa out, and then Chiara will be a good and obedient Goober (and Roddy can continue with the canoodling for a while longer, if you read between the lines). Josh takes deep breaths, recalling the intoxicating scent of the perfume worn by that girl who wouldn't go to the prom with him. If you watch Josh in this scene, he will really unnerve you. He's got a seething thing going on that's really quite creepy. "That's interesting," Roddy says mildly, because it's not good alliance politics to say, "Oh, go twiddle your diddle, you misogynist fool." Furthermore, I am tempted to attribute at least some of Josh's anger toward Lisa to the fact that she's sleeping with Eric instead of with him as he obviously originally planned. In that case, it is interesting to note that although Amy didn't get Roddy and wound up hating Chiara, Josh didn't get Lisa and hates her directly. Write your own five-page paper on the relevant sexual politics here.
Gerry and Marcellas have a dull chat to the effect that Roddy is sure to make a strategic and well-considered decision. They talk about the fact that, from their perspective, the most important thing is to get after "the couples," because they're in the process of solidifying into a foursome that will have an awful lot of power in a short time.
Amy tells us that she's optimistic about Josh's report that he has a secret plan that would keep Amy safe for a while. Josh promises her that it's "brilliant." Amy continues that if Roddy nominates her, it will "look like he fell prey to outside influences like Chi-whore-a." Good grief, Amy, graduate from the tenth grade already, would you? Josh, in the diary room: "I can get Amy to do whatever I want. She will vote the way I tell her to vote; if she gets Head of Household, she will nominate who I tell her to nominate." You know, I once knew of a college dorm where there was a "Do Not Date This Guy" list kept by the girls in the building. I always thought it was a hideous idea, pretty much totally inconsistent with about five different abstract notions of fairness I have, but when I see guys who are as unsettling in the way they talk about women as Josh is, I start to understand why such lists are invented.
Josh goes to the HoH room and starts in on Roddy again about how Lisa "defected" and needs to get the boot. Roddy diary-rooms that Josh has a new theory as to who should be nominated "every fifteen minutes." Well, or he keeps wailing away at the same one every fifteen minutes, I guess. Josh diary-rooms that he wants Roddy and Eric to "stop thinking with their cocks and start thinking with their heads." Or start thinking with the squirming twelve-legged demons residing at the bases of their brains, living off their spinal fluid, the way Josh does. If I weren't so devoted to non-violence, I might suggest that Josh needs anger-management classes, in the form of being sucker-punched by members of the WNBA until he screams like a little girl.
Almost time for nominations. The music appears to be what you get if you turn the intro from Sinead O'Connor's "Jealous" upside down and remove all the interesting orchestration. Everyone stresses out. No one wants to be evicted, no one feels safe, yada yada. Roddy gives the usual "nominating people is the most devastating thing you can experience, aside from scurvy" speech. He pulls everyone into the house to hear what he has to say. And now, the endless and painfully boring nomination mumbo-jumbo, in which he stresses that he hopes everyone understands that he's a very, very nice guy. Because he is a very, very nice guy. Really. And don't you forget it. When all the keys have been plucked, the nominees are Marcellas and Amy. Roddy says that he nominated Amy essentially because she's selfish and nasty, and although she's capable of putting that aside for short periods of time and being a lot of fun, it ultimately doesn't change her underlying attitude, which remains that she is a little better and more important than everybody else. Now, I'll grant that the speech is extremely patronizing (he tells her how important it is to be a nice person, yecch), but I also think that it's pretty much right on, and that she deserved it, and that he means it, to a great degree. Roddy turns to Marcellas and says that he nominated Marcellas because Roddy knew that if he didn't, Marcellas would support Amy, and Roddy wants Amy voted out. Ouch. Probably the right move if that's what he wants, but that's gotta hurt both of them.
Later, Amy and Marcellas share the big chair in the diary room, bitching about being nominated. She's angry because it appears to be all about her, in a way other than the way she likes, while Marcellas is angry because people keep getting booted when they're supposed to be the "decoy." (Well, "keep" in the sense that it's happened twice.) "These people are horrible," he says gravely. "These people are awful." Oh, come on now. He did the same thing when he was HoH. Nominating people is part of the game; what exactly did he expect? He's crying now. For God's sake, Marcellas, pull your damn self together. I realize it's hard to be jerked from the power position to the chopping block, but it's not like you couldn't have seen this coming. It's always awfully difficult for me to sympathize with anyone who believes they've been wronged because they've been nominated. It's like going to a pancake breakfast and resenting the syrup.
Reactions continue. Roddy is nervous about Marcellas perhaps nabbing the veto and taking out Amy, and Josh is sad that he might lose Amy, whom he has cast as his personal marionette. Amy says she will "kill" to win the veto. Yawn.
Wednesday. Previously, the world continued spinning on its axis. But just barely.
