Previously: Dick was just so mad about the house booting Kail instead of Eric, and he started yelling at everybody like the unhinged neighbor he basically is. Seriously, Dick's that guy who lives door, and the cops are always there, and you kind of hope it's just noise complaints, but eventually, you get so sick of the sirens that you just move, and then later, you learn that a friend of his got busted selling meth out of his apartment, and he swears he had no idea, and you kind of think maybe he didn't, because he is stupid enough not to notice someone selling meth out of his apartment and socially lame enough to let dudes come over when he's not even there just so he can have friends, and you kind of wonder if his friends also steal his money. Also, Jessica became HoH, and everybody in her alliance was very excited and showed it by throwing the biggest party since Thursday Night At Dick's House When Dick's Not There. Dick vowed to make everyone hate him, and fortunately, they were most of the way there anyway, so he was kind of carrying the coals of his own suck to the Newcastle of their existing disdain for him. Jessica nominated Dick and Daniele for booting, and Dick swore that he'd make life hell for everyone until he was out the door. Could the veto possibly keep us from getting rid of one of these genetically bound morons? And what of Eric, Subservient/Sweet Chicken? Is there any chance the America's Choice question will ask whom Eric should poke in the eye with a fork? Because my vote is all ready. I would happily give my ninety-nine cents for the cause.
Blue and white nomination ceremony. Jessica explains -- just the way she did in the previouslys -- that she nominated Dick and Daniele. They can compete for the veto, after all. Jessica adjourns the meeting, and in the DR, Dick swears that he will make everyone hate him. Daniele, for her part, complains about how "hard" it is for her in the house, which means she really needs a job in food service, because this is not hard. This is being on TV, and you don't have to make rent or huck your own groceries, so seriously, Daniele: button it. Jessica tells us that, all things considered, she'd rather see Daniele leave than Dick, because Dick has a lot of other targets he'd pick on before he'd pick on her. That's a girl with a plan -- or more of a plan than you'd think she had based on her voice and her eye makeup.
Eric joins Jessica and Jameka in the HoH room and talks about how happy he is that either father or daughter will be out of his irrationally pointy hair. Dick, meanwhile, tells Daniele that he feels like his every move has been wrong, and he tells her she needs to become a better liar. Hey, there's nothing like parental advice. Dick instructs Daniele not to believe anyone in the house other than maybe Zach, whom I'd recommend she trust only while he's in the bunny suit. Dick tells us that he's been giving Daniele a lot of advice to try to help her go farther in the game. He also hassles Daniele about taking her vitamins, even offering to smash them up in her food. He also tells us how much he likes being Daniele's dad, because that's what he thinks is his bulletproof argument. He's hiding behind being Daniele's dad, because he's glommed onto the cult of parenthood in the current culture that elevates parenthood to some kind of moral imperative and third rail, where going off on the "it was for my baaaaaby" excuses whatever bullshit angle you're currently working, whether it's treating other reality-show contestants like crap or letting your three-year-old run around a movie theater. Dick is a product of the same mentality that led the airlines to start giving a toddler-ish age limit for kids to preboard: oceans of dipshits claiming they need to get on first because of their helpless twelve-year-olds. Daniele is Dick's unjustified preboard.
Jen comes upstairs and interrupts the HoH conversation among Jessica's alliance. Jessica tells us she didn't really appreciate Jen's presence, but this is just about all you'll be seeing of Jen for a while, so I hope you don't like her either. Because Jen has been working with Dick for a week or two, Jessica assumes that Jen is just there to listen in so that she can report to Dick and Daniele, because she doesn't understand that Jen has staked out such a no-man's-land territory at this point that she can literally align with whomever happens to be HoH, and they don't have a good reason not to believe her. She doesn't take anything overly personally to the point where it interferes with her game, so she doesn't have disorienting grudges, but she also doesn't really have any friends.
Downstairs, Dick and Daniele talk about how much they need to get the veto. "This is extremely important to me that Daniele stay," he says. He tells us that he must get everyone to hate him so that Daniele can stay. Again, this is ironically Dick's cheapening of Daniele -- he's just selling her as a prop in his own story, propping up his image and his tale by passing off as a rescue mission what is actually just the bubbling over of his id.
