Dressed like a green onion with glitter on its face, Julie teases "the most action-packed episode of the summer." I'll believe it when I see it. And I'm not saying that for the reason I normally would. I mean, with Chima's expulsion and all, even tonight's previouslies are more interesting than most episodes.
Oh, and in the credits, you know how they show each evicted houseguest's exit in a little video tile? While everyone else is shown coming out the front door, Chima is just shown walking down the hall to the Diary Room. Awesome.
As everyone knows by now, emergency-replacement-HoH Jordan nominated Natalie and Lydia, the latter of whom is still in her "Captain Unitard" costume (with her dyed-pink hair, not a wig), and complains in the Diary Room about the "poopy feeling" of having been nominated a fourth time. That would not be a comfortable outfit to have a poopy feeling in. Natalie DRs about how she plans to win the Power of Veto competition (and then trisect an angle and phase through walls), and Michele DRs that she's going to do the same. She has at least won two more than Natalie has, which is zero.
Jordan privately assures Natalie that she's just a pawn, but DRs that she reserves the right to change her mind. Would anyone notice a change that small?
Natalie whispers to Kevin what Jordan just told her, and they both try to buck up Lydia, telling her to "just win the Veto." "Haven't you noticed I can't win shit in this house?" Lydia whines from under the blankets. Uh, Lydia? I noticed. Natalie points out that the same can be said of herself, and lies that she hasn't been told she isn't the target. Kevin's getting frustrated with Lydia's intractability, to the point where if he wins the PoV, he thinks it might be better for himself to use it on Natalie. Lydia would LOVE that.
Russell bonds with Michele, congratulating them both on being "lone wolves" and saying he wants to take her to the final two, because he needs to be up against another villain in front of the jury. They're wondering when Jeff is going to turn on them just when Jeff comes in. Russell figures he and Jeff are square now, so he considered any alliances with Jeff are dissolved. Okay, then.
In the night-vision cameras in the red room, Natalie suddenly wants to play truth or dare with Lydia. Except the truth is the dare, because Natalie wants to know how many times Lydia "hooked up" with Jessie. Lydia plays coy for a bit, then confesses to some "good times" when Jessie was HoH. This is unnecessarily illustrated by a clip of Lydia climbing out of Jessie's bed in her underwear. This is starting to turn ugly between the two women, so after getting them both wound up against Jessie, Kevin does the wise thing by kicking them out so he can sleep. I was wondering how long Lydia and Natalie's post-Jessie alliance would last, considering how much they hated each other when Jessie was in the house. But now, it's stronger than ever, because they've decided to hate Jessie instead for playing them both. That's why they hate Jessie? That was the one thing he was uncomfortable with in the house. Whatever. This gives them new motivation to stay in the house and become HBIC -- Head Bitch In Charge. That sounds like a solid plan, except for the fact that it seems to a) omit the plural, and b) be impossible.
morning, Kevin approaches the two of them to suggest turning the other alliance against each other. Natalie comes up with the idea of spreading the rumor that Russell and Michele have a final-two deal. Which is awesome, because it's pretty much true and they don't even know it. Natalie calls this "Operation Bosley and the two Angels." Okay, it just got a lot less awesome.
Kevin is the one to pass this along to Jeff, alone in the backyard. Jeff takes Kevin's report at face value, and considers aloud whether to get rid of Russell this week. Kevin can't believe this is working.
Jeff goes up to HoH to report to Jordan. Jordan has her doubts, because she trusts Michele. But Jeff wants to keep open the idea of backdooring Russell. Jordan juggles her mouth guard or retainer or whatever between her teeth as they discuss the various options regarding what this could all mean. Oddly enough, the only possibility they dismiss out of hand is the one that Kevin could be lying. Kevin, meanwhile, is quietly jumping up and down with his girls in the red room over how successfully he lied.
Group Chenterview. Over the living-room viewscreen, Julie asks Jeff whether he has any regrets about using the Coup d'Etat, and of course he doesn't. Julie asks why Kevin said he felt guilty for Chima's expulsion, and Kevin says he felt he could have done more to prevent "Hiro-Chima." Good one. Julie then turns to Lydia to ask about her tears over Jessie. She's pretty embarrassed, not to say pissed at Jessie by this point, and if she sees him in the jury house it's going to be ugly. Julie says she actually kind of wants to see that. Julie asks Jordan about the best part of being HoH, and she admits that it's mostly being able to take a bath. That would explain the gratuitous shot of her shaving her legs in the tub earlier in the episode. Nice of her to justify that. Julie tells them that a live PoV competition is coming up, then the vote and the eviction, and then the HoH competition. Finally, there's a commercial. How long is this episode going to be, anyway?
Even with everything going on, we still have time to listen to the phone call from home that Natalie got to have from her dad, who says he watches every episode with her boyfriend. It's very emotional. Natalie is moved. I've also moved -- on.
