Sunday's show began with us reliving the whirlwind that was Big Brother Fast Forward (which was neither fast nor forward: discuss). We watched Danielle leave the house all over again, with Boogie telling us how proud and happy he was for her, especially the way she marched out of the game with her head held high. Sure enough, this segued into footage of Boogie declaring, "Class act, right there. Class act!" Oh wait, that was Will. Hard to tell them apart sometimes. I think we can officially add "Class act!" to this summer's overused phrases, along with "Backdoored," "thrown under the bus," and "It is what it is."

After Danielle left, George then turned to the rest of the house guests and happily said, "Thanks everyone for keeping me." Yeah, don't get used to it, chicken man. Will then popped up on the screen and told us that "the state of overdrive is terrible for the way I play this game. I work slowly, I work methodically, and I work by strategy." Luckily, none of that mattered because everyone in the house this season seems to be a total idiot, willing to trust someone who from the outset was a notorious liar. Anyway, as we all saw on Thursday, Will and Janelle had a quick strategy session in the four minutes aloted to them by CBS, and in that time, the evil doctor managed to convince Janey to put George and Erika on the block. "Janelle listens to me because she's in love with me," he said. I don't know if that's true, or if it's more because SHE'S AN IDIOT! Oh Janelle. What happened? You seemed to be back to your sharp, conniving self just a week ago. Now you're full-on Chill Town dependent again. Must you toy with our hearts so much?

Sure enough, Janey did exactly what Will said, putting George and Erika up on the block. "I'm sorry, George. I didn't get to like talk to anyone," she said, clearly forgetting about the four minutes she just spent, you know, talking to Will. We then saw the Veto competition all over again, and it turns out that all of Will's carping from the end of Thursday's episode was true: he really did break his thumb during the game. We also learned that Erika dodged a major bullet by winning the veto. "Had Will's symbol come off, she wouldn't even be in the building," Boogie told us. Memo to CBS: if you really want good ratings, have a camera on Erika the moment she finds out she's not Boogie's betrothed. Yes, this will basically be the summer of "I TOLD YOU SO!!!"

Well, we then watched George's unceremonious eviction, and as he left, Will told us, "Chicken George is the only person in the jury house who I have not blatantly misled and lied to." I believe the key word there is "blatantly." Last time I checked, that whole notion of "We saved you, Chicken George!" wasn't exactly the truth.

Sure enough, George's exit was accompanied by Boogie's valedictory "Class act, George," which got me thinking -- what isn't a class act to Boogie? He could look at a potted plant and proudly proclaim, "Class act, fern. Class act." I'll tell you what's not a class act though: Señor Stingray.

Sorry, still bitter about Steve Irwin.

Anyway, George's ouster provided inspiration for yet another Chill Town phone skit, but sadly, the bit seems to have peaked. It just wasn't as funny. Or at least, as intentionally funny. Seeing Will's injured thumb take a hit from an overly enthusiastic Boogie was worth the price of admission. As a loyal sidekick, Mike should know better than to aggravate the injury of his Master!

Later, Boogie thanked Erika for saving him, to which she replied, "You are taking me to the fuckin' final two!" Uh huh. Whatever you say, Diane -- I mean, Erika. Our deluded damsel then told us that she wanted to sit with Boogie in the finals not only because she liked him but because she felt she couldn't win against Will or Janelle. This of course begged the question: then why get rid of Danielle? I mean, her whole logic in putting Danielle up was that she was the one Erika couldn't beat. Well, if Erika can't beat Will either, then why not take him out instead, preserve your friendship with Dani, and secure loyalty from Boogie? I can't even think about it. I get flustered. The only thing that can un-fluster me is something positively nauseating, and thankfully, Erika was able to provide that for me by saying that regarding Boogie, "I think it would be cute to have us two the final two." Bad news, my lady: "cute" and "Boogie" are two terms that never occupy the same sentence. Maybe "awkward" or "poseurish" or "peasant-like," but not "cute."

Of course, we knew Boogie's thoughts on taking Erika to the final two: "That ain't happenin!" Yup. Then again, if Boogie had any capacity to think for himself, he'd realize that he might not be able to win against Will in the finals. Sure, Will's already won and that might send some votes Boogie's way, but truth be told, people like Will more, and everyone knows he's been the brains of this operation. If Boogie were smart, he really would take Erika to the finals. Then again, as J-Unit pointed out to me, what greater gift can a sidekick provide than allowing his Master to win $500,000?