Amy and Marcellas play cards, and she mutters that she knew she'd be nominated. "I'm not stupid," she drawls. More of her and Marcellas sitting in the diary room and bitching. Roddy comes out, sits down with Amy and Marcellas, and tells them he's sorry. He tries to make chatter with them. He says he may have "made it sound too harsh" in his nomination speech, but he was just speaking his mind and he hopes they understand. Amy complains bitterly in the diary room about Roddy, and about Chiara, and about...well, just about everything, because of course, nothing is ever Amy's fault. It's always everyone else's fault. Amy never does anything objectionable. Haven't you heard?-She's on the right side of the good-girl/bad-girl Impenetrable Wall of Puritanical Judgment! Don't worry if you missed it the first time. She'll tell you all about it -- four hundred thousand times a day. I couldn't be more done with Amy.
Roddy retreats to the HoH room, and Chiara comes in to see him, to the strains of provocative guitar twangs that can, quite frankly, mean only one thing. That's right -- cattle-rustling. But I kid. She crawls in bed with him and tells him what a good job he did with the nominations. Amy and Marcellas -- who aren't being petty and jealous at all -- sit in the diary room talking about how "manipulative" and "monopolizing" and "trashy" Chiara is. Oh, put it in a note, spray it with Love's Baby Soft, and stick it to her locker, Saved-By-The-Belle. Back in the HoH room, Roddy tells Chiara that he feels bad. He particularly feels like a prick for having said it was Amy's "time to go," and he's pretty much right for feeling that way. Chiara reassures him that he did fine. Of course, she's looking at the departure of Amy, who is the head cheerleader to her prom queen or the Minnie Mouse to her Daisy Duck or what have you, so she's not exactly winning any journalistic awards for objectivity. Chiara diary-rooms that she did have some input into the nomination decisions (what a surprise), and some Eric footage makes it even a little plainer: he says flat-out that Amy is getting the boot because of the "soap opera" between her and Chiara. Perhaps not strategic on Roddy's part, but not difficult to understand. Call a guy's girlfriend white trash, and he's not likely to want to be your friend. Live and learn, my little mint julep.
Marcellas talks about how personally Amy is taking her nomination, and someone in the editing room is not a big Amy fan, because they show endless footage of her here, lying on a bed in the Aquarium Room, literally stuffing handfuls of shredded cheese into her mouth. Now, don't get me wrong -- we've all had those moments. I'm not judging. (One of mine was in law school, lying on my couch, eating Häagen-Dazs, and watching, as I recall, Loveline.) But this is not flattering Amy footage. We knew she liked the cheese, but...damn. Marcellas comes looking for her and finds her and her cheese. "It's not the best image I've ever seen of you," he says dryly. "Amy, we really have to do this high-end." "I know, Marcellas," she says, and shoves some more cheese in her mouth. He gives her one last scolding, finally rouses her from her pouts and whey, and gets her to go outside with him.
Marcellas and Amy sit in the hammock together, and Roddy comes over and sits down with them. "Have I said I feel bad?" he asks. Amy says he has. There's a pause. "Roddy, we can't make this feel better for you, but you really need to go away from us," Marcellas says, waving his hand away. He refuses to "pretend like this is fine." Amy laughs hysterically, because acting like an ass to people who already obviously feel bad is quite possibly the funniest thing she has ever seen. ["I might question how bad Roddy actually feels. That initial 'Guys? I'm soooooooooooorry' didn't strike me as the soul of sincerity." -- Wing Chun] Seriously, coming from Marcellas, this is unbelievably unfair and hypocritical. You'll recall that Marcellas did precisely the same thing to Tonya after he nominated her -- went to her and forced her to tell him she understood why he nominated her and she wasn't angry. You'll also recall that he was lying, in that he told her he loved her and didn't nominate her for any personal reason, at the same he was diary-rooming that he'd rather get rid of Josh, but he didn't like her either. This moral high ground that Marcellas and Amy are trying to occupy is about ten inches underwater, so I hope they have their hip-waders. I certainly wouldn't watch this show without mine. Is this what he meant by "high-end"? Roddy basically tells him this -- that it's hard to believe Marcellas has already forgotten how crappy he felt when he had to make nominations. Roddy goes inside and tells Chiara and Lisa about it, and from the way he describes it to them, I really think he was intending to be sincere and was stung by the way they acted -- I mean, he does have that sort of Judd-Winick-esque way of acting all most-mature-guy-in-the-house, but...he sort of is, so I'm a bit more forgiving than I might otherwise be. He says unhappily that the one good thing to come out of it is that he no longer feels bad about putting Amy and Marcellas up for eviction. Sigh.
