Wearing a sleeveless black jumpsuit with a set of black measuring spoons dangling from around her neck, Julie is still touting Dan's "biggest move in Big Brother history" last week, but says that with tonight's double eviction, anything can happen. Okay, how about a triple eviction, then? Can that happen?
We're reminded in the previouslies that after saving his own ass last week, Dan's playing was far from over, as he went on to beat Frank in this week's Power of Veto competition, and then got Frank to agree to be cool with not being vetoed, leading to his veto of the other nominee, Jenn, instead, and Ian replacing her with Joe. And Frank still seems to think he's in great shape. Which he is, physically.
Back in the studio, Julie tells us it's Day 62 and says it's been all about blindsides this season. She also mentions that it's Frank's sixth time being nominated, so either he or Joe will be leaving shortly. Julie adds that given tonight's double eviction, there will be only five players left by the end of the show. Best news of the night.
Julie segues into a short sequence on the action inside the house since the Veto meeting shown last night, and on Day 59, Joe loudly DRs that he's hoping Frank's the real target. That appears to be his whole strategy. Jenn is relieved to be off the block but worried about Frank, so "it's still go time." Go, then. Oh, right, she has no strategy either. Frank figures he only needs three votes to be safe, and figures that Dan, Danielle, and Jenn are firmly in his camp, unaware that Dan's secretly flipped on him. Dan happily DRs about Jenn being on his side and Frank being in the dark.
Frank has a talk with Dan in the kitchen about week -- a conversation during which Dan slips up and mentions what Joe might do, as if he's still going to be here rather than Frank. Frank is stunned at the very idea, and Dan's red-faced in the DR, admitting, "I gotta be a lot more careful than that this week." Frank tells Dan he has reason to be worried, as this reminds him of unpleasant past events. Of course he's looking for anything from Dan, who, unwisely, is still busying himself cutting up fruit rather than looking Frank in the face. Of course, even if Frank twigs to what's going on, it's probably too late for him to do anything to save himself. But he can still really embarrass Dan.
Joe visits a hammock-rocking Ian to ask for advice. Ian tells Joe to play it cool, and DRs that Joe is the one person in the house who could screw this up. Joe talks about how Ian might have a chance to take down Frank himself, in the event of a tied vote that Ian has to break. Ian acts excited at the very prospect.
Dan sits and contemplates the memory wall, realizing that there's still somehow one angle he hasn't covered: Joe. So he goes into a darkened bedroom on the spot to quiz Joe about who he would nominate in the event he wins the HoH. Might as well ask him who he'd make Secretary of the Interior, but Dan likes to cover his bases. Joe says he'd ding Shane and Danielle, claiming he can't be in the final four with them, but in the DR, Joe hollers that his actual target would be Dan, and whoever's on Dan's side. Joe knows the HoH only gets two nominations, right?
A half hour later, according to the caption, Dan returns to the darkened room to get in bed. Mistaking Dan for Shane, Joe sits up in bed and whispers that Dan chased him in there earlier. Dan's like, "This is Dan." Long, awkward pause, after which Joe goes, "What's up?" I think Dan can stop worrying about Joe now. When Shane comes in, Dan tells him all about Joe's earlier faux pas. They laugh about it, but Dan's starting to wonder if Joe's big mouth is too much of a liability. Well, you were the one who decided to pick his tiny brain in the first place.
Julie gets on the viewscreen to the living room to tell the houseguests that it's double eviction time. Some of them look a little more surprised at this news than last time, and Dan does a double facepalm at the realization that the week he spent the last several days gaming out is going to be over in less than an hour. We get right to the nominee speeches. Frank, with his usual air-juggling gestures, reminds everyone that he can't compete in the HoH competition, like that matters worth half a brown squirt any more. Joe stands up and fishes for laughs, calling himself the "single biggest threat in the kitchen" and sucking up to the others before telling them to vote with their hearts. Julie tells them it's time to vote, reminding them that the nominees can't vote and Ian will only vote in the event of a tie.
