Is the most boring alliance in Big Brother history actually running the house this season? Tonight’s live episode saw two houseguests evicted and while Brigade is short one member, they now hold the majority in the house.
I wasn’t entirely sure this was the right week for the Brigade to target one of their own. While it was a surprisingly astute decision on the part of Hayden, Enzo and Lane to get Matt out of the house before he became their undoing, it could have backfired on them tonight had one of them not won the Head of Household competition. As luck would have it, that wasn’t the case, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Is it wrong of me to say that I was happy Jessie was in the house this week, if only to give Britney her own private gun show and make her lift weights for a little while? I can’t help it, the guy amuses me and though I would’ve loved to have seen someone like Janelle or Jordan return to give Britney some actual advise on how to survive in the house, seeing her Pandora’s Box backfire on her was amusing and a nice change that wasn’t game-damaging for the last girl left in the house. While Britney was locked up with Jessie, the guys were out having a Luau-WatchHawaiiFive0ComingToCBSThisFall! What just happened? Where was I? Big Brother. Right.
I’ve been rooting for Britney all season and for the most part, she’s been on top of things but I have to say, I’m disappointed that she didn’t seem to consider that Matt was allied with Lane, Enzo and Hayden. In all fairness to the girl, she may have been thrown off by the rest of the Brigade encouraging her to put Matt up but still, Matt pushing for Ragan to be the replacement nominee should have raised some red flags. While Britney didn’t see what was right in front of her, Ragan did. He brought it to Matt, who covered for the people whom he thought he was allied to and then tried to leverage the information in an effort to convince Hayden and Lane that he should stay and Enzo should go. This was to no avail, as Matt was evicted unanimously.
I attribute Matt’s eviction to cockiness on his part. Had he seen better that his alliance had turned on him, he might have confessed everything to Ragan and Britney and saved himself from being nominated. Post-eviction, Matt expressed regret and admitted to being overconfident when he threw last week’s HoH competition, so it seems he’s already starting to see where he went wrong.
The eviction was followed by a quick Head of Household competition that had the guys (Britney wasn’t eligible to compete) diving into packing peanuts and trying to find the names of the two houseguests that were Head of Household twice (Rachel and Matt). Hayden used the smart strategy of finding both name-cards first, then running the first one to the podium and going back for the second one.
Hayden’s HoH reign was brief as he nominated Brendon and Ragan for eviction. The Veto ceremony was a Before/After quiz that rewarded the houseguests for the time they spent trying to memorize facts and events from the game so far. I recall watching Big Brother After Dark on Showtime and witnessing Britney saying that Ragan knows every single detail of every single event in the house. He did prove to be up on the timeline of things as he got a question right that the rest of the remaining contestants got wrong, which earned him the Veto and safety from eviction. Britney was nominated in his place but the house voted unanimously to evict Brendon, which continued the tradition of predictable evictions for this season.
Brendon was as surprised by his eviction as Matt was, which is to say, not at all. I’m sure Rachel will be disappointed to see Brendon follow Matt into the jury house. On the positive side, the couple has a couple of weeks to bicker in private before the finale.
We will have to wait until Sunday night to find out who wins the Head of Household competition. Personally, I’d like it to be Ragan or Britney as I’d like to see the playing field of Brigade vs. Non-Brigade evened out a bit.
And let’s give it up for Enzo for avoiding the costume-curse twice as he wore the penguin suit through two evictions and is still in the house!
