In the black-and-white recap of Wednesday's eviction ceremony, at least a couple of people weren't amused by Steven's "Suck it, bitches" closing line. Well, I was, but then I wasn't voting. Keesha and Libra DR that they went along with the alliance of eight for now to play it safe, the former to avoid being a target herself. Keesha is pretty emotional, and Angie says that at least now with Steven gone, she can concentrate more on her strategy. And Keesha is blaming Angie for letting her take the fall. After winning the HoH competition, Keesha promises to "turn this house upside down." She just doesn't know exactly how yet.
Renny and Libra are also both happy with Keesha's victory, considering themselves close allies of her. Dan insists in the DR that he's still only pretending to suck, which is why he threw the HoH competition after "showing a little life." By that he means getting the first question right, which I maintain that he only did because he forget he was supposed to be blowing it. He even sucks at sucking. And Keesha promises to remember who was there for her before she had the HoH key. Afterwards, she's sitting in the women's bedroom with Libra and Michelle and Renny and she says that while it's fun to be HoH, she has no idea who she's going to nominate. Libra's like, "Say what?" Jessie and Memphis, meanwhile, are confident that they're they only ones who have Keesha's trust. Keesha does a little DR in which she talks about how people in the house know who they want nominated, but Keesha, being Keesha, assures us that it's not up to them. Yes, Keesha, I've noticed that about you.
It's time to see Keesha's new HoH room, and she's more excited about the pictures of her dog than of her family. When Keesha opens her letter from home, Renny's the only one allowed to stay and listen to her read it aloud. Once the tender moment passes, Keesha and Renny start talking shit about Libra. April comes and joins the conversation, and somehow the two of them are the best of friends again, now that Keesha's the HoH and April's primary strategy is sucking up to HoHs. Renny leaves, and the two blondes start talking strategy. But they don't get far before Libra and Ollie also arrive so the group of four can discuss nominating Angie and someone else. But as Keesha says in the DR, one other possible nominee is Libra herself, who doesn't even know it. Don't worry, Keesha will fix that later.
After the ads, Memphis has joined the group, and Keesha breaks the news to him that she's considering nominating him and Angie. Memphis starts by defending Angie. The door buzzer rings yet again, and this time it's Renny and... Angie. Keesha asks them for a few minutes, so Angie, reading the signs, goes back to report to Jessie and Michelle, except she thinks that it's the others running Keesha instead of Keesha being after Angie all on her own. It doesn't bode well for a potential nominee when she doesn't understand why she's about to go on the block, does it?
Back in the HoH room, Memphis warns Keesha not to target someone who isn't coming after her, which he assures her Angie isn't. Keesha actually has the nerve to ask Memphis to keep this between them -- and the other three people still in the room, of course, who are in a completely different supposedly secret sub-alliance from the one Memphis is in.
So Memphis goes right to Michelle and Jessie to report as much, and suggests that Jessie go feel out Keesha, but without saying he heard anything about Keesha's thoughts from Memphis. That should go well.
The visitor to the HoH room is Dan, who assures Keesha that he's got nothing going for him right now. He's Goose-Egg Dan. I just gave him that nickname. You like it? I bet Dan would pretend to, in the DR. Like Jessie before her, Keesha respects Dan for being so straightforward and voting according to his word, and agrees to look out for him for the week. The funny part is that while everyone is taking Dan at his word, he's kind of running a con here by pretending to suck. Or he's conning us, and he actually does suck. Actually, that seems more likely.
Keesha then has a one-on-one with Libra, confronting her about the doubts she sensed from Libra in the last week. Libra confesses to targeting Keesha's friendship with Steven rather than Keesha herself, and says she understands that Keesha needs to do what she needs to do. "You've got to be careful with your mouth," Keesha warns Libra, "because it's making you a target." Hmm, what did Keesha's mouth just do there?
Dizzy yet? After all this strategizing, it's time for the women to sit around speculating about the upcoming food competition and whether it's going to be about eating gross stuff. Michelle fills their heads with a bunch of stories about how Portuguese cuisine is all about the parts of the pig you don't normally want, and tells a story about a celebration she went to that featured dancing pig carcasses. I don't know why the editors are showing us this instead of taking furious notes for upcoming competitions.