Dan is the first to vote, and while pimping his website, votes to evict Frank. Danielle also votes to evict Frank, so it looks like he's going to be done. Jenn casts what is certain to be the one vote to evict Joe, and then Shane makes it three to one, and Frank just came in seventh place. Once everyone's back in the living room, Julie tells them Frank was evicted on a three to one vote, and he gets up and walks out of there in record time -- at least for someone carrying a giant teddy bear -- pausing to hug only Jenn and barely acknowledging Dan's apology. That's one jury vote Dan might need to worry about.
Inside the house, Jenn's getting hugs from people, now that she's all alone in there (whether she's figured that out yet or not). Out in the studio, Julie observes to Frank that he looks shell-shocked. Frank admits to being "bummed" after being so spectacularly lied to, especially after Dan swore his allegiance to him, but admits that he lost the PoV after all so there's nothing he could have done anyway. Frank now realizes that his alliance with Dan was probably never real in the first place. Which is a little harsh; I think it was for a day or two there, when Dan needed it.
Julie asks Frank about his tendency to trust other people in the house, and Frank says he didn't have much choice. Julie talks to him like he's a bereaved mother about his years of trying to get into the house, his weeks of trying to stay in it, and the minutes he's having to endure sitting to her in his "Julie Chen is my Homegirl" t-shirt. Frank says he wouldn't change anything, "except maybe a couple things at the end." Like maybe taking that fruit knife away from Dan a day or two ago, for starters.
Time for goodbye messages. Joe takes credit for beating Frank, like he did anything, and says he should have gotten rid of Dan. Shane tells him it's nothing personal, and it was a good game. Ian says he had to send him home for his own sake. Frank looks away from the screen when Dan comes on, predictably shilling for Frank's jury vote by telling him he respects the hell out of him and knows he can't beat him, and hopes there are no hard feelings. Nothing from Frank's one real ally Jenn.
Julie asks Frank if there are hard feelings, and he says absolutely, earning a big cheer from the studio audience. Julie gives Frank the chance to unload on Dan, and he says that he thought booting Britney last week would give him a chance, but there was just no way in. Julie runs down his stats: six nominations, three HoH wins, and three PoV wins, and "one heckuva game." And that's Frank on his way to the jury house. Where he and Britney are going to have a lot to talk about.
Time for the HoH competition already? You know everybody's going to be fighting hard for those sweet few seconds of feverish conferring during an upcoming commercial break. Julie gets on the PA to the backyard, where Joe, Shane, Jenn, Dan, and Danielle are in isolation booths waiting for the competition to begin. The game is simple: Julie will read a quote from a nomination speech from earlier this season, and the players will have to guess who it was that said it.
Julie begins with a quote from a nominee who said everybody underestimated him or her, and after some shuffling of face-cards and some prompting from Julie, there are three JoJos, a Wil, and an Ashley up there. The Ashley is Jenn's, so she's the first one to get a point. But she's still standing there defiantly like she's in front of a firing squad. Who said, "It's down to brass tacks and I need a vote?" It was Mike, and this time Jenn, Dan, and Danielle get it right, so Jenn's still in the lead. But then she's the only one to misidentify Frank's nominee-speech quote about a bully, so she's now tied with Dan and Danielle for first place, with Joe and Shane tied for last.
The rankings stay the same when Julie asks who said they came in thinking they were going to play a dirty game (JoJo) and Joe and Shane guess Wil. The breakdown of right and wrong continues as Jenn, Dan, and Danielle correctly guess that Kara said she played an honest game, while Joe and Shane guess Wil again. I'm starting to think those two don't have a full deck of cards, in more than just the usual sense. The three lead players are also the only ones to get the question about Janelle right, and they go into the last question with a score of 1-1-5-5-5.
But then they all get the last question wrong, so Jenn, Dan, and Danielle are going to have to break the tie in the usual way, namely guessing a number (without going over). They wait with their mini-blackboards poised while Julie asks the total number of minutes Jodi was in the Big Brother house. Aw, poor Jodi. Danielle guesses 230, Dan 363 (showing his work and everything), and Jenn goes with 160. The right answer? 481, more than eight whole hours. I had no idea she was in there that long. In more current news, Dan is HoH, as if he needs another break right now. At least he gets lost trying to exit the hedge maze out of the game booth, so he's not completely invulnerable.
