It's finale night. At last. Finale night! Yay! Yay, endings! Yay, wrapping it up!
Previously, everyone I didn't hate was evicted. Oh, wait. I hated everyone. Never mind.
Julie Chen looks chic and lovely again in gray pants and a black stretchy top, having apparently packed the pirate clothes back in the trunk a few weeks ago and left them there for good. She reminds us of the misery, making out, and farting that's gone before: "Now, there are two." Thank you, Julie. season: fractions. She tells us that Lisa and Danielle had a soul-baring session after Jason flip-flopped off for his Chenterview. We see Danielle confess to Lisa that she was "diabolical." Interestingly, though, she can't actually seem to come up with a lot of terribly diabolical things that she did. Nevertheless, in the diary room, Danielle smugly smirks yet again that "the ultimate alliance was Jason and [herself]." As Danielle confesses her supposedly evil and tricky nature to Lisa, it becomes clear that Danielle places enormous importance on the fact that people were fooled about her closeness with Jason -- as if that, in and of itself, was brilliant game play. If you think about it, it really isn't. Merely keeping your alliances a secret doesn't actually do anything for you. Part of the reason they weren't discovered is that they didn't do a whole hell of a lot for the first half of the game except lay low. I'm not saying they didn't play well, but this theory Danielle seems to have adopted that she masterminded everything that happened in the house is absurd, and she isn't brilliant just because no one knew about her alliance with Jason. In fact, considering how she reveled in her own brilliance in the DR, I actually think her sneakiness did just as much harm in keeping her out of the money as it did good in bringing her to the final two. In other words, Danielle...you were only occasionally diabolical. A lot of the time you were just staying out of the way. Which is smart, of course, but not necessarily the same as brilliant. "The goal in this game was for people not to know how close Jason and I was," Danielle says. See what I mean? That's the problem, right there. The goal in this game, last time I checked, was to win money, and I'm not sure you get to lay claim to being "the ultimate alliance" unless one of you, you know, wins. Or at least takes over France or something. And bring me one of those little Eiffel Tower statues, would you?
Among other things, Danielle credits herself with having had the idea that the couples needed to be split up, which is crap. Everyone in that house knew how that was progressing, and Gerry was perfectly capable of getting there on his own. Shut up, Danielle. The editors help her out by playing a voice-over of Danielle talking about how she and Jason played so brilliantly every week, getting people out, "Boom, boom, boom, boom," and showing pictures of Lori, Tonya, Amy, and Eric. Of course, Danielle and Jason didn't vote for Lori to be evicted, so counting her as one of their "booms" is a little unfair. If we're doing revisionist history, I'd like to be taller.
But anyway. We see how Lisa kicked Danielle's butt in the Little Red Hat endurance competition, and there you have it. A little evil, a lot of luck, and some tolerance for tooth-chattering, and here sit your final two. , a series of quick shots -- slime tank, peanut butter bikinis, Eric and Lisa, dead gnomes, Sheryl Crow, hygiene smackdown, chicken livers, sponges -- what a season it's been! How is it possible that it wasn't more interesting? Maybe if there had been more foodborne illness. It certainly felt like there was an adequate supply of nausea, though. Must be something else.
All twelve original houseguests toast themselves in blue and white. Ah, alcohol. My sweet friend. Then Danielle and Lisa toast each other, and say "final two" for about the twelfth time in these first five minutes. Okay, someone's getting slapped. And not with my hand, either. I'm looking around the apartment for something handy, and the pan I made dinner in is looking pretty good.