Of course, predictably, now that Marcellas has acted like an ass to Roddy in public, he goes to Roddy in private and -- wait for it -- demands that Roddy listen to his explanation. Sheesh. He basically bitches that he's afraid he'll get evicted, and that's all there is to it. It boils down to little more than "How dare you nominate me? I might get booted!" Welcome to the game, sweetheart. It's no different from what anybody else does any other week, except that it's you this time. Roddy reassures Marcellas that he truly doesn't intend to have Marcellas go, but he agrees with Marcellas that if Marcellas were to veto Amy, he'd probably send himself home. Marcellas wants to understand why Amy was nominated, and Roddy tells him again -- she's not a very nice person. Marcellas diary-rooms how unfair this all is, because of course nothing is Amy's fault. Amy's "not the one who's running around being evil." Right. Remember that Wall of Puritanical Judgment? Marcellas sort of believes in it, too. Interestingly, Roddy tells Marcellas that he intends to boot Josh at some point, and talks about the reasons he doesn't like Josh, and this seems to make Marcellas happy. Roddy annoyingly insists that Marcellas acknowledge that Roddy cares a lot about him. Marcellas laughs and giggles, but he doesn't really believe it. The most prominent thing in this scene, however, is Roddy's bald spot, which is so prominent, in fact, that it very nearly has orange cones around it and a guy waving flashlight sticks in its direction.
But enough about traumatic conversations and hair loss -- now, it's time to enjoy those delicious Subway sandwiches! Amy's sandwich (no one who grew up near Philadelphia would ever call those things "subs," ever, ever) has three kinds of cheese on it. Are you still enjoying the cheese joke? Because it never gets old, you know. You can't have enough of the cheese humor. "That's not just one little piece of food, that's a full lunch!" she says happily. Lots of Subway-eating ensues. They certainly do have the product placement cranked up to the North Pole.
And now, we get a lengthy sequence which is incredibly stupid in concept but very amusingly edited. The idea is that Tonya and Lori slept in the same spot in the Big Bed in the Big Bed Room, and now Marcellas is preparing to occupy that same spot. So now, everyone wonders whether that spot is cursed. Because two is a curse, you know. Marcellas is also nervous because his picture is on the same shelf with Lori's picture and Tonya's picture. He attaches actual importance to this. Hee, what a goof. Anyway, their explanations of how this bed might be cursed are underscored with that oo-woo-oo scary haunted-house music you can buy on a cassette tape at Walgreen's for three dollars anytime in October, and there are extra helpings of that mood-enhancing blue-and-white footage. There is also some effective use of the world's cheesiest scary camera effect, which is flashing back and forth between regular images and flipped-negative images, like lightning. Oooh, scary! The memory wall -- is it cursed? Marcellas -- is he sleeping in the Bed of the Damned? The editors -- are they bored out of their skulls?
So Chiara, as it turns out, enjoys nothing on earth so much as talking about her sex life. In great detail. And then talking about it some more. And then talking about it some more. Amy -- with Marcellas rolling his eyes behind her -- points out that Chiara has called herself a whore "on several occasions," although if you look at the clip they show of this phenomenon and look at the other footage in this segment that's from the same conversation, she certainly appears to be doing it sarcastically on this particular occasion. This, Amy claims, is the origin of Amy's lovely and oh-so-mature habit of calling her "Chi-whore-a." Oh, Amy, go suck a Georgia peach. Anyway, the boundaries-ignorant "Kiki" (ew) tells stories in the living room about having honey licked off her, and about group encounters, and about her ability to achieve orgasm, and about streaking, and so forth. She seriously could not be tackier if she were half-dried paint. Anyway, Amy is back on her patented high horse in the diary room, talking about how sad it was to realize that Chiara obviously has no self-respect. Unlike Amy, who is going to be a model of self-respect through this entire episode. Let's watch!
Marcellas, much as he loves Amy, tells us that he does not agree with the things Amy says about Chiara, and he lays it out straight that much of Amy's problem with Chiara, at the root of it, is that Amy wanted Roddy and Chiara got him. Which has been painfully obvious, but it's nice to see that even Amy's friends recognize what her true issue with Chiara actually is, and self-respect certainly has very little to do with it.
At any rate, Josh and Roddy (unsurprisingly) think Chiara should talk about sex just as much as she wants. Lisa just thinks she's a "free-spirited person," and Danielle thinks it's just for fun. Eh, I suppose. What did I take away from that segment? Chiara is stupid, and so is Amy, and neither of them is stupid in the way the other one thinks. It's all very baffling, which is not all that surprising when everyone is stupid, I guess.
In the Big Bed Room, Amy and Marcellas lie in the dark and talk. She doesn't want to leave, and he is still convinced that it can't possibly be that everyone actually wants to evict Amy, so he's continuing to overthink, wondering what the big secret plan is. Psst, Marcellas? They really don't like Amy. That's the secret plan. And now there is some talk of the veto, because Marcellas thinks the best way to spare Amy is for Josh to get the veto. Meanwhile, Roddy tells Josh that he told Marcellas that vetoing Amy would probably send Marcellas home in her place. One of Roddy's interesting strategies is that he often tells people the truth at times when they might not expect it. It's like the trickiest misdirection of all, because there's so much scheming that people don't notice that he's just telling them the truth a good four-fifths of the time. Josh says, "I can't expose myself as going against what Roddy's plan is," which I think is his way of saying he wouldn't use the veto if he got it. Just the sound of Josh's voice saying "expose myself," however, gives me such deep full-body shivers that I think my bones are cracked. In the Big Bed Room, Amy vows to veto Marcellas out. In the diary room, Marcellas vows to veto Amy out. On the basketball court, Josh takes strategy tips from Eric. Man, talk about the blind leading the blind.
