The game is most definitely on in the Big Brother house. After McCrae made the first two nominations of the season, the houseguests spent yesterday obsessing over the Veto, the MVP and the third nomination. This article contains spoilers from the live feeds, including who was nominated, who the third nominee is, who the assumed MVP is and who won the Veto. Yes, the Big Brother live feeds are already that far ahead of the episodes by this point, so if you don't want to be spoiled before Sunday night's episode, stop reading now! But feel free to read our recap of the season premiere.
Ok, moving past the gratuitous spoiler alert, just to catch you up, after McCrae won Head of Household, he nominated Jessie and Candice. Since then, they had a fashion show and the mood in the house has been relatively drama free. In fact - and maybe I just wasn't watching the right feeds - but I barely saw Jessie anywhere, so if her strategy is to lay low and hope people forget about her, it's probably working. Also on catch-up, Kaitlin and Jeremy have cozied up, while Aaryn and David have also begun a melodramatic showmance. More on that in a minute. Amanda and McCrae seem to have developed a close friendship, but I haven't seen any indication that this is anything more than friendship/alliance.
Also somewhat teamed up are Helen and Elissa. And Helen seems to be the only one who's tried to befriend Elissa. Everyone is convinced Elissa is Rachel's sister, though Elissa refused to be up front about it, which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I can't blame her for wanting the houseguests to not know that she's related to a former player and winner, but in the process of denying and avoiding a straight answer by taking the "What does it matter?" approach, people have become more suspicious of her and in some cases, paranoid that she's part of the bigger twist, like America's Player or the Saboteur. At this point, she probably would've been better off getting the whole house together, admitting that she's Rachel's sister, denying that she's MVP and stressing that she has no additional benefits or financial incentive in this house, but I'm not sure she's even aware that people suspect that.
MVP
I don't know that it's confirmed that Elissa is MVP, but most if not all of the house - assume that she is. And the problem with that is that this MVP twist puts a target on her back, as the houseguests believe she has an advantage among the voters, and they're probably right. I think the assumption is that Elissa is the MVP but if she confirmed it at all on the feeds, I didn't see it. Regardless, the feeds went out yesterday afternoon and when they came back on, David was nominated by the mystery person. Given his showmance with Aaryn, MVP nominating him might throw the houseguests' attention onto that and away from the other two nominees - or away from Elissa, assuming it was Elissa's nomination. Would it have been completely crazy for her to nominate herself? That might have thrown the houseguests off the scent that she was MVP and had any added advantage among voters. At this point, it's looking like there's a strong chance she'll be put up after the Veto. Everyone seems to be pushing for it and McCrae has indicated that she'll be the replacement nominee if someone comes off. I'm not sure it benefits him to go against the house on this.
Veto
The Veto was played last night, and feeds indicate that McCrae won. From the conversations in the house, it was the spelling comp, where houseguests have to find and collect letters and use them to spell a word. Then whoever has the longest, correctly-spelled word wins. It sounds like Elissa tried "Potroast" but that's two words. McCrae won with "delivery." Will he leave the nominations the same? Or pull someone off and nominate Elissa or someone else? Nothing is ever set in stone until the ceremony, so we don't know. I'm not entirely sure what the rules are with this MVP nomination, and whether or not he can use the Veto to save the MVP's nominee, so David may or may not be stuck on the block.
The storage room was the setting for a few emotional moments in the house yesterday, including the one above, which happened when the houseguests discovered that the food had been replenished.
But it was Aaryn and David who used the room to stage their own showmantic spat and make-up session, nearly convincing me that these two could very well be the new Rachel and Brendon in their in-house/in-game roller-coaster romance. The argument happened not long after David was put up on the block. He confronted Elissa in the kitchen to have a heart-to-heart with her. Their conversation was fairly uneventful and I didn't see any tension between them. Elissa did get teary when she talked about how people are treating her in the house and whether or not people like her. She alluded to the fact that she is Rachel's sister but I'm pretty sure she denied being MVP and inched around the topic of whether or not she'd nominate him if she was. It seemed like David just wanted to get an idea of what's going on with her, considering it still seems obvious that she's MVP and he's the one that ended up on the block. This conversation wasn't game-changing, and I'm not sure Elissa said anything to get him on her side, nor did she say anything to really damage her reptutation with him or anyone else. Still, Aaryn was not happy about it…
Aaryn eventually took David into the storage room where she proceeded to question him repeatedly about why he was talking to Elissa. David kept telling Aaryn he was just trying to see what Elissa was thinking. Aaryn kept going back with "But why would you talk to her?" questions and round and round it went. The conversation went nowhere, but for some reason, just kept going on. If David hadn't been eating an apple the entire time, I might have wondered if they'd gotten caught in some kind of mystical, melodramatic time-loop. From what I got out of it, the whole thing stemmed from Aaryn's concern that if David won the Veto and came off the block, she'd go up as the replacement because of her association with him. But that was the first two minutes. The rest of it just seemed like Aaryn wanted to chew him out for doing something that seemed completely harmless from my vantage point and had very little to do with her. I don't even think her name came up in the conversation.
Beyond basically shrugging, eating his apple and assuring her he was just trying to see what Elissa was thinking, David didn't put up much of an argument on his side, nor did he walk away, even at the points when Aaryn seemed close questioning his intelligence, but he seems like too chill of a guy to react to being berated. Either way, after the Veto was played and McCrae won, Aaryn expressed regret over acting the way she did and pulled David into the storage room to apologize and hug it out.
So these two seem fine again, and though David's still on the block, Aaryn appears to be safe.
And that's about where we're at. We'll update you once the Veto ceremony takes place! While the house seems mostly united against Elissa, I don't think these houseguests know how quickly things can change, especially once the Veto is either used or not used and the nominations are locked in stone until eviction night. The houseguests might be in agreement about getting Elissa out because it means if that's the plan, they're all safe, but once the Veto ceremony is over, most of the house is safe no matter what and - assuming Elissa's up on the block - there are two other houseguests to gun for, one of which might be David, a good physical competitor. Elissa could be the "We'll get her out next week" contestant. Many a houseguest has made it to the end or very close to it being that guy. See last season's Frank!
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