Anyway, the lovely people at CBS then treated us to a lip-smackin, saliva-swappin montage of Boogie and Erika (or Boogrika, as I call them) making out, with the latter asking, "Think they show this on television?" The answer is YES, THEY DO. SO PLEASE STOP BEFORE WE ALL GO BLIND!

Boogie then revealed the cardinal rules of "showmancing": "#1. Don't, in showmancing, don't ever get real feelings for someone." Do nausea, blindness, and general malaise count as feelings? As for rule number two, well, there was none. Turns out that Showmance Theory is a very narrow discipline.

And speaking of showmances, Will and Janelle continued their "are they or aren't they" relationship by getting awfully flirtatious in the diary room. Made sense because they were apparently having a "flirt-mance." Gotta admit, I wanted to hate all the classifications and their pseudo-Sex in the City cleverness, but dammit, I couldn't deny them. I loved them. And what I loved even more was that Dr. Will anticipated a season's worth of snark by saying, "I'm sure people are going to say I'm having a showmance with Mike Boogie." The answer to that assumption: yes. Conveniently, the producers cut to a shot of the two guys in the hot tub, with Boogie wearing an ever-so-Brokeback cowboy hat. "There's nothing wrong with two men being in a hot tub together sometimes," Will said, adding, "I think it's a bro-mance." Whatever you want to call it, I think I've pretty much reached the saturation point for sexual images involving Mike Boogie.

"Howdy, partner. Mind if I get in your innertube?"

After the commercial break, we filled some time by watching Erika pacing around, smoking cigarettes in the backyard. Turns out she used to be a smoker, but then she quit when her grandfather died of emphysema. She was absolutely adamant against smoking, but now that she's back in the house, she's picked up her old vice to deal with all the pressure. C'mon, you can't blame her. How else was she going to take out her stress? By eating???

Unfortunately, Erika's new habit was making "Operation Double Date" that much more difficult for Boogie, who claimed, "When you go to kiss her, it tastes like an ashtray." We then cut to him brushing his teeth violently after kissing her lips. Okay, that's a bit excessive. It's not like she's soaking her gums in tar and garlic (at least, not that we know of).

Well, it's never good to see anyone pick up a nasty smoking habit, and even Boogie noted, "she looks like she's aged five years." On the plus side, she certainly can blow a pretty amazing smoke ring, a feat that I have yet to master. Whenever I try, I usually wind up with an amorphous cloud that gets in everyone's eyes. Hence, I'm not a smoker. I can't even do the cool tricks.

At long last it was time for the Head of Household competition -- something we nearly forgot about in this content-deprived episode. Filling in for the Chenbot was Janelle, who managed to do a fine job, even pulling off her very own "BUT FIRST!" Anyway, the three players -- Mike, Will, and Erika -- had to don referee outfits, and not everyone was pleased with this. Erika complained, "We put on really stupid referee costumes that made me look like I had no figure." I love you Erika, but of all the things you need to be worried about, your figure is not one of them (your late night tongue wrestling with Boogie on the other hand...).

The gang then headed outside where the Big Brother Bowl awaited them. Yes, this competition came replete with footballs, a scoreboard, an endzone, goal posts, and what seemed to be a mini field. This was gonna be fun! Or so it seemed. If you thought this challenge would have anything to do with football, you'd be wrong. Instead, it was just another trivia parade that involved neither the footballs nor the goal posts nor any of the other cool things that a tireless crew certainly spent way too much time putting back there. You know, couldn't we at least have the annual Big Brother bocce tournament or miniature golf bonanza? Must everything be trivia? I understand for the live shows why there's a need to keep the challenges quick and expedient, but this was pre-recorded. The producers could have put a little more umph into it. Don't cocktease us with football paraphernalia and then leave us hanging!

Well, the way this event worked was that all three players would stand at the endzone, and Janelle would ask them questions with numerical answers. The three would write down their guesses, and for the amount that a person was off the correct answer, they'd have to step that many penalty yards backwards. For instance, if the correct answer were three and someone wrote down five, that person would have to step back two yards. The house guest with the fewest amount of penalty yards after seven questions would win HOH.