Coming back from the ads, Julie remotely herds the six remaining houseguests into the living room for the nomination ceremony, noticing aloud that Joe has already parked his ass in one of the nominee chairs. Dan gives a quick speech about how he coaches back home, and nominates Joe after all -- and, for the first time, Ian. "Gotta feel it," he says. Julie tells them it's not over yet, because the live Veto competition is still coming up.
For the PoV, all six remaining houseguests are standing in front of a button, with their backs to their own long, slotted mazes that they'll have to negotiate a wooden shark's fin through. Are we sure this is a good idea for a live show? That maze looks like it could take some of these people a while. But I guess we're committed. Julie starts the competition, and we get to take in the riveting spectacle of six people trying to wiggle shark fins along a maze for, well, a while. Fortunately there's lots of bleeping. After some time, Ian seems to have a clear lead, getting hung up at the end but running back to his buzzer while Shane's still at the starting end. After that, even Julie feels comfortable predicting that the nominations might change.
Post-ads, we get to watch Dan being all panicky, snapping at Ian to hurry up while in a room with Jenn, who hits Ian with the door while trying to open it for him. Jenn leaves, and Ian makes to follow her until Dan calls him back. Slapstick followed by farce! This episode has everything. They whisper some stuff we can't hear about someone coming after Dan and the Quack Pack, and Dan tries to rush in a quick talk with Jenn, even as Julie severely and repeatedly starts ordering everyone into the living room. "Don't make me come in there," she threatens. Oh, if only. Also, I suspect she's been sitting on that line for quite some time.
Once order is restored and the Veto meeting begins, Ian wastes little time saying he's going to save himself, and tells Joe he wishes he had "two of these jokers." Dan takes a long pause making a "really tough decision," then tells an obviously stunned Danielle to sit to Joe. Julie goes to ads while Dan and Jenn go off for their delayed conversation. Come on, Dan, how hard are you going to work to protect that alliance? I'm pretty sure even Jenn must have figured out by now that the jig is up.
Short nominee speeches. Danielle hits the high points, saying it's her fourth time on the block, and "please, vote, keep me here." Joe stresses his "strong-ass loyalty," and the second vote of the night begins with Shane, who votes to evict Joe. Jenn once again votes to evict Joe, and Ian goes through the formality of making it unanimous. So that's it for Joe, at long last. His farewell is rather more boisterous and huggy than Franks, as he goes out saying he loves them all and it's just a game.
He comes out of the house and into the studio whooping and hollering like he just climbed out of a monster truck. Which was falling off a bridge. Inside the house, Danielle and Jenn hole up together while Ian and Dan talk elsewhere. Dan, I venture to say, should maybe be a little worried about what Danielle and Jenn are saying to each other, because I can guarantee they're not talking about Joe.
Julie's going to have to have a short exit Chenterview with Joe, who blames his loss on not winning the PoV. Or indeed anything. As for why it's him and not Danielle out there right now, Joe puts it down to showmance. "I can't go there!" Julie points out how much he sucked at the game in general, and asks if that was his strategy. Joe jokes that it was his plan all along before admitting that he tried his hardest to win every competition, but had to rely on his cooking skills and "being there for people." Yeah, that always works.
Final question: "What exactly is that on your chin?" Joe strokes the white feather hanging from his bottom lip, joking lamely about his "mini-Claus." Bear with me, now: my dad used to own a couple of records by a comedian named Brother Dave Gardner, who did his southern-accented act in the tones and cadence of a revivalist preacher. I never got any of the jokes when I was a kid, and now that I sometimes hear Brother Dave on a satellite radio comedy channel, I still have absolutely no idea what that cat was talking about, ever. But at least he was quieter than Joe.
And after Julie tells us to watch Sunday's show for the HoH winner, Wednesday's for a special eviction episode, and another eviction on Thursday, that's it for tonight. And almost it for the summer. After an episode like tonight's, though, the thought of the end doesn't fill me with as much joy as it once did. Dear God, what am I becoming?
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.