Julie welcomes us -- and a pretty big live studio audience -- to Big Brother. After previouslies and credits, she tells us it's Day 9, and Brian's on the block with Renny. We'll find out which of them is going tonight. "But first," Julie says, her eyes narrowing, "blindsides cannot happen...without traitors." Thank you, Judgie.
The editors replay last night's veto ceremony, which ended with Brian as Jerry's replacement nominee. Brian claims in the DR to have seen it coming the second Jerry started speaking, and as soon as the meeting breaks up he wants some one-on-one time with the HoH. Once they're alone in Jerry's room, Jerry quickly outs Ollie as the one who turned on Brian, and says he was given an ultimatum; nominate Brian or go home himself. Brian is unimpressed with Jerry's excuses, because Jerry's priority in this situation should have been Brian.
Brian and Dan discuss Ollie's betrayal, and then confront Ollie for breaking his word, like it's Ollie's fault that Brian overplayed his hand so badly and tipped off the women in the first place. Dan self-righteously claims that he never would have gone back on his word, which is easy to say before he's had an opportunity to do so. After Ollie leaves, the remaining members of Brian's alliance -- that being Brian and Dan -- figure that Ollie and April were behind the whole thing. Dan makes a little speech in which he tortures a metaphor about stilettos, and also me. He's not an English teacher, is he?
That night, Ollie and April canoodle in bed, but Ollie DRs that the relationship might end up burning him. April basically DRs, "Yup."
Outside, the three women who busted Brian realize they're going to have to stick together, even as Brian realizes he's going to have to split them up. So Brian turns to Steven for help, thinking that if he can just get five votes, Jerry will tiebreak in his favor. And if I could just get someone to hand me half a million dollars, I'd be that much richer without having to go on Big Brother.
Brian decides to go on a charm offensive by putting on a little puppet show with socks as the houseguests. The funniest part is the line he gives himself: "I made eight thousand alliances in three hours!" The rest of it is pretty inane, although the editors have some fun pixellating the nipular area of the ping-pong ball boobs inside the sock puppet representing April. Afterward, everyone sits around discussing what fun that was and Steven plays his part to the hilt, saying it won't be as much fun without Brian and they should all vote for him to stay. Now that is some exceptional acting right there, making it sound like he's reading from a cue card when there isn't one there. Brian isn't much better, pretending to hide his evil smirk behind a modest one, and he says the only way to pull that off is to bring Memphis over to their side. Which should be easy now that Brian's no longer gunning for Memphis after Memphis committed the crime of not kissing Brian's ass, right?
But Angie seems won over by the puppet show, so she goes to lobby Keesha on her idea to keep Brian in and "eliminate drama" in the house. Well, Renny-related drama, anyway. Libra and April don't like what they're seeing, but they don't say anything to either Keesha or Angie about it now. Later, however, when the anti-Brian alliance is hanging around the pool table, Keesha sits on the other side of the backyard -- to Renny, the other nominee, mind you -- and starts getting all defensive about what she thinks they're saying about her. This somehow escalates into a shouting match between April and Keesha, which the others split up. Still, Keesha dramatically claims to be done with April So much for sticking together. Meanwhile, Brian is updating Jerry, but Jerry isn't about to commit to anything at this point. He might have to break his word again and he only packed so many civvies, after all. In the bedroom, Libra and April warn Renny to get packed, like they've already been beaten.
So now we're in the studio with Julie on the viewscreen, letting the houseguests know that they're bringing back the eviction-night audience from Big Brother 1. Not the actual, individual members of the audience, mind you, but just the concept of filling the studio with people. Which, now that I think of it, might actually require them to track down all the actual, individual members of Big Brother 1's audience. Whatever. Julie's first question is to Jessie, regarding whether he and Renny have buried the hatchet. He acts like a punk, which gives Renny yet another chance to lecture Jessie about his youth and inexperience. I'm really tired of this feud between them. Yes, Renny acted like an asshole and woke Jessie up, but he needs to let it go. It's not like he had to get up and go to work the morning.
Julie then turns to Libra to "give her a chance to respond" to people who might criticize her for leaving her five-year-old daughter and five-month-old twins. Translation: What's wrong with you, lady? Libra gives a non-answer that's good enough for Julie, because it's time for commercials, not follow-up queries.
When we come back, Julie has her one-on-one HoH interview with Jerry via viewscreen and asks if he has any regrets. He says he's doing his best, and he's still here. Um, who isn't? That's not exactly a bold claim. Julie twists the knife about Jerry "betraying" Brian, and he reiterates that he didn't wear anything military-related when he had to do that, so as not to embarrass the service. Which makes this about the third time he's said that, by my count. If he didn't want to embarrass the service, maybe coming on Big Brother with a suitcase full of Marines merch wasn't the best idea in the first place. She asks if he feels safe, and he says he does for the moment, thanks to what he calls "Jerry's Angels." Yikes.
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Julie changes the channel to the living room and gives the floor to the nominees to make their case. Renny characteristically fumbles over a long speech, and then Brian stands and just says that he's been having a great time here, and advises them to remember that it's just a game. A game he's losing.
Time for the voting. April votes to evict Brian. So do Libra, Michelle, and Ollie. Julie calls a pause to the voting, in an attempt to build more suspense and sell some crap. Can commercials vote to evict Brian, too? No, they abstain. But Dan votes to evict Renny (after calling Julie "Mrs. Chen"), and Jessie votes to boot Brian, so the best he can hope for is a tie. But when Keesha votes for Brian to go, even that's out the window. Memphis votes to evict Brian, and so do Steven and Angie. So much for Brian's charm offensive. Sounds like he only accomplished half of it.
Once everyone's situated back in the living room, Julie reminds them that the evictee has to leave right away, and breaks the news that Brian lost a 9-1 vote. It's quiet as he hugs everyone goodbye and takes off. Inside, everyone marvels at how quickly Brian's picture has gone monochrome on the memory wall, almost as though people are running it or something. Dan looks pretty devastated, but how does Steven feel after that emotional moment? "Can I go pee?" he asks Big Brother.
Out on the interview ottomans, Julie asks Brian what he was thinking making so many deals so early on. Brian says he just got ahead of himself. That's one way of putting it. Julie asks if Dan is going to be okay, and Brian hopes so, but isn't sure Dan has the edge for the game. Plus he has Brian-stank all over him now.
Farewell messages: Keesha tells Brian that his arrogance brought him down. Yep. Jerry calls Ollie's betrayal a shame. Ollie apologizes for said betrayal. Steven's farewell sounds like he's reading it out of a yearbook. Dan calls Brian the big brother he never had. After the messages, Julie's last question for Brian is who he thinks is the most underestimated player. Brian thinks it's Memphis, because he apparently hasn't met Libra. But then if everyone thought she was the most underestimated player, she wouldn't be the most underestimated player any more, would she?
Time for the HoH competition, and it looks like another quiz-show thingy. Except it's one of those things where you have to guess what the majority of the houseguests will answer, and if you guess wrong, you're out. I had a whole thing here giving a blow-by-blow of the competition, but even in condensed form it's boring, so I'll just tell you that the new HoH is Jessie. Look out, Renny. Some more.
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Julie signs off, reminding us to watch again on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and flogging the live feeds and Big Brother After Dark. Then we get to "eavesdrop," which in this case consists of watching them all stand around awkwardly in a circle talking too quietly to hear. That's some sucky eavesdropping, right there.
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M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.
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