Julie reminds us that the ten evictees are back to give their votes. We go to a large living-room set, where all ten of those who've gone before are sitting around in a circle, preparing to act just about the way they did when they were in the house, except with better wardrobe and less card-playing. And with no one watching them in the bathroom, I guess. Tonya gets the self-pity-fest off to a flying start. She says that she had a really difficult time with the things people said about her that she didn't get to see until she got home. She singles out Marcellas -- probably at least in part because of the "stripper masquerading as a mother" speech, although I think she was able to get the sense from reading about the feeds that he and Amy were pretty thoroughly brutal in the way they talked about her from Day One. (That would be Marcellas of the Big Golden Heart of Huge Enormous Sweetness, as he would undoubtedly characterize it.) "My kids saw that," she says with sadness and a sort of heavy-handed, guilt-inducing dismay that you'd think might be reserved for a woman who didn't walk around wearing nothing but food quite as often as this particular woman did. I mean, I understand that you don't have to become a sexless drone just because you have kids, and I'm not denying her her fun, but it looks to me like she uses her kids here to leverage sympathy that's just not called for. And that's pretty bad. If you want people to be guarded about what they say about you in front of your kids, you have to behave like you at least care that your kids are watching. Which she didn't.
Marcellas apologizes to her, but as usual, he manages to make it ultimately a moment of self-love: "I apologize to you. You know, I was the boy with the lines." Is it possible for him to get through a single conversation without expressing his deep and abiding adoration of himself? It would be sort of funny if it weren't so...you know, pathetic and irritating. She responds in kind by complimenting herself, saying how forgiving and kind she is. They hug. Oh, God, we have fifty-three minutes left. I don't think I'll make it. Especially if I have to look at her weird teeth and inappropriate pearl necklace and his pink polo shirt for the entire hour.
Amy, interestingly, really is the only person who genuinely takes the opportunity to apologize for the crappy things she said about people in the house while she was there. It comes off as fairly sincere -- I think she got out and thought that the sight of herself in some of those moments was kind of ugly. My friend Ames made the comment recently that Amy will be a terrific girl someday, and I think I agree. She's one of those people you suspect will have a number of very cool qualities after some growing up and some confidence and maybe a little therapy to keep her from pouring her heart out for the benefit of people who walk on it. She has sometimes really bothered me, but it's completely easy for me to believe that, five years from now, she could be a hilarious, self-possessed bad-ass, and I dearly hope it happens. At any rate, she apologizes very straightforwardly, and with a refreshing lack of sneaky attempts to surreptitiously justify everything she did. Chiara jiggles her foot, feeling very much empowered to accept or not accept Amy's apology, having been not at all at fault herself. Still can't stand her. Can't. Stand. Her. Not in the house, not out of the house, not ever. We see Kiki in...well, it's not the diary room...it's sort of the Post-Mortem Room. She tells us that she doesn't forgive Amy at all. You know, one of the reasons I don't believe in using the word "bitch" too freely is so that I can save it up for moments when it really, truly applies, such as this one. Bitch.
Josh follows this up by apologizing to Gerry, and he too comes across as mostly sincere, or at least as sincere as Josh gets. "I was cruel to you," he says simply. And accurately. We see him in blue and white whapping Gerry with the plastic lizard. Yeah, I could believe that watching yourself do that would not be pretty. I wonder whether it was the part where he said "Nazi" that made Josh think he might have crossed the line. Gerry is gracious in response. They do not hug.
Chiara. Oh, Chiara. She takes this opportunity to apologize to...Roddy, of all people. She could not be sadder if she were a Lifetime movie where three women in the same family all die of consumption within three days of each other, and then all the actresses win Golden Globes. Kiki says that somehow Roddy suffered the effects of her neediness, or something...I don't totally understand it, except that she's still got his name tattooed on her ass or wherever she had it done, so she's not giving up just because he's done everything short of hanging out a sign to advertise his lack of interest. "Cool. Thanks for saying that," he answers. Prick. They have certainly turned into a traveling horror show.
Roddy. He prattles on for quite some time (again) about how hard it was for him, because all he ever did was act really, really nice to everyone, so he has no idea how he was so badly misread. As usual, he is not willing to take responsibility for anything he did, because the way he mindfucked half that house was not "nice." He could really use a little self-awareness to go with all those facts about continental drift.