I won't bother repeating the questions because they weren't particularly interesting. Needless to say, after the first round, Boogie answered correctly while Will and Erika both incurred two yards worth of penalties. After round two, Erika had four penalty yards, Mike had six, and Will had three (and the lead). By the time round four ended, however, Mike had tied Will with six penalty yards, and Erika was just behind with seven. We then advanced a little further, and going into round seven, Boogie had a small lead. He managed to answer the last question correctly, which meant he automatically won HOH, thus crushing most of my dreams that he might be shown the door sooner rather than later (if at all).

In celebration, Will poured a cooler full of liquid on Boogie, an act that surely delighted his bro-mantic interest (it's so special when a Master dotes on his sidekick). The good doctor then told us he wasn't concerned about nominations -- Mike wasn't going to put him on the block. I hoped this might be misdirection, but what sidekick in his right mind would ever put his Master up? As for Erika, well, she was fair game, and she already knew she was probably going up. "We are sleeping in the same bed," she said, "and he's probably gonna nominate me. It's kind of hot." Actually, not at all.

"Gotta love those bad boys!" she then added. And I'm sure you'll love them when they screw you over and make you look like a fool in front of America!

As we headed into commercial, Will then said that Boogie was going to showmance Erika upstairs while Will was gonna "faux-mance" Janelle, and hopefully, by the end of the night, they'd both be so suspicious of each other that they'd do anything to take the other down. Divide an conquer. Simple strategy. And yet, no one seems to see it coming. I guess that makes it halfway genius. Or sad.

Later on, the whole gang hung out in the hot tub, and Janelle told the boys that she didn't need an engagement ring from any potential fiancés. She'd be happy with just a friendship bracelet or something. That's like me saying "I can't go a week without watching Carlos Mencia!" It's lying, I tell you. Lying.

Anyway, what followed was lots of boring banter about marriages and whatnot. Boogie said they should all go to Vegas and have a crazy weekend and pretend to get married, to which Will logically replied, "Why would we do that?" Good question. Let's let the Master do all the planning from now on, Mike.

Janelle then joked that if they were to go to Vegas, they'd probably just get drunk, and she'd elope with Will. He replied that he woudl then spend the next week trying to get an annulment, to which Boogie asked, "Why would you do that, Will?" Ah, touché! Unfortunately for Mike, the sidekick cannot trap the Master. Will said he would get the annulment so that he and Janelle could go to Minnesota and get married properly. Saved!

Later on, we then saw Erika and Janelle sitting alone together outside, and for a brief second, I thought the two might begin transpiring. However, they were just waiting for Mike to unveil his new HOH room. Lame. There was nothing special about Boogie's new domicile. He received a gift basket full of many foods that would outlast a nuclear holocaust, and he seemed most excited about receiving a can of Spaghetti-O's. Will thought he should relax -- he could get Spaghetti-O's at Ralph's. And for all of you who don't live in Southern California, Ralph's is our reigning supermarket. It's not like there's some guy named Ralph on Big Brother who you have to remember.

Anyway, the Scooby Gang trekked back down to the hot tub where Will tried to convince Erika and Boogie to have a baby. After all, she was in her mid-thirties, and to quote Marisa Tomei, her biological clock was ticking like this! (Imagine me stomping the floor). If these two were to have a baby (and let's hope this doesn't happen, lest the seed of Boogie propagates), the suggested name was "Chilliam" so that the guys could call him "Chill" for short. Other options: "Douchebag", "Douchelliam" and "Douchelito."

Erika then joked (or did she?), "I want to have a baby with Mike! We're going to have a baby!" There are some conceptions I don't need to, ahem, conceive of. This is one of them. Brit and K-Fed are a close second place.

Well, while Erika and Boogie ascended to his den of repugnant insemination, a drunken Janelle tried to make her moves on innocent Will. Her advances were too much for him though, and he had to spurn her, despite the underlying objectives of Operation Double Date. This left Janey with nothing but a giant gallon of cranberry juice to latch onto, and as any girl will tell you, that's hardly a suitable substitute for a man (or his bidness). She grew belligerent at his rejection, and while I thought their badinage was just flirtatious sparring, it turned out that it was actually angry sparring. Eventually, Janelle left the hot tub and huffed back into the house, and once again, I thought maybe, just maybe, Chill Town had bitten off more than they could chew. Might a scorned Janelle seek out Erika to enact revenge? Of course not. Instead, Janelle and Will made up, and in the storage room they began talking about strategy. What they didn't realize, however, is that a nosy Erika had meandered downstairs for whatever reason and was now listening in on them.

