You may or may not recall that Thursday night's episode left the eight non-Rachel houseguests holding onto a giant spinning paint can. Brendon Diary Rooms that he needs to win to keep himself and Rachel safe, while Hayden seems to think that he can send both Brendon and Rachel home in revenge for Kristen's departure. Which at least has helped Hayden focus on the Brigade. More great news for the Brigade!
After a flashback to Kristen's eviction, Kathy DRs that she was the one vote to keep Kristen, and she's ready to face the consequences. We're about to see what she means by that.
Back to the paint can, where a little more than eight minutes has elapsed. Ragan's arms are hurting already, and everyone else is pretty turned off by the blobs of paint being spewed at them. Kathy offers to be the first off and thus the one Have-Not of the week. "Is that a deal?" she asks. And she jumps off without finalizing anything with anyone, just under 13 minutes. Kathy claims in the DR that she's purposely trying to appear weak. She's succeeding.
With 17 minutes elapsed, Lane's weight is starting to tell on his beefy arms. Brendon, as always, experiments with some dorky positions. Rachel keeps calling out encouragement to Brendon, which earns her some mocking from just about everyone in the DR. Enzo jumps down at 26:13, DRing that the Brigade will cover him. Matt calls him out on this, but only in the Diary Room.
Now everyone is just waiting for Brendon to fall, and eventually he does, at 36:06. Looks like another tough week for them, and even Rachel is annoyed with him for letting her down. Although she keeps most of it inside the DR, she can't stop herself from telling him to make sure to win PoV. And she thinks that if she keeps winning HoHs, she's going to be a bigger target than Brendon. So I guess she'll have to rely on her charm, then.
Lane goes down , at 46:12. Britney drops a few seconds later, at least according to the clock, saying she doesn't want to be in the position of nominating people who think she's their ally. Hayden falls the very same minute, so now its down to Matt and Ragan, for their second endurance competition. Rachel quietly hopes that Matt will give it to Ragan. Good luck with that. But Ragan gets the idea of dropping voluntarily to keep himself clean in this week's nominations. Metaphorically clean, that is, because the paint spray is coming on harder. And finally Ragan drops at a little over an hour and ten minutes, marking Matt's second HoH stint. The same two people keep winning every week, don't they? What is this, The Amazing Race? Matt even tells Rachel as she awards him the HoH key, "See you week in the room. I'll keep the sheets clean for you." Heh, and also, considering the alternative, EW! Matt says that he came through for the Brigade, but Hayden says he better not screw up the nominations again or they're kicking him out. Trouble in the brigade already, again?
Enzo, Lane and Matt celebrate in the storage room, and Hayden's looking forward to revenge, while Enzo DRs that he just hopes Matt sticks to the plan.
In one of the bedrooms, Rachel lies to Brendon that she's not upset with him, and that he did his best. Then she adds that she knows what's going on, but adds, "I can't talk about it." Oh, I HATE THAT! She's referring to being the target herself. He says they'll make it again, but she pushes him away and calls him "emotional and sensitive," whereupon he emotionally and sensitively flounces out of the room.
Time for Matt's second HoH room tour, at which Britney and Ragan take another turn at mocking the oblivious Rachel right in front of her. In this case, they do it by acting like girls in old Beatles newsreels. After a short time, people start sneaking down one by one. As Britney explains in the DR, it's a game called "Trapped," which is what it's called when you're the last person in the room with Rachel and Brendon. And Matt just lost this round. HoH has its downsides too.
Matt and his half-zipped hoodie with no shirt walks into the HoH room and finds the Pandora's Box door in there. He reads us the envelope explaining the Pandora's Box, which in this case involves the "Diamond Power of Veto." The Diamond Power if Veto, by the way, looks just like the Golden Power of Veto, except it has fake diamonds instead of fake gold plating. It's up to Matt to open it or not, and he thinks out loud, telling us the only reason not to do it is if he's required not to tell anyone why he's doing anything. But then he opens the door anyway.
A moment later, he walks into the Pandora's Box room, which is decorated like a museum vault with gold walls and the Diamond PoV in a display case. Matt reads that it allows the holder -- him -- to not only Veto any nominee he wants, but name their replacement. He cares not at all about the punishment he's putting the house in for, and DRs, "I totally run this place like always, just another week in the Big Brother house. Or, another week in the version of the Big Brother house that exists in Matt's head.