The evictees start in talking about Danielle and Lisa. Josh takes the position that Lisa has gotten a free ride from other people. Gerry agrees in the PMR that Lisa had no "coherent strategy." Interestingly, I think that's a good thing. I don't think you can go into that house with a single set "strategy." Just as with Will last year, I think one of the things Lisa did well was roll with the shifting fortunes of the house. This game, because of all the uncertainties of competitions and such, really does need to be played week-to-week, so I wouldn't fault her for not having a single consistent strategy. I don't think you need one. Amy certainly didn't have one, and she was in the final four. Marcellas, on the other hand, is giving Lisa credit for what a nice girl she is. He notes that for him, Lisa's "defining moment" was being the only one not to take the money in the game with the cell phones. I actually do think she got huge points for that -- just when Danielle and Jason were looking like mustache-twirling operators, here came Lisa with this really generous move. It seemed to boost her underdog appeal considerably.
Tonya says that Danielle got people to do her dirty work, but it's not clear to me what she means. She obviously hates Danielle, but in this game, I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't vote for you because you didn't do your own dirty work. I don't know. Maybe I'm not following. She confuses me. Josh responds by complimenting Danielle's excellent play in the house by pointing out how badly people realized they were being played once they left. This is true, but once again, I have to stress the endgame. If you just want to make the final two, you don't need to worry about votes. But if you want the money, you need a way to get enough votes to win, and Danielle didn't have any plan for that at all.
Sort of apropos of nothing, Lori -- in a weird off-the-shoulder purple peasant top -- says that Danielle is "very dynamic." I never know what people mean by "dynamic." I'd think it's a synonym for "loud," except that no one ever says it about me.
Chiara returns her tray table to the full upright and locked position as the Roddy-Won't-You-Please-Love-Me Redeye takes her from Wackyland to Goofyville. She says that her problem with Danielle was how Danielle talked about Roddy. She thinks, but does not say, "After all, that's my future husband she's talking about." Blah dee blah devil, and so forth. Interestingly, of all the people Danielle was really crappy and mean about, I think Roddy took the least of it. I always got the impression that she said "devil" with a weird kind of grudging respect -- I didn't take it as literally as some of these people do. I think of her as having been much meaner in her talk about Chiara and Amy and Lori and Tonya and Gerry and some of those folks. I think Danielle thought that she and Roddy were mutually respectful worthy adversaries, in a weird way, so I find it really interesting that it is the way she talked about Roddy that's really coming back to bite her.
Jason launches into a defense of Danielle, and because Marcellas cannot stand to have anyone in the room look at anyone other than him for one moment, he makes a great show of standing up from his seat to Jason and making Amy slide over so he doesn't have to sit beside Jason. "It was very difficult for me to sit to the Christian virgin and have him sort of glorify meanness," Marcellas says in the PMR. Putting aside the incredible hypocrisy Marcellas displays here -- given that he was so cruel in the way he talked about Gerry and others -- I think it's especially comedically stupid that he somehow implies that virgins should be nicer than other people. Where does he get his ridiculous notions, anyway? Target, I suppose. Doesn't everyone shop at Target now? When Marcellas is finished glorifying...well, himself, Jason returns to the theme that, in reality, Danielle loves everyone and was just playing the game. He tells them that he knows Danielle better than they all do, so they should take his word for it. Fat chance, Li'l Soul Patch. Jason accuses them of "faulting people for playing the game" if they don't vote for her. Not that it was really "game" for her to go in the diary room and talk about how Amy thought she was sexy and really wasn't. That's just mean talk, which is fine. And yes, we all do it. But if you want somebody to vote for you to take home money, you don't do it. Danielle's DR sessions were poor game play. Why is that hard for Jason to understand? "I want you to consider giving this game to the person that has played the game the best."
Okay, this is all I'm going to say about this. The only things there are in this game are (1) staying in the house; and (2) getting people to vote for you at the end. Those are the only two things you have to do. They are both legitimately part of the game. There is no reason in hell why anyone should vote for you in the second part because of how well you played the first part. Simply put, why should you hand half a million bucks to an ass? This isn't a game of skill in any sense other than making other people make decisions the way you want them to. There isn't anything to it -- no racing, no challenges, no games; not really. The only way Danielle "played the best" was in convincing people to do what she wanted and fooling them into not thwarting her. But she did a horrible job of securing votes at the end, which is equally part of the game. So I have had about all I can take of this "Danielle deserved to win" argument. There's no such thing as deserving to win in this game, except by making people want to vote for you. "I hate you" is a perfectly valid basis on which to vote, in my opinion. I certainly wouldn't have voted for Danielle to win a penny, because she was cocky and arrogant and full of herself. And I love seeing people like that not get what they want.
