Big Brother: Hairstyles of the Lame and Briefly Famous

Tonight, on Big Brother: This happened.

The evening begins, as all evenings in the seventh circle of hell do, with Jessie. Julie congratulates him for…standing around while other people won a competition, I guess. As a result, Jessie and his creepy anime body will now be foisted upon America for another summer. I’d be upset, but what do you expect from the network that also brought you Gary Unmarried?

Jessie enters the house, and everyone screams just like they did last week. Oh, Big Brother. I’ve missed you and your frustratingly repetitive ass. When you are gone, I long to be treated as if I have the memory of a fruit fly.

“WHERE MY ATHLETES AT?” Jessie yells like a tool while everyone in the house looks at him with varying degrees of horror. That Jessie: always able to read a room. “I hate Jessie,” Kevin admits. I feel him on that shit. “I haven’t been to the gym in ten years! What do I have to talk to this guy about?” Kevin wonders. Discussing your shared mammoth case of narcissism is not really an option, I guess.

In the Diary Room, Jessie gives himself angelic entrance music, then flexes and takes his shirt off and jumps around the room, screaming. We are nine minutes into the show, people, and six of that was a recap and the credits, and here we are, watching Jessie do stupid Jessie bullshit for what I’m sure is only the first of the many, many times I am going to have to suffer through this. Lord, beer me strength.

Dear Flipit: I Wasn’t Kidding About That Resignation Letter

Back in the living room, Jessie jumps around and screams like a Donato who just won one of the many competitions that were fixed in their favor. Hey, I guess there is a bright side to this, after all: we could be watching Daniele or Dick right now, I guess.

I just hate my daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

Russell tells us that he likes Jessie a lot because they have “a lot in common”. Yes, your shared ability to make me dislike you within seconds is quite remarkable. Douches of a feather, I guess.

Ronnie tells Jessie he’s glad Jessie’s here, since he wants to work out and lift weights and everyone else is a yoga person, apparently. “I know how to work Jessie,” Ronnie says. “I’m smarter than him, I know his weakness.” Even Jessie can see through something as transparent as that: Asking the guy who clearly works out whether he’d like to work out with you doesn’t make you Sun Tzu all of a sudden, there, Glasses.

In the kitchen, Lydia tries way too hard to bond with Jessie. “So, do you live out here?” Lydia asks, which Jessie does, because he wants to be “a WWE Superstar”. Obviously, his wrestling alter ego would be The Turtle, since it appears that he now has the ability to retract his head into his body.

Lydia continues to throw praise upon Jessie, complimenting his muscles and asking how he got so big. How do you think, Lydia? Obviously, it’s all the time he’s spent reading and keeping up with world events. Makes you strong!

In the back bedroom, the Brains (Ronnie, Michele and Chima) discuss a bit of strategy: Ronnie wants to offer Jessie an alliance, which would allow the Brains and the Athletes to work together for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Jessie takes Jeff into the storage room and asks him for advice about nominations. Jessie’s theory (which you will be hearing a lot of) is that everyone’s going to be kissing his ass so much that he needs input from the other people in his clique. “I’m not really planning on helping Jessie,” Jeff says. Yeah, neither am I.

Jessie comes out of the diary room with the HOH key. It is worth pointing out that Ronnie is wearing a shirt that says “DORK” in giant block letters. Way to buck the stereotype, buddy. This makes me dislike him instantly, for a myriad of reasons that I’m not willing to discuss here. Suffice to say that willingly putting yourself into an easily identifiable box like that is super gross. Don’t worry about the nine hundred things that make me a well rounded and interesting person, because: dork! It says it right here on my shirt!

“If I let you label me and turn me into a cartoon, can I be on TV?

The HOH room does actually look kind of cool. It has a very Asian theme (Les Moonves obviously has an Oriental fetish), with a waterfall on the wall, a fish tank, and a pretty convincing fake panorama on one wall that makes the room feel much more open than it really is. “What sucks is that while you’re up here, everyone’s talking about you downstairs,” Jessie says, already trying to dispense “meaningful” “advice” like he’s some sort of wise old veteran. Dude, you didn’t even make the jury last time. Doctor Will, you are not.

“Being HOH the first week is like kissing your best friends girlfriend,” Jessie says in the HOH with his nipple hanging out like he’s Tara Reid. “It’s exciting while it happens, but afterwards it sucks because everyone hates you.” He’s obviously really proud of himself for coming up with this metaphor. Watching Jessie is also like kissing my best friends girlfriend: both make me feel a deep, profound shame.

