Whoa, it's gotten so bad that we're starting off with a disclaimer: in white text on a black screen, titles read, "BIG BROTHER is a reality show about a group of people who have no privacy 24/7. At times, the Houseguests may reveal prejudices and other beliefs that CBS does not condone. Views or opinions expressed by a Houseguest are those of the individuals speaking and do not represent the views or opinions of CBS." Dude, they're really scrambling over there, aren't they?
As usual, we're starting the Sunday show with a flashback to the most recent eviction, which in this case was Nick's. GinaMarie is sobbing uncontrollably in the Diary Room as though Nick is actually dead. She'd better pace herself, or what's she going to do when she finds out she got fired for being a bigot? Jeremy DRs that he is "flabbergasted," having expected all the votes from the Moving Company and "his girls" to keep Nick, but some "goobers" in the group "ruined everything." He normally works a lot more blue than that. Aaryn DRs that everyone has lied to her, plus she's a minority in the house. See how she likes it. Helen cheers, "I love this game!"
The flashback to Day 21 continues, and Elissa insensitively thanks America three feet from where GinaMarie is wailing in despair in Howard's arms. "What the fuck?" Jeremy mouths from across the living room to his greatly diminished alliance. GinaMarie locks herself in the toilet cubicle, which turns out to have an overhead camera in there after all, and won't come out until Aaryn comes to talk her down.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kaitlin confronts Jessie about her vote, which Jessie denies. GinaMarie and Aaryn rejoin the group, and they're already counting the votes, trying to figure out who flipped. Well, just about everyone, looks like, given it was a 7-4 vote. "ALL OF YOUSE ARE SOOOO STUPID!" GinaMarie brays across the house, and rants at the others who are hanging out in a distant bedroom laughing openly at her tirade. Well, as openly as one can from another room.
McCrae explains to the DR why he voted out Nick: he says the Moving Company was pressuring him to choose between them and Amanda. "So I made my choice," he smirks. Spencer also confesses to Howard, saying, "It's not about being fair, it's about winning." He DRs that the Moving Company is over, mainly because Jeremy is such a pain in the ass. And also because Helen made a pretty convincing case to him seven hours before the eviction. Two hours later, Spencer approached Howard privately, who claimed to be on the fence himself. Howard did vote to evict Elissa, but that was only to provide cover for those who didn't. A 7-4 vote has enough people pissed off, but an 8-3 one would have left no doubt as to who flipped. Probably.
Flashback to Helen's win of the HoH on Thursday night, as well as some gloating from her in the DR. Jeremy, Aaryn, and Kaitlin seem pretty defeated, but Jeremy DRs that he's going to continue to hold his chin high. "It's too pretty to hold it low." Well, at least he's learned something.
Helen, Elissa, and Candice celebrate in the Have-Not room, which they're going to be vacating shortly. Jeremy comes in and actually makes the class move of congratulating Elissa on still being in the house. Helen accepts gracefully, but she seems to be the only one.
Meanwhile, Aaryn and Kaitlin sit and complain, and GinaMarie comes in weeping into Nick's hat. And blowing her nose into it in the DR. Nick's going to love seeing that. The three of them have in fact decided that they don't even want to be here any more. Well, who's stopping them from leaving?
Freshly ousted HoH Aaryn moves into one of the regular bedrooms with Jeremy and Kaitlin, the latter pair seeming to have annexed Jessie's bed. Not that Jessie is taking that lying down (get it?), and when they accuse her of flipping her vote, she complains about their treatment of her and suggests Aaryn get to know Elissa instead. It's starting to blow up when Judd wanders in and Kaitlin orders, "Judd, get the fuck out of here." Judd mildly points out that he lives here, and gallantly leads Jessie out of the room while the other three hurl insults at their backs. "I feel like I'm back in high school," Kaitlin says, after acting like it, "but I'm on the other side." Telling, that. The truth of this is too much for Aaryn, who maturely starts throwing pillows and the mattress off the bed she's currently occupying.
