Li'l Soul Patch Hits The Bricks

Previously on Big Brother 3: Danielle became HoH, and everyone wondered how it would affect them. Because in the end, this is one game where you can legitimately say it's all about you. Danielle also made a gigantic gloating fool out of herself several times, as she so often does when she's overly proud of her accomplishments. Not that one should not be proud of one's accomplishments, but one should probably not be so obnoxious that one's housemates want to beat one with a large stick. Danielle nominated Lisa and Amy, and if you didn't see that one coming, then I can only recommend that you start watching the occasional television program other than Newshour With Jim Lehrer, because trash apparently throws you. Danielle also tried to get Jason some action by suggesting good old-fashioned prostitution as a means for the girls to avoid eviction. After pretending to agonize over it for a full week while basking in the studliness of it all, Jason evicted Amy. Amy had a bad week, managing to throw up, be evicted, and get peed on. Good thing she's a trouper. In other news, Lisa began to figure out that something was going on between Danielle and Jason, and that, in all likelihood, it wasn't good news for her.

When we last saw our intrepid contestants, they were stranded in the middle of a special above-ground back yard pool in individual inflatable rafts. There was fake rain blowing on them in a blatantly fake manner, and they were making like Scott Wolf in that movie White Squall (also known as Dead Captains' Society), where Scott and his prep-school buddies had to defend themselves from both life-threatening storms and a seriously scenery-chewing Jeff Bridges. The houseguests were also wearing stupid red rain hats, looking like characters from a cartoon children's book called Nummy The Slow-Witted Bear Learns To Stay Dry.

I can't tell you how happy I am that this is the second-to-last time I have to hear the credits theme music. Especially because this week, they start the credits music with a very special thunderstorm sound effect. Are you kidding me? Someone needs hurt the person who came up with that. If you are the person who came up with it, I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not sorry. Look, after all, at what you've done to me. Look what you've done to the reputation of the drum machines and simulated violins of the world. They may never recover.

We begin this week's fairly tortured story with last week's blue-and-white eviction of a surprisingly chipper Amy, who went out like a star in a black dress I loved and a cucumber-cool pair of shades. The Funeral March of Eviction moans in its typical despairing manner as Jason talks in the diary room about what a good competitor Amy was, and how it was just a strategic decision for him to evict her. I still say this is stupid, because either he or Danielle would have had an infinitely better chance in a vote against Amy than in a vote against Lisa, but...it's not like Jason's logic always makes a lot of sense to me. He still has the soul patch, after all. Danielle says she "loves Amy deeply," but that she is ultimately loyal to Jason. I'm certainly glad Danielle cleared that up for us, in case you spent the entire season in the bathroom and missed the 400,000 other times she's mentioned it. What I really want Danielle to clear up for me now is whether she is ultimately loyal to Jason. Because I can't tell from anything she's said so far. Am I missing something? But I kid. Danielle also throws in a comment to the effect that her second loyalty -- presumably sitting on the bench as the valiant junior varsity in her game of intrigue -- is to Lisa. Now, there's a pile of crap. Danielle has said all along that she had no interest in the well-being of anyone other than herself and Jason, and I think that's exactly the way she's played. Moreover, her definition of "loyalty" to Jason is about to be brought into sharper focus.

Countdown. "Nine down, one more to go." For now, for later, and for always, shut up, Danielle. Boy, do you ever make my eyelid twitch.

In the pool, we slide to color as everyone continues to endure the pretend rainstorm with all the pretend courage they can muster. Back in the studio, Julie Chen makes reference to "Mother Nature unleash[ing] her fury." Mother Nature? Unleashed her fury? Wow, that's quite a coincidence that Mother Nature co-operated and helped out the guy with the big fake rain machine. I wonder what Her contribution was. For those of you on the Julie Chen Fashion Watch, Julie is wearing flared jeans and a strange, pale, sleeveless top. The top has a big hanging sag just north of her breasts, although that could be because it's built for someone a little less skeletal than she is. Julie explains that the winner of the lifeboat competition will eventually compete in the last part of this three-part head of household competition against whoever wins round two, which will take place in a little while. God, could they drag this out any more? Seriously, the fall season is starting, and I don't really want to be watching this terrible show in December when chestnuts are roasting. Julie says, "Let's go back and see who managed to endure the wind, the cold, and the rain." Only she stops very dramatically before she says "the rain," again tending to perpetuate the myth that it is...you know, rain. It's important to remember that the contestants in this competition are, for lack of a better way to explain it, in the shower. It's a big shower, but it's a shower nonetheless. Someone has really worked up some dramatic music to accompany it, though. There are a lot of screechy strings and loud drums in it, which is how you can tell that what's going on is important and dramatic.

