Julie's sticking with orange, apparently, as she tells the live audience what the previouslies have been explaining to us for several minutes, only in more detail. The houseguests are sitting in the living room waiting, with the remaining members of the increasingly misnamed "Popular" clique, Laura and Jordan, sitting in the nominee chairs, both adjusting their boobs like they don't know they're on camera.
Ronnie tells us that he's planning to get Laura out of the house, but promises that Russell is still on his "hit list." Like he's going to get another chance. Casey doesn't seem to think that's likely. Jordan reminds Laura, "You know what to do" if Laura stays and she goes. Laura doesn't seem to think there's much chance of that, but she Diary-Rooms, "I'm not dead yet." I'm already hating her less, and she busts out a Monty Python reference? No fair.
Jordan goes to her BB-BFF Jeff in the backyard for reassurance, and they both agree that she's more likely to stay than Laura, because Laura's the smarter of the two of them. By that logic, Jordan will eventually face a jury vote while standing to one of the houseplants. With that urgent business out of the way, they can move on to the flirting and canoodling. No "booger," though, at least not on camera.
Laura makes an approach to Ronnie, warning him that if she leaves, Ronnie will be facing a Jeff/Jordan alliance. Ronnie acts open to keeping Laura, and suggests proposing to Jessie that they evict Jordan, which he claims will flip almost half the house. Ronnie's right about one thing: there will be some flipping.
So Ronnie summons the contingent he mentioned up to HoH: Chima, Lydia, Natalie, and Kevin. He suggests the idea of evicting Jordan, and when nobody goes for it -- probably because like everyone else in the world, they're tired of watching Ronnie pulling random levers and cackling -- he brings up Russell, claiming that Laura told Ronnie that Russell is trying to rally votes to keep Laura. Natalie bails on the conversation to head out to the backyard to find out from Jessie if that's true, but since Jessie doesn't know either, he calls Russell over and asks if it's true (now in front of Jeff). Russell denies it, and goes to find Ronnie. Meanwhile, Casey and Jordan are also hearing about this move, and when Laura comes out, she says it isn't true, and suggests a house meeting to get all this out in the open. Looks like someone may have overreached a bit.
A moment later, pretty much everyone is out there, and Laura asks Ronnie in front of everyone else if what he is claiming re: her and Russell is true. "I'm not being put on the spot," is all Ronnie will say. Laura gets emotional about how everyone in the house hates her anyway, but Ronnie's hiding behind a claim that he promised Laura privacy, like some kind of HoH-HG privilege he's invoking when in fact he just doesn't want to have to pick which lie to go with in front of everyone. He adds that he's fine with people making of that what they will, and does that stupid thing he keeps doing, which is walking away so everyone can talk about him. Which they do, discussing the lies of Ronnie. After a few minutes of that, Russell heads inside, only to find Ronnie calling down to him from the HoH mezzanine. But Russell's not having it, and when Ronnie names all the people he claims he hasn't lied to (which is by no means all the people in the house, it's worth mentioning), Russell invites everyone inside to hear it from Ronnie, and he gets a great high-angle vantage point where he can watch his entire house of cards tumble down. Laura announces that Ronnie's been playing them against each other all along. Finally he retreats into his room, and looks at Russell on the monitor, saying, "Should have put his ass up." Yes, Ronnie, Russell is the problem right now.
Ronnie has locked himself in the HoH room indefinitely, living on his snacks. After some time -- like, day, maybe -- Big Brother's voice asks him to go to the Diary Room. Hearing the announcement, Russell gets up from where he's sunning himself in the yard to intercept Ronnie when he comes out. Russell sets up a steady stream of pleasant mocking, all of Ronnie's way to the DR. As Ronnie locks himself in, Russell promises his fellow houseguests that that's all Ronnie is going to hear for the week, until he inevitably goes home. And what did Big Brother need Ronnie in the DR so badly for? Apparently so we could hear Ronnie say of Russell, "He's an #*&@."
Russell continues making Ronnie his project, following him from room to room to room. After a few rounds of this, Jessie and Natalie watch Russell harangue him all the way to the door of the HoH room, and then whisper sympathetically to each other about Russell's treatment of Ronnie. "It's not right," Natalie says. As for Ronnie, if Russell's goal is to make him cry, it's working. He misses his wife, and wishes she could tell him what to do. He should be wishing that she could also go back in time and tell him not to do all the stupid shit that landed him in this situation in the first place.
Time for the live viewscreen interview with Julie and the HGs. She starts by asking Natalie about the mood in the house. Natalie says it's tense, but at least it's more united than last week. Before things can get too interesting, though, there's a retread of the luxury competition with the men in women's outfits, because that was so hilarious the first time.
