To Be Perfectly Frank

S14E04

Julie's dressed like a hot-pink ace of diamonds as she welcomes us -- and a live studio audience -- to the show. A zoom-heavy previouslies sequence brings us up to speed: former players (Janelle, Britney, Dan, and the ever-tiresome "Mike Boogie") came back to coach this season's crop of losers. HoH Willie (Team Britney) nominated Frank (Team Mike) and Kara (Team Dan), and Shane (also Team Britney) won the PoV for the week. "And the house-flipper decided not to flip the house," the narrator says by way of saying Shane decided not to mess with the nominations. It's nice that they didn't have to sit on that one very long. Back in the studio, Julie welcomes us back and goes over the situation yet again while we see shots of the waiting players inside the house. Mike's latest in his seemingly endless series of desperate fame-milking t-shirts reads, "Where's Will?" Where indeed? Julie's segue is about how the coaches think they're in control, but the players are really running the house. Come on, Julie, we know the producers exist.

Back to Day 9 and Shane's non-Veto, which he held off on using in order to show his allegiance to Willie and his team. Frank's first move post-noms is to go see Willie in the HoH room and tell him he doesn't trust anyone in the house as much as he trusts Willie. Which is an odd thing to say under the circumstances. Willie says all he wants is for Frank to keep his mouth shut, and he'll round up the votes to get rid of Kara. Frank assures Willie in turn that he can trust him.

As Willie tells us in the Diary Room, he actually does want Frank to stay. So he basically gathers Janelle, Britney, and their respective teams, discussing which of the two nominees to actually get rid of. The room seems to lean toward booting Kara, in order to cripple the already weakened Dan.

But in the interest of longer-term damage control, Janelle goes over to Dan in the backyard to complain about Kara's impending departure and explain how she, Janelle, tried to make a case to save her. From over at the pool table (where Ian is beating her like a drum), Britney keeps casting suspicious glances over at the other two non-Mike coaches, suspecting that Janelle is actually going over to Dan's side rather than just cravenly sucking up.

And Britney's paranoia lasts the night, although it changes forms by morning. Over breakfast, she notices that the photos of herself and the other coaches on the memory wall have keyholes to them. Which, why would that be the case if the coaches weren't going to have to join the game later on? After this demonstration of mental acumen, Britney has to balance the scales somehow. So goes to Willie and secretly tells him that the math doesn't add up for the number of evictions and the number of weeks in the game, unless the coaches are brought in at some point. Otherwise, it's only three weeks until people start going to jury. Britney warns Willie not to tell anyone. Why tell Willie, then?

By M. Giant

Later, Willie decides to call a house meeting, but only with players. No coaches allowed. "If that was one of my players I would have nixed that," Dan mutters to Britney, like there's anything any of them can do about it but for himself, Britney, and Janelle to stress out. Which is after all what they're doing now. I don't even know where Mike is right now, not that I miss him. "Mike Boogie could be leading the meeting for all we know," Dan cracks. Mike is in fact dead asleep, which is probably better for Mike than if he actually were leading the meeting.

Up in the HoH room, Willie is basically telling the players that they need to play for themselves and not let the coaches run them. He also shares the theory that the coaches could be joining the game later, and will probably band together against the newbies, like last year and every year former players are brought back. Joe thinks Willie's getting ahead of himself. Wil says he wants a 24-hour break from game talk, like there's anything else to talk about in there, but Willie insists that if the coaches join the game, one of those four is going to end up with the grand prize. Which, from my point of view, is not necessarily a bad thing, depending of course on who it ends up being. Now the big question: what dumb-ass reason could Britney have had for sharing this with Willie in the first place?