Danielle explains how really, really trying it was to endure the shower. Jason complains in the pool about how "unbelievably cold" it is. I'm telling you, they need to get someone more northern on this show, because these people are pathetic, embarrassing, meteorological wimps. It's Southern California. It's September. Honestly, how cold can it be? They all bail their little inflatable rafts as the rain continues to fall, and when it finally stops, they look visibly relieved. Lisa looks the most unfazed. Lisa looks, in fact, like she could do this all day, which is exactly what she wants Danielle and Jason to think. Lisa explains, in a particularly bizarre diary room session, that her inspiration for remaining in the competition was her underwear. Well, technically, she says it was her swimwear, but I think you'll agree that I can call it her inspirational underwear without running afoul of any journalistic guidelines. It turns out that the bathing suit top she's wearing was her mother's, and in a heartwarming (or at least pelvis-warming) show of romantic solidarity, she is wearing Eric's underwear. You can decide for yourself whether wearing your boyfriend's underwear in a situation like this qualifies as adorable, creepy, hopelessly twee, or strategically brilliant. After all, it's always possible that Eric's underwear held the key to all of his powers. What powers, you ask? Well, the power to make girls want to wear your underwear, for one. You have to admit that as a theory, it has an elegant simplicity.

Danielle's teeth are chattering madly. I just find it hard to believe that it's cold enough to justify madly chattering teeth. I don't even behave that way in Minnesota when it's forty degrees below zero. Up here, we just plug in the iron until it's good and hot (the "Linen" setting is good), put it inside a nice knit hat, put it on, and go. Thus the big old floppy winter hats. Plenty of room for the iron. Anyway, Lisa opines that a lot of Danielle's chattering jaw was intended to throw Lisa off, and was not in fact genuine chattering at all. Actually, although I certainly wouldn't put the psych-out past Danielle strategically, in this case, I think Danielle is just wimpy about the weather.

As it continues to "rain," Jason makes a grab for his cartoon-bear hat with the wrong hand, and lets go of his key. He puts his hand back on as quickly as possible, but the buzzer sounds, because Big Brother has already seen him. Isn't it interesting that Mr. Honesty's first move was to put his hand back on his key and see if he could get away with it without getting caught? Heh. I knew he had it in him. He beats himself up over it quite frantically, but honestly, he just lost his concentration for moment, and in these endurance games, it happens that that's exactly what you can't do. It's also creepily similar to how the parallel game ended last year for Nicole. Make a grab for something else, not remembering you're supposed to be keeping your hand on the key. Mental toughness, baby. It's what all the cool kids are wearing. In the diary room, Danielle says she was shocked that Jason let go of his key. Jason tells us he was upset because he wanted the competition, and "felt like [he] could have gone the distance." I actually don't think he could have. I don't think concentration is Jason's strong suit, and if he hadn't let go when he did, he wouldn't have let go very long after that. He doesn't have great powers of focus. In fact, he sort of puts me to sleep, so maybe he has the same effect on himself. When he's gone, Danielle says in the diary room that she was desperately holding onto the key, because if she let go of it, she would be letting go of $500,000. So for those of you who believe that Danielle was never playing for the $500,000, but was only ever playing for second place -- which would make her strategy of apparently ignoring the people outside the house who would be watching her snipe at behind their backs a little more understandable -- I think that moment pretty well proves that wasn't the case. I would like to believe that Danielle was savvy enough to have realized quite a while ago that no one liked her enough to award her a half-million dollars after the way she's behaved, but apparently not.

Lisa has a good time in the diary room snarking about the way Danielle was trying to psych her out by yelling and screaming and pounding her chest. Lisa could not be less fooled, referring to Danielle's ranting (in what is apparently a Danielle-ism) as "boo-boo talk." Hee. I don't know what that means, but I'm pulling it out sometime and using it myself. It can't make any less sense than half the stuff I already say. In the pool, Lisa knows that it is in fact Danielle who is having trouble hanging in. As usual, Danielle screams that she is capable of withstanding things that other people can't, because she's birthed two babies. And of course that has a lot to do with everything that ever happens. After all, Big Brother could come over the microphones at any time and tell them that in addition to staying in the pool for a really long time, they're going to have to go through a simulation of labor involving watermelons. If that happens, Danielle is so in! Anyway, as the rain pounds, Lisa decides to have a little fun playing with Danielle. "Who are you talking to over there?" she asks the screaming Danielle. "I'm talking to myself!" Danielle yells, trying to sound confident instead of desperate, and not succeeding. Danielle says she loves the challenge and the rain and the boat and the pool, but she's not fooling anyone. Danielle is on the ropes.