Julie says that the houseguests will reveal their votes one by one. They show us PMR sessions in which the evictees share their "thoughts." Chiara claims to have "wavered." By which she means "asked Roddy what he wanted me to do a bunch of times," I suspect. Josh talks about his internal debate over whether to vote "emotionally" or "strategically." I think it's interesting that apparently those lead him in opposite directions. Is he saying he would emotionally vote for Lisa? Weird. Roddy equivocates. Eric says his relationship with Lisa isn't the be-all and end-all of his decision (yeah, right). Marcellas talks about Danielle being "amazing." Josh compares Lisa to Forrest Gump (heh). Lori says she respects Danielle. Amy talks about how Danielle played everyone brilliantly. Josh says, "To knock Danielle for what she did to get to the finals is to not understand the game." Sigh. See paragraph.
Julie tells us again -- in case this is the first time you've seen the show -- that the ten evictees will get the final say in who wins. Before they vote, though, the evictees have a chance to ask Lisa and Danielle a final question. For this session, the evictees are in the big studio living room, and Lisa and Danielle are seen onscreen from inside the house. Lori asks Lisa whether she has regrets about the first HoH and the original alliance. Lisa says she does -- in fact, the original alliance is her single regret. "I'm not one to judge someone as quickly as I did," she says, deftly sucking up to Lori while also lending a suck to Marcellas. Lori asks Danielle about the handwashing incident -- which of course was highlighted by Gerry's hands! In the salad! Danielle says she recalls that. Danielle and Lori both agree they blew up at each other. Well, that was certainly dull. I think Lori missed a memo about taking the opportunity to pick your personal scabs. Everyone else got the memo, though. You'll see. And it was apparently quite a persuasive memo. !
Tonya asks Lisa about certain unkind things Lisa said about her after she was gone. We see Lisa say in blue and white that Tonya's conversations were all "too materialistic." Tonya asks what Lisa's "true feelings" about her are. Rather than answer something like, "You're a freaky plastic doll," like she's thinking, Lisa dodges the question entirely, just apologizing if she said anything about Tonya that was hurtful. Tonya turns her attention to Danielle, and leads off by saying she doesn't care at all about what Danielle thinks of her. Yeah, I don't think Danielle's getting that vote. Stand back and be in awe of my ability to read people, but that's my guess. Tonya asks Danielle what she could change about the game, if she could change one thing. Danielle says she would have held onto the key. Not, of course, "I wouldn't have flapped my yap and blown my chances at the half-million." Because she doesn't learn. Blue-and-white Danielle lets go of the key.
Amy asks Danielle how honest she was in her diary room sessions. I find that an interesting question. Because Danielle was so mean and so cocky, I think it makes her look bad to make her say, "Yes, I meant every mean and cocky word." On the other hand, the structure of the question gives her an opening to say that all she ever did was tell the truth -- which is essentially what she does. I'm curious about why Amy asked her that. She asks Lisa how honest her diary room sessions were. Lisa basically says that she didn't say anything she didn't mean, but that she didn't say everything she was thinking, either. (No dummy in that regard, Lisa.)
Eric asks Danielle how she would rate her performance in terms of "ethics." Which is stupid, because no one really knows what "ethics" means in this context. Does it refer to being "honest"? I mean, who cares about honest? I don't think Danielle's play was unethical in the slightest. I just came to detest her personality. Why are we discussing ethics? Sigh. Danielle obviously doesn't know what Eric means either, so she whimpers out something to the effect that she wasn't ethical, but that she didn't break any rules. Or something. Not a good job of answering that question at all. The point here, I think, is to figure out what the person asking the question wants you to say. Eric greets Lisa with "How you doin'?" which is stupid, because anyone in America could have told him that his line was "Hi." They never get in touch with me in advance, so I can tell them these things. Eric asks Lisa about when she voted to bring Amy back instead of him. He asks her whether she thought that might sway his vote, and asks how it affected her. Clearly shaky about having this be the first time they get to talk about this fairly significant issue, Lisa says she didn't think about the final vote, but that her reason for not bringing him back was that they would only have had to separate again. Which is totally not true, which he knows -- she rightfully voted not to bring him back for strategic purposes, and I'm not sure why she doesn't just admit it. I mean, everyone knows already, Lisa.