So. Let's meet Dick's id, shall we? The morning, everyone is sleeping, when Dick hops out of bed and goes and gets a pot lid and a spoon from the kitchen. With everyone still asleep, Dick takes these items in by Dustin's bed and bangs them right to Dustin's ear repeatedly. What follows is a montage from what was, combined, like a forty-five-minute rant in which Dick went around vowing to make everyone's lives a living hell until they sent him home. It's dumb, of course, because nothing motivates like spite, and if Dick actually makes these people hate him as much as he's talking about, they're going to spite him by booting his daughter, considering how obvious it is that this is his purported agenda. Either they were going to send him home anyway, or they still won't. This will not change who goes home, because he can't actually keep it up for days, and if he did, the show would put a stop to it, because they won't make a show that's nothing but other people sitting in a locked room and Dick talking to himself. But anyway.
The short version is that Dick hollers like a nutter about Amber's daughter, Jameka's religion, and everything else. He also repeatedly makes homophobic remarks directed at Dustin, which I'm very glad are included in the version shown on television, although they were (obviously) more explicit for those who saw them live. Ultimately, the rest of the house just starts ignoring Dick, which drives him completely nuts, just like it did when Jen ignored him weeks ago. In fact, when Amber looks like she's about to crack and start responding, Jameka comes and quietly retrieves her to lead her away before she reacts to any of it. I find that moment weirdly touching, with this odd overtone of watching someone dragged away from an abusive boyfriend by a loving friend. Dick preens about how he's very effectively getting to everyone, but...it really looks like the opposite. They're certainly not enjoying it, because it's inconvenient to go hide from him, but for the most part, they've just ignored him and gone about their business. It doesn't look like he was really bothering anyone in the way he intended, except for Amber, who is just as crazy as he is. It would have been more complete if you'd seen all forty-five minutes of crazy, but they showed enough. They gave you the information, including about fifty repetitions of the hilarious and edgy practice of calling a gay man "Princess," and what you do with that information is both up to you and on you. Notably, during this blowup, Daniele brushes her teeth and smirks affectionately about what her dad is up to.
Time for the POV competition. Dick smirks and gloats as Jessica says she hopes her alliance members will be chosen to play so that they can keep the veto away from Daniele and Dick. Dick keeps up the homophobia aimed at Dustin as Dustin is chosen for the veto competition, along with Zach and Jameka (and, of course, Jessica, Dick, and Daniele). The players are sent into the backyard one by one to play a game in which they have to run from station to station and drink various things -- pickle juice, weird combinations of food put through a blender, and so forth. Jameka runs through the course, but the bacon, egg, and orange juice drink (wow, YUCK) throws her off, and she skips it. She tells us that the chunks really were a problem for her, so that's not good. For her or for me. Dustin tells us he hasn't really tried that hard for veto until now, but he wanted this one. He goes through the drinks trying to take the heavy ones first, and he does very well. Zach follows, and he won't drink the blood. He also skips a bunch of other ones, because...what does he care? What's great is that this seems to occur to him about halfway through the competition, like, "If I don't win the veto, then...then...," and then he finally stops drinking vile things. Daniele gags when she gets to a steak and broccoli shake. I admit: this does not sound tasty. Dick drinks them all, because this is exactly how he sees himself, and it's exactly the kind of thing he's good at. Jessica takes the opposite of Dustin's approach and goes for the easy ones first, and she doesn't do the bad ones at all. She throws one of them right back up, though, which is nifty. Maybe she's thinking of her dad, the Human Ipecac.
And now, they have to play croquet, getting one shot for each thing they drank. The bottom line here is that ultimately, Dick wins the veto by one point out of thirty-three, which...you know. If Dustin had been better at Nerf croquet, he'd have won. It's not like it's fixed, Dick just has a lot of tolerance for disgusting things. I mean, what's in his mouth when it's not gross drinks? His own tongue. The pickle juice was probably an improvement over his usual, like, Cream Of Bacterial Swampmouth.
After the veto competition, Dustin tells everyone how much he wanted it, and his little team talks about how, even if Dick uses the veto, he's just going to be the target. Dustin explains in the DR that Dick was essentially just as mature as he always is. Dick attempts to bait Jameka about her religion, to the point where she tells us in the DR that she's about done with this. Once again, everyone else retreats to the HoH so they don't have to listen to him. When Jameka loses her composure and can't hold it in anymore, she tells Daniele how much she doesn't appreciate the comments about her religion by telling Daniele she thought they believed in the same God, but maybe not. Daniele -- who has been giggling and smirking about her father's recent behavior -- decides to yell at Jameka, and then, up in the HoH room, at everyone else, about how terribly unfair it is that everyone holds her responsible for her dad's actions. She weeps and moans and plays the my-poor-self card, claiming that it's none of her business how he acts, which would be much more convincing if she hadn't already giggled at how awesome she thought it was when he won the veto, even though he had already been verbally abusing everyone for hours.