More talk about how cold it is. It's cold. Yeah. I'm truly just so bored at this point. Danielle tells us that she didn't want to sit in the pool anymore after a couple of hours. I think it's safe to say we're all ready for this to be over. Lisa says in the diary room that she was having a "constant conversation" with herself about when she should talk to Danielle and try to strike some kind of deal. I think it was pretty clear after a few hours that Danielle was vulnerable, and that she just wasn't going to be able to stick it out longer than Lisa was. Lisa asks Danielle whether she has any sort of deal with Jason for the final two. In the diary room, Danielle admits that Lisa busted her, and Lisa clearly knew that Danielle probably had a deal with Jason to take him to the end. In order to avoid an outright lie -- and in a rather pathetic display of underestimating Lisa's intelligence -- Danielle simply repeats to Lisa over and over that she doesn't know what Jason will do. She does, very interestingly, tell Lisa in her most ominous tone to hold onto the key. Of all the rather puzzling things Danielle did this week, that's the hardest for me to understand. The closest I can come to understanding it is that, in reality, as I have always suspected, as the game was ending, Danielle realized she needed to go to the finals not with Jason, but with Lisa. She figured out -- or at least she thought -- that she had a better chance against Lisa than she did against Jason. Had Danielle won this competition, she would have stood a better chance of winning HoH and being forced to choose between egregiously screwing Jason and taking Jason to the final with her, neither of which is appealing. In other words, despite the fact that she's held on for some time, I'm not convinced that Danielle really wants this. At the very least, as it draws to a close, she is realizing that giving it up could work out very well for her. As much as she has emphasized her loyalty to Jason, nothing she's doing in the pool is consistent with being loyal to him. Not telling Lisa to hold onto the key, and not what she's about to do. I think the only reason Danielle is holding onto the key at this point is that she hasn't figured out that Lisa knows the same thing that she knows, which is that either of these women has a better chance against the other than against Jason. If Danielle knew for sure that Lisa would take her and not Jason to the final two in the event that Lisa won, I think Danielle would quit immediately, Jason be damned. Hmm, if only there were a way to test my hypothesis.

At this point in the competition, Danielle looks fairly desperate to get out of the pool, whether it's an act or not. Lisa, on the other hand, looks like she's awash in the sheer tedium of the exercise. Man, I hear you, sister. Me, too. When the rain starts up again, a drenched Danielle puts the last few shreds of her soul on the auction block by asking Lisa if Lisa will give her word that she will evict Jason if she wins. Lisa gives her word, after securing a parallel promise to evict Jason from Danielle. Here's what's interesting about this deal. It's easy to see Danielle as a manipulative operator. It's easy to see Danielle as having stabbed Jason in the back to protect herself. What isn't so obvious, but what became obvious to me later, is that Danielle completely screwed herself by making this deal. All she did was set herself up for a situation in which she was going to look very bad, like she ultimately betrayed Jason even after all the times she said she wouldn't. And what did she get out of it? She got nothing out of it. Lisa was going to take her to the finals anyway. Lisa is no idiot. Lisa was never going to take Jason to the finals. Therefore, Danielle got nothing out of this except that anyone watching at home had yet another reason to believe that, in the end, she was a snake and a backstabber, ultimately not even loyal to Jason. Which is true. (Note that I don't personally think lack of "loyalty" is a big deal in a game in which everyone is out for themselves; I am merely noting the difference between what Danielle is yapping her flap about and what she's actually doing.)

