We rejoin the Head of House competition -- the one where everyone has to untangle a long rope from a yard-sized rope grid suspended a couple feet over mud, hay, and grass -- already in progress. As we know, Brendon's out for both survival and revenge, and outgoing HoH Matt Diary Rooms about how it would be nice for someone in the Brigade besides him to win a competition for once. And people in Hell want ice water.
Flashback to Rachel's eviction, and the subtitles come through for us with regard to what she whispered to him during her exit: "Baby, you have to win. Please." Why? He could never win HoH when she was there. Matt gives himself credit for this eviction, and indeed all evictions, when in fact we all know that everyone else who left committed the mortal sin of getting between Rachel and her man. Lane remarks in the DR on everyone wanting to stay clear of Brendon, so much that when they scatter, they totally miss Rachel's picture going to black-and-white.
Back to the HoH competition, which Lane DRs in his comfort zone, with the hay and the mud and all. Hayden and Enzo whine a lot, and Kathy and Ragan are completely disoriented. Enzo DRs about the lead Brendon has, but he isn't worried about it because...
Flashback to three hours before the HoH competition. Enzo whispers to Hayden that he's going after Ragan and Britney , because they're too close to Matt and Lane, and that leaves the other half of the Brigade vulnerable. Wow. With allies like that, who needs enemies? We see them then roust Brendon and Rachel out of bed, assuring Brendon that he's going home but Britney and Ragan are their targets. Brendon and Rachel agree to the plan, but of course that was before the eviction, so who knows what Brendon's state of mind is now?
Brendon's extending his lead (which Lane amusingly attributes to Rachel's stabbing him in the back with a syringe full of rabies when she left), while Kathy and Enzo are in a humiliating race for last. Lane's closing in on a tangled-up Brendon as the ads hit.
When we come back, Lane's already mentally reading his HoH letter when Brendon narrates, "All of a sudden, a giant cloud of focus comes over me." That cloud clearly departed before he entered the HoH room and started mixing metaphors, but it's enough to help him make it to the end and hit the button, triggering a cheesy "Eye of the Tiger" music cue and hollering out that this was for Rachel as the rest of the houseguests mope unhappily. Brendon picks his three Have-Nots: "Ragan, Britney and Matt." He keeps rubbing it in, saying they would have been better off keeping Rachel, and boasts to the DR about having no mercy to people who had no mercy for Rachel. The thing he keeps leaving out of the equation is that Rachel is horrible.
While Brendon showers, Enzo descends into recriminations about how they did send home the wrong person, but then says that he'll be fine. Britney quietly speaks up and basically says, easy for him to say, given what went down with her and Brendon last week. Enzo: "Huh?" Britney goes to Lane, who assures her that she'll stay if she wants to. Britney struggles to keep it together, which is tough given that she's a likely nominee and a Have-Not who looks like a drowned rat with too much eye makeup. She, Ragan and Matt commiserate in the Have-Not dump, except Matt's smirking to himself over his secret Diamond Power of Veto. And of course what Britney doesn't know is that Brendon was only pretending to hate her as part of his "evict me" campaign, and might secretly be just fine with her.
Time for Brendon to show off his HoH room, even though, as Britney says, she'd rather fall down the spiral staircase and break her neck than actually enter Brendon's HoH room. There are lots of family photos, to the amazement of Lane, who DRs that he thought Brendon was cloned or grown in a lab. Enzo and Kathy suck up, to the disgust of Britney. And Ragan DRs that he doesn't want to be there, but then he doesn't leave, either. Much better strategy to hang around and pout.
Montage of Lane and Britney goofing around together. Moving on.
Hayden quietly tells Enzo that he might actually trust Brendon more than he does Matt, and Enzo agrees that Matt's spending too much time with Ragan. "He can't do that, it's not Brigade," Enzo says, making me want to slap him. They decide to go after Britney, in order to keep Lane's loyalties focused on the Brigade. And then they'll bring Brendon in. Wait, what?
Enzo goes up to the HoH room with Brendon, who says he's going to nominate Lane and Britney, I guess because it's the closest thing to a showmance left in the house at this point. Enzo makes the case for concentrating on Britney, and clumsily adds that he doesn't trust Ragan, either. They part with a soul-hug and everything.