After some more ads, Julie tells us that the internet has been calling Ronnie "The Square Root of All Evil." Good one, internet! LOLZ! That's her introduction to her private HoH interview with Ronnie, and she asks why he tried the playing-both-sides strategy, since a BB expert like him has to know that it usually backfires. Ronnie claims he was really playing only one side, since he actually was tight with the Athletes. Julie asks why he didn't nominate Russell, and he says it was too soon to burn his bridges with Jessie and Natalie. Julie asks how he lived locked up in the HoH room for 48 hours, and he basically says it's like his life. Plus it was a ploy for sympathy, and he claims he has at least five people downstairs on his side. Julie sends him back down to the living room, his delusions intact.
Julie switches the channel back to the living-room-cam for the nominee speeches. Jordan goes first, making a babbling speech about uncovering the rat together and calling everyone "Gucci." Laura's speech is about how glad she was to have met everyone, but makes reference to "manipulation and lies" that prevented that from happening fully. Okay, but it's not Ronnie's fault she came into the house all "I think Jessie's the hottest." I mean, Jesus.
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The voting begins. Jeff goes first, and you know he votes to evict Laura. Jessie votes his grudge against Laura. Natalie, however, votes to evict Jordan, just to "spice things up." Casey votes out Laura, as do Russell, Kevin, Lydia, Chima, and Michele. So it should be an interesting Sunday episode while everyone tries to figure out who voted to keep Laura. And of course I use the word "interesting" in terms of what it means on the scale of Big Brother episodes. Without even going to ads, Julie breaks the news that Laura was evicted in an 8-1 vote. She leaves the house, and it's pretty quiet among the eleven left behind. Especially Ronnie.
Laura's exit Chenterview comes after the ads, and she gives Laura props for her sympathy vote before moving on. Julie asks Laura why she thought Ronnie was gunning for her. Laura thinks Jordan may have spilled the beans to Ronnie that she was onto him (although we know it was Chima). But Laura's glad that she brought Ronnie down with her, and is confident that he'll go home week. Like everyone won't forget all about this and be pissed at someone else by then. Part of living in a fishbowl is that everyone seems to end up with the memory to go with it.
Farewell messages. Ronnie calls her out for having "diarrhea of the mouth." This from an expert on the subject. Casey gives her props for not taking any crap. Russell sensitively says, "It was very fun watching you tan." But he also says he doesn't want someone as smart as she is in the game. Jordan of course talks about their friendship. Kevin says she never asked him not to vote for her. "Sorry. Enjoy your pageants? Bye!" That's Laura out of the picture, but not before saying that she hopes either Jordan or one of the Offbeats wins the upcoming HoH competition.
Speaking of which, Julie reveals that the Houseguests got to practice for that competition. It's basically a midway game, where you roll a croquet ball down a wooden ramp that's mounted on a swivel, trying to catapult the ball into one of the seven five-gallon buckets positioned a short distance away. They all suck at it, of course. Except Casey, oddly enough.
Now we're live in the backyard, with the actual competition set up. It's called "Buzzworthy," and now there are a lot more buckets, set up in a hexagonal honeycomb pattern. The closer you get to the middle, the more points you get, with a bulls eye being ten points. And you only get one shot. Which might explain why Julie is about to use the phrase "Take your best shot" one zillion and pi different times in the few minutes.
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According to the randomly selected order, Michele goes first. She scores a 4. Jessie steals her short-lived lead, landing a 6 with nothing but net. Kevin's 5 doesn't beat that, and neither does Natalie's 2. Lydia looks like she falls short of the buckets entirely. "One won't do it," Julie says, even though it looked more like zero. Up is Russell, but he has to wait until after the ads for his turn. When it comes, he scores a 5, Chima a 3, Jordan barely a 1, and Jeff a 6. That of course means a tie with Jessie for the lead. Casey goes last, and his takes a bad bounce off the center and ends up at 1, so now Jessie and Jeff have to do a tiebreaker. Jessie gets a second 6, and Jeff's ball also bounces out of the center and into a 3, so that's Jessie's second HoH term in the bag. Oh, goodie.
Julie has a little viewscreen Chenterview with the Houseguests afterwards. Jessie attempts to be modest, and fails miserably, claiming he just looks forward to being able eat enough to maintain his muscle mass. Julie reminds him that nobody said this would be easy. "You're right, but it's easier when you're HoH every other week," Jessie smugs. Way to pull off the modest act, there. Kept it up for nearly a minute. Julie asks Casey about missing his son's first birthday. Casey admits that it was tough, but this is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." As opposed to his son's first birthday, which will come several times a month from now on. Casey gets a little choked up about that, but by now, Julie is done. Julie gives her usual Thursday farewell-and also-watch-all-this-other-upcoming-crap speech, and we're back "eavesdropping" on the house, which is difficult because we really can't hear much of what they're saying. But once again, Ronnie's all alone. Going to be a long week for him. And for me, because why should this one be different?
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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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