Oh, good. It's time for more of the part of the show where Josh talks. He asks Lisa why he shouldn't vote for Danielle. It's actually not a bad choice of question, for an idiot. She says the reason is that she was a playing for "an honest person to win." How boring! Good grief, like Josh is going to vote based on honesty. Lisa should have told him that if he voted for her, she'd give him a lap dance. Or pick the bugs out of his horrible little beard. When it's Danielle's turn, he asks her why he shouldn't vote for Lisa. Danielle says that she was "on a mission" and "did what [she] had to do." That was an even worse answer than Lisa's! None of these women knows the first thing about handling Josh. Of course, only the Health Department really does. They have guidelines. Involving latex gloves, Lysol, and boiling water. (Oh Josh, I missed you so much.)
Chiara asks Danielle to list all the houseguests to whom she told a lie. Danielle unapologetically says she lied to everyone but Jason. And possibly Lori, because there just wasn't time. Kiki then asks Lisa whether Lisa forgives Kiki for calling her insecure. Huh? I guess that's called, "Kiki Telegraphs Her Vote." Maybe she thinks Roddy will grab her, throw her down, and start making out with her. Lisa says she doesn't understand why Chiara called her insecure, but she's going to go back to her first instinct, which was to be Chiara's friend. So the answer is yes. Sort of. In truth, the answer is basically, "Whatever, freak." Heh.
Gerry asks them both the same question: if you don't win the money, what was the flaw in your game? Ooh, cool question. I love that question. Danielle basically can't come up with the flaw in her game, because she's convinced that the only reason anyone is unhappy with her is because she was "dishonest," and she says that if she hadn't been, she wouldn't be in the finals. She really doesn't grasp the difference between "dishonest" and "gratuitously mean." I don't think they're angry at her because she was secretly in an alliance with Jason. I think they're mad at her for things like...well, yes, the "devil" stuff, but also the way she would ridicule Amy, and the way she would ridicule Gerry, and most of all the way she had to sit in the DR and gloat over how brilliant she was. I'm convinced it's at least 50% Danielle's attitude, and not her game play, that's the real issue. Perhaps that's fair and perhaps it's not, but it's not the same as if it were all about an abstract notion of "integrity." Lisa says that if she loses, her mistake will be bringing another "Will" -- not well-liked, but well-respected as a player -- to sit at the finals with her. Eh.
Roddy. He asks Danielle how much she hated eating PB&J. Yeah, you're too classy and cool to get into it with her. We get it, Brother Superior. It's good to know he hasn't changed. Danielle obligingly says she hated the peanut butter and jelly. Of course, we knew that. Roddy asks Lisa her favorite memory of the house. She says it was watching her own growth experience. Eric sort of shakes his head, smiles a little wryly, and says, "Damn." I'm thinking he was hoping for the dinner, or perhaps one of their make-out sessions. I liked that. That was cute. Not that she didn't announce to an entire chat that the first time he kissed her, it was kind of bad. I can't imagine he didn't take a fair amount of abuse at the fire station over that one.
Marcellas says he has no questions for either of them. Why, after all, would he intentionally turn the focus of attention to someone other than himself? Why would we think he would do such a thing? The degree to which all these people are using their Q&A moment to reaffirm every negative quality we've ever seen in them is really striking.
Jason's turn. Everyone is crying. He doesn't ask any questions, because he suffers from a fundamental lack of curiosity, and without Danielle to tell him what to ask, he's a little adrift. He tells them both that he loves them, and they all cry big fat tears of foiled friendship. I think speculation on the boards is correct that Jason knows that Danielle has lost the game, and that's the reason for the extensive crying. Either that, or he's just a big baby, which is also possible. Or he's thinking, "I wonder if sleeping with Lisa would have helped."