Danielle lets go of the key. Dramatic music: "Brrrrrreeeep!" Time elapsed? Four hours and twenty-three minutes. Gosh, that's a long shower. Danielle weeps in the diary room that she feels like scum for having made this deal with Lisa. I think she ought to be weeping about spending that much time in that hat. Lisa says in the diary room that she feels great about having been victorious in the pool competition. Back in real time, as Lisa emerges from the water, we see her pull a wedgie out of her butt. Boy, you're not kidding. I suspect that competition was the wedgie-maker of all time. They should have called it The Seventh-Grade Bully Shoves You In A Locker Competition. At any rate, Lisa says she made a "strong deal" in the pool with Danielle. I think she may or may not understand that this point that Danielle isn't planning on keeping this deal, but I think she does understand that she backed Danielle into a corner where if she doesn't keep the deal, she's just going to make herself look horrible.

While Lisa takes a shower, Danielle and Jason have a little chat. Danielle tells the tale of the deal she struck in the pool, but she assures Jason that she has no intention of keeping her word to Lisa. Danielle insists to Jason that she's being loyal to him and intends to "scumbag" Lisa. What she doesn't seem to want to admit is that she has already screwed Jason. Irrespective of what Danielle intends to do, what she did was extract a promise from Lisa that Lisa would evict Jason. That constitutes the screwing of Jason. It's not just that Danielle agreed to evict him; it's that Danielle quit after getting Lisa to agree to evict him. Jason seems to grasp these implications, even as Danielle seems not to. He admits in the diary room that it would not have been his preference for Danielle to make a deal like that. Yeah, no kidding. Danielle also makes some sort of comment to Jason that she "just gave away five hundred Gs." Again with the clear indications that Danielle has believed she was in it for the half million from the beginning. Furthermore, I don't understand what she's referring to about having handed over the money, but I often don't really follow everything Danielle says, so I suppose that's all right. I'll just pretend it was something coherent. "Number one priority in this house: to win the $500,000 for my family," Danielle says in the DR. Oh, you mean Danielle wants to win it for her family? Why didn't she mention that earlier? It would have been good to know. There's a shot of Danielle here that looks extremely scary, where she's got her eyes sort of half bugged out. I don't really understand this shot of her, nor do I really want to, but I have a feeling that whoever put this sequence together found that look as funny and creepy as I did, which is why it's there. She says in the DR that she doesn't think Lisa and Jason understand how much the money means to her. Yes, we understand, Danicholas Nickleby. You are poor and needy. Your children are wearing potato sacks. I GET IT. Looking scary, Danielle eats soup. Ah, yes, the frightening implications of a crazy lady eating soup, muttering about avarice. For a refreshing change of pace, shut up, Danielle.

Julie reminds us that because Lisa just won round one, she's guaranteed a position in round three, which we'll be seeing at the end of the show, just before the live eviction. She also points out that this leaves Jason and Danielle to compete in round two. I really don't get that sag in Julie's shirt. Does she need a place to store snacks? HA! I just implied that Julie Chen eats snacks. I am quite a card. Julie promises us that, later, we will be catching up with Chiara, Josh, Gerry, and Marcellas. Oh, goodie. That'll be a treat. I'll just start drinking now, if that's all right with all of you.

Time for phase two of the HoH competition. In this game, Danielle and Jason each have to complete a sort of moron obstacle course, completing a series of tasks as quickly as they can. The competition includes really adrenaline-pumping things like doing laundry and making a peanut butter sandwich. You know, sometimes it just seems like the people who make this show become so absorbed in it that they don't even remember anymore what's interesting and what isn't. A peanut-butter-sandwich-making race? I think season, I would like to request a different competition coordinator. Preferably someone with less interest in dumb things.

Danielle starts the competition by arranging the pictures on the memory wall in order of when the various houseguests were evicted. She doesn't seem to have too much trouble with this, which I guess isn't surprising, given her excellent record of keeping track of how many are "down" and how many are "to go." She runs outside, where the task is to wash a towel in the shower. Well, okay, you use the shower to fill up the bucket, and then you wash the towel in the bucket. She dunks the towel, and then she puts the towel through the wringer, then into the dryer. up is Danielle's favorite pastime: making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Moreover, she has to actually eat the sandwich. Woe is Danielle. In case you don't remember, she hates peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, although she always hesitates to complain about it. Well, not "hesitates to complain" as much as "rushes to whine," but that's neither here nor there, I guess. When she has successfully choked down the sandwich, she goes to the task, which is to arrange a set of pictures in order of when various people won the power of veto. She doesn't finish it. In the diary room, she insists both that she did not throw the competition and that she was praying that Jason would beat her. I find it very hard to believe that both of those things can be true. How can you really do your best in a speed competition when you're praying you'll lose? Whatever. Danielle explains -- in case you were having trouble keeping up -- that the reason she didn't want to win HoH was that if she did, she would have to break her word to Lisa in order to keep her obligations to Jason. And Danielle is all about keeping her word. Or at least all about making it look like she's keeping her word. At least to Jason and Lisa. Well, at least to Jason. Well, until the pool. Actually, I'm not sure what Danielle is all about anymore, except her "needs" and, of course, the countdown.

