So despite not being HoH or the Veto holder, Dan managed to make this last week play out exactly the way he wanted, manipulating Danielle (who was HoH and the Veto holder) into saving him and then making her watch while he cast the sole vote to evict her showmance, Shane, after promising that Shane would join them in the final three. Now it's Ian, Dan, and Danielle, the latter of whom has just become possibly the angriest member of the final three ever.
Danielle drips tears and mascara on her eviction-night dress as she sobs about Dan lying to her again, and Ian is shell-shocked, even though he benefited from Dan's move. On Shane's way out, we saw that Dan whispered to Shane, "Dude, she's been playing you the whole time. Ask Jenn." Yes, Dan's thinking about how he's going to get any jury votes from people he's been stabbing in the back all season, hence that little tidbit. But Dan's also confident that both Danielle and Ian would take him to the final two.
Well, that's if he can salvage things with Danielle. We saw on Thursday night that Danielle was pretty mad at him in the arcade room, but Dan's confident he can bullshit his way out of trouble with her one more time. Not if she finds out on finale night what he said to Shane, he can't. But of course she won't, because even if Shane gets a chance to tell her, he wasn't paying attention anyway.
Meanwhile, Ian's still wandering the house, panting and quacking in some kind of post-traumatic excitement. Dan continues making self-serving excuses to Danielle, who for once isn't letting him off the hook. "How do I know he's not gonna do that to me?" she Diary-Rooms. Danielle says she feels terrible, and Dan tells her that's why they make a good team: he doesn't. Is he actually talking his way out of this? "Fool me three times, I'm a dumb-ass," she DRs, paraphrasing my weecap title from Thursday night.
Danielle wonders to Dan how she's supposed to trust him, as accomplished a liar as he is. "I'm not proud of that," he lies. See? He's still doing it! And Ian is now talking himself up while he paces the entire rest of the abandoned house. Dan promises Danielle that there's no more stunts for him to pull, and that it's them all the way to the end. She seems to be buying it, but she's finally learning -- in the DR, she says that she's only pretending to trust Dan. Okay, good for her. About two months too late, but whatever.
So now that the fallout from Thursday has been dealt with, we get to finally start the final-three mimosa banquet clip show. Dan, Danielle, and Ian gather around the table to celebrate and spout awkward dialogue to set up the playbacks. Dan sucks up to the two of them while Danielle is supposedly secretly plotting her revenge, but is in fact acting as the producers' tool to launch the retrospective.
We flash back to Day 32, when Ian, still in his dog costume, proposed starting the Quack Pack with Dan, Danielle, Shane, and Britney. And look, three of them are still here. Dan hearkens even further back to Day 1, when he and the other coaches first showed up for the first time. Man, the guys' hair was so much shorter at the beginning of the season. Every year should have at least one cast member who know how to cut hair, otherwise someone inevitably ends up sitting to Julie looking the way Shane did on Thursday.
Back in the present day, they talk about how Janelle hid her emotions so well that nobody ever knew what she was thinking, as illustrated by a clip from day16 when she revealed to Britney that she never cries, or feels much of anything at all. Back at the table, Dan talks about his Bible, which he was shocked to see Mike reading one day. Mike DRs that he was looking for guidance from God in the absence of his actual higher power, Dr. Will. We see that clip, which wasn't interesting enough to make the show the first time and still isn't. However, the same can't be said of Britney's Day 53 meltdown during her nomination week, when she started throwing things and playing mumblety-peg until Frank suggested taking it out on his giant teddy bear. Which she beat so hard that a larger person would have shredded the poor thing. The one time in the house her being a munchkin was actually an advantage.
Later, the final three move on to a fake-sounding reminiscence of the summer's fights, which cues a flashback to Frank vs. Willie on Day 9, which we relive in its entirety. Maybe even its entirety and then some, because it seems to last forever even in fast-forward mode. But that's just a warm-up to Willie vs. Joe on Day16, when Willie head-pushed Joe and got summarily expelled. If that had been the only thing Joe accomplished in this whole game, his summer wasn't a complete waste. And I can say that with confidence, because it was.
Back in the present, the final three have moved on to the arcade room to fakely discuss the showmance between Danielle and Shane. Danielle admits that the two of them did have a few fights. Then we travel back in time to Day 33, when Shane and Danielle were sniping at each other in the HoH bed and Britney got between them -- literally. The two of them each presented their case to Britney about the pros (Danielle) and cons (Shane) of having a showmance, and Britney tried to smooth things over between them, I think more out of boredom than anything else.
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Speaking of abortive showmances, Ian recalls his slop date with Ashley back on Day 9, and so do the editors, at considerable length. It's not any less awkward the second time around. In the present, Dan asks Ian about whether he thinks Ashley would have ultimately chosen him over Frank, and after Ian says he thinks so, we're back at Day 52, when Ian verbally took on a carrot-suited Frank after Ashley's departure. So let's watch that fight again too, shall we? Actually, let's not. Maybe we should skip right to the America's Vote segment, when we're invited to text a vote for our favorite player of the season to win $25,000. Or maybe we should skip that too.
Time to wrap up the clip show from the living room, a space whose significance Dan speechifies unconvincingly about. Danielle recalls Dan's funeral on Day 51, in which Dan emotionally sucked up to everyone else but Danielle, whom he hideously sandbagged while everyone was still crying. Finally, two wrap up this always-painful segment, Ian says that only one Quack Packer can win and proposes a toast: "May the best duck win." They drink to that.
But the episode isn't over yet, because the first part of the final HoH competition is about to begin. It's nighttime and the backyard looks like a forest, with the pool made up like a pond with giant fishhooks dangling over it. Ian reads the card that tells them that the winner of the HoH competition picks the person who will join them in the final two, and all of them are eligible to compete for this one. It's simple enough; the last person holding onto their fishhook wins part one.
They climb onto their hooks, which soon carry them across the yard, dunk them into the pool up to their noses like a trio of teabags, and then swing back across to bang them against a padded wall like three groaning wrecking balls. Dan DRs that he's been stabling a lot of people in the back all season, and is willing to do it one more time to make it to the final two. As for Danielle, she DRs that Dan shouldn't get too comfortable, because "It might be time for you to get blindsided." That would teach him, wouldn't it? No, it totally wouldn't. The competition continues, with more banging and more dunking and now even a hard rain for good measure. This one could last minutes. Which is kind of too bad, because after a summer of punishment at the hands of these people and their former housemates, I'm ready to watch them take some more of their own.
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By M. Giant
But the episode isn't over yet, because the first part of the final HoH competition is about to begin. It's nighttime and the backyard looks like a forest, with the pool made up like a pond with giant fishhooks dangling over it. Ian reads the card that tells them that the winner of the HoH competition picks the person who will join them in the final two, and all of them are eligible to compete for this one. It's simple enough; the last person holding onto their fishhook wins part one.
They climb onto their hooks, which soon carry them across the yard, dunk them into the pool up to their noses like a trio of teabags, and then swing back across to bang them against a padded wall like three groaning wrecking balls. Dan DRs that he's been stabling a lot of people in the back all season, and is willing to do it one more time to make it to the final two. As for Danielle, she DRs that Dan shouldn't get too comfortable, because "It might be time for you to get blindsided." That would teach him, wouldn't it? No, it totally wouldn't. The competition continues, with more banging and more dunking and now even a hard rain for good measure. This one could last minutes. Which is kind of too bad, because after a summer of punishment at the hands of these people and their former housemates, I'm ready to watch them take some more of their own.
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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