It’s hard to say who’s playing the game better. While Kevin has made some key game moves, Michele’s not giving up hope that she might have a chance at the final two. Meanwhile, Jeff and Jordan’s shot at making it to the finale together is gone and while it seems probable that Jeff will get the boot on Thursday night, there’s always the chance things could get turned around if Kevin decides to go along with Michele’s plan.
Filler for tonight’s episode came in the form of dollar bills that rained down in the backyard. We were given a little teaser during Sunday night’s episode that Kevin was going to receive a special HoH power that could benefit him or the house. Tonight we saw Kevin receive the mystery envelope that offered him the chance to open “Pandora’s box” and the chance to win $10,000.00. He knew when he opened the door and stuck his hand in the box that he might be handing that money over to someone else in the house. Sure enough, his hand was stuck and, locked up in the HoH room, he got to watch the rest of the houseguests go out back to find dollar bills raining down all over the place. While some of the houseguests mentioned finding Kevin, most of them weren’t all that concerned with where the HoH was.
Kevin watched on a monitor in the locked room behind the HoH room as everyone scrambled around the backyard trying to collect as much money as they could. Natalie found a bowl to fill, while Michele used a basket. Jordan and Jeff stuffed money into their clothes. When Jeff and Natalie went inside, Natalie heard Kevin calling out. She went upstairs to talk to him through the HoH door and he tried to tell her to find a key. She decided that money was better than helping Kevin and went outside to find more cash. Kevin finally managed to get Jeff upstairs and told him they couldn’t keep the money if they didn’t find the key. So Jeff went and found the key, then instead of helping Kevin get free so he could join them to snatch up some cash, he went outside. Kevin got Natalie back inside and convinced her to steal the key from Jeff. Natalie’s attempts to get into Jeff’s trash-bucket full of cash didn’t go unnoticed by Jeff and he finally went upstairs and got Kevin out. Between Natalie’s sneakiness and Kevin’s lying about needing the key to keep the money, Jeff seemed to be confused about the situation. In the end, he was the one to make off with the most cash anyway, capping off his total at over three thousand. Kevin only managed to collect just over six hundred dollars with the rest of the houseguests falling somewhere in between.
The Veto competition was the classic face-mashup one. This one was alien-themed and offered a home entertainment system as a bonus prize to whoever got the best time. Each houseguest took a turn looking at various photos of two houseguests faces mashed together and made to look like an alien. They had to pick which two houseguests made up that face and ring a bell. This was a make-it-or-break-it situation for Jeff and Jordan. One of them had to win it for there to be any chance of both of them staying. While Jeff seemed to do ok and Jordan struggled through it, it was Michele who dominated the race, beating out all of their times by a minute or more.
Jeff had been saying earlier that if he was going to win this, he would have to do it himself. He seems to realize that for the type of person he is, winning this game means not relying on other people. So he took his loss hard and wouldn’t even give Michele a congratulatory hug. With Michele winning the Veto, it was obvious to everyone that she would use it to save herself and Jordan would be put up in her place. As Jeff is a better competitor than Jordan, it seems likely that Jeff will be evicted on Thursday. But Michele is looking ahead. While she’s earned herself safety for the week, she needs a strong ally to stand by her side if she wants to have a better chance of making it to the end. She told Jeff she’d work on Kevin to get him to keep Jeff if/when it comes down to a tie. With only Michele and Natalie voting, if Natalie votes to evict Jeff and Michele votes to evict Jordan, that would leave Kevin to cast the deciding vote. Michele’s argument to Kevin was that he would need someone to help him get rid of Natalie since he wouldn’t stand much of a chance next to Natalie in the final two.
Even Jordan seemed open to the option of going home and letting Jeff stay. Granted she was drunk during that conversation but she seems to think Jeff has a better shot at getting to the end than she does. Personally, I disagree. If I were in that house I'd probably see Jordan as the perfect final-two companion. While she's held her own in the game, the argument that she rode Jeff's coattails would hold some weight among the people in the jury house. I'm not saying that's entirely true but you have to admit, there's an argument there and Jordan doesn't have a lot of strong allies sitting over in the jury house.
Kevin listened to the argument but I’m not entirely sure he’ll buy it in the end. If he saves Jeff and Natalie goes next week, she might hold it against Kevin in a final two scenario. Plus, with Natalie in his ear constantly, it seems unlikely that he’d vote to evict Jordan on Thursday unless Michele and Jeff got to him just before the live show started and convinced him it was his best option at winning the game.
It’s do or die time now. With just two HoH competitions and one Veto standing between the remaining houseguests and the final two, it should be interesting to see who steps up to the plate and who gets cut loose in the final few laps. In the meantime, fans of the Jordan/Jeff showmance have a couple of days to prepare for the inevitable splitting of the two love-birds as one of them will be sitting on Julie’s couch on Thursday night.