And now, the one interesting storyline this show has going for it, which is that it turns out that Danielle and Jason have had a simple, low-key, two-person alliance going on from the beginning of the show. They haven't really done anything yet -- at this point, they're laying low and gathering intelligence. I have to give them both credit, because this is a better piece of play than I thought either of them really had in them. Danielle says that she aligned with Jason because he has "God on [his] side," which I find sort of an eye-roller, but other than that, this is sort of interesting. Jason, in particular, shows a side not previously evident. He's sharp enough to see that Chiara is Roddy's weakness, because she takes him out of the game, and puts him in "boyfriend mode." That's at least partly true. At any rate, Jason and Danielle do a lot of low-key whispering about their fear of Roddy and their intent to turn the Marcellas-Amy faction against the Roddy-Eric faction. Jason tells Danielle that as much as he likes Roddy, he thinks Roddy has to go because he's a threat, and that if Roddy were nominated, Jason would vote him out.
Cut (nice!) to Roddy, who diary-rooms that he trusts Jason completely. Oh, completely. "There's almost no chance that Jason is playing the game, and he's really not the person he's showing." Ha! "And if it is, I would be so in awe of him for pulling that over on us." Double ha! As arrogant as Roddy can be, I do appreciate the fact that he has respect for good play, even when it's not his own.
Danielle and Chiara chat. Of all the dumb and boring filler in this show, this is the dumbest, boringest, and fillerest. Basically, Miss Kiki goes on and on and on about how much she adores Roddy, and she pretty much gives it up to Danielle that she's reached the testing-his-last-name-with-yours phase, where you start wondering what kind of dad he would be. Ow. In a month? On television? Ick. They discuss the fact that Roddy is cute, smart, nice, and funny, and they have the "excuse me, since when do they even make that guy?" conversation. I know it well -- "I know they have that guy in the catalog, but I didn't know they actually carried him!" The other lowlight is that Chiara says, "I hope that Roddy and I's relationship continues outside of the house." Excuse me, "Roddy and I's relationship"? Well, I suppose that's what you have to expect from a girl who can't spell "oar."
And now it's time to reveal the winner of the America's Choice question, which was about which houseguest should get to take another houseguest of their choice to a private dinner. The winner is...Marcellas. He could pretend to drag out the suspense, but he's taking Amy, and everybody knows it. They chirp happily as he takes her hand and pulls her up off the couch. We see them get ready for their big date -- he dresses up, she curls her hair -- and then they enter the diary room, which is where dinner is being served. It looks nice, with flowers on the table and lots of seafood. They gossip and talk, and she drinks. And drinks. And drinks. Oh, Amy. She talks and talks and talks about herself, her nomination, her image...pretty much anything directly related to the amusement park that is Amyland is fair game. But you may not leave Amyland. There is no exit from Amyland. Amyland is locked from the outside, and only Amy has the keys. Marcellas tries to divert her at one point by telling her that he wants to go back to school -- hey, Amy, that's interesting! -- but she ignores him and starts talking about her bad luck with boys, yappety yap. Marcellas diary-rooms, somewhat painfully, about this issue. In short, he says that Amy doesn't take an interest in what he has to say, and it makes her hard to be close to. They toast themselves, but it's sad, both because this is their last week together unless the veto comes into play, and because Amy sort of spoiled it by getting drunk and acting like...well, herself. As I've said before, it's not that we haven't all done this, but it is a habit Amy's going to want to break at some point. She's going to look back on things like this and realize that however they would have gone, good or bad, she would have liked to have been there for them, and she wasn't.
Danielle initiates a night-vision conversation with Marcellas about the possibility of trying to create a group of five to work on ousting the couples if Amy leaves. This would mean bringing Josh and Gerry and Jason into the fold, as Danielle explains it. Marcellas is willing, and he says they need to "reconfirm Jason." Just then, as coincidence would have it, Jason walks in. Danielle puts on a marvelous show of telling Jason that she and Marcellas have been thinking about asking Jason to work with them. Isn't that swell? (Hee.) She "tells" Jason that they need to keep Gerry and Josh around as basically dead weight to throw at "the couples," as the Goobers are known now that Josh has been marginalized. Jason agrees, surprise of surprises. Ooh, Jason is definitely smooth.
