After Michele nominates Chima and Natalie, she Diary Rooms that although she's friends with Chima, she's there to win half a million dollars. And then the groups split off, with Chima, Natalie, and Lydia going off to complain about Michele's nominations sucking because they're what "they" wanted her to do, whereas if she had done what "we" wanted her to do Michele would have just made a brilliant move. Michele adjourns up to the HoH room with Jordan, Jeff, and Russell. They're out of patience with the drama from the other four, like me, but unlike Jeff and Russell, I'm generally able to express my frustration without using the word "bitch."
Downstairs, Chima is telling her allies that she's thinking about just leaving, because she's so bitter about Michele "backstabbing" her. Kevin points out that if she does that, she'll screw her alliance, because they need her vote in the house. Like Chima gives a shit about anyone but Chima.
"Houseguests, the lockdown is over," Big Brother announces, and they head out to the backyard to see a practice version of this week's PoV competition, which looks like kind of a mini-golf thing. Kevin goes inside to wake up Chima so she can practice. When she comes out, a Big Brother voice HAL 9000s over the PA, "Chima, please put on your microphone." She ignores it. Jordan remarks on Chima's pattern of disregarding the rules, which we haven't seen too much of, but now that the show has a case to make, we see a montage of past occasions when Chima has ignored instructions, like on Day 6, Day 10, Day 35 (when she essentially threatened to have the FCC all over CBS, like the network hasn't figured out how to bleep her), and Day 40, when she covered up a camera. Kevin goes to get Chima's mic for her. She takes it, and tosses the pack across the yard, right into the Jacuzzi. Natalie and Lydia go over to fish it out, acting like "it fell out of her hand." Ladies, I don't think your litter cover-up is going to work. With several dozen cameras recording everything, it's like I Know What You Did Last Summer for morons. Call it Ten Million People Know What Chima Did Five Seconds Ago.
Later, Chima is instructed to go get a new microphone pack from the storage room. She refuses, and Kevin once again goes to fetch it for her. She finally puts on and says into it, "You guys can suck a dick." And then she takes it off again. Aren't you glad you insisted, Big Brother?
Later, Chima's in the red room with her friends, as they try to convince her to go to the DR, as Big Brother is repeatedly requesting. She still refuses, until the creepily, insistently calm HAL 9000 voice is replaced by that of Executive Producer Allison Grodner herself, telling Chima in a human and very irritated voice that she needs to go to the DR. Natalie tries to buck Chima up as she finally, finally goes. And when Chima reaches the DR, Allison or another producer is in there, being filmed from the shoulders down. "No need to sit down," she instructs Chima. "You're gonna go out this way." And she does, and the camera focuses on the empty DR couch. Way to leave with your dignity intact, Chima.
And you know, in a sense I can see her point. Her HoH power was made a mockery through no fault of her own. I don't like Chima, or Jessie, or their alliance, but what happened to them was, objectively, unfair. But unlike them, I'm not going to blame Jeff for using the power that was given to him. After all, there are two things mitigating the unfairness of this situation. One is that people need to realize that sometimes, America is going to have a chance to influence the game, so it is to your advantage, Jessie, to not be a dickhead that America hates. It is to your further advantage, Chima and Natalie and Lydia, to not align yourself with that dickhead. The second factor is this: Julie always warns them to "expect the unexpected," which by now we all know is a polite way of saying "We will change the rules on you in midstream and there is fuck-all you can do about it." Chima came into this house expecting it to be fair. Even if that were her first, last, and only mistake, it was a fatal one. And now she's getting kicked out for acting like a brat about it. And I choose the word "brat" advisedly. There are other, stronger words, but those are usually applied to adults.
Natalie, Kevin, and Lydia are left in the red room, starting to wonder if Chima's gone for good, and Kevin thinks she'll be charged for the microphone pack as well. Natalie and Lydia blare their cover story at him, and he awesomely reminds them that they're surrounded by cameras. Then the voice of Allison Grodner calls them all to the living room. She gives them a minute to wait and speculate and sweat before telling them over the speakers that because of Chima's destruction of "production equipment" and "multiple rule violations," she's been expelled from the game. Lydia asks if they need to pack for her, and Allison says yes, and they'll tell them what the deal is with nominations tomorrow. After the production has had a chance to figure that out themselves, presumably.
Kevin cries, saying this is "stupid." Outside, the Gang of Four is bitching about the overreactions of the other Gang of Four, which is now the Gang of Three. In whose bedroom Natalie now is trying to pin Chima's meltdown on Michele. Lydia and Kevin warn Natalie not to make herself crazy; they just want to get Chima's stuff packed. Lydia compares Chima to an alcoholic with whom there is no reasoning, and reminds Natalie that Chima made her own choices. Lydia is, for once, correct. Kevin is still rattling off synonyms for stupid: "This is dumb. It's not smart, either." They keep trying to talk Natalie down, but it just turns into an argument among the helpless and the hopeless. And mindless.
morning, Michele calls everyone into the living room to make an announcement: she is no longer HoH. And there's about to be a competition for a new one, complete with Michele having to sit it out as the outgoing HoH. In the DR, she takes it pretty well, saying she was at least able to accomplish the goal of getting rid of Chima. "I had a good two days of HoH," Michele says. Did I say her HoH reign would be the most boring ever? Please never listen to another one of my predictions again. Kevin agrees in the DR that it's a good way to "reset" everything. How is it Michele's fault that one of her nominees lost her shit? But of course, you won't hear anyone talking in the Diary Room about how unfair Big Brother can be.