Willie's revelation to the other houseguests has made Frank a lot more nervous, now that Willie's come over all unpredictable. He goes into the HoH room and gets a few assurances from Willie, and then Britney joins them, presumably for some damage control. Frank ends up getting offended by Willie's imitation of Wil's earlier comment, complete with Wil-voice. And there's worse news for Frank, as he heads down to one of the bedrooms with Joe and Jenn. Joe lets Frank in on the outcome of the last Blonde-Bloc meeting, in which Willie and Britney proposed splitting their votes so nobody would be able to tell that half of the house was united against Dan and Mike. Which, thanks to Joe's big mouth, it isn't going to be for much longer. Frank feels doubly betrayed by Willie after hearing this. Frank also tells Joe and Jenn about Willie's mocking of Wil in the HoH room. "I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH THAT AT ALL. THAT'S NOT PART OF THE GAME," Joe blares in the DR. Neither is my ruptured eardrum, you human jet engine. After that conversation Joe goes right to Wil, who vows in the DR that it's going to bite Willie in the ass. But his move is to report this to Britney, who feels the need to defend Willie to Wil in front of Frank. And then she goes up to the HoH room and tells Willie, "I say this because I love you: you're screwed." I don't love him, and I agree. Ashley, also in the room, listens as Britney explains how Willie's imitation of Wil has become a PR nightmare. All Willie cares about, though, is how he's trying to save Frank and Frank's turning on him. How ungrateful can one of Willie's nominees for the week possibly be?

Willie charges out to the backyard and tells Frank, "I've been trying to save you all week, man." As they start gathering attention from the other players in the house. Frank doesn't take any crap from Willie, who reminds Frank that he told him to keep quiet and he'd be fine. Frank doesn't trust Willie any more than Willie wants him to trust the coaches. It soon devolves into shouting, with Willie getting increasingly upset and telling everyone to vote to keep Kara. Mike, who's been a nonentity all episode up until now wades into this, saying, "Who died and left you boss?" Uh, Britney kind of did on Day One, champ. Now it's a shouting match between Willie and Mike, while Britney watches with increasing horror as her top pick spirals to the ground, trailing a corkscrew of cigarette smoke. It's always tricky to tell what these people are thinking, but I bet Britney is resolving that the time she makes a clever deduction, she's going to keep it the fuck to herself.

We come back after that blow-up to the calm living room, which is always such an anticlimax on these semi-live shows. Speaking of anticlimax, Julie "axes" Jojo (Jojo's word) about the mood in the house, and she says she didn't think it was going to happen so fast. Julie asks Ian the superfan how it's going, and he says it's lived up to his expectations and that he hasn't been bored once. Jealous. Julie then asks Wil for one word to describe the last thirteen days. "Oh, goodness," is all he can come up with, aside from a panicked expression. When it's Ashley's turn, she gives Julie "loosey-goosey," which either doesn't mean what Ashley thinks it means or Ashley's hold on reality is even more tenuous than I've been suspecting. The one word Julie wants from Willie is the one to describe his reign as HoH. He starts to actually answer, but Julie only wanted one word, and he blurts, "Pressure." Thanks, Julie, that was much more enlightening than whatever he was going to say. Julie turns to Mike, and they reminisce for a moment like cousins at a family reunion who hate each other before Julie asks him whether it's harder to be a player or a coach. He says it's the latter. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink," he explains. Poor Mike.

Time to set up for the vote, but first the nominees get to beg for their lives. Frank goes first, saying he's enjoyed the last thirteen days and he hopes it's not over for him, then makes a speech about bullying not being okay. He advises them not to listen to their coaches... unless they're telling them to keep Frank. Kara tells them to vote in their own interests, and "know that someone has made a final deal with the person you're trying to save." She's giving everyone a little too much credit there, I think.

The voting begins. Danielle is the first to vote, being the least suspenseful vote in the house, as Kara's one remaining teammate. Of course she votes to evict Frank. is Shane, who also votes to evict Frank. Hard to know if that's the part he's supposed to be playing or not. Joe, wearing a blue chef's jacket in the DR, votes to evict Kara. Ian votes the same way, and we go to commercial with the votes tied at two-all. Coming back, Jojo votes to evict Frank and Jenn votes to evict Kara, so it's tied again. Wil and his plaid beret vote to evict Kara, so now it's down to Ashley to either cast the final vote or make it a tie. She votes to evict Kara, so Kara is done. With everyone back in the living room, Julie makes her pre-eviction speech and says that a 5-3 vote has resulted in Kara's eviction. She's getting up before Julie is finished speaking. It's a fairly quiet farewell, considering there are fourteen people for her to hug goodbye, and I think she makes it to all of them. In fact, I think it may still be happening.

