Big Brother: The End Of The Beginning Of The End

Tonight on Big Brother: Ratalie finally pulls her own weight.

Kidding!

I hate to break it to you guys, but this week looks to be just oozing with filler material. The only real action is the competition and live eviction. So I’m not a bit surprised when the announcer says that past BB greats are going to be guesting tonight. Depending on who they dug up, this could be the best part of the hour by far. Unless Ratalie is evicted, which will be the best part of the whole season.

EXCEPT… ***DUN DUN DUN***

Chocolate Macramé Chenbot rolls on set and drops a bomb:

No one’s getting evicted tonight.

“Nothing to see here. Please fast-forward to Tuesday.”

Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

You heard right. In Chenbot-speak, “it’s the conclusion to Part 1 of the final HOH competition.” Which means, in a nutshell, that it’s the end of the beginning of the end. Which means all the good action will happen next Tuesday, and tonight will be pretty much ALL filler. So bite me, Grodner.

Ratalie’s nose tells us for the 48th time how much she hated Michele. “Every time I would see her or hear her voice, I would boil up inside.” If that’s like throwing up in your mouth, I boiled up inside when Chenbot told me there was no chance of Ratalie leaving tonight. Rat claims the evil is gone from the house, and immediately disproves it by heckling Jordan on the log. She says Michele’s probably excited to go to the jury house and get some quality booger time with Jeff. Jordan isn’t taking the bait. “You’re a little instigator” is all she says. We’re finally seeing what passes for Ratalie’s game, now that she’s forced to play for herself. She was doing a lot better when she had Kevin to hide behind. And Chima. And Jessie.

Elapsed time: 55 minutes. Kevin almost falls off as the log stops. Much rain commences as the log starts rolling backwards. The Houseguests stagger along, just trying to survive, like in the previews for that movie The Road. Which looks terrific, BTW. I just finished the book and spent two days curled up in a fetal position afterwards. And yeah, I just compared a summer reality show to a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. Irony? Decide for yourself. Ratalie almost falls, but makes a miraculous recovery.

If you squint, you’ll probably see a PA’s hand pulling her back into position.

The rain machines stop, and the wind machines start blowing fake leaves all over the place. Then after the fake leaves come fake snow. The fake snow is made of real ice, according to Jordan, but she’s from Charlotte and has probably never seen real snow anyway. The log starts switching directions at random in an attempt to hurry stuff along. Yes, please, let’s get this suspenseful competition over with so we can get back to the filler.

Elapsed time: 3:02. Ratalie attempts to talk some more smack.

BORING.

Kevin tells Jordan she looks cold, and she should keep shivering to warm up. He thinks that if she shivers enough she’ll let go of the key. Puh-leeze. That’ll never work, even on Jordan.

Right?

So it’s down to Ratakev again. Jordan goes inside before she has to put up with all the gloating. Ratalie starts running her mouth (except in her case I guess it would be her nose) about how she could stand on the log for like the next 12 years if she has to. BUT, according to Kevin, Ratalie is supposed to throw the first round so he can win it. There are so many Ratalisms in effect here that I just threw up in my mouth again. She doesn’t want to play hard in an endurance competition? She told Kevin she’d let him win, but now she’s trying to beat him? So much for keeping your word.

Rat wants to stay up on the log for like 15 more minutes to “make it believable”. What’s the point? Jordan’s not even out there, and she’s obviously figured out that Rat and Kev are still working together. Ratalie keeps insisting that she can win this round, so he better take her to the final two if he wins HOH. I don’t know what those two things have to do with each other, but anyway, she’s not exactly cementing a rock-solid alliance here. She begs Kevin to keep HIS word that he’ll take her to the final two. He swears on the kitchen sink, but admits in the DR that his word doesn’t count for anything right now. Oh, Ducky, you have no idea how many people out here are begging you to break your word. Finally, Ratalie jumps off the log, and so does Kevin. Except according to Ratalie logic I guess he should have waited another 15 minutes to make it look real.

Back to Chenbot, who lets us know that we have jury house clips coming up! Plus, alumni interviews! Yay!

After the break, it’s back to live Houseguests. Kevin has ditched the clashing patterns and is generally back in full-on Ducky mode. Chenbot tells them that no one is going home tonight and they’re all staying until Tuesday. Here’s the deal in case you’re confused like me: Part 2 of the HOH competition is coming up live in a few minutes. Part 3 and final eviction will have to wait until Tuesday, finale night. Then the evicted person jury questioning and voting will be live. At first I didn’t like this arrangement (change is bad and all that), but I’m starting to believe that this is an improvement in a couple of ways. First, it saves us all the boring “we’re the last two people in the house” footage. By keeping all three people in the house, we have a shot at getting some non-boring footage for Tuesday. Second, the jury questions will be live, so hopefully there’s less badly-edited questions of the “but why did you evict me?” sort. Speaking of the jury, they’re sitting around the pool drinking umbrella drinks and wondering who’s about to join them. Lydiot can’t believe Ratalie lied about her age.

But neither of you are old enough to remember the ’80s band that inspired this look.

Also, no one appears to be shaving in the jury house.

OK, so Lydia probably never shaves, but still.

Jeff walks in trying to talk like Kevin and it takes them a second to figure out who it is.

Awesome! Let’s rip our matching tank tops off together!