Jason starts the competition, and says in the diary room that he wants to win round two. He has figured out, after all, that Danielle is pretty much going to the finals either way, thanks to the Red Hat Treaty. Therefore, his only interest is in ensuring that Danielle winds up in the final two with him, and not with Lisa. I have to say that the apparent sincerity with which he makes this point makes it hard for me to believe that Jason threw the eventual contest with Lisa, as it appeared he might have. If he were inclined to do that, I don't understand why he wouldn't have just thrown this part of it. At any rate, he arranges the pictures, he washes the towel, he makes the sandwich, and he arranges the pictures relating to power of veto. Strangely, he complains that scarfing the PB&J gave him a "burning sensation" in the back of his mouth. Maybe time, he should try grape jelly instead of jalapeno. He actually completes the PoV task, and makes it partly into another task which involves pulling peoples picture's off the bottom of the pool and arranging them in the order in which they were HoH, but he screws it up and doesn't get anywhere near finished, so that's about the end of this annoying interlude. Wow, is that the last really idiotic, utterly pointless competition involving dorky tasks? I'm almost feeling nostalgic. Where have you gone, Magic Donut?

Julie says it's time to tell the houseguests, who are gathered in the living room, who is going to be going up against Lisa in the final competition. She first makes time to ridicule Jason for having let go of his key in the endurance competition in the pool so very, very early. Ha. Julie's gotten mean lately. Maybe she's rehearsing for that Early Show slot I keep hearing she's up for. She might be practicing on Jason so she'll know how to handle Donald Rumsfeld. , Julie gives Lisa and Danielle an opportunity to complain about how difficult it was to be stuck in the pool for four and a half hours, and they take her up on it. After all, why skip an opportunity to complain? Finally, Julie reveals what we already knew -- that Jason completed one more task than Danielle in the time allotted, so Jason and Lisa will go against each other in the final HoH contest. Julie asks both Jason and Lisa whether they've decided whom they will take to the finals if they win the final round. They both say that they have made the call. How very dramatic. Somebody needs to tell Jason to button one more button on his shirt. Or buy him some medallions.

Now, unfortunately, it's time to visit with some of our less-than-dearly departed houseguests. Julie says that their lives have gone on since they left the house. I suppose that's sort of a relative statement, requiring some point of reference regarding the degree to which they had lives before. We start with Josh, because the universe is unkind to me. He is fondling his unfortunate cat, who manages to look both bored and sort of grossed out. Come to think of it, that's about how I usually felt about Josh. I totally feel your pain, kitty. Since he left the house, Josh's largest accomplishment appears to be having grown a large, unwieldy goatee. It's not up there with the TiVo beard, in terms of how appalling it is, but it certainly isn't taking home any prizes. The chin part looks like an upside-down mushroom. We also see him assure his mother on the phone that people like him. I wonder where he's finding these people. I certainly don't know any of them. When interviewed, he whines some more about how he was betrayed by all his closest friends in the house. Yes, yes, your story is very sad. Let's not go all through it again. Please. He is still joined at the hip to the unfortunate Merritt, and we see them watching the show together. Josh remarks that Danielle is playing the game "incredibly well" and deserves to make it to the final two. He points out that Danielle has done a brilliant job getting other people to do all the dirty work for her. Can't argue with that. Josh and Merritt make out some more. I need an aspirin. They stick their tongues out and make faces. Aaaaagh! Medic! Blah blah blah romance (theirs) and nausea (mine).

