Oh, man, it already seems like the season has been going on forever, but there are still all these goddamn people in the house.
In the wake of Braden's eviction, Casey and Jordan and Michele wonder who flipped on them, unaware for the moment that it was Ronnie. As for Chima, she vows, "I will never volunteer as a pawn again." Before the HoH competition, Ronnie's already trying to quietly deflect the blame on Michelle. Braden's photo on the memory wall goes black-and-white. If the producers really wanted to piss him off, they'd turn it brown.
Ronnie's almost as happy to have won HoH as Jessie is to see him win it. Jeff is, too, with reservations, because he doesn't completely trust Ronnie. Laura, meanwhile, is totally onto Ronnie.
But of course, Ronnie's HoH, so it's not like anyone can go after him. Instead, Lydia, Chima, Natalie, Ronnie, and Kevin are sitting around talking about the vote Michele makes the mistake of confessing that she voted to evict Chima, who freaks out on her. Which I'm sure makes Michele feel a lot worse about her vote.
Meanwhile, in the "splish-splash" room, Ronnie's trying to calm Jeff down, along with Jordan, Laura, and Jeff. In other words, all the people who voted to keep Braden contingent save Casey. When Ronnie leaves the room, Laura explains how and why she thinks it was Ronnie who flipped. When Ronnie returns, he continues to argue that it was Michele, not fooling anyone, least of all Laura. "I told you it was him," she whispers after Ronnie leaves the room again. He needs to quit leaving the room.
Ronnie reports back to the Athletes/Lydia axis, who give him props for playing both sides so well. Ronnie himself promises the Diary Room that there will be "big moves in store for the week."
After the ads, Laura continues making her case, now to Michele, Chima, and Kevin, that Ronnie's the puppetmaster. Then Chima joins Ronnie and his Athlete allies to report back. Ronnie boasts that he's playing the game, which he can do in the presence of the people who got their way, after all. He also DRs that Laura just gave him an excuse to nominate her.
Ronnie shows off his HoH room. Unsurprisingly, it's a dork den. [With the soundtrack to Legally Blonde: The Musical and a bubble wand as his gifts. Make of that what you will.-- Angel] Surprisingly, Ronnie is married. To someone cute. You think you know somebody...
That night, Ronnie comes out and joins the people who actually did vote to keep Braden, and if he wants to continue acting like he didn't flip on them, he should probably stop being the only one in the supposed voting block who isn't acting upset about what happened. Still, he's not coming clean, even when the whole group goes down the line and they all say they voted to evict Chima. It's like a locked-room mystery with morons. Belatedly, Ronnie realizes he needs to act upset, so when he does, he acts pissed at Casey for trying to deflect blame, acting like Casey's outspoken doubts make him the prime suspect. He ends his participation in the discussion by issuing Casey veiled threats if he continues making comments like that, and then stomping back inside. Way to play it cool, Ronnie.
There's a luxury competition, and the two losers have to watch the new movie The Ugly Truth. Except some of the people are acting like they want to see it, which is very confusing to me. In any case, everyone adjourns to the back yard, where Ronnie introduces the host for the game: Dan! The winner for last season! I'm so surprised! All the houseguests look excited to see him, except for Jessie, of course, because some of the weight he put on since last year is from the foot that Dan broke off in his ass.
So the game is like a version of The Newlywed Game, where each player has to try to answer a dual-choice (as opposed to multiple-choice) question about each houseguest of the opposite sex. It starts with the guys having to guess something about each woman, one at a time. Except with the "twist" that the person the question is about has to come out in an embarrassing costume to reveal the correct answer. And everyone acts like this is hilarious. Casey wins for the men, getting all but one right. The women's round results in a three-way tie between Michele, Chima, and Natalie, but that's beside the point, because I will never be able to unsee Ronnie waving a lightsaber around in a gold lame Princess Leia costume. Shudder. The tiebreaker question is about how many minutes it takes for Dan to move in for a kiss on a first date. Turns out Dan takes his time, so Chima wins with her guess of 120 minutes, as opposed to the actual 243. I was going to ask who'd spend four hours with Dan to begin with, but then I remembered I spent thirty-some with him last summer, so I'm not one to talk. So Casey and Chima get to watch a romantic comedy together, even though they hate each other. Like most leads at the beginning of romantic comedies, come to think of it! Obviously this shared experience will make them see each other in a new light and they'll realize they were meant to be together just before the end of the live finale in September. But first, Chima and Casey have to decide which of the four cliques has to be the Have-Nots for the week. Casey suggests the Athletes, Chima wants the Popular, and when he doesn't immediately cave, she threatens him with eviction, since her teammate is HoH. So then Casey caves, letting Chima be the bad guy. Chima's only too happy to play that role.
America's Vote: for the competition (not this one, obviously, since it's already over), we get to vote on what the Have-nots will have to eat: sauerkraut and seaweed, cabbage and cocktail weenies, or pickled eggs and pickled herring. Yeah, I think I'll abstain.
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Filler scene about how Chicagoan Jeff can't pronounce "bully" or "bull."
Jeff, Casey, Laura, and Jordan head up to the HoH room to try to convince him to put up Russell. Ronnie's considering backdooring him instead, but they don't like any plan that would result in any of them nominated as pawns. That may just be too damn bad.
Ronnie shares their idea with Jessie and Natalie, who act open to it, but then Jessie warns Russell what Ronnie's thinking. Russell is smart enough to be worried, and not take Jessie's reassurances at face value. In fact, if anything, I would suspect that being reassured by Jessie must be one of the most terrifying experiences a Big Brother houseguest could endure.
A whole commercial break later is when Ronnie looks over the Memory Wall to consider his nominations. Laura interviews that she's nervous, and suspects it'll either be her or two other people from her side. Casey feels the same way. Russell tells the DR that Ronnie's in for a fight if he puts up Russell. As for Ronnie himself, he frames his choice as shaking up the house or playing it safe. Because he's the first HoH ever to face that choice.
The houseguests convene around the table for the nomination ceremony. Ronnie's fellow Brains, Michele and Chima, are of course automatically safe. Before starting, Ronnie wants to tell them something, and because he's got a captive audience, he can: "No matter what anyone in this house may tell you, we all are here to win half a million dollars. And I made a promise to my wife, I made a promise to my family and myself, even though I am a genuine, honest, and passionate person, I would play strategically. I would not play personally." He pulls the first key, and it's the key for Jordan. After her, it's Casey, Lydia, Natalie, Jessie ("First time I've ever had this happen," Jessie says as he drapes his key over his neck), and Kevin, which means that the two nominees are Jeff and Laura. He claims he's doing it to give them the chance to win the Power of Veto. Oddly, they don't seem to appreciate his thoughtful gesture as much as he might have expected.
Laura feels completely vindicated in her suspicions of Ronnie, and promises to fight for the Veto. Jeff has to give Ronnie credit for playing both sides, although he thinks the other side is playing Ronnie rather than the other way around. Casey babbles about how Ronnie has shown his true colors. And as we see Laura and Jordan heading into their dismal Have-Not bed-cube for the night, Ronnie explains his nominations to us: Laura is the one who figured him out, and Jeff is someone he trusts to be a pawn. But the bottom line, Ronnie tells us, is that this is just the first step in his master plan to ultimately evict Russell at the end of the week. I find myself oddly ambivalent about this, but I'm a lot more sure about one thing: this is probably not going to go the way Ronnie is expecting it to.
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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, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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