In that room that looks like your town’s local municipal pool, Ronnie tells some other houseguests about how hellish high school was for him. Ronnie’s confessional, in which he has the most embarrassing fauxhawk in the history of reality television, gives us more information: “All I did was play videogames, people called me gay all the time,” he says. I feel bad for him and all, but there’s getting made fun unjustly because you’re different, which is what happened to him in high school, and there’s getting made fun of because you’re thirty years old and trying way, way too hard. I mean: dork shirt. Overt sci-fi references. Fauxhawk. It’s embarrassing for all of us, you know?

Michele says that girls spread rumors in high school that she was lesbian, so she couldn’t get anyone to date her. Aww. Wait, is Big Brother going to spend all season trying to teach us “valuable” “lessons” about the importance of individuality and not to judge a book by its cover and whatnot? Because I refuse to swallow that after school special bullshit from a show that has repeatedly shown extended montages of women stuffing their faces full of snack food after being called fat.

The show that gave us the ‘Amber Wants To Be A Model’ Montage is here to teach you not to judge a book by it’s cover!

Jordan tells us in confessional that she wasn’t mean in high school, and that she tried to treat all people equally: “It didn’t matter if someone had tattoos, or wore glasses (HA!), or smelled bad,” she says. Having glasses is almost exactly the same thing as not showering, of course.

Ronnie waits for Jessie upstairs in front of the entrance to the HOH room. He makes a Revenge of the Nerds reference in confessional, trying to emphasize the need to talk to Jessie and the athletes click. Because at the end of Revenge of the Nerds, the nerds laid down and did the bidding of the athletes, of course. I cannot say this enough: Shut up, Ronnie.

“If you want to play ‘Let’s Make A Deal’, lemme hear it,” Jessie says. Ronnie tells Jessie that he can get Michelle and Chima to do whatever he wants, which is three votes for whomever Jessie wants out the door. He also tells Jessie that he’ll be right there making decisions with Ronnie when he wins HOH. Jessie’s reaction is clearly pretty indifferent, but Ronnie seems to think that they have forged an unbreakable alliance that no one will be able to detect, because who would think that the dorky kid and the giant muscle-bound guy would work together? Everyone is one thing only! This is how the world works! “No one is going to think we’re working together. We’re like the Galactic Empire,” Ronnie says, making myriad Star Wars references with his stupid fauxhauk. I surely hope the producers are trying to drive home the nerd thing by feeding him these lines, because otherwise he is TERRIBLE. If you want people to see you as more than a nerd, then quit being such an effing nerd. Jesus.

I mean, come on. It’s like he’s asking for it.

Lydia and Kevin hang out in the hammock in the backyard and talk about…wait for it…high school! Lydia and Kevin were not popular either, and they both whine a bunch about how terrible high school was.

Okay, I would like to get something that’s bothering me out of the way right now, and then we can all move forward amicably to mock these people: Guess what? High school was terrible for pretty much everybody. If high school did not suck for you, consider yourself lucky. Now that we’re all adults and live lives as fully formed people, we can all move past the shit that happened years and years ago. If you cannot, that is no one’s problem but your own, and your neuroses win. Russell is not going to suddenly start dunking your head in the toilet, I’m pretty sure, so quit being such weenies, all of you.

By the way, for someone who’s so “offbeat”, Lydia sure does rock a Livestrong Bracelet like a champion.

Pop Your Collar To Complete The Look

Jessie and Russell talk outside the HOH room. They seem to think that the two of them will be able to run the whole game, and that there’s no possible way anyone will be able to take them. “I respect Russell because he’s just like me, he has a killer attitude,” Jessie says. You will note that all of the people Jessie says that he likes tonight will all have one thing in common: they remind Jessie of Jessie.

Jessie asks Russell what he thinks about who should be nominated, and Russell mentions Lydia, because she’s so smart and tough. Jessie again mentions that everyone is kissing his ass, so he wants Russell’s input since no one is kissing Russell’s ass. To count: people kissing Jessie’s ass: many, people kissing Russell’s ass: no one. “We’re the same person,” Jessie says, as if this is some sort of compliment. It’s so obviously apparent that Jessie wants someone else to make the decisions for him, so that he has someone to blame. What a killer attitude!

Now Jessie and Natalie play chess against each other while Ronnie and Hootie McBoob watch. Hootie McBoob asks everyone who the hottest guy in the house is; Kevin says Jeff, and Laura looks at Jessie for a moment before naming him. This is so obviously an attempt to pander to Jessie that even Jessie has picked it up. “It felt desperate,” says Jessie. And who knows better about being desperate for attention than Jessie?

Does anyone want to play Spin The Bottle?