Now we check up on Chiara, whose friends appear not to have become any less annoying than they were when we saw them before. Too much time in the tanning beds, not enough in the De-Annoying-Izer. She says she's going "back to normal." Yeah, that one's got to be considered relative as well. And then, the inevitable topic. "I might not have won a half-million dollars," she says, "but I got him." And I think we all know who "he" is. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she has apparently managed to miss approximately 12,000 extremely clear signals that he wants nothing to do with her, so Kiki is still hanging on to her deep and abiding love for the odious Roddy. We also get the opportunity to listen to Chiara talk about Amy, and we all know how much fun that always is. She says that Amy is "extremely insecure." Well, you should know, Clingy O'Clingham. "I think that she is very angry at having a pretty girl in the house that got a lot of attention." Oh, my goodness. Okay, first of all, even if that's true, you do not say it about yourself. Ever. No matter what. No! Second of all, I don't know one single guy who watched this show who walked away with any sort of affection for Chiara as the "pretty girl." Every straight man I know who watched this show all summer is of the opinion that far and away the cutest and most appealing girl on it was Lisa. If anything, they use the notion of finding Chiara cute as a joke. Unfortunately, there is no ladder tall enough to allow Chiara to get over herself now. The biggest ones at Home Depot won't even afford her a glimpse of her own shoes.

We see the DR session in which Amy calls Chiara "Chi-whora," and Kiki opines that it's always been her theory that when you call people a nickname, it means that's what you are yourself. This is basically a very, very slightly refined version of "I know you are, but what am I?" Really, it is. Then, we see Chiara and her poor mother out on the street, where Kiki is telling us that her mom supports her "one hundred and ninety-nine percent of the time." What the hell does that mean? I would get "one hundred percent," and I would get the slight humor in "ninety-nine percent." I don't know. Maybe they taught percents on the same they taught nautical spelling in Chiara's elementary school. She comments that her parents weren't really "prepared" for the way she acted on TV. I think the American Psychiatric Association wasn't "prepared" for how she acted on TV, so her parents can hardly be blamed. Blah blah blah Kiki's friends, blah blah blah I-yam-what-I-yam. You know what? Cram it, nitwit.

Now we check in on Gerry, who is back at school. You can really tell that he's changed shape quite a lot since he arrived in the house. He looks terrific, actually. He talks about how much he likes being back at school, and how happy he was to see the family. Yay, Gerry. The kids in his classes seem to do a fair amount of good-natured ragging on him, which in my experience with teachers speaks pretty highly of his relationship with them. He says he lost nineteen pounds in the house, and I'm actually surprised it's not more. He says that the hygiene experience was a little embarrassing, and that it seemed like kind of a "cheap shot" and a stupid reason not to like him. Blah blah blah personal growth.

Marcellas is relaxing in L.A. before heading back to Chicago. (May I recommend Belly, a.k.a. Reality-Show Contestant Vortex Of Soul-Sucking Suckage? Seriously, as I understand it, you can't swing a dead cat in there without hitting some punk who ate rat heads on Fear Factor.) We see Marcellas meet up with a friend of Lisa's at some bar. He tells Friend Of Lisa that he thinks America let out a moan of disappointed despair when he didn't use the veto. Apparently, he wasn't able to pick up the audio from my house. This leads us back into another discussion of the eternal question of why he didn't veto himself, and you will be stunned, I'm sure, to hear that he thinks it's because he's such a wonderful and kind person. Do you suppose he thinks he's actually fooling anyone? Do you suppose he actually is fooling anyone? I just have to believe he can't be. I would feel uncomfortable sharing the world with people who believe Marcellas is as he believes he is. What would such a person be like? He goes on to say how badly he was hurt by Danielle, and then he gets back to the subject at hand, which is congratulating himself for his wonderfulness. Blah blah blah massive shared experiences.

Hey, it's almost time for something to actually happen. Julie reveals that in addition to the usual assorted family members who are standing by for the eviction, Eric is there in case Lisa gets the boot. Usually, I'd suspect that a guy in this situation would be sitting there rehearsing what to say, but I don't think Eric is worried about it. "Hi!" It's even shorter than "How you doin'?" Maybe he'll touch her belly button.

When we come back from commercials, it's actually time to start the damn competition already. Lisa and Jason are side by side, sitting in little booths. Danielle is behind them, really not caring what happens since she's going to the final two anyway, but undoubtedly rooting for Lisa on the theory that she has a better chance against Lisa than she does against Jason. Tonight's game is that the nine evictees have been asked to provide positive and negative words about each of the three who remain. For each evictee, Julie will read three adjectives, each of which applies to one of the current residents, and they will have to identify to whom one of the words was applied. Yeah, that's not a great explanation, I admit. But for example, the first question says that Lori called one of them "mysterious," one "funny," and one "polite." They have to guess who was "funny." Of course, the great mythology of this show dictates that Danielle is downright hilarious, so this one is fairly easy. The competition as a whole isn't terribly interesting, but it offers a few tidbits of interest. Kiki called Lisa "insecure." Roddy called Danielle "soulless." (Ow. Danielle makes a bemused face at that one.) Marcellas called the three of them "instinctive," "attractive," and "guarded," all of which you'll notice are sort of meaningless. They should have asked Marcellas to give adjectives to describe himself. He's really more of an expert on that. Of course, there wouldn't be any negative ones, but that's all right.