Jameka breaks the news to Daniele that the reason nobody likes her is that nobody likes her, and this is not what Daniele wants to hear, because much like Dick uses her to make himself look good, she very much has been enjoying feeling sorry for herself and hiding behind her dad, letting him work on her behalf while claiming she haaaaates his methods. This is a sign of great cowardice: once you knowingly let someone use particular means on your behalf, you're on the hook, and pretending you're not just means you don't like to be responsible for...well, anything. Eric basically tells Daniele quite clearly and coherently that her failure to act disgusted when her dad went from obnoxious to bigoted does indeed put some responsibility on her, which I agree with. It would put some responsibility on you or on me, too, if we smirked through "princess" and some of the crap he was saying to Amber. I mean, we saw Daniele smirk while he was doing it, so we know she's lying, and the show was very careful to include that clip of her brushing her teeth and smirking, which has no purpose in the story other than to make sure you know she's full of shit during this entire conversation, provided you're paying attention.
Even if you're not paying attention, they're careful to underline that she's full of shit by immediately playing a clip of her in the DR, with her little signature smirk, admitting that it was just strategy -- and, basically, that she was using people's basic compassion for a person with family problems to advance herself in the game. Fair? Yes. Admirable? Not really. Anyway, she then goes and tells her dad to stop being an asshole, because it's not good for her game. Not "Gee, Dad, maybe it would be good if you stopped being a homophobic, bigoted piece of shit," but just, "Gee, Dad, this might not be good for my game." And at that point, she pretty much is responsible, because...put up or shut up, lady. If you're going to play all boo-hoo with everybody about how hard it is to live with him and how pitiable you are because America sees that he's your dad, and then you're going to go and basically tell him you didn't mean it? Yeah, I'm kind of done feeling bad for you, which I tried to do for a while, because your dad really does suck, and that's a bad beat. But it seems that you suck also, all on your own.
After the commercials, we watch as Dustin stupidly offers to go up on the block against whichever person isn't vetoed, assuming Dick vetoes someone. This, of course, is incredibly foolish to a level I'd have to declare "classic," because Eric doesn't control his own vote, and we don't know where Jen and Zach's questionable minds are, and in the event Jen and Zach aren't where you'd like them to be and Eric gets the wrong instructions from America...well. You know. That's a tie, and...then what?
Eric gets an instruction from America to give the silent treatment to Jessica for twelve hours. This, of course, is not convenient. He decides to feign illness and hide in bed. While he hides, Jen asks Jessica if she's going up, and Jessica says that if she does, Jessica will do all she can to make sure she doesn't go. Jen further tells Jessica that she thinks Dick and Dustin have some kind of a deal, which...what? That part, I did not understand. But Jessica goes to talk to Eric, and he tells her enough to tell her he can't talk, but he kicks her out, telling her he's sick. The buzzer sounds, saying that he failed to give her the silent treatment, which...he doesn't seem to realize, since he keeps trying. Meanwhile, Jessica convinces herself that not only does Dustin have a deal with Dick, but Eric does too, and that's why he's not talking to her. Oh, Jessica. Oh, timing. I have to say, this season is full of people coming up with theories much too complex for their surroundings. "I don't know who to put up," she whispers to the ceiling.
Dick, of course, tells us that he would give his life for Daniele without hesitating, and he's obviously going to use the veto on Daniele to "control who's staying and who's going." Jessica says that she still doesn't know whom to put up if there's a veto, and she's actually kind of weepy in the DR. At the ceremony, Dick gives Daniele an opportunity to speak, and because she already knows what he's going to do, it's cheap for her to say he should do whatever he wants, so she does. Of course, Dick takes Daniele off the block, because, like Marcellas before him, he likes to use the game to prove what a good person he is. Jessica idiotically nominates Dustin, taking away one sure vote against Dick. Dustin further curses himself by gloating in the DR about how sure he is that he's perfectly okay. He doesn't know about Eric, of course. Dick DRs about how excited he is, and how he knows the pawn always goes home. Jessica boo-hoos that people are trying to use her, and I don't even know what that means. I think she's confusing herself, which looks like...it might not be that hard.