Later in that same bedroom, Jessie returns to her vacated bed, and Kaitlin climbs all over it to annoy her, like a kid bugging her sister on a road trip, until she leaves. Candice comes in and wonders what happened to her bed and her clothes, all of which have been thrown to the floor. Then Jeremy comes in and takes a turn on Jessie's bed with her, refusing to get off despite her repeated requests. As Aaryn returns, Candice threatens "all hell in this house" if her bed gets flipped again, and Aaryn gets all mocking chicken-head finger-snapping at her, with Kaitlin joining in. Oh, yikes. Candice keeps her cool, saying she's happy they flipped it. Howard enters and Aaryn keeps up the act. "What you gon' do? Where's yo' class?" Howard realizes that he and Candice need to not be in this room right now, and as GinaMarie gets into the mix and up into Candice's face, Howard picks up Candice and carries her out of the room. These sore-loser women have the Mean Girl cranked up all the way to eleven, and finally Jeremy mutters into the blankets, "Y'all are not making it better for yourselves." Wow, look who's the voice of reason all of a sudden.
In the Have-Not room, Howard tells Candice to ignore them, and says he can't control his own temper once it starts, so he's not going to start. Even though that was his bed too, after all. He says that he only feels the need to defend her and Helen, the other minorities, and is happy to go home for it if need be. Candice runs down the litany of racist behavior she's been putting up with, and Howard promises it'll get better if they're the bigger people together. Candice breaks down crying, and Howard's there for her, saying they're not running; they're just playing a game, and they're going to play it smarter. Howard DRs quite correctly that people are showing their true selves, but they don't have any power in the house right now. I'm not sure how much that helps, but I suppose it beats having to suck up to them on top of it.
Back in the bedroom that's been the site of so much drama, Jessie is trying to lecture the others on their behavior, and GinaMarie accuses her of voting Nick out from jealousy. Jessie claims to be on the side of the house that respects her, which they question. Enter Amanda, who has been listening outside the door, and schools everyone about shit-talking behind people's back, and smacks Aaryn with this word-punch: "You're fucking racist on this show. And when you get out of this house you're going to have a lot of people fucking hating you." Or even before then. "That's why I came to you in a subtle way trying to help you." Aaryn denies being racist, as racists do, and bleats at Amanda, "You're a liar!" Amanda just laughs, "What game are you playing? Because we're playing Big Brother." Amanda exits, inviting America to judge. I like to think America is judging wisely.
Candice is still upset, and crying in the HoH bathroom. Do you realize that this Sunday episode is so jam-packed there wasn't even time for the HoH room showing? Helen, Andy, and Elissa surround Candice supportively while she tearfully recounts what happened to her bed. Which is not exactly a hate crime, but it's shitty and rude and on top of everything else I can get why it would be too much. Helen says she would normally tell people to bite their tongue. But she assures her that she's done putting up with it, so those people will get voted out and Candice is winning right now. The only problem is that they can only vote out one person a week. Well, most weeks.
Amanda and McCrae hang out making googly eyes at each other until McCrae tells her that he has a confession to make. After asking her to promise not to be mad, and he lets her in on the secret of the Moving Company, with a complete roll call and history. "I didn't want to be with them at all," he claims, which isn't exactly true. Amanda DRs that her first reaction was, "Good job, McCrae," and calls herself an idiot for missing it. Maybe time, dear. McCrae goes on to tell her about the Moving Company's pressure on him to dump her, but he looked at it like a chess game and kept his queen so the king would be safe. I guess he means himself there. McCrae thinks she doesn't trust him anymore, but she assures him she does. Probably helps that he was the one to tell her.
GinaMarie is crying on a sofa, and ends up getting comforted by Aaryn – and Candice. So I guess we know who the bigger person there is. Watching this, Aaryn is moved enough by this to actually say, "Candice, I'm sorry." She goes on to make her excuses about being Southern and thus prone to saying things that aren't appropriate (which is bullshit, as I have met plenty of non-racist Southern people), but she didn't want to offend Candice on a racial level. In the DR, this heartfelt mea culpa is more clearly stated, "I am sincere in my apology to Candice to the point that she took my comment wrong." In other words, not sincere at all. So it's Candice's fault that Aaryn's racist now. But Aaryn goes on in the DR to say she can't have Candice using it against her and spreading things about her that aren't true, as though Candice is the only one. So Aaryn's sorry to the extent that her behavior has hurt herself. What an asshole, seriously. Candice accepts the apology and returns the sentiment to Aaryn's face, but in the DR she assures us that she's not buying it for a second, and will be ignoring Aaryn from now on. If only the rest of us could.