In the end, Lisa takes it by three points, eight questions to five. The interesting inquiry, of course, is whether Jason threw it, especially since he lost fairly decisively, particularly on early questions. The theory that Jason threw it would be, I think, that he's actually so "noble" or "devoted" or whatever that he literally wanted Danielle to win more than he wanted to win himself, and he feared that if he won and took Danielle to the finals, he'd beat her, and since he knew Lisa would take her, he thought Danielle had a better chance against Lisa, so he threw it. ["That's exactly my theory." -- Wing Chun] I can certainly believe that Jason might do that. But I don't think he did, for a couple of reasons. First, he did seem to try his hardest to win the second round, and he said rather convincingly in the diary room that the reason he was doing it was that he knew that otherwise, he was out of the game. He would have had to completely change his feelings about that between round two and round three, and I just don't think he did. I'm just not prepared to think that he thought so far in advance that he intentionally beat Danielle so that he could intentionally lose to Lisa out of fear that if Danielle won, she would take him to the finals and she would lose. And if his devotion to Danielle were that absurdly complete, I have to think he'd worry that despite the deal, Lisa might not come through and might ditch Danielle entirely. Furthermore, the answers on which he lost the game weren't completely ridiculous. You could believe Chiara might have called him "insecure," or that Amy might have called him "sweet" and Lisa "precious" instead of the other way around, or that Marcellas could have called Lisa "attractive" and him "instinctive" or "guarded," especially considering the anti-Jason mood Marcellas was in when he left the house. Finally, I think his upcoming Chenterview illustrates that Jason's abilities to read people and situations tend to clock in somewhere below average, so I'm not confident that he would be naturally good at this particular game. So could he have thrown it? Sure. But I also think he could have lost it fair and square, and I'm sort of leaning that way.

At the end of the competition, everyone hugs. I think Jason smells the burnt toast that is his own ass. Again, I am distracted by the fact that I just don't need that much of his hairless chest.

It's almost time for the last eviction. Oh, thank goodness. At this point, this den of buffoons can't empty fast enough for me. I think the lizard tank is basically the last undisturbed pool of dignity.

The eviction takes us back into the living room. Lisa baby-talks to Julie that she's nervous, and then Danielle and Jason get a chance to plead their cases. Neither of them chooses to do so. They just say how much they love Lisa. Eh, suck-ups. Tearfully, Lisa stands up and says that she hasn't been selfish in the game up until now, but that this is about to be a very selfish choice. With big giant tears rolling down her big giant face, Lisa evicts Jason. He understands, of course. Because he has no evident emotions at all, and is apparently one big old confection. He is Jason, Man Of Marzipan. Danielle and Lisa both cry and escort him to the door. He leaves the house and flip-flops into the studio to meet up with Julie. Back in the house, Danielle and Lisa both cry. You know, I feel like I'm about tapped out on the "Danielle, you orchestrated that, so please stop weeping" number, but...she did. So she should.

In the Chenterview, Jason's first comment is, "I feel like Danielle has the game." He congratulates her, because of course, it's all over. Hee hee. Yeah, probably. Could the boy be any less perceptive? "It was what I've played for," he says. Oh, good. More people who are too noble to play for themselves. Bleh. He says he knew that Lisa would evict him, and then he talks some more about the wonder of Danielle, and I start to get a headache around this time, so can we just cut this short? He's cute. He's not too bright. He got played by Danielle. He continues to buy the Danielle line hook, line, and sinker. When Julie asks him if he'd do anything differently, he says, "I would have won the competition tonight," and because I think Jason isn't quick enough to bluff that, I think that's further evidence of the non-throwing theory, but again, he could just be much sneakier than I'm thinking. He vows to vote for Danielle. His farewell videos are just about what you'd expect. Boo hoo, we love you. He also talks back to them and waves to them on the TV. Weirdo.

Jason is turned over to his family. Everyone cries. "Go get it, Danielle!" he calls out. Ha! This is so satisfying.