Eric pumps iron in the yard. Chiara and Danielle sit in the hammock, and Chiara opines that the winner of the game in the end will be the strongest woman. She's advocating to Danielle a sort of "girl power" alliance, which of course doesn't fit into Danielle's scheme at all. Kikikins says that for strategic purposes, "the girls" are her priority, but in her underwear...er, "in her life," it's all about Roddykins. Chiara says that she and Roddy have "an understanding." Yeah, I've heard about these kinds of understandings, my dear, and I think you almost had one, right up until you started naming the children of your fantasy marriage. Lisa tells us she agrees that the girls are the alliance to watch, and that the guys won't even suspect it. Cut to the guys, suspecting it. Eric diary-rooms that girls can't work as a team because they're too emotional, or something, and they overreact, and...you know, they have all kinds of parts on the inside that he really doesn't understand, but he thinks one of them might be called something like the "accordion." Josh bitches to Roddy about the girls some more, and how you can't trust them. Inside his head, he starts humming "Can't Fight This Feeling," which was playing at the ninth-grade party where the girl he brought wound up in the closet with his best friend. He diary-rooms that the girls have now gotten themselves into a mess by making him angry and betraying the Goobers. Which Josh hasn't noticed do not exist anymore in their past form. "If they would have just done what they were told, they wouldn't be in this predicament," he spits. He also calls them "idiots" and "morons," and then he has to get out a thesaurus and look up his own name in order to locate additional synonyms.
Veto competition. Gosh, I wish some part of this held some interest. What we have here is...well, it's like an oversized mini-golf hole that ends in the pool. And instead of hitting a golf ball with a club, you have to hit a big inflated ball with a big toy mallet. And it's technically croquet, in that you don't actually hit the ball you want to hit, you hit another ball into it. Each ball has the picture of a houseguest, and the point is to knock out the ball representing the person you don't want to get the veto. Last ball not knocked into the water gets the veto -- and you can't hit your own ball into the water. Ah, they're catching on to the veto-avoidance thing. Amy voices over that she really hopes Josh will win, because she just knows he will veto her out. Which he won't, as we know. There's a lot of pointless whacking (now there's an episode theme if ever there was one), and in the end, the power of veto goes to Eric. Who Roddy calls "E-Man," because...well, actually, I don't know why. Roddy diary-rooms that he hopes Eric won't use the veto, because having to put up a third person just adds to your list of enemies, and it's very unpleasant having to nominate another person anyway.
In the HoH room, Eric and Roddy chat, and Roddy comments that if he didn't successfully send Amy home, it would -- among other things -- hand more power to Josh. Blue-and-white Josh strolls across the yard in his doof-rag. Roddy and Eric discuss how stupid and annoying Josh is, and Roddy specifically contends that he "can't stop playing the game." Of course, I don't think Roddy ever stops playing the game either, but I think Roddy is talking more about Josh not being able to stop talking about playing the game. "I will have no qualms about axing him," Eric says simply. So I think that makes it official: the Goobers are no more. Adios, Goobers!
In a little chronological scramble, to the strains of the Soft Saxophones of Intoxicated Rambling, Roddy comes out to the hot tub after Amy and Marcellas's date, and finds a boozed-up Amy sitting on the edge. He hands her a cigar. She -- in that sad, drunk-girl way -- starts in about how she's really not a horrible person, and he insists he didn't ever think she was a horrible person. She then gives this very bizarre explanation of her inherent and persistent selfishness, which is that she was born premature and almost died, and her grandmother and her pediatrician therefore believed she was some kind of miracle baby, and she's basically gone through life expecting everyone to fall at her feet just because she's breathing on her own. Or something. It's exceedingly strange. Also...her pediatrician? Mmm, okay. "And then as I grew up, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I had no friends," she says. Oh, man. She claims that she's "a hard person to get to know." I hate that line. That line is almost exclusively used by insensitive people when they don't want to come right out and say that they're going to act however the hell they want, and they'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't count it against them, because you simply can't understand the depths to which they go. She swears she was "the ugliest child ever," so of course, Roddy does what she's begging for and reassures her that she's pretty. Oh, make it stop. Finally, Amy just says that Roddy hurt her feelings by nominating her, which is just about the first thing she's said that makes a lick of sense. Roddy basically tells her he wishes he could take it back now that they've had this talk, but he can't. (I would point out that according to live-feed-watchers, Eric actually talked to Roddy about using the veto, and Roddy asked him not to, after this happened. This would suggest that Roddy may have overplayed his feelings of regret, but also that Roddy really didn't want to have to nominate a third person. So he might still have been sincere that if he could go back and start nominations over, he might not nominate her -- or he might be so full of it that you can smell him from Scotland.)
Josh talks to Gerry (!) about how nervous he is about the veto. He doesn't want to see a veto happen and wind up nominated himself. Eric calls the veto meeting, so it's once more around the living-room sofas. Marcellas voices over that he was hoping Eric would "do something truly courageous...like veto me." It's quite a coincidence, isn't it, that Marcellas has noticed that the righteous thing for Eric to do would be the thing that happens to benefit Marcellas? It's so wonderful when all of morality is aligned at your side as you battle on for...well, for yourself. At any rate, Eric tries incredibly hard to be serious and grave. He gives the nominees the opportunity to make a statement. Amy starts by falling on the floor and grabbing his leg and begging to be vetoed. No, really. Then she composes herself and says she's sure he's already decided, so she has nothing to say. Way to go, there, Amy. Marcellas just sits and stares coldly, legs crossed, arms folded, and refuses to say anything. What a snot he's turned into in a short time. Can't we evict both of them? Eric rubs his hands together and announces that he has decided not to use the veto, which doesn't come as much of a surprise to anyone. He assures them that it's not personal, and wraps up with "I love you both." Again with the false "I love you"s, which I really do not like. Eric boxes up the veto medal.