The golf-themed PoV competition has now been converted to the HoH competition, complete with ugly golf pants for everyone to wear. There's one hole for this competition. The goal is to use the giant putter to make a hole in one, but if you miss, the ball will roll on to a rotating windmill behind the hole, where it will get caught up in one of many little cubbyholes that have different point values assigned to them. Highest number of points in each round gets eliminated, but the eliminated person gets to pick a secret prize from the table nearby. Lydia goes first and gets 6 points. Jordan gets 3 and Natalie 2, while Russell, Jeff, and Kevin all score holes in one, so Lydia's out. Her prize is the HoH key, but since this is a White Elephant/Nasty Christmas/Yankee Swap-style situation, she knows she's not going to get to hold onto it. Her only consolation is the pitcher of mimosas that's waiting there for the losers, and it looks as if she's going to be embracing that consolation with everything she's got.
In the second round, Natalie is eliminated, so Kevin had better keep getting holes in one for his team. Natalie wins a Hawaiian Vacation prize, and holds onto it rather than steal the HoH key from Lydia and get it taken away in a later round. In the third round, Russell just misses a hole in one and gets eliminated with seven points. He wins a phone call from home, which he swaps with Natalie for the Hawaiian vacation. Natalie is moved to Halle-Berry-at-the-Oscars tears, and thanks Russell for the best thing that could have happened to her. Russell rather coldly says it wasn't for her; he just wanted to give his parents a nice trip. Natalie manages to perform a symphony of "can you believe this douche?" even while crying uncontrollably. It's actually quite an impressive performance. Russell explains in the DR that he couldn't have his allies thinking he was secretly in cahoots with Natalie. He may have oversold it a bit.
Kevin gets eliminated in the round and gets $5,000, which he says he'll keep. Dude's already won ten grand this season. Now it's down to Jordan and Jeff. After Jordan goes, Lydia, still pounding mimosas, shit-talks Jeff from the loser's table, saying she'd rather see Jordan win. They ignore her and confer quietly, and Jordan says she wants to hear from her family. Jeff steps up and deliberately fucks up the shot. Jeff gets a spa weekend, which he swaps for Russell's Hawaii trip. Russell not only isn't annoyed at losing his parents' trip, he gushes over Jeff's class move in the DR. Someone's got a man-crush. What's even more amazing is that Jordan has won the competition. The last prize, which she gets to open and trade for anything else, that's been previously won, is, unsurprisingly, the unitard, although it's apparently been converted to a superhero costume. She of course swaps it for Lydia's HoH key. Lydia really needs to stop with the mimosas, because she turns on Jordan and tells her, "Be a puppet. Dumb hos get cut at the end." Way to suck up to the new HoH, crazy lady. She drains a final mimosa and stomps off, yelling at everyone from across the yard. She's trying to act hardcore, but she's not really pulling it off in those pants.
Later, inside, Michele quietly congratulates Jordan on her victory, and when Lydia passes by, hollers out, "Wear your unitard, bitch!" So clearly the high road is closed to through traffic in the Big Brother house. Lydia maturely runs into the kitchen and starts throwing beer and food out. She's on a rampage, yelling at them to send her home, but Jeff says she's not going anywhere. Just to be contrary, I guess. At first, he's the only one who engages with her, and she says she's going to keep yelling so they evict her. Jordan, Michele, and Russell also join the group in the red room as Lydia continues her wobbler, actually standing on her bed and challenging Michele to... well, I'm not really sure what, honestly. Russell asks why Lydia's slurring her words. "I'm nahssulring my words!" Lydia slurs. The Gang of Four laughs, and Lydia demands to have a one-on-one conversation with Jeff in the DR, as though that's going to resolve anything. Jeff wants no part of that, if only because being trapped in that small a space with that many alcohol fumes would probably bleach his flavor-saver blond. Lydia stomps off to the DR hallway, but before she slams the door, she screams that Ronnie was right about Michele, and deserves to be there more than Michele and Russell do. That leaves the rest of them in the red room, with the Gang of Four telling Natalie and Kevin that maybe they need to try to control their teammates a little better. Yeah, they're 0 for 2 this episode, aren't they? Lydia, meanwhile, is having a meltdown in the DR by herself, and wishes she could talk to Ronnie or Chima or Jessie. Right now, at this very moment, I really wish I could hear the Big Brother voice say, "Lydia, please put on your unitard."
That happy HoH room-music is pretty incongruous given the mood. Lots of pictures, and Lydia wisely sits this one out. Or perhaps she is just too hung over to get out of bed. Jordan gets choked up reading the most boring letter from home ever. But the good news is that the family's moving into a new house, so Jordan gets her own room! The dream of every twentysomething girl.
Lydia changes into her "Captain Unitard" costume, which, as previously mentioned is the old red unitard that's been in rotation for the last four seasons, but now augmented with a cape, some gold briefs, a pink wig, goggles, and a "Captain Unitard" decal on the chest. Actually, Lydia doesn't look that much more ridiculous than usual.
The preamble to the nomination ceremony is pretty truncated. That bit where the HoH talks about his or her nominations and we hear the potential nominees tell us why they are or aren't worried? Totally skipped, and I don't miss them at all. It's not like there are any big surprises coming up. Jordan calls everyone in, and the safe people are Michele, Jeff, Kevin, and -- no suspense here -- Russell. Leaving Natalie and Lydia as the nominees. Jordan says she's giving Lydia the opportunity to leave, like she said she wanted to. She tells Natalie, "No hard feelings," and adds that she still has the PoV. Natalie says she plans to win it. Well, there's a first time for everything. Lydia DRs that she's not shocked; Jordan says she plans to "weaken" the other team, as though it's possible at this point to weaken them further without attacking their molecular structure; and Natalie says that this is her third nomination this week, but she plans to fight. Good luck with that.
So we're down to seven people. Wait, now, does this mean no double eviction on Thursday, as previously announced? Rip-off!
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.