The backyard has been set up to look like a dairy farm, which the houseguests emerge into without preamble, broken into three teams for the Have-Have Not competition. HoH Helen and Jeremy with his Never-Not pass are sitting it out, but it's a pretty simple competition: three teams of four have to transfer spoiled milk from one of three huge vats by tossing bucketfuls from teammate to teammate, until that teams' jug at the far end of the yard is full. Last team to finish will be the Have-Nots. As the competition begins, each team has a member standing knee-deep up in the vat, throwing the contents of their buckets into a bucket held by a teammate on a platform below, who then has to throw it into a bucket held by a teammate standing on a rotating turntable, who then has to throw it into the bucket held by the final teammate standing behind a fence, who then pours it into a trough that leads to the team's jug. Obviously a lot of milk is being spilled in the process.
Teams must have been randomly selected, or nearly so, because Howard's on the blue team with Kaitlin, GinaMarie, and Aaryn. So he DRs that he's planning to throw it to screw them over, even if it means he's in there too. And thus he keeps just throwing milk in Aaryn's face instead of her bucket. Under those circumstances, losing the competition must be just gravy. The red team finishes first, so Jessie, Andy, Elisa, and Candice are Haves. Howard continues struggling manfully to throw the competition, but McCrae is sucking even worse as the yellow team's vat-man, to Howard's growing frustration. It looks like a tie, and even as Howard keeps fumbling his bucket and pretending to slip, his blue team comes in second. That means the yellow team – Judd, McCrae, Jeremy, and Amanda – are Have-Nots. Aaryn has the nerve to chant about karma striking Amanda for being a mean person. Which makes me wonder how much sour milk Aaryn swallowed, anyway.
Helen has noticed that Jeremy's come over all nice since her HoH win, and she's happy to milk him for info. Which he happily hands over, telling her about the Moving Company alliance. Helen's pokerfaced with Jeremy, but she's cheering in the DR, remembering to give credit where it's due to Candice for sniffing it out first. "I killed the Moving Company!" she says. Jeremy expresses to Helen that he's regretting siding with Aaryn. So to test him out, Helen offers to put up Jeremy's showmance Kaitlin as a pawn opposite Aaryn this week. Jeremy says he's fine with it, and is willing to help Helen out. Helen knows she can't trust someone who would sell out his whole alliance like this (not once but twice, just now), but she figures she can use him. Yeah, using Jeremy worked out great for the Moving Company.
Helen's visitor is Howard, whom she offers a sandwich from the HoH fridge and asks what he knows about the vote. He pleads ignorance, though he DRs that lying about his vote to keep Nick has been killing his conscience. Helen tells him someone's been lying to her, and she needs to know why the vote was off from what she expected. Howard asks if she's a forgiving person, but is still hesitating -- at least until Helen gets up to call Spencer in there. As though it's scripted, Howard tells her to wait, takes her into the bathroom, and confesses, "I overthought myself." Helen realizes this means Howard voted to keep Nick. Helen actually cries -- or pretends to -- over this betrayal, and then asks Howard if there's anything else he wants to tell her. Howard should realize this means she already has the goods somehow and he should come clean, but he's sticking to his denials. Even when Helen names off the members of the Moving Company, he maintains that the lack of trust between the guys makes a guy alliance impossible. Howard DRs that he decided not to tell her because he wanted Helen to trust him. Well, it didn't work. Helen hugs him and assures him they're good, but in the DR she says she's very disappointed, and on the fence about keeping Howard, whom she no longer trusts. Clearly overthninking himself is not a high bar for Howard.
Helen calls the nomination ceremony without any ado whatsoever. As she starts the key-pulling, the first person safe is Elissa. Also safe, in order, are Andy, Candice, McCrae, Amanda, GinaMarie, Judd, Jessie, Howard, Spencer, and Jeremy. Try not to act so surprised that the nominees are Aaryn and Kaitlin. Helen tells them they're both very strong competitors, and she wants to give them the opportunity to play for the Veto. Kaitlin DRs that she feels like she picked the wrong side. You think? Aaryn DRs that it would be stupid to not vote her out. "I'm the only one that doesn't want to kiss their butts." Great strategy. Jeremy says it's too bad about Kaitlin, "but I didn't' come here to get married. I came here to win five hundred thousand dollars." I hope neither of those things happens. Helen DRs that Aaryn deserves to go home, but there are bigger targets. "So watch out, here comes Helen." Wow, that may be the limpest tagline ever.
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.