And thus concludes another predictable live-episode of Big Brother 12. While most of the houseguests have been likable enough, this has been a fairly bland season and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that things will take a turn for the dramatic before the finale later this month.
Before we get to the recap, I need to talk about Enzo for a second. I like the guy. He seems decent enough and even managed to pull off a Veto win when his neck was on the line, so he gets credit for that this week. But can we shun the word “shun” for the duration of the season? Not to be a grammar-cop but I don’t think that word means as many things as he thinks it does.
After Enzo won the Veto and took himself off the block, Ragan made a play to appeal to Lane and Britney. He had Britney all lined up to vote to evict Veto-replacement-nominee Hayden, but he needed to secure Head of Household Lane’s vote as he would be the tie-breaker. Ragan knew the likelihood that Enzo would vote to evict Hayden was slim-to-shun at best, so I think he made the right call in going with Lane. His argument seemed fairly good too but it wasn’t enough in the end as he was evicted unanimously. Britney must have known Lane wasn’t going to vote to keep Ragan, so she made a good move in doing the agreeable thing. There would have been no sense in forcing a tie that would have only resulted in Ragan going anyway. As for Lane, maybe he'll kick himself for not signing on to abandon his alliance. As it stands, his fate is in their hands as he can't play for Head of Household this week. Then again, the Veto's more important than the HoH this week, so we'll have to see how everything plays out before we know if he made a bad call.
Ragan commented on the loyalty of the guys in the house and he seemed fairly level-headed about his own eviction. It’s evident that he’s a fan of the series and that he went into the house with a plan to play strategically. Strangely enough, for a BB season that was lighter on the drama than in previous seasons, most of the evictions seemed more emotion-based than they were strategic. Had that not been the case, I think there might have been a good chance that Ragan could have gotten further as he proved himself to be a very quick thinker and a fast talker. He just needed a house full of people playing to win and not just to get out the people they didn’t like (or were trying to get between them and their man.)
While Ragan may have had a good read on the houseguests this season, he wasn’t entirely right in branding Matt a “good human being,” but I suspect Julie was baiting him when she asked him to elaborate on his relationship with Matt. This came after we were shown the sequester-house footage, which included Matt revealing to Kathy, Rachel and Brendon that his wife isn’t, nor was she ever terminally ill.
In terms of the reactions to Matt’s revelation that he lied about his wife being sick, I fully support Kathy’s disappointment and anger in learning that Matt lied to her. She related to that story, having suffered from cancer and had first-hand experience with that kind of life-altering challenge. To learn that he lied and was taking advantage of her empathy and compassion was understandably disappointing for her. She has a right to hold a grudge if she wants. As for Brendon and Rachel, did either of them ever have any kind of heart to heart with Matt about his wife? I never got the impression that they were all that close with him, so banishing him from the room and to hell seemed a bit melodramatic and unnecessary. Yeah, what Matt did was crappy and it doesn’t exactly speak highly of his character, but he lost, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
With Ragan gone, that leaves Britney, Hayden, Enzo and Lane to continue on. The Head of Household competition was Christmas themed and had Hayden, Enzo and Britney trying to get glass ornaments to hang from a Christmas-tree frame on gate-thing. It’s one of those tricky competitions that takes patience and didn’t end by the time the episode did, so we won’t find out who won until Sunday night. Britney kept dropping her ornaments, so I’m not getting my hopes up that she’ll win, but it would be great if she did. Whoever does win HoH this week secures a spot in the final 3 and is eligible to play for the final HoH competition, so this HoH is definitely one to win.