"I have your back! I have your back!" Will told Janelle. He then went on to say, "Let's kick Erika out of this house." At this point, you'd start to think that Erika would see the writing on the wall, but instead, she continued to stand by the door quietly and listen in.

"Erika came up to me in the backyard and told me that you were planning on evicting me," Janelle then told Will, and again, you'd think that now Janelle would see the writing on the wall, but nope, she didn't. Erika then told us, "We'll see who he's loyal to: me or her." How about you don't put your fate in his hands? Whenever two people are jockeying for one person's acceptance, that's usually the time when those two people should join forces and turn the tables. Did anyone even see the last season of Survivor?

"Tee hee! I'm being played!"

Sadly, Erika's little spy session came to a close when Boogie ambled in and full-on blew her cover (probably intentionally). He managed to get her back upstairs, leaving Will to tell Janelle that he swore on his life that he'd evict Erika if given the choice. And like the dimwit that she's turned into, Janelle said she believed him. Painful.

After the commercial break, we then saw more canoodling between Erika and Boogie. "I can't wait to get you out of this house," she said, referring not to evictions but to consummating a real relationship after the show.

"What I really like about each other is we both have enough respect for each other that we're not trying to push things," Boogie replied. Translation: yeah, I'm probably gonna break up with you after this.

The next day, Janelle sat at the kitchen table and played cards with Chill Town. The guys said that the three of them HAD to win the veto and get rid of Erika. "They say that I'm safe, but I only believe them like a tiny bit because Chill Town lies a lot," Janey told us. I was glad to see her showing signs of healthy skepticism, but again, actions speak louder than words, and as far as I could tell, she already looked like she had one foot planted firmly out the door.

Erika then joined the game, taking over Janelle's hand while she ran off to the bathroom or whatever. Before anything could happen, we here at the TVgasm offices joked that Will and Mike would tell Erika the exact same spiel as Janelle, and sure enough, that's exactly what they did. Even worse, Erika said, "I know you guys are telling her the exact same thing when I leave." The guys just smiled and laughed, and in typical Erika form, she blatantly ignored all the warning signs and continued on, confident that she was somehow safe for the rest of the game.

As we went to commercial again, Erika noted, "I don't want to be nominated. It makes me kind of look like a ho-mance." Yeah, um, too late for that. The moment you let Boogie touch your lips, your credibility in this game was pretty much shot.

Finally, it was time for nominations. Like I said earlier, if Boogie were smart, he'd actually put Will up on the block, but then again, this week, the nominations sort of don't matter. It's all about the power of veto. Whoever wins it gets to send someone home. Anyway, Boogie made a perfunctory nomination speech during which Will chuckled and ate yogurt the entire time. With only one key left, who would it go to? Mike's household love? Or Erika? Rimshot! Tips in the jar. I'm here all night. Try the veal.

Sure enough, the one person safe was Will. Mike gave a whole speech about how Will was so great, and because of him, Boogie had made it this far, and it was only appropriate that the last key pulled in Big Brother: All Stars was Will's and blah blah blah. As for Erika, Mike bullshitted his way through that by saying, "You are far too special and... um... have meant so much to me in the house to ever be some girl who kissed a guy on a reality show and got did wrong." But yeah, that's pretty much what you are. Erika: all the signs are there: he won't commit to taking you to the final two, he won't put your key in the box, and he's obviously complicit with Will no matter what. STOP RELYING ON CHILL TOWN! YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM! We yell because we love, Erika. We yell because we love.

Alas, as the show ended, Erika said, "They have that expression, 'Bros before hos.' And let's just hope it doesn't come down to that because I think I would be out third." Way to catch on. What would ever make you think that this is a bros before hos situation? Oh yeah. EVERYTHING.

So now it's do or die time. Chill Town must decide who will be their Yoko: Janelle or Erika. And luckily, our very own trusty intern created this image for the occasion:

What do you think will happen? It's all about tonight's veto competition. Who do you want to win?

And remember, if you're watching the live feeds and know the results, do not include spoilers in the comments section.

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Posted by B-side on September 5, 2006 8:55 AM