Thanks to Angel for covering for me on Wednesday, and for leaving me one less idiot to watch in this house. Smell ya later, David.
We rejoin the HoH competition already in progress, with randomly chosen partners trying to transfer large amounts of barbecue sauce using small scoops, sliding along the well-worn slippery lanes that have been used for this variety of competition since time immemorial. This version has the added wrinkle of a hedge separating the two ends of each lane, as well as each partner. We get some reactions to David’s eviction from the Diary Room: Aaryn is out for blood, saying David’s eviction made it personal and now she can’t trust anyone (aside from her partner Jeremy, apparently). Elissa thanks America for making her MVP, allowing her to nominate a bigger target than herself. Spencer is also pleased with how things are going, since he assumes that the Moving Company will be able to run Elissa’s MVP votes for the duration. Solid plan, as long as America plays along.
During the flashback to David’s exit on Day 13, Aaryn whispered to him that she didn’t vote to evict him. GinaMarie expresses shock in the DR about how the plan to evict Elissa clearly “fell to pizzas,” but Nick goes into a room with her and lays it on thick about how this was his greatest fear and now it’s the two of them against everyone else. Nick explains to us that the Moving Company members each have their own faux-lliance, and GinaMarie is his. Not sure which of the two of them is luckier.
Back at the HoH competition, Aaryn and Jeremy are taking an early lead, with Elissa and Andy (who both fear an Aaryn/Jerermy win for their own reasons) close behind. Jessie and Howard, meanwhile, are working on filling the smaller jug first, because accomplishing that wins you a bigger scoop to fill the large jug faster. At least in theory. Judd is taking the same tack, as is Helen, calling Spencer not her “first, second, third, or fifteenth choice of partner for this,” which is pretty harsh in a house containing fifteen people. As the competition wears on and people get more and more tired, falls seem to become more frequent. Amanda decides to abandon her bipedal nature on the theory that if she doesn’t fall, she doesn’t “pop an implant.” At 39 minutes in, both Judd/Nick and Howard/Jessie are getting close to scoring the larger scoops. The former team gets to it first, and start using their bigger scoop. Howard and Jessie reach the same milestone shortly thereafter, lucky that they don’t have to give up on their smaller jug just because another team reached it first. Now it’s just a question of whether the strategy will pay off. It certainly won’t for at least one of them.
An hour in, the course is starting to look like the aftermath of a vampire buffet with dark red streaks covering the playing field. The big cups are turning out to make a big difference for the teams who went for it. But Aaryn/Jeremy and Andy/Elissa are holding onto their lead, and by the time we go to ads, the jugs are getting full enough that they’re starting to try sticking their fingers in there. Not long now. Maybe they would have done better with the smaller-handed people at the jug end, no? But that would have required strategic thinking, which we all know is not a strong suit for most people who go on Big Brother.
We come back an hour and eight minutes in. The two teams that were in the lead before still are, with Judd/Nick closing in. Too late, though; Jeremy gets the ball first, and obnoxiously congratulates himself for it both in the yard and in the Diary Room.
Now it’s up to Jeremy and Aaryn to decide which of them gets to be HoH. Spencer DRs that the Moving Company needs Jeremy to step up for the sake of their alliance, but Jeremy concedes it to Aaryn instead. Jeremy continues being obnoxious in the DR, counting off his reasons for screwing his alliance: Aaryn’s “man-candy” just left, she’s not going to vote out Jeremy, and this way Jeremy gets to compete in week’s HoH. And now Aaryn gets to summarily decide which four people are Have-Nots for the week. I’m sure she’ll handle this responsibility with characteristic maturity. Aaryn asks everyone who voted for David to raise their hands. Nobody does, at least not outside the DR, so Aaryn calls out Elissa, Helen, Candice (who protests, “I didn’t vote for your boyfriend”), and Andy. Elissa protests on behalf of Helen, and declares Aaryn “not a nice girl.” News flash.
Back inside, Aaryn is still trying to count up the seven votes who sent David out, although Jeremy says they need to move on (which, to a smarter person than Aaryn, would indicate that Jeremy was one of them). Spencer claims to have voted for Elissa, having set up an alibi in advance with Candice by saying at the time that he planned to vote out Elissa, even though he had no intention of doing so. That’s some expert ass-covering, Spencer.
Helen and Elissa hang in the flight-delay hell that is this season’s Have-Not room, begging America for the MVP position. And now they’re determined to outlast Aaryn.
Andy asks for a face-to-face with Aaryn and “comes clean” about voting David out, while lying that it tore him up inside. Aaryn’s still bitter about other people not talking to her about it first, so she lets Andy off the hook. At least to his face.
When Aaryn throws her HoH housewarming party, Andy looks on the bright side: “How often do you get to see baby pictures of the devil?” he asks the DR. It looks a lot like McCrae’s HoH room, but with different snacks and pictures. And a terrifying stuffed clown straight out of Poltergeist. Eventually reading the tensely quiet room, Aaryn invites anyone to leave if they want. Elissa takes her up on it, figuring she’s wasting her time anyway, “and I’m really scared of clowns.” So now Elissa can get back to whatever incredibly constructive thing she was doing before.