Amy diary-rooms, more perceptively than usual, that what's frustrating her is that she knows she's on the block because of how she acted. Marcellas goes into some more highly moralistic blather about how the people in the house "stab you in the back" and so forth. He goes on to lament that if Amy hadn't done so much drinking and been so self-centered, then they both wouldn't be in this mess. That's partly true, but it is also true that the two of them participated together in determining that they were superior to everyone else, and making that very, very clear to everyone. Amy was the worse offender, but they were both responsible for the phenomenon. He goes on to feel sorry for himself some more, saying that he "knew Amy was a liability," and how "in this house, you can't have strong relationships," like, boo hoo hoo. Seriously, Marcellas often acted just as bitchy and alienating toward the other people in the house as she did, so although I do think Amy's the main reason Roddy made this particular choice, I think the two of them as a pair made it very easy to do.
They diary-room some more about how unfair it all is, and then we're mercifully out. Bring on the eviction, because one less person to annoy me will be...well, one less person to annoy me.
Thursday. Previously, Subway was the best sandwich ever!
Julie Chen sits on the sofa in an ice-blue blouse and shiny vinyl goldenrod pants. The blouse is her usual slouching-peasant style and the pants have a lot of genuinely weird stitching and gathers. I think Julie's pants use recycled material from the chairs in a dentist's office. She recaps everything they just showed in the previouslys.
Marcellas bitches again about the "decoy-gets-the-boot" problem. Shut UP. "Why me?" he moans. "I'm cute, and I'm walking around all sweetness and light, and I keep getting nominated, and I don't know why my reward for everything is, like, being on the block." Yeah, that's pretty much why, right there.
Amy talks to Jason about her feeling that she's being "set up" to be evicted unanimously, which she calls "cruel and tacky." She says she understands that it's not meant maliciously, which is sort of contrary to the whole "cruel and tacky" thing, but I'm way past looking for consistency at this point. Amy says it would be nice if she could "have something." Which "something" has no conceivable meaning other than Jason's vote. Marcellas claims in the diary room that he's not worried about Amy campaigning to avoid unanimous eviction. Then we see her curling her hair, as she voices over that in all her life, "there's nothing [she] can remember wanting that [she hasn't] gotten." That, if true, explains a lot, because that is horrifyingly unhealthy. Then we see her talking to Marcellas and Gerry about how she knows she's being voted off, and then after she walks away, Marcellas mutters, "The longer that girl stays, the more she gets on my nerves." Oh, thank you so much, Captain Loyalty of the S.S. Upstanding. Later, Amy goes and begs Josh for a vote. He winds up telling her that he is going to throw her one. "I'm gonna start something," he says meaningfully. She joyfully high-fives him. Pardon me, Miss Amy, if I make a comment here about lying down with dogs and waking up with fleas. Or, in Josh's case, worms. Amy is apparently unaware that Josh is the hangnail on the hand of the entire house -- the solanine on the potato chip, the squirrel at the bird feeder, the blue-ringed octopus in the aquarium, the Autumn In New York on the résumé, the Boston Common on the Thursday-night schedule, and the cheap baby's breath in the basket of flowers. Uch.
Lots of chatter among the couples about distrust of Josh because he wants to vote for Amy, winding up with a shot of Eric and Lisa lying in the hammock under a pink blanket. She turns and kisses Eric's impeccably shaved pec. "I can't believe how beautiful you are," she says. He doesn't say anything, but he turns and looks lovingly at his bicep. No, he does. I also have to agree with those on the forums who have noted that he appears to squirm in surprise, which says very unfortunate things about something going on under the blanket, I fear. Do they make Eyeball Cleaner? I'll take a case. And a half.
