Wearing a dress like a giant Oreo, Julie tells us that history will be made when a juror returns to the game for the first time ever. That's a pretty loose definition of "history," Jules.
After previouslies and credits, Julie again tells us that a juror will return tonight, because it makes total sense that there will still be eight people in the last week of August. Then she throws us back into the action inside the house, picking up where we left off last night when Aaryn put up Spencer as the replacement nominee opposite Helen, even though she was really in the mood to ding Amanda instead. Helen is now regretting disregarding Jessie's warning about Amanda weeks ago, and has no choice but to go with Elissa to try to suck up to Aaryn and GinaMarie.
Andy joins them for some stupid reason, and Helen tells him he's the swing vote. Andy is still selling the idea that he's firmly in Helen's camp. She cries and lectures Andy at the same time, holding forth about good guys versus bad guys, which kind of pisses off Andy. Then they talk about how they'll all be in trouble if Amanda and McCrae find out about this. So then Andy goes right to the Have-Not room to wake up Amanda and tell her all about it. This does not actually get him in trouble.
Helen can still tell Andy's lying to her, so she goes to McCrae to try to secure his vote for her to stay. And her main argument is that McCrae shouldn't be scared of Amanda or let her boss him around, because then they'll have a miserable life together. This is actually pretty personal, and I think that if McCrae were actually listening he might start to get a little offended. In fact, McCrae DRs about how Helen is just as pushy as Amanda is. Amanda comes in to collect McCrae, so that's the end of that conversation.
Outside, McCrae admits to Amanda that Helen accused her of bullying. Amanda does the mature thing, which is to go up to the HoH room and complain about Helen to Spencer and Andy, and McCrae when he joins them. Amanda seems stunned that anybody could ever consider her bossy. Or a bully. "You're assertively honest," Spencer says with an unusual amount of diplomacy for him.
Later, Elissa and Helen hang out with GinaMarie to try to secure her vote to keep Helen. GinaMarie claims to want to vote that way, so they agree that they need to issue Andy an ultimatum that if he doesn't vote to keep Helen, he's getting nominated . Well, anything's possible.
So Helen and Elissa have apparently summoned Andy to the HoH room. Andy finally admits that he's wavering on his vote, saying that people might come after him for not voting her out. Elissa argues that she and others will come after him if he does. And in fact, Elissa says that if she or GinaMarie win HoH week, they're nominating Andy. Which Andy is terrified by, as he says in the DR. Imagine his panic if there were any chance of either of those two winning HoH.
Julie gets on the viewscreen with the houseguests in the living room, and I have reason to hope that she might not waste everyone's time with the pointless interview which, by necessity, never reveals anything interesting if only for the reason that everyone's in the room together. Instead, she says something about the houseguests being kept in the dark, and plays them some night-vision footage of the Have/Have-Not competition in the black box.
Julie asks some questions about that and then shows them some video of Elissa dominating last night's PoV competition. And that's it, before the nominee speeches. Spencer gives his usual shout-outs and asks for everyone's vote except Elissa, saying he knows she has to vote for Helen. Helen's speech is almost completely directed at her family, which is a good way for her to work up a decent head of tears before appealing to her fellow houseguests for their votes.
Voting begins, and McCrae is the first to be sent to the DR. As expected, he votes to evict Helen, as does Amanda. Elissa votes to evict Spencer, as expected. If Andy really is the swing vote, he swings to evict Helen, which is enough to send her out of the house tonight. GinaMarie casts the safe vote to evict Helen as well. So Helen will be… competing against Judd, Jessie, and Candice to get back into the house. Not that any of the houseguests know that. Oh, this is exhausting.
After the ads, Julie gets back on the viewscreen and breaks the news that Helen's out on a 4-1 vote. At least she knows who voted how. The hugs go on longer than usual, even given the fact that there aren't as many people getting them as in weeks. She leaves graciously to a rousing round of applause from both inside the house and out. Once Helen is out in the studio, Julie remarks on the 4-1 vote and asks Helen what happened to her alliance with McCrae and Andy. Helen says she's been questioning Andy's loyalty to her ever since he was HoH and declined to nominate Amanda and McCrae, despite her preferred strategy of taking out big players.