Later, some of the houseguests are hanging out with Aaryn in her room, trying to figure out who’s lying about having voted out David. Aaryn figures, “Howard lied,” accurately but with no supporting evidence. Nick rejoins the party while some of them bemoan the lack of unity in the house and what it’s going to take to get rid of Elissa. Jeremy suggests nominating Elissa against Helen, as a consensus begins to form that Helen was the mastermind behind David’s surprise eviction. Jeremy DRs that he’s the one making all the decisions, so he’s deflecting all suspicion from any members of the moving company. Aaryn says that someone’s lying and orchestrated the whole thing. “And if it’s you, Nick, I’m gonna cut off your dick in your sleep.” And then she favors him with a sunny smile, which is hardly less terrifying than the final shot of the scene: a slow zoom in on her scary-ass clown.
The Have-Not menu this week is liver and lima beans. “Why are you doing this to me?” Andy demands of America. Aaryn says she wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy, but of course she knows we all know better.
There’s a little party going on in the HoH room with McCrae, Amanda, Judd, Howard, and Andy, and they’re soon shit-talking Aaryn. So I have to assume this is from last week when McCrae was still HoH. The discussion quickly turns to Aaryn’s habit of making racist remarks. And believe it or not, some of them actually air. Like Aaryn saying of Helen, who is Asian, “Shut up, go make some rice;” using the term “squinty Asian” to Jeremy in the kitchen; referring to Andy as “that queer;” and saying of Candice, “Be careful what you say in the dark, you might not be able to see the bitch” (in response to a comment from GinaMarie about Candice being “on the dark side”); and doing a Michael Scott-worthy Chinese accent about some rice and nail salons. Howard and Amanda DR about how this is going to come back to bite Aaryn. Let’s hope.
Candice and Helen hang out in the Have-Not room, and Candice wonders why she was left out of the loop regarding David’s eviction. By process of elimination (which also eliminates Spencer, incorrectly), they figure out that Nick must have voted out David, along with Jeremy, and are in a secret alliance. In fact, she’s even starting to suspect that Spencer lied to her as well, and that they’re playing the rest of the house against each other. There’s her “super duper snooper trooper” skills (her phrase) at work. And eventually, as though the Have-Not room is Plato’s cave, they manage to sit there and deduce the existence of the Moving Company to include Jeremy, Nick, Spencer, and possibly Howard and McCrae. “There’s something that we’re missing,” Candice says. Yes, take out the “possibly” and you’re there.
And America’s Vote is for the Have-Not menu again. Thrilling.
Jessie and Kaitlin hang out in the back yard. Jessie has decided that a) Nick hates her, and b) everyone else in the house has paired off, so c) she’s going after Nick. That’s some airtight Jessie logic right there. She starts following him around to try to figure out what’s going on with him, staring at him, and making him intensely uncomfortable. Whether that’s her intention or not, which clearly it is.
Helen decides to have a one-on-one with Aaryn, admitting that she also voted out David but she thinks they can work well together. Her argument is that nobody wants to nominate their own friends, so they could do that for each other. Aaryn isn’t entirely convinced, and DRs that she’s even offended, and would probably prefer Helen to be making rice right now rather than trying to sell her this overly complicated Strangers on a Train shit.
Spencer, Jeremy, and Nick hang out in the back yard. Jeremy abruptly says Elissa needs to go. Spencer says Amanda’s the bigger liability, because she talks to everyone and McCrae listens to her. Nick agrees. “Should I put up Amanda with Elissa?” Jeremy asks as though he’s HoH, and Spencer agrees. Man, the steering on that moving truck is seriously wonky.
But Jeremy is nominally on board, so he puts on his “puppetmaster” hat and goes up to the HoH room to inform Aaryn, “Amanda is the mastermind behind David going home.” So he suggests nominating Elissa and Amanda, on the additional grounds that “they both suck.” Aaryn wants to tell Amanda, but Jeremy can’t have that, saying nobody warned anybody about David. “I could blame her mother and she would probably put her up,” Jeremy DRs. Probably the most accurate thing he’s said.
It’s nomination day, and Elissa is “100 percent confident” that she’s going to be one of the nominees. Nick DRs that they’ve been relying on Jeremy, and doesn’t look nearly as nervous about that as he really should. Helen DRs that she hopes to have convinced Aaryn of her utility in the game, and Aaryn’s all righteous-avenger as she talks about her nominations, which is almost always a sign that the HoH is doing something really stupid. When she convenes the nomination ceremony, the people who are safe end up being Jeremy, Kaitlin, Andy, Nick, Judd, McCrae, GinaMarie, Spencer, Jessie, Amanda, Howard, and Candice. So that’s Elissa and Helen as the nominees. Aaryn blames Elissa for making “unnecessary waves” and being the cause of David’s eviction, and Helen by association with Elissa, though she lies that she hops Helen wins the Veto. Aaryn DRs that the reason for Helen’s nomination was to further punish Elissa by nominating her against her best friend in the house, given what Elissa did to Aaryn’s best friend. Yeah, too bad the MVP thing makes guaranteed pair-breaking a thing of the past, isn’t it? Elissa isn’t surprised, obviously, but she claims to be even more motivated to win the Veto this week. Like last week? Helen’s just hoping the MVP nominee goes home again. Solid plan. Jeremy decides it’s okay that Aaryn didn’t nominate Amanda, because his target is Elissa after all. “Only thing standing in our way is this MVP nomination,” he says confidently. Oh, is that all? He’d better hope it ends up being more of a nonissue than it was last week.
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.