Jeff drops in the weekly DVD. They immediately notice Rat threw the s’mores competition and diss her for it. I don’t buy it though. I’m pretty sure that on finale night everyone will talk about what a great player she is and vote for her. They go back to wondering who’s getting evicted next, and looks like we have to wait until Tuesday to see Michele’s entrance.

Back at HQ, Chenbot reveals the 4 mystery alums: Janelle (YES!), Evel Dick (boo), Danielle (RAWK), and Boogie (blech). They show a couple of clips of each one, and Bye Bye Bitches is included. Still the best BB moment ever, BTW. It beats Who Wants Cake by a fake eyelash.

So what’s everyone been up to? Evel Dick has evidently learned how to use his Inside Voice.

And borrowing hair product from Lydiot.

Boogie bought a Bentley. Why am I not surprised? He also has a baby gift for Chenbot Nano, and Ms. Copyhacker points out that it’s in a Tiffany’s box. I dunno what she’s hinting at there. Chenbot says she’ll open it after the show. Darn.

Tiffany’s, Bentley, kid’s watch, 2002 fauxsie. And what’s with Janelle’s Tootsie blouse?

Chenbot asks Danielle who her favorite Houseguest is. Danielle has not changed a bit since the show, which is refreshing. She’s pulling for Ratalie. And slutty_whore wins the comments, for pointing out that Rat has been playing a lot like Danielle did. Even though the comparison makes the skin on my teeth crawl, because Danielle is one of my faves evar. Danielle says the way Rat got Jeff to evict Russell was “phenomenal”. Sure, if by “phenomenal” you mean “obvious”. The only reason it worked was that she used Kevin to spread the lie, and everyone trusted Kevin. Besides, how much credit do you really deserve for putting one over on Jeff?

Janelle says that Jeff taking out Russell was the worst move of the season. Duh. Boogie thinks the best move was Jeff using the Coupe Deville Power to get Jessie out, or maybe the lie Ratakev told Jeff. E.D. agrees with everyone, or at least I think he does. He’s mumbling and stuttering all over the place. I guess his inside voice is rusty from disuse.

Next, the bot asks for reactions to Chima’s meltdown. Dick says Chima was an idiot to quit the game given the strength of the competition. “There’s eight people left, and these are your final 3?” Hooray, someone’s finally calling the final three the way it is, and I can’t believe I’m agreeing with a Donato.

So who does everyone like to win? Boogie and Janelle and Dick all say Kevin. Danielle wants to see a woman win, but that can only happen if she isn’t up against a man in the final two. Bitter much?

Which brings us sadly to the end of the alum panel. You know what? This show would be much cooler if they had running commentary from all-stars all season long. Like the old House Calls, but on the show itself. Or even in like a chat room or something.

After the break, it’s finally time for Part 2 of the HOH competition. This is called “Heads Will Roll” and is basically an oversized skeeball game. They seem to like the skeeball this year. Houseguests have two minutes to roll the skeeballs (they’re really volleyballs) representing former HOHs into their holes in the proper order. So it’s a brains and skill challenge.

So much for Ratalie’s producer-supplied advantage.

Rat starts to line up all the balls at once, which seems like a good idea, but then she stops after 4 and just starts rolling. She has a lot of trouble getting the balls into the holes, and a few of them go in the wrong ones. She finished with 2 seconds to spare, but Chenbot says she got only five balls in the right holes. Jordan is actually good at getting the balls into the holes. The live audience cheers every time she gets one, which kinda startles me because I nearly forgot this competition is live. She finishes in like a minute and a half, getting nine right. And Ratalie’s out of the running for HOH! Ding dong, the witch is mostly dead.

Chenbot says that since Chima’s out, there is one spot left on the jury, so America is Juror #7. Hey, remember Season 1 when we voted on all the evictions and the winner? Yeah, I didn’t think so. That’s also the way Big Brother still works in the rest of the world, BTW. But what do they know? They call soccer “football” and use goofy units of measurement where everything’s a multiple of 10. Anyway, here’s how it works: they show each potential final two on the screen. Rat/Kevin, Rat/Jordan and Kevin/Jordan. You text who you want to win in one of the scenarios. This will never work. It’s way too complicated for the average BB viewer.

The average BB viewer can barely count to 6.

After the break, Ratalie is glaring daggers into the camera, because how dare the show put her in a competition she actually has to compete in? The bot breaks the news that Jordan won and will face off against Kevin. Kevin looks poleaxed.

Did I do that?

Chenbot asks Ratalie how it feels to lose a competition straight up instead of throwing it. “It sucks,” she says, because it was a mental challenge AND a physical one and yappity yap yap. Just shut up already, PLEASE. Chenbot cuts her off for one final programming note: there is going to be a show on Sunday. A clipshow. Bloopers, not-yet-seen footage and so on. A whole hour of filler? I can hardly wait! Maybe we can do a filler recap. Just paste together segments of previous recaps. How’s that sound? (I’m lying. We’re taking Sunday night off.)

As the credits roll, Rat is still trying to make excuses for how she lost. Seriously. No. One. Cares. All that matters is that you lost.

See you Tuesday night for the finale, wherein Flipit, Schoonie and myself will go head-to-head! We’ll split it up into three parts and then America can vote on the winner. It’ll be just like the show itself, only with more hygiene and less steroids. Bubye!