Big Brother: HOLY CRAP, THAT HAMSTER CAN SPELL!

We begin after nominations, as always. Sheila wants everyone else to “come through for her” and keep her in the game. Both Matt and Natalie are happy to be safe. This is news, people. They could be unhappy to be safe, much like roughly half the cast of Survivor this season, which has been filled with a bunch of quitters and whiny babies. James tells us for (rewinds and counts) the fourth time that Sheila and Ryan are nominated. Wait, what is going on? I wish someone would explain to me what these “nominations” are of which he speaks. Wait, so let me get this straight: whomever loses the least amount of weight is subject to the vote? When do they get to be in Girlicious? HOW DOES THIS SHOW WORK?Matt takes Natalie in the storage room and thanks her. That is not a sexual euphemism, he really offers his thanks. His gratutitous thanks. In her butt. Natalie tells him that he can pay her back with a week of massages. What is with this chick? She should at least try to get to first base.

Meanwhile, Ryan is checking with Josh to make sure that Josh has his back. He stares at Josh dumbly, like he is a giant Swiss Cake Roll. Just so you guys know, my notes seriously, actually say “Ryan is dumb” every single time he speaks, throughout the whole episode. He’s not cute dumb like Natalie is, he’s dumb dumb, y’all. Josh (because if you betray a secret alliance, no one really cares) is like, “Yeah, sure, I’ve got your back!” even though Josh could give a shit.

Ryan and Sheila commiserate about how screwed they are, with Sheila talking about how they seem to be bearing the brunt of the rage from James even though everyone lied to him. These two, they can just relate on the same intellectual level, you know? It’s like Riding The Bus With My Sister up in this bitch.

And the monk music starts up, and I go “Please, Lord, give us more stupid Bible time” because that was awesome last week. Matt, Adam and Ryan read their pink Bibles covered in pink blankets in their pink room. Matt is just “really into this Bible story”, and then Adam starts talking about the Ark of the Covenant, which (logically) leads to an Indiana Jones retrospective, including discussion of the Holy Grail. They decide that if one of them wins the show, they’ll spend the money searching for it so they can make even more money. That plan is flawless! The part of the rolling boulder will be played by Ryan, I guess.

Later Sheila is sitting in the backyard with Sharon and Adam comes out. She apologizes to him for being such a bitch at the beginning of the game. It’s a totally random time to do it, 35 days into the game, and it probably has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she is nominated. I would also like to point out that Sheila looks almost exactly like Thing 1 and/or Thing 2 in that leotard.

James and the others sit around in the pool, trying to suss out who the mystical third vote to keep James out of the house was. James recaps that they know it’s either Matt or Adam. Natalie tells us that she has to do her best to make it seem like Adam was the one who cast the vote, so Natalie very blatantly lies to Sharon, who we all know is not dumb. Since Natalie sort of…is, Sharon figures it out immediately. She just brushes Natalie off, leaving Natalie thinking that she has pulled off some sort of elaborate ruse. This is completely unrelated (sort of), but when I was a kid, we’d take a flashlight and shine it on the wall, and the cat would stalk it all around the room and jump all over it and go apeshit trying to catch it. You would let it get really close, and then move it at the last second, and the cat would look around like, “Shit! I almost had it that time.” We used to do this over and over again, for hours. Natalie? Is my grandma’s cat.

Later, Natalie is walking by the hamster cage and she notices that the blocks in the cage now spell “POV”. Her first thought, undoubtedly, must have been “Oh my god you guys, I’ve seen Charlotte’s Web, and THIS HAMSTER CAN SPELL.”

Natalie starts drilling Sheila (after noting that the blocks are the same color as that other thing in the cage! Creepy), telling her to study the cage, count the wood chips, and learn it’s labyrinthine depths, because there will definitely be a quiz. This, of course, makes Sheila cry.

When we get back from the break, Sheila is still crying. And then we flashback to before the break, where she was crying. Oh my God, show. Are you serious? Wait…I have forgotten what happened before the commercials! Was someone crying? WHAT IS GOING ON? Why is she crying? Did The Donald fire her?

But seriously: tell me she doesn’t look like Thing 2 here:

Outside, Natalie starts telling everyone how crazy she was going inside, complete with accurate hand motions and everything. When Natalie calls you crazy, it is time for a self-assessment.

And now, the best part of this episode. Everyone in the house but Sheila has clearly been up drinking all night, and they’re gathered in the living room bullshitting. Someone comes up with the idea to run screaming into Sheila’s room and wake her up to tell her that it’s time for the Veto competition. They decide to do it, and run screaming all over the house, freaking the hell out of Sheila in the process, who gets up, groggily throws on her unitard and heads outside. James comes out, laughing his ass off, telling Sheila that BB just told him to “await further instructions”. Everyone starts laughing, and Sheila figures it out and actually takes it pretty well. I was actually expecting her to go nuts and starts screaming about how no one loves her, so props to her for that.

The players are chosen for the Veto competition; James chooses Matt, Sheila chooses Chelsia, and Ryan chooses Josh. Ryan talks about how good this is because of their “secret alliance”. Everyone, say it with Amber: So Sad.

And then we’re right to the veto competition, which usually doesn’t happen. The whole backyard is done up like the guinea pig cage. The houseguests each get a balance beam, and they have to transfer 500 letter blocks, 2 at a time (wow!) across the balance beam to the other side. If you drop a block or fall off the beam, it’s curtains for you. The first person to get all the blocks across and/or who is the last one standing wins the veto.