In order to inoculate himself against whatever suspicion will accrue to him from what's in the offing, Matt hides the Diamond PoV in the luggage and gets out his dollar prize card from the first HoH competition. He goes downstairs and says he opened Pandora's Box, and says something about a briefcase on a screen and the return of his dollar card, meaning that he'll thinks he'll undergo the same punishment as anyone else. Which nobody believes for a second. Which in turn even Matt recognizes. "We're all gonna get saboteured," Enzo says with surprising acuity.
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Later, Brendon and Rachel talk about what Matt's up to while Britney eavesdrops. And Ragan is speculating to Hayden and Kathy on what it could mean, up to and including bringing somebody back. Well, sort of.
Ragan goes into the DR and, spotting the envelope on the couch with his name on it, looks at it askance and says, "Oh, this is not good." He sits down and reads the offer for him to be the saboteur, which will include three sabotages per week. Let's hope they're not as lame as the ones Annie had to do. Ragan is shocked that he was chosen for this, and is torn about the decision. But since he doesn't want to let America down, he agrees to be the new saboteur, hardly believing it himself. Oh, Ragan.
Rachel approaches Matt to talk about his upcoming nominations. Ragan offers to leave, and Rachel rudely says she doesn't care; "I know you guys are like a team." Which is news to everyone in the room but Rachel. She wants to make a deal with Matt, warning him that one of them is likely to win PoV. Ragan again wonders why he's there, and starts to angrily say that nobody's ever even proposed an alliance with him. Then Rachel tells him it has nothing to do with him and tells him to go, then. "Okay, Rachel," Ragan says with exaggerated politeness. She does it right back to him, and suddenly this is spiraling into a fight. Brendon walks in to take Rachel's side while Matt leans back and watches, bragging about doing that until he disagrees with Brendon about something and wades right in. Good strategy for about three seconds, though. Rachel comes up with the idea of Brendon and Ragan leaving, and Matt's ready to move on, but suddenly Rachel thinks there's no point. Well, it was all worth it, then.
Meanwhile, out in the kitchen, others are picking up in the tension and Brendon calls the scene in the other room "two against one." Ragan says Brendon wasn't even there, and that Rachel was the one raising her voice. Ragan calls Brendon on putting out only his version of events, and then Rachel comes and gets Brendon. "I apologize if I am a bitch," she tells the room, which I'm sure will keep her safe this week. So then the couple goes back to Matt to talk some more. Matt is refusing to be nailed down, and agrees that whichever one of them stays will be coming after him. Rachel extends that logic to say that so will everyone else. Well, she had me and then she lost me.
Saboteur message! Everyone goes running into the living room like they're on MST3K and they've got movie sign. The unrecognizable figure-- which looks and sounds exactly like the Annie version -- starts by thanking Matt for opening Pandora's Box and releasing him. "My mission is to destroy all of you and cruise the half-million dollars," the saboteur boasts. Everyone looks at each other suspiciously, and Brendon asks Matt to reiterate that he only got a dollar. And Matt repents in the DR of ever touching it. "Curiosity killed the Matt," he DRs. Britney asks why anyone would even want to be the saboteur, and everyone belatedly realizes that the saboteur is among them. Ragan is already defending the saboteur, whoever it might be, and Matt laughs as nervously as if it's him. Which I realize is Matt's normal laugh, but still.
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Nomination day. Rachel is confident that Matt will nominate her and Brendon because he's a "pansy." Brendon feels like he'll be a target, bat adds that Matt is a liar, rat and weasel. Enzo is hoping Matt will stick to the plan, and it's notable that Matt's position in the Brigade is no longer "The Brains" but "The Gremlin." Matt narrates that this is a more important nomination than last time. "It's time to take out the trash," he clichés.
At the nominations, the people who are safe are Kathy, Ragan, Britney, Lane, Enzo and Hayden, to the surprise of no one. But that isn't to say that Brendon and Rachel can't still look disgusted. Matt flatters them, and wishes them luck on the PoV competition, saying one of them will probably win it anyway. Brendon is already dreading the house without Rachel, and she cries in the DR, saying with a straight face, "I have to get another injection of Botox because I have so many wrinkles right now." Enzo gives Matt props in the DR, but acknowledges that the new saboteur will be a wild card. For all of two episodes.
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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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