And now, we get what look like closing arguments. Lisa announces that she came into the house saying she would play with her heart. She insists that playing with her heart didn't make her weak; it just made her a "different player." Roddy picks at his foot and looks bored. There is way too much gel in that man's hair. Each spike is individually distinguishable from space. "I'm sitting to Danielle because I brought her here," Lisa says with a gentle smile. I really like that line, because I think Lisa correctly surmises that the way she might lose this vote was sort of on a "Danielle played the hell out of this game" theory. So what Lisa is pointing out is that Lisa had the power to eliminate Danielle, and it's only because she chose not to that Danielle is there. I think it's the right thing to say to these people, actually. She then specifically calls out Gerry, and the fact that he called her "lucky." She says she's choosing to take it as a compliment. I think she did well for herself.
Danielle once again uses her incredibly irritating "innocent as a dove, sly as a snake" line. Apparently, she has not noticed yet that hammering on the brilliance of her own duplicity is not really getting her a lot of traction with these people. Basically, Danielle's only argument in her defense is that her family was counting on her. Again, this has nothing to do with the way she sat in the DR congratulating herself. She seems to have a real problem with the notion that it is not actually the ruthlessness of her play that is making these people not like her. It's her arrogance. And clearly, that hasn't changed.
Dramatic music fetched from the vaults of the music editor from Starsky and Hutch plays in the background over shots of the evictees, who we are meant to think are pondering their very serious decisions. Of course, what they are really doing is pondering how they currently look on television. Sigh.
Back in the house when the cameras are off, Danielle tells Lisa once again that all she was ever doing was playing the game. She needs a clue. She also says she'd do it all over again, which means she needs two clues. You're going to lose, here, dummy. You might think that would indicate the need for a change in strategy, if you had it to do all over again.
Julie transitions to more PMR jabbering about who is less offensive, basically. Then we see all the houseguests placing their special voting keys in the special finale voting box. I'm not sure when the people who make this show are going to notice that no sequence including a voting or nominating ritual has ever been interesting. Not ever.
Annoyingly enough, we are then taken to an interview back in the Chenterview studio with the evictees. God, ENOUGH already. Julie welcomes them, yakkety yak. Josh acts like a spaz, and Julie tells him to shut up. Well, I am summarizing. When she gets things settled down, she starts the interview with Jason, asking him whether the other houseguests influenced his "Christian virgin" attitudes. He totally misses the question -- or dodges it, depending on whether you think he's dim or not. I tend to think he's a little dim, honestly. At any rate, instead of answering the question, he says some more how much he loves everyone, which is...fine, but not really relevant, of course. It's just the only thing he knows how to say. He's kind of like a blender where all the buttons are broken but one. You're getting "Chop," whether you like it or not.
Julie asks Josh about Merritt. In a truly strange and perhaps Freudian slip, Julie intends to ask "When are you going to make an honest woman of her?," and instead says, "When are you going to make a decent woman of her?" Wow, Julie. Harsh. Josh says they're taking things at their own pace, blah blah blah, and says he's not making any big trips to register for china just now. Translation: "I voted for Lisa, and I'm still hoping she might sleep with me. I can always get married later."
Julie asks Eric about things between him and Lisa, and asks what it was like to watch her from the outside looking in. The big mook makes what's actually a very nice little speech about how he just got more and more crazy about her, and he just thinks she's so cool and so swell and...aw. They're both just kind of awkward and pretty and nice and simple. Give them a hand, ladies and gentlemen, and wish them luck.
Rather cruelly, Julie asks Chiara about Roddy. Good God, Julie. The girl needs help as it is! Help her put it down! Don't make her pick it up! Roddy seriously looks like he is going to throw up sitting behind Chiara, so for me, that makes this otherwise painful sequence entirely worthwhile. Chiara giggles and equivocates and basically says, "Gee, I don't know." Well, my dear, that makes you the only one who doesn't know.
Julie doesn't ask Roddy about Chiara, because she wants to ask him about the fact that he sucks. Don't we all. She brings up the fact that he admitted to having manipulated everyone in the house and taken advantage of their weaknesses. She asks whether that isn't, in fact, a form of lying. Yay, Julie! I mean, it isn't really a form of lying, but it is a form of acting like a dick, so she's close enough. Roddy babbles about how much integrity he has and how playing on people's weaknesses is "not immoral to do." Along here, I start thinking a lot about what his eyeballs would look like in a jar on top of my television.