Sheila says that she’s going to win the whole game “for her son”. That, right there? Is one of my reality TV pet peeves. Don’t tell me you’re going to win for your family that you’ve just left for three months. That is always, always bullshit. Just say you wanted to be on TV, I’ll respect you more. Matt is the first one to fall of the balance beam, telling us that he threw it, mostly because he didn’t care. Ryan goes down soon after him. Then Sheila (who has been crowing the whole time about how slow and steady wins the race and how careful you have to be about the whole thing) absolutely butterfingers a block, while standing still, and is out. Poetic! Then Chelsia falls, which causes James to let out a huge cheer (?). At one hour and twenty-seven minutes, James places his veto seal on top of his completed block tube, and he wins the veto.

After the competition, Sheila tells Natalie how much she sucks at campaigning, because she’s not a kissass, and:

Wait. Let’s play a game for the rest of the episode. Every time Sheila says that she is/is not one thing and then immediately proceeds to do the opposite, I’m going to tell you about another show that I like that is really cool. That way, we can all pretend that we haven’t already spent 16 hours of our lives watching Sheila act bananas. Get it? Let’s go.

After the competition, Sheila tells Natalie how much she sucks at campaigning, and how she’s not going to campaign, and then she tells Natalie how she pretty much expects their votes because she knows they’re loyal to her and will do the right thing. Hey, do you guys watch How I Met Your Mother? Man, that show is hilarious.

Then she tells them that they’ve known her for long enough to know that she’s an honest, “straight-up” person who doesn’t play games, and how excited am I for the return of 30 Rock?

Wow, I’m going to run out of shows before the end of this, aren’t I?

So Sheila, needing affirmation that someone has her back, goes and harasses Adam, who is just trying to read his pink Bible under a pink blanket in his pink bedroom. She tries to get him to say that he’s voting for her to stay, and he does not understand, because he thinks it’s kind of dumb to talk about it when the veto ceremony hasn’t happened yet. Sheila almost starts crying (again), thinking that Adam is waffling, when in reality he just can’t read people. Who aren’t retards, I mean.

Sheila then goes up to the HoH room to talk to James. Sheila says that she knows James wants to find out about who is the mystery third vote. She starts shit talking Adam, calling him a wuss and insinuating that he has no sexual organs (or something, I’m not sure, I don’t speak crazy). Then she says, “You know, not to throw Adam under the bus here, but wouldn’t it be crazy if you took me down and put him up?” On a side note, I wish that Chuck were coming back this season, but I guess I’ll have to wait until fall.

So James goes into Adam’s pink room (where he is just trying to take a pink nap, dreaming a pink dream under his pink blanket) and wakes him up, calling him up to the HoH room for a discussion. James tells Adam that he wants the truth about the vote that Adam cast. I must say, I do not understand why this is important to James. Just get rid of your biggest threat, jerk. Adam is certainly not your biggest threat. Also, I just noticed that Adam has weird bald spots on one side of his head. What is with people and wonky facial stuff this season? First lazy eyes, now this.

After this conversation, James walks down the stairs (right past Sheila, eating breakfast while quietly having instigated this whole thing) into the bathroom, where Josh is brushing his teeth. He tells Josh that he’s going to use the veto; Chelsia gets out of the shower and he tells her that Adam will be going up in Sheila’s place for lying about the vote that James now thinks came from Adam. Me, at this point: “Wow, if Natalie’s plan actually works…I’m going to have to revaluate a lot of things.”

James figures that if he’s going to do this he’s going to need a third vote from Sharon, so he calls her up to his room to talk about the plan. Once he tells her that he’s going to put up Adam for lying to his face, Sharon, who is no dummy, is like “Um, you know that it was Matt and not Adam who voted for you, right?” She tells him that she is “100 percent sure” and that is apparently enough for James, who tells us in confessional that he was “furiated” which must be some crazy non-English word that he has learned during his bike travels. Perhaps it is Canadian.

So he throws the scenario at Chelsia later that involves taking down “Big She” (which is what I’m going to immediately start calling Sheila from now on) and putting up Matt, because he wants everyone to learn a lesson. In confessional, he’s like “Well, I told Natalie that I would save Matt, but they’re all liars, so screw them.” That is an attitude that I like in my reality show contestants, right there.

Soon James is doing the patented Stupid Pensive Memory Wall Stare, faux-considering what he is going to do during the ceremony. He calls everyone into the living room and gives the two nominees a chance to speak. Sheila plays the victim, talking about how she has spent her whole game “saving people” (Hey, didn’t The Riches start tonight?) and being honest (Big Love) and pledging her loyalty to people (Friday Night Lights) and keeping her word (Mad Men). And that she has learned that you have to play the game for yourself, and now she is crying. Ryan gives a speech, in which he is dumb. James then vetoes Sheila and replaces her with Matt.

Natalie looks pissed, yo. He tells the group that he’s doing it because what Natalie did showed him that he needed to break up the strong couple still left in the game. Okay, so that reason is bullshit, because if that were true he would have done it during original nominations. The real reason is that James is just as petty as everyone else and is doing this for his own pleasure. However, I actually think he’s sort of cool, so he gets a pass. What? I never said I was fair. Natalie ends the show by telling us that God is now really mad at James, and that God will smite him for lying. Oh, Natalie. God is probably watching American Idol like everyone else.