When she finally goes out to join Julie, it remains quiet in the house aside from some real time Tweets popping up on the screen, one of which votes to evict Mike's hat. Cosigned. Out in the studio, Julie asks Kara why she was voted out. Kara says people were threatened by Dan, plus people voted their alliances. Julie asks Kara if her shyness cost her the game, and Kara says it might have, although Dan advised her to lay low. And look how that worked out. Julie rolls the tape of the farewell messages, in which Danielle says she's sorry Kara's gone. I bet she is, now that it's her and Dan against the house. "YOU GOT THE LOOKS BUT YOU AIN'T GOT THE GAME," Joe hollers. "GO BACK TO MODELIN'." Thanks, Joe, now go back to the flight deck of that aircraft carrier that you apparently learned to talk on. Shane creepily says he'll miss Kara's legs, and Dan admits he let her down and is sorry to see her go. Julie reports that Hugh Hefner Tweeted "Go Kara," so at least she has support where it matters.

After the ads, Julie cues a flashback to 1:29 the morning, when the lazy-ass houseguests were woken up by a news flash on the viewscreen. A newsreel voice narrates cheesy footage of a portly cat burglar "breaking" into the house and doing stuff like picking up carpet tiles and falling over the couch. The voice promises further updates as the night progresses, so obviously this is going to be one of those deals where the video gives them information that they'll need to answer questions during the upcoming HoH competition, assuming they can retain it with interrupted sleep and eyes that aren't fully focused. Indeed, they're awakened again at 2:28, 3:17, 4:01, and 5:15 for more clips, in which the burglar takes bites out of food in the storeroom, shaves one of his legs in the HoH bathroom, and drinks directly from the milk carton before putting it back in the fridge. I guess I was wrong; that kind of stuff is going to stick in their minds no matter how sleepy they are.

By M. Giant

Time for the live HoH competition. It's one of those game-show formats. Outgoing HoH Willie and the four coaches are ensconced in a makeshift jury box to the side while Ashley, Joe, Danielle, Ian, Jojo, Wil, Jenn, Shane, and Frank are tucked into individual partitioned compartments. Julie asks a series of guilty/not guilty questions about the burglar's activities, as shown during the video clips overnight. Everyone gets the first one right, but Shane's the only one who blows the second question, about how many bites of food the burglar took in the storage room, so he's out. The third question, about which leg the burglar shaved, proves trickier, because only Wil and Frank get it right. Frank applauds himself furiously while the other six players steps down. Frank and Wil both mess up the fourth question and both get the fifth one right, but Wil is the only one to get the last question wrong, so Frank is the new HoH. He and Mike seem pretty happy about that, while the other players pretend to varying degrees. Except Willie, who stomps off into the house by himself. I guess he figures that since he'll be gone a week from this moment, he might as well spend as much time inside as he can.

By M. Giant

After the break, the remaining houseguests are assembled back in the living room, with Frank and Mike seated in what were the nominees' chairs earlier tonight so they can gloat about their win. Julie asks Janelle (this week's big winner among the coaches, if you ask me) how this first week of her third time in the house compares to her first two times, and she says it was like three weeks of Big Brother in one week. Julie has more news to break: the coach who wins this week's coaches' competition can either give one of their players immunity or trade their players for another coaches' player. "And everyone is eligible to be traded except the Head of Household," she adds. "Boo-yah!" Mike crows like he rehearsed it. Julie signs off the viewscreen and plugs the upcoming week of Big Brother programming, like I have a choice. Then it's eavesdropping time, in which we learn nothing of interest other than nobody seems to want to talk to Dan. There's nothing more contagious in the Big Brother house than loser-stank, you know.

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.