On to Tonya. Julie asks her about the "harsh criticism" she took for the way she acted. For the zillionth time, Tonya rehashes the bull about how she should be allowed to "be a mom and be sexy." I am so sending her a dictionary. With "sexy" circled.
Julie asks Lori about her short stay in the house, and asks whether she's ever thought about whether she would have "stirred things up" in the house if she'd stayed longer. "Oh, Julie, yes," says Lori, projecting her voice past the dead and very rare Bohemian Mink-Covered Snake (serpenticus furrificus) draped around her neck. Everyone laughs, because Lori is from Wisconsin. Ha, ha! Those Midwesterners! "We'll never know how things would have been different," Julie says abruptly, trying to shut her up.
Moving along to Gerry, Julie asks whether his students think he's cool now, or whether he takes abuse for the things they saw. (I would think the lack of hand-washing would be a likely target for, say, sixth-graders. "Good morning, Mr. Poopyhands!") He says there's some of both, but he doesn't mind. He says that, fortunately, he was perceived as a "pretty cool teacher" before, so he's even cooler now. Gerry? Yeah. Quit while you're ahead, dude.
Julie reminds Marcellas of the time she whacked him in the back of the head with a card. He recalls that. "Did arrogance cost you this game?" Julie asks, in an unusually straightforward and un-Julie-like fashion. Much to no one's surprise, Marcellas says that arrogance didn't cost him the game -- his sheer wonderfulness and purity of heart cost him the game. He loved everyone, so his pure and true heart simply could not survive. It was sort of like Edward Scissorhands, the way Marcellas describes it. Get. The. Hook.
Now, Julie asks Amy about her comment when she left the house the second time, to the effect that she would need armed guards to protect her from Kiki and Tonya. "Actually, Chiara and I are planning on moving in together," Amy says, and everyone laughs. She says that while she is kidding about being roomies, she and Kiki have in fact sort of made up. Yeah, right. That would be cool if they lived together, though -- talk about a sitcom in the making! Of course, it would have to be on pay cable, because of Chiara.
Julie sends them all back into the house. Roddy is appointed to walk in front of the line. You just know that some part of him was like, "Yeah, that's appropriate. At least Julie gets it. She's mature. She's good people, like I am. Also, I think she wants me." At any rate, they all pile out, and head from the studio over to the house. Jason is given the grave responsibility of being the Doorbell Ringer. A rare technical glitch plagues the usually spot-on crew, and just as Jason reaches for the doorbell...it rings. Yep, before he touches it. He doesn't even really fake the sound guy out, either, like he's one of those guys who shoot free throws with a little pause at the top to make you step in the lane. They just plain jump the gun. Well, of course they do! They're so excited! Aren't we all? It's almost over! Hooray!
Eric goes in last. Because it's more suspenseful that way. You can have the phony friendliness up front. The love must wait. You can't hurry love, you know.
Inside, Danielle and Lisa are told that they have visitors. Lisa goes over and opens the door. There is a semi-joyous reunion among all the evictees and the two people they can barely bring themselves to vote for. Eric hangs back while everyone else hugs Lisa. Eric is holding a big stuffed dog. Whether it's Lisa's old dog or a new dog, I'm not sure. Wow, I narrowly avoided a metaphor of some kind right there, I can tell. I felt it whip by my ear. When Eric and Lisa finally hug, everyone else who watched the episode but me apparently can hear Eric tell her she won, but I can't. I believe them, I just don't hear it. I can tell he says something, and then she asks him if he's sure, and he says he's sure, and then they cut away to Julie very quickly. She says that it is (mercifully) almost time for the vote. Thank goodness. I can't take much more.