The food competition turns out to have a 1950s theme, so everyone gets dressed up in the costumes left over from the local high school production of Grease and heads into the backyard. There they find two giant record turntables with a high wall between them and baskets full of unmatched socks balanced on the spindles. Yes, it's a sock hop. The women will be on one side of the wall and the men on the other, and they'll be matching socks from the two baskets, without being able to see each other. When they find a pair, they have to hang each one on a numbered hook under a food group on their own side of the wall. Naturally it involves a lot of yelling, and some partners work together better than others. People on the sidelines try to facilitate communications. Renny in particular is turning out to be a liability, screaming so shrilly that Dan can't even hear her. I also can't help noticing that while the women keep most of their socks in the basket, the men's are soon strewn all over their entire turntable. Big Brother: reinforcing gender stereotypes since 2000. Strangely, I don't see a clock running during this thing, but the buzzer goes off for Ollie and April after, according to my internal clock, forever. As the HoH/host of the competition, Keesha unveils everyone's food for the week. Aside from the fact that Michelle's excited about the pig's feet and Renny is disappointed that she and Dan screwed up so badly they lost out on wine, it's as boring as it sounds.
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After the ads, April and Ollie (presumably sated on pigs' feet and pumpernickel) lounge around discussing their mutual love for self-help books. That segues into Ollie opening up to April about his history of paranoia in relationships, and an interminable discussion built around a road sign motif. The sign in my head right now reads "SLOW," because that's how this scene is going. ["Of course the editors put in this tedious scene instead of the disgusting footage of them doing the nasty under blankets in the middle of the house. Why would America care about that?" -- Angel]
With the nominations coming up, the formerly bravado-filled Keesha calls April up for support, and April obligingly talks her into going ahead with her plan to nominate Angie and Memphis; the former for "letting Steven go" and the latter for winning the car. April may have a point about Memphis getting out of the house ahead, but I think she goes a little far when she snots that the possibility of Memphis winning second place plus a $50,000 car is "not fair." Okay, first of all, Memphis won that car fair and square. It's got nothing to do with the outcome of the rest of the season. And second of all, if Big Brother actually paid off fifty grand to give a contestant a used car, then we're clearly in Bizarro World and nothing else is going to make sense anyway.
So then Jessie goes to Keesha to try to talk her out of it. He makes a case for Libra, who would be sure to have six votes against her. Keesha's nervous about putting up Angie and Libra, so Jessie tells her to go with Libra and Dan instead. "It's that easy," he keeps telling her. He predicts that Dan will be cool, and Libra will freak out and shoot herself in the foot. All Keesha seems to know right now is that at least one group is going to be pretty shocked by the nominations. That's enough reason right there for me not to be.
While Keesha contemplates the Memory Wall preparatory to nominations, Memphis and Angie DR about possibly being targets. Jessie feels safe (which should have told me right there that he's toast, but then I'm still relatively new at this), and just hopes Keesha nominates the people he wants her to. And Libra is hoping Keesha doesn't hold differences against her. As for Keesha herself, she says she's going with her gut, and two people "are going to be sorry that they messed with me." Yeah, that sounds like Keesha.
Time for the nomination ceremony. Keesha starts tearing up during her speech, finally saying, "I'm really sorry, but I have to do this." The first safe person is Dan, which is a pretty clear signal right away. Memphis also ends up being safe, so it's obvious that neither of the two main options she discussed are in effect. And then Libra's safe too! Finally, the nominees are: Angie and Jessie. We know why Keesha nominated Angie; it's because she blames her for Steven's departure. And as for Jessie, she calls him a threat and says she's also mad at him for sending one of her good friends home. Also you can't tell her what to do because you're not the boss of her. I may have added that part.
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In the DR, Dan calls it his own "coming-out party." Except he's still in, of course. Angie says it's not over yet. And Keesha DRs that her nomination of Jessie was about his arrogance. "I mean, am I not the HoH?" she huffs in the DR. See what I've been saying about telling Keesha what to do? She had two different groups of people giving her her marching orders, and her rebellious streak just made her do something that makes no damn sense. Michelle already wants to win PoV to save Jessie: "It's on like Donkey Kong," she says. And Jessie's nomination doesn't seem to have helped his arrogance issues any: "See you at the competition!" he pre-gloats.
Good news: no episode on Wednesday. Yay! Bad news: eviction night is on Thursdays from now on. Boo!
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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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