Back at the chess match, Jessie puts Natalie in check and wins the game. This sets off a round of light flirting between them, as Jessie tells everyone that Natalie is a loser. “He says I’m a loser because I because I lost in chess? Who lost last season?” Natalie says, quite hilariously. “And who won to get you in this season?” she says, smiling. “Natalie is a baller,” Jessie says. And why is that? “I see a lot of my attributes in her,” he says. Now there is a man who knows what he likes.

Natalie and Jessie talk in the HOH about the other people in the house. Jessie tells Natalie that “Rodney” talked to him about an alliance, and Natalie replies that it’s a good idea to align with “Rodney”. Meanwhile, Ronnie (who?) and his fauxhawk enter the HOH room with the other Brains, wanting a meeting between the two sides. Natalie comes up with the idea of nominating a Brain as a pawn, asking Ronnie what he thinks about potentially going on the block. “This is the best way to tie us together,” Natalie says of nominating a brain. “No one would ever suspect us.” No one suspects you now, dullards. You can’t throw people off of the scent when there’s no scent yet.

Ronnie tells everyone that Michele (who is not in the room) is the best choice as a pawn. Chima says she isn’t comfortable with going up, but if she can trust them than she’s fine with going up. Wow, this is an incredibly dumb idea. You don’t need a pawn when there are THIRTEEN PEOPLE in the house, dweebs.

Time for a competition! Jessie emerges from the Diary Room looking quite scary with tacky pants and a very blue shirt. He tells everyone that Food Competitions are a thing of the past, because now each week brings us the “Have and Have Not” competition, because this is the Season Of Stealing Things From Survivor. Hey, you’re in tribes! Hey, some of you will have things and some will not! Next thing you know, Lisi is gonna be up in that bitch. Lots of stuff to trip over!

So THIS is what it looks like in Flipit’s brain!

Jessie tells them to go to the storage room and put on their “war paint”, which earns a round of cheering. The houseguests take this advice to heart, absolutely caking themselves in the provided paint. Out in the backyard, everything is bathed in blacklight, so thanks to the paint they all look like backup dancers from a Missy Elliott video.

Get Ur Freak On

This competition has a “rave theme”, but I don’t see any of them twirling glow sticks and dropping a bunch of X, so that’s a giant lie. Something called “Rave juice” is going emerge from a faucet at one end of the yard, and the cliques will use the provided pipe to build a continuous structure that will connect to the other end of the yard and cause a wheel to spin when the liquid hits it. The clique who finishes last will be the “Have Nots” for the week. Because Jessie is HOH, the athletes are already part of “The In Crowd” and do not have to compete, so they get to sit and watch and take shots, apparently.

The competition begins, and while you would think that The Brains would be good at this since it’s a mental competition, they quickly fall behind. Jordan says her teammates doing a good job, but that they were asking her for “ninety degree angled” stuff and she didn’t understand what they were talking about. “Talk like normal people, please!” she says completely seriously. I guess Jordan spend geometry class just being really, really nice to her classmates.

On the Off-Beats Team, Casey kind of takes charge and earns them a nice lead thanks to his leadership, which impresses Lydia. Ronnie says that the Brains were trying to build a linear path, but it appears that they’re over thinking it a bit. It looks to me like everyone else is just trying to use whatever fits to get as far as possible. The Offbeats finish first and keep themselves out of the doghouse for the week, leaving a race between the Populars and the Brains. Soon, the Populars have got their wheel spinning too, meaning that the Brains will be the Have Nots this week. This does not bode well for them, since this was definitely a mental competition and designed to take advantage of their strengths. I think it’s the teamwork portion that appears to be the problem. Then again, if I had to be on a team with Ronnie, I’d probably be pretty ineffective myself because I’d be too busy trying to flick him in the ear.

This is now how I remember it from Nickelodeon

So, what does it mean to be a “Have Not”? Well, not only are you on slop for the week, but your showers will be cold. In addition to that, the Have Nots will be sleeping in a special Have Not Bedroom, which Jessie calls the “most uncomfortable room in Big Brother history”. Chima is already freaking out, which I think is more a function of her predetermined place in the game and frustration with how things are going thus far than anything else. The bedroom ends up looking very minimalist, all cold steel and metal carts for furniture. It’s kind of like sleeping in a truck bed, is the best way to describe it. Ronnie points out that it’s actually not all that bad, and he’s actually right, but Chima is already busy completely freaking out. Jessie, of course, takes this opportunity to use the metal bed as a podium and flex for the crowd, because one should never pass up the chance to be a douche if the opportunity presents itself.

“I am way too diva for this,” Chima says to the house. “I want to go home where I have a warm shower and a nice bed,” she continues while the other houseguests look on in disbelief. I mean, if this is what’s going to unravel her, what’s she gonna be like in week four when they’re all wrestling in honey while wearing giant bee suits or whatever?