Okay, time to crown the big winner. Julie tells us that either Danielle or Lisa will get half a million bucks, and the runner-up gets $50,000. Time to reveal the votes. The way they're doing it this year is that each person stands up and pulls his or her key out to reveal the vote. What I hate about it is that they don't get to explain. It's just pull your key, announce your vote, and sit down. Sigh. I want details! Prurient details, if possible! Anyway, Lori goes first. She votes for Lisa, which according to my pre-show calculations (which were that she needed at least one of Lori, Gerry, Amy, and Chiara in order to win), bodes well for Lisa. Tonya votes for Lisa. Eric votes (shockingly) for Lisa. Josh stands up. "I did it. I voted for Lisa to win Big Brother 3," he says as if he is surprised, and then he sits down. Some have interpreted that to mean he was pressured into it, but all I took it to mean is that they obviously talked about it, and he had told everyone that he was struggling with whom to vote for. I suspect what it really refers to is that he was having a lot of trouble putting aside his personal gripes with Lisa, so it pained him to vote for her, but he did. And why? Same reason as Chiara is about to vote for Lisa -- he wants Roddy to love him. Sigh. Anyway, Chiara votes for Lisa. Gerry votes for Lisa. Roddy votes for Lisa. Marcellas votes for Lisa. Amy votes for Lisa. Oh, and Jason votes for Danielle. That's a nine-to-one vote, for those of you keeping score at home.
Groupthink? Maybe. But every one of those people, save Josh, had a good reason to vote for Lisa, as far as I was concerned -- or a good reason to vote against Danielle. I think Josh went along as he often does, desperate for approval and to fit in, but I think the rest of them could easily have reached that decision legitimately.
Everyone claps. Lisa looks teary and puffy and thrilled. Josh runs over to hug her, which is just additional proof that money isn't everything, because you never know what it may bring into your life. Julie tells Danielle and Lisa that their families are waiting outside. Lisa pauses to get some Eric hugs (hee hee), and then all head for the door. Gerry hugs Lisa and assures her that "lucky" was a compliment. Ooh, not! Okay, I don't technically know, but...ooh, not! Everyone out the front door. Danielle goes to her children and very youthful-looking hubby and they all hug. Yay, hugging! Lisa goes to her father, throwing the poor stuffed dog right down on the steps (hey!). Aww, Lisa loves her dad.
Time for the winners' Chenterview. Julie congratulates them, telling them they're "both winners." Why do hosts always say things like that? They're not both winners. Lisa won. Danielle lost. You can tell by the extra zero at the end of Lisa's check. More from Danielle about the fact that she got in trouble for doing the "bad things" that got her into the final, and I think my id is fully aired on that topic, so there you have it, and I'll leave it there. Danielle says the way this ended has proved that "a good person can win it." Take that, Will! Then she throws in, "And they don't have to play hard." Oh, meow. Asked whether she would do the same things if she had it to do over again, Danielle says, "I would do it exactly the same." Which apparently means she enjoyed losing and it would be her preferred outcome if she did it again. She's really not as smart as she sometimes seemed, you know.
Asked whether she's surprised she won, Lisa says she was, "because of last year." In other words, she expected evil to prevail. Hiss! Spit! Julie asks whether they were surprised by the lopsided vote, and Danielle says that once she felt the non-love in the Q&A session, she sort of got the idea that the tide had pretty firmly turned against her. Julie leads the women through a little word-association game, in which she rattles off former houseguests, and they're supposed to say whatever comes to mind. Highlights: Lisa calls Amy "crazy." She responds to Marcellas with, "Beautifulness." "Beautifulness"? Sigh. I think I'll be needing the English-Lisa/Lisa-English Dictionary yet again. They call Roddy "a good man" and "wonderful." Whatever. Lisa calls Gerry "strong," which I give her credit for noticing. Lisa calls Eric "lovely," which is kind of cute, and much better than most of the things she might have said. They both call Jason an "angel." I still think one of them should have said "shave." Julie offers Lisa congratulations.
When we come back from the last commercial, Julie wraps it up on the front steps of the house with all the houseguests gathered around her, including Lisa, holding the big stuffed dog. Julie makes a lame peanut butter joke, and then a lame haggis joke, and then mercifully? It is not on. Anymore. Until year. May we all be here to suffer through it together.
Not surprisingly, bad music plays over the credits.