Amy sits outside later and talks to Gerry and Eric. She says she feels bad, because Marcellas thinks she's being selfish, and she, in turn, doesn't understand why he won't consent to give up a vote so she isn't evicted unanimously. Unfortunately for Amy, Marcellas overhears this, stomps into the Big Bed Room with his robe billowing behind him, and tells Chiara and Danielle that Amy is outside claiming he doesn't want her to get a sympathy vote, which he says isn't true. To her credit, Danielle is up and out immediately to fetch Amy and bring her back into the room to "nip this in the butt [sic]." With Chiara and Marcellas observing, Danielle asks Amy whether she told people Marcellas didn't want her to have a vote. Amy claims she didn't, and I guess technically she didn't, but she certainly implied to Eric and Gerry that Marcellas was asking her not to try to get a vote, so I think her denial here is a bit hollow. Marcellas turns on her angrily, and tells her that if anybody in the house wants to vote for her, they can, so she should "stop playing martyr." And he's getting himself on a roll, and you can see it coming, but you can't do anything about it. Amy insists she's not playing martyr. (Oddly enough, the person playing martyr in this scene is clearly Marcellas, as you will soon see.) Marcellas hollers at Amy that he heard her outside saying he didn't want her to have a vote, and then he yells high-and-mightily that he has "bent over backwards to be [her] friend," even "to [his] own derision," which is not the word he wants (he wants "detriment"), but hey, what can I expect from these people at this point, once we've seen "orr" and "pitcher"? Marcellas outright blames Amy -- not just her specific behavior, but the very fact of his association with her -- for the fact that he's nominated, and he clearly wants it known that she should be apologizing to him for what an albatross she is, dammit. You know, when I first saw this argument, I actually sided with him. Watching it again, I think he's being unnecessarily nasty, not to mention incredibly self-righteous. Also, it doesn't slow him down when he starts to make her cry, and that's wrong. That should always slow you down, when it's your friend. He should at least have stopped standing over her and screaming. I think he really, really hurt her, and watching that scene again, it makes me kind of hate him.
And we're back to Julie, live. She goes to the houseguests in the living room, and she wants to know how everybody is doing. Specifically, of course, she wants to know whether Marcellas and Amy have made up. Happily, and I think somewhat overly easily, Marcellas says that they have. Amy happily refers to herself and Marcellas as "Suzanne and Anthony." Aww, just like the forums always say! Then Julie hands Josh a free shot at strutting his arrogant, self-satisfied stuff over the safe week he's enjoyed. Feh. She points out that apparently, his "fire insurance" line worked, and he says -- no foolin' -- "You don't mess with the Jew." The Anti-Defamation League prepares another award for Josh to recognize the leaps forward that are likely to result from his efforts to promote greater understanding among all people. Now Julie talks to Eric, which is apparently some kind of huge deal, because he feels that Julie neglects him. She asks him about the power of veto, and he says: "Let me tell you somethin' about Vito. Vito was not pullin' his weight here, he wasn't doing his share of the chores...Vito had to go." Heh. Okay, I thought that was funny. I'll award the point. It also cracks up the houseguests, especially Josh, who sprawls across the back of the couch and cackles like a loony. And then, in the very best Julie Chen moment of all time thus far (and, I am confident, of all time to come), she says, "Settle down, Beavis." JULIE! That was excellent, especially since I grade Julie on a curve. And again, this cracks up the houseguests. In other news, Julie cracks on Eric about talking in his sleep. The rest of this whole sequence is stultifyingly boring, but that was worth the entire hour.
Chiara and Eric talk about voting, but we don't see them actually vote. Chiara's intentions to vote for Amy are very clear; Eric is a little more guarded. But the fact that they aren't shown actually voting is a little bit of a hint.
Now we have to sit through the always-irritating Parade of Nominees' Loved Ones. First, Amy's friend Angela talks about Amy. Angela is basically a lot like Amy, only more so. ["When they first showed Angela, my sister and I were dead sure they were about to tell us she was Amy's sister. They look that much alike, to me." -- Wing Chun] Angela goes back to the whole "Amy is more moral than the other girls" crapola that Amy herself is overly snooty about, and I pretty much sleep through that part. They show the clip again of Amy and Marcellas giggling about how they act superior because in their normal lives, they are indeed too good for the rest of the people in the house, and now I remember why I don't like Amy, which makes me feel better about the fact that I don't like her friend, either.
Marcellas's mom talks about how Marcellas and Amy are a natural pair of goofballs, and Marcellas is her pride and joy, which is about what you expect her to say. Surprisingly, though, she then talks about how hard it was for her when Marcellas came out to her, and then they show him talking about how hard it was. It sounds like they were pretty well estranged for a while, but now Mama Marcellas seems to be taking the position that she'd rather know him and not be happy about everything he does than not know him at all. I think things still aren't easy for them, but she appears to be working on it. Which is...not a perfect outcome, but better than some get. It's an interesting little segment, rather unexpectedly.
More Julie, talking to Amy and Marcellas. How was it to be nominated together, were they bitter, did it drive a wedge between them, blah. Amy has adopted what I believe is an incredibly phony veneer of perfectly chipper giddiness throughout this entire show, which is actually a little creepy. This doesn't seem like her normal personality at all, because when she's amusing, she's drier and more laid-back. I'm not sure it's a good idea for her to push this hard to act happy. It occurs to me that maybe this is how she manages that thing where she always gets exactly what she wants -- she pretends to want whatever outcome she winds up with. She also completely downplays the fight, which I don't think is honest at all. She was really, really hurt, and I think that one's going to leave a bruise for a while, but for the moment, she's got boundless energy. Ick.