Continuing the high school theme, it looks just like a cafeteria! They should have to wear hairnets.

After the commercial, the girls have a bikini competition for the house, because they’re all already that bored. Michele comes out first, ripping off her shirt to expose her swimsuit, getting cheers from the audience. Jordan comes out in a little nighty looking pretty cute, and then Hooty McBoob comes out with her tramp stamp and giant scary rack, expecting everyone to whistle at her. Jessie pretends not to be interested, even though you can tell that he totally is, and HMB continues to try really, really hard to make everyone love her. “Laura strikes me as the type of person who will use her “assets” to stay in the house, he I am not buying,” he says, even though he’s totally buying. I love that Jessie hates anyone who takes the attention away from him, especially if that person is a circus freak, just like he is.

In the kitchen, he cooks a meal (undoubtedly composed of egg whites and chicken), and she sits and watches him, saying nothing. Abruptly, she just starts talking, saying that she’s ready to compete and yapping about how people are kissing his ass. She’s not really saying anything, she’s just talking and trying to get him to like her, and he seems determined not to. “Jessie doesn’t want to talk to me,” she says, “I think he’s doing the ‘schoolboy’ thing where he thinks he’ll get attention if he ignores me,” she says. Oh, HMB. The real reason is that you are a female Jessie, and he does not like people who are actually like him, only people that he thinks are like him. Get it?

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go stand on something and flex my pectoral muscles.”

Next we get an awkward scene in which Jessie asks for a massage from Lydia. What? I need some background. Does she have massage therapy training or something? Did she lose a bet? I am confused. Anyway, she starts rubbing all over him and he brings up the game, talking SOME MORE about how everyone is kissing his ass. By the way, everyone is kissing Jessie’s ass. Would you like to take this opportunity to kiss Jessie’s ass? Not that you should, because everyone is already doing it. But if you were to kiss his ass, he would know that you were kissing his ass. His ass is his favorite subject, and he hates that everyone is kissing it, although you are welcome to kiss it, if you want. But he would totally know what you were doing. Which is kissing his ass.

“By the way, if you would like to literally kiss my ass while you’re up there, I’d be totally cool with that.”

The screen in the living room announces that nominations will be taking place today.
Natalie, Russell, and Jessie talk in the HOH room. Where’s Jeff during all this? Is he the ostracized Athlete? Natalie tells us that one Brain is already going up as a pawn (known as “Operation Needless Sacrifice”), and they just have to figure out who the other person’s gonna be. The consensus seems to be that it should be either Lydia or Hootie McBoob. Russell and Natalie seem to think that Lydia is the bigger threat, but Jessie is sufficiently annoyed by HMB that he would like her to vacate the premises. This is, of course, completely personal, but whatever, Jessie’s HOH. As Natalie and Russell continue to advocate for the nomination of Lydia, Jessie tells us that he’s ultimately going to do whatever benefits him the most, which for now is to stare off into the distance with his fish face:

Back from commercial, we get our first Pensive Memory Wall Stare of the season as Jessie considers who to nominate. HMB is upset that she could be a potential target, saying that Jessie is “messing with the wrong girl”. And how exactly would you be backing that up? Ronnie hopes that Chima’s meltdown will get her put up as a pawn instead of him. Lydia seems to think that she’s cool with Jessie, so she’d be surprised to be nominated. Russell tells us that the nominations are actually his, and he’s telling Jessie who he thinks is strongest and getting them put up. Braden, who we haven’t heard from all hour, tells us that there’s a greater force at work that is deciding their destinies, because Greater Forces have nothing to watch from June to September either, apparently.

Nomination Ceremony. After handing the other athletes their keys, Jessie begins the nomination process by pulling Michele’s key. Next comes Braden, then Kevin, Ronnie, Jordan, Laura, and finally Casey, leaving Lydia and Chima nominated. Jessie says that there’s not much to go off of this week as far as nominations go, and they’re both competitors, so he wishes them luck in saving themselves. Chima says something in reaction to her nomination, but I’m to busy noticing that she’s suddenly become a member of the Offbeat Clique to notice what it is.

That Trademark Big Brother Attention To Detail

Ronnie says that nominations are the “best thing ever”, because he is a giant idiot who doesn’t realize that having all of your clique members around gives you a better shot at immunity. Lydia is already crying about being nominated, because she is Molly Ringwald and we are all her mean family who has forgotten her birthday. Jessie tells us that this is just the way the game is: you say you’re someone’s friend and then you stab them in the back. Hey, just like high school! I’m detecting a theme, here.

Anyway, that’s it for this Tuesday’s episode. I miss Survivor already.