PoV competition. The only one not playing is Russell, and with Julie on hand, he doesn't even get to host. The game is "Before or After," which we've seen in seasons. Separated by high partitions, the players have to guess if a certain event came before or after a different event, and they indicate their answers by stepping forward onto the step marked "After" or back onto the step marked "Before." The first question is a guilt trip about Casey winning the margarita party for them before being nominated, but everyone gets it right anyway. Lydia, Jeff, and Natalie are eliminated by the question, leaving Michele, Jordan, and Kevin, so nobody will be vetoing herself tonight. They all get the one right, but Kevin blows the one, so it's down to Michele and Jordan. Which means that it's unlikely anybody will be vetoing anybody. They both get the four questions right. Out of questions, Julie busts out the tiebreaker: how many truffles were in the giant mud pit for the flying pig competition a few weeks ago? Jordan guesses 60, and Michele guesses 50. Since the correct answer is 100, Jordan becomes the season's first sitting HoH to win PoV. What's even more amazing is that Jordan has just outsmarted a neuroscientist. It's a world gone mad.
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Back in the house, Jeff and Jordan are having a last-second conference with Kevin, while the others wait in the living room. Julie calls everyone together for the Veto meeting and tells Jordan she can take one of her nominees off the block. Before that, Julie gives the floor to the nominees. Natalie says she'll respect Jordan's decision, and Lydia simply says no hard feelings, pretty cheerily all things considered. Jordan stands up and says she's not using the PoV. Lydia's face falls, like she just realized she's gong home tonight. Julie sends us to commercial as we hear the others suspiciously asking each other what they were doing at the end of the break. Times like this I wish I hadn't already used the "locked-room mystery for morons" joke this season.
And after the break, the nominees get another chance to speak in their defense. Natalie plays the pitiful victim, saying she's on her own and would be grateful to get to stay in the house. Lydia tells them to vote the way that will further their game. Which I think they'll do as soon as they get rid of Lydia.
Russell is the first to vote. He votes to evict Lydia, as do Michele and Jeff, so Lydia's going to be wearing her Captain Unitard outfit out to the studio. Kevin votes to evict Natalie, but he looks pretty nervous about it. Julie breaks the news to the houseguests that it was a 3-1 vote, and Lydia's out. She gets up, says goodbye to only Kevin, and as she comes out the door, lowers her goggles and strikes a couple of lame superhero poses on her way over to hug Julie.
In the exit Chenterview, Julie asks her why she only said goodbye to Kevin. Lydia says it's because she's the only one she wants to see win the game. "Everyone else can kick rocks." Brr! Julie asks her about bonding with Natalie over the past week. "Yeah, that was tough," Lydia groans, comparing Natalie to a clingy kid sister. Lydia admits she didn't really try that hard to stay, since aside from Kevin, she couldn't stand those people in there anyway. Julie then asks if she blames Chima for her eviction, and Lydia admits that it weakened her. "Weakened?" I thought that word meant "make weaker," not "turned into a drunk psycho." Julie turns the conversation to what's going to happen with Jessie in the jury house and Natalie boasts, "He's gonna need ice packs." She says Jessie played her and Natalie both, so we can look for that week, I assume. I'm sure it will take Jessie almost three minutes to talk her down.
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From that, we go right to the HoH competition. The five remaining houseguests who aren't Jordan are standing atop a platform, with narrow plastic tubes sticking up from the ground below them, and two big bins of aluminum cans behind them. The first to get 24 cans in the tubes wins HoH, unless nobody pulls it off in an hour, in which case the one with the most wins. So clearly we will not be getting a new HoH before the end of the episode, unless someone's really good at this. Julie says "go," and this looks hard, because there's a waist-high railing they have to lean over, so they have to let go of the cans a good four feet from the tops of the tubes, which aren't much wider than the cans themselves. If this were a midway game I'd be yelling shenanigans. There are a lot of cans on the ground, except for one that's already made it into one of Kevin's tube. One's also hung up on the opening at the top, though. That might be a setback.
When we come back, Kevin's tube is clear, plus he's got four cans racked up, as does Michele. Julie gets on the speaker to distract them. Jeff and Russell have a few as well. Julie adds a degree of difficulty: there are these little shelves sticking out below the players, and they start extending out from the front of the platform, briefly blocking the tops of the tubes until they go back in, and then come back out again in an unpredictable pattern. Yeah, I think this one is going to go the full hour.
So no double eviction, but we've still got six people left, so I guess it's a wash. But I'm still wondering what they'll do if the jury, short a person after Chima's expulsion, comes back with a tied vote at the end. I suspect the producers are wondering the same thing.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see how vlogger Sean Crespo thinks they should reinvigorate the franchise in No Prior Knowledge!
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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