On that subject, Julie asks if Helen regrets not going after Amanda earlier, and Helen still thinks that Judd was more dangerous at the time. Oh, man, these people are going to be so embarrassed when they find out his yokel act wasn't an act. "What was so scary about Judd?" Julie asks almost mockingly, and Helen airs some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories that were floated about him, all of which are completely wrong. Which of course Julie can neither confirm nor deny, given that Helen might be heading back into the house in a matter of minutes. Julie also asks Helen how many of the tears she cried were for real, and Helen says that it was part of her strategy before asking, "Can I go back in?" Rather than answering that, Julie cues up the goodbye messages.
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Andy references her speech about good and evil, and says that while he thinks she's good, other people who can kick his ass don't. Though not in so many words. McCrae says Helen had to go for coming after his queen (as in chess, not just in a gross smurfy way), and Amanda says she's known for weeks that Helen was after her. Elissa simpers about how she'll miss Helen, and now Helen is crying for real. Julie asks Helen what she'd do differently, if given a second chance, and Helen readily says that she shouldn't have gotten rid of Howard, and should have evicted Amanda the first time she was nominated by the MVP. Rather than reacting to that, Julie tells Helen that she'll have a chance to get back in tonight. Helen chair-dances excitedly, but asks if she gets food before the challenge after a week of being a Have-Not. Well, of course not, Helen.
Before they compete, though, we get a look inside the jury house for the first time. Of course Candice showed up there two weeks ago, quickly followed by Judd, sans his grizzly bear shirt. Judd tells Candice that he never saw it coming. Yeah, no one did. Then a week later, Jessie showed up, and this is Judd's first chance to understand what happened to him. Poor jerk has been sitting and playing cards with Candice for a week still never knowing what hit him. Jessie explains how Amanda decided Judd was MVP and started gunning for him, and boasts about how she did her best to mess up Helen and Elissa's game before leaving. Which I have to admit that she succeeded at, at least partially.
On some other day, they find a breakfast buffet laid out with a note telling them that one of the four jurors will be going back into the house. Judd and Jessie both talk about what they're going to do to Helen and Amanda when they get back into the house, most of which will no longer be relevant by that time. Candice is mostly after GinaMarie for her own personal reasons. But what about Aaryn?
Then we cut back to the studio, where Candice, Judd (back in his grizzly bear shirt), Jessie, and Helen are waiting to compete. Julie tells them that the other houseguests have no idea what's about to happen. I'm sure they suspect something's up, given that it's been twenty minutes since Helen walked out and nobody's said boo to them. But that changes as Julie gets on the living room viewscreen and summons the seven people still in the house to appear before her. And that's when Julie tells them that the four jurors are about to compete to return to the game. Oddly, everyone reacts like it's going to be Helen -- Elissa excited, and everyone else terrified. The doorbell rings, and in walk the four jurors. There are joyous reunions all around, or at least a lot of fake joy. I'm starting to worry that the show didn't build in enough time for hugging. Julie lets it go on for quite a while before shooing them out to the backyard. Lets' just hope Elissa's screaming didn't blow out anyone's body mic.
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It's looking like another endurance competition, with ten players (including the four jurors) up in narrow platforms against a wall. The jurors have a fake crowd mural behind them like in the stands at a baseball game, while the players who haven't yet been evicted are up against what looks more like an outfield wall. Outgoing HoH Aaryn is of course sitting out her fourth competition.
Julie explains that both competitions will be going on at the same time, but it's not just an endurance competition after all. Instead, the goal is to be the first to catch ten of the balls that will be launched at all of them, without falling off. If that's a juror, then that juror is back as the new HoH. And here come the balls. Well, first the platforms start moving, just to add a degree of difficulty. After they have a minute to get used to that, a crack-of-the-bat sound is heard, and ten off-camera ball launchers shoot tennis balls at each of them, at a pretty high speed. Looks like Jessie was the only one to catch one. Then sprinklers start drenching them all, and that's all that happens until the last ad break. Stretching this out, are we?
Julie comes back just long enough to tell us that we'll find out who wins on Sunday, see the Veto competition on Wednesday, and an eviction on Thursday. Only one? I was hoping for five or six. Julie signs off with the houseguests, and another set of balls comes at them. This time a lot more people catch them -- including Jessie, who's still in the lead. With a new set of balls coming at them every ten minutes or so, this could easily be decided in a matter of hours. Oops, there's another set, which it looks like everyone missed. So make that days.
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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