Now Julie asks Marcellas and Amy to say their final words, and Amy blathers quite meaninglessly about how much she's learned, and I'm sorry, but I'm just not convinced by this at all. She doesn't seem to actually be able to articulate anything she's learned, but she obviously feels like she should have learned something. It's possible that she really thinks she's gotten the point about her behavior, but nothing about this speech suggests to me that that's the case, and it's all just a little too quick to represent a total change of direction as a result of a conversation she had when she was drunk, as she's claiming. She closes with some prattle about destiny, and then it's finally over. She turns it over to Marcellas, who is told by Julie that he has practically no time left, because Amy talked for so long. (Now there's a metaphor.) He talks a little about how much he likes everyone, and he'll see them on the "outside" (it's not Alcatraz, Marcellas), and this really is very boring.
Gerry and Danielle are shown talking about voting, but not actually voting. They both try to sound balanced, and don't say much of substance.
Now we see a little sequence about Gerry and his attempts to rise from the ashes of his disastrous first week. Lots of Goober talk about how he's a traitor, et cetera, lots of footage of him sitting alone, eating alone, swimming alone. The cool kids pretty much treat him like crap. Fortunately, as a teacher, Gerry is used to being victimized by the middle-school psyche. Most strangely, however, he and Josh seem to be pretending to have reached a tentative settlement of hostilities. They make a deal that if Gerry is HoH, he won't put up Josh, and vice versa. The rest of the houseguests talk about how irrelevant they think Gerry is, and then Marcellas correctly makes the point that as the rest of them take shots at each other, Gerry just sits there, staying in the house and not making additional enemies. Gerry thinks he "absolutely can win."
Julie's HoH interview with Roddy is pretty dull, as usual. He offers another round of the "Gosh, I like Amy a heck of a lot" thing he's been spouting in a continuous stream since he nominated her, which (as mentioned previously) rings perhaps a wee bit hollow since he put the kibosh on the idea of vetoing her. Julie asks him about Kiki, and he doesn't seem to want to talk about it, but when he does, he's very noncommittal. He says he's just having fun, and he wouldn't make any promises based on having known her a month and all of that, but he does wind up saying he thinks it's pretty likely that he will continue to date her. It's hard to tell whether he's substantively blowing it off, or whether he genuinely just doesn't want to talk about it, or whether he doesn't want to discuss it with Julie because he is slightly serious about it. I think it could be any of the three.
Jason, Lisa, and Josh talk about voting. They don't vote. Enough with the non-voting. This isn't interesting! Stop it! Sometimes, it's all just spittin' in the wind.
Back to the houseguests, and time for the eviction at last. Just as everyone suspected, it's a seven-to-nothing clean sweep in favor of giving Amy the boot. She claps happily, which again is creepy, because she spent the entire week saying she didn't want to go, and especially that she didn't want a unanimous vote against her, and again, I just do not buy the eleventh-hour turnaround. Nevertheless, she fake-cheers her way to the door after faking an obviously pre-planned catfight with Marcellas. Snore. She makes her way out of the house, working the pretend cheer the entire time, to the point of humming out loud on her way to see Julie. She is quite thoroughly full of it, and now she just needs to get off my TV.
Back inside the house, everybody gives Marcellas big kisses, and he certainly does make a speedy recovery from Amy's departure.
Amy now gives the most Stepford-ian, creepy Chenterview ever, grinning maniacally and talking a mile a minute the entire time. Loves everyone, isn't angry, so thrilled! So happy! Couldn't be happier! No hard feelings! Doesn't mind leaving! You can just hear her therapy bills ch-chinging through the entire thing. She also claims to have made up with Chiara, which is utter bull. In the end, Amy strikes me as a big phony, top to bottom, stem to stern, orchestra to balcony, and I'm ready for her to go. Oh, and when Marcellas does his videotaped goodbye, he says, "Your dismissal from here shall be avenged." Way to steal from Will.
In short, as is the case with most people, I like Amy a lot more when she's not trying quite so hard to convince me of how wonderfully endearing she is. There's an okay girl in there somewhere, and after she's had a few disappointments that she's been able to acknowledge are disappointments, she may surprise herself.
Now it's time for the new HoH competition. It's trivia about other people again. These questions are always so fascinating. I mean, really, "Who is five-foot-four?" There's a nail-biter. Anyway, in the end, it comes down to Eric and Gerry, and the tiebreaker is to guess the total height in inches of the three houseguests who have been evicted so far. The correct answer is 194 inches, and Gerry actually comes very close at 188. Eric does not come so close, at 268. That makes the girls an average of seven and a half feet tall, if you're keeping score at home. Way to go, there, Eric. Eric knows very well that this is a significant development, because Gerry? Is not too dumb. He's a buffoon, but he's not dumb. The Gang of Cutes look a little ill, as well they should. Whee, breaking up the Alliance Formerly Known as the Goobers! What will Gerry do? What will happen ? Oh, yeah. They'll have a stupid food challenge and some of them will sit outside playing cards, and others will sun themselves like lizards. That's sure to be fun.