Enzo reports back to Lane that he might be up against Britney, Lane DRs, which makes Lane want to "go to a bar, find the hottest girl there, and fight her boyfriend!" Awesome.
I hope everyone else gets called to the DR for no apparent reason as much as Ragan does. From the laptop, he gets the suggestion to announce that there's a secret alliance in the house. Ragan goes with that one, because it fits in with Annie's accusation that there was a lifelong friendship in the house. Which apparently people in the house still speculate about, even though none of that discussion is ever aired. When the saboteur comes on the screen, he tells them that they failed to get him out of the game, and everyone looks confused. Because they thought it was Rachel, remember? The saboteur brings up the secret alliance, and adds that it's a pair, one male and one female. Which puts Kathy and Britney, the two remaining women, under three times as much scrutiny as the six remaining guys, because nobody in this house is going to waste their minimal brainpower trying to narrow down one guy out of six when they can flip a coin and have an even chance of landing on the guilty female. Kathy and Britney both swear on everything that it isn't them. "Sounds like something the saboteur would say," Brendon says. Way to go, Ragan.
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Everyone speculates on what the Have-Nots are getting to eat this week in addition to the slop. Enzo guesses snails, and indeed, it's eggplant and escargot, which makes it kind of amazing that Enzo guessed snails. They all hate it. Moving on.
Matt swings in the hammock with Ragan, who is stressing out about the week. He says that Brendon's insanity and illogic make him an unpredictable player. As opposed to 90 percent of the people who go on this show. Matt encourages Ragan to go talk to Brendon to save himself, and if he saves Matt as well, that's just gravy. Matt DRs about how he thinks Ragan is his showmance partner. Matt, do you really want to be in a showmance in this house?
Ragan enters the HoH room and Brendon tells him, "Make it quick." Ragan says that nobody would suspect anything if the two of them had an alliance. Brendon seems receptive, but he DRs that he can't forget how Ragan "spit" on Rachel, which I don't remember happening at all. Do you remember the spitting? I don't remember the spitting.
Brendon invites Britney up to the HoH room to ask why he shouldn't nominate her. She basically throws herself on his mercy, and offers to play for the Veto on his behalf, although she DRs that she has no intention of keeping her word. "Ultimately, I'm competing for half a million dollars," she DRs, "and I'm not gonna let Canklesaurus Rex get in the way of that for me." Brendon asks if she wouldn't veto even Lane, and she promises to be in Brendon's corner. And when he asks if he would be safe from her if she won HoH week, she says, "What you do for me, I will do for you." She's being awfully evasive for someone who doesn't plan to keep her word anyway.
Nomination day. Britney is a hundred percent certain she'll be nominated. Lane is worried about being nominated, but knows the Brigade has his back. Ragan's only worry is that Brendon acts not out of logic but cowardice, which is the thing Big Brother players always call out as the motivation for actions that they themselves find upsetting. Matt says that although he has the Diamond PoV, he'd rather not be nominated at all. Greedy much? As for Brendon, he narrates that he's torn between doing what's best for himself and getting revenge for "the woman that I love." He keeps calling her that, doesn't he? Even now that she's gone. I'm starting to think he means it.
Brendon convenes the nomination ceremony, and the safe people this week are Enzo, Kathy, Hayden, Britney (who's clearly blown away) and Matt (also deeply confused). That makes Ragan and Lane the nominees, which I think is the one nomination nobody ever saw coming. Brendon explains to everyone that he wants them to fight to win and stay in the game. In other words, Brendon picked his nominations with a dartboard.
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Ragan DRs that Brendon is a coward (which I still don't get; Brendon is a lot of things, but "coward" is not that high on the list), and that he wants to "avenge somebody that he knew for about a month." And Lane says this is the dumbest move Brendon's made, of many. Enzo calmly DRs that he's furious. Britney says she's shocked, but that she doesn't trust Brendon and figures it's all part of Brendon's plan. Where Britney is wrong is in the assumption that Brendon has a plan. As for Brendon himself, he DRs that this is his house, so they'll have to play by his rules. Yes, until Thursday.
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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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