The first "week" in the Big Brother house is one of the longest, both literally and figuratively. I expect those later weeks when the remaining houseguests are sweeting it out awaiting competitions or the decisions of their co-competitors feel especially long, but as the houseguests are actually in the house for about a week before the first episode airs, there's a long stretch of time between when they all walk into the house and when the first person walks out. And anyone familiar with the timeline of events that takes place between one eviction and the next knows that the nominations, Veto competition and Veto ceremony all take place in the earlier part of a Big Brother week. And now we can cram the MVP nomination ceremony into that window as well. The second episode of Big Brother will air tonight and feed watchers already know who was nominated, who the MVP nominated, who the MVP is, who won the Veto, whether or not it was used to save anyone and who went up in their place. What we don't know is what will happen between now and Wednesday. And a lot can happen.
It's at this point that you get your spoiler warning. All of that information I vaguely referenced in the paragraph above will be discussed in much more detail going forward, so if you want to wait to find out how things went since the Head of Household competition was won read no further!
Ok, you've been warned. Just to catch you up, McCrae nominated Jessie and Candice for eviction. The MVP later nominated David for eviction. The Veto competition sounds like it was a combination of the sticky honey (a challenge used in the past in some form or another) and the spelling competition, in which each participant has to collect letters and spell a word. Whoever spells the longest, accurately spelled word wins the Veto. From the chatter post-competition (they don't show us the comps or ceremonies on the feeds), Elissa spelled pot roast as one word, which was wrong, so she didn't win. David was trying to spell a word but failed to get all the letters and had no word. I'm not sure what Jessie and Candice spelled, but McCrae won the Veto with Delivery. Fitting for a pizza boy.
McCrae opted to use the Veto, taking Candice off the block and replacing her with Elissa.
That's the basic information about comps and ceremonies. Now here's everything in between, summarized.
Alliances that I'm aware of are the Moving Company (Howard, Spencer, Nick, Jeremy and McCrae), an unofficially-named showmance alliance, whom Amanda calls Bieber Fever (Aaryn/David, Kaitlin/Jeremy, Jessie and maybe Nick, who seems like kind of a wildcard), and McCrae and Amanda (though we'll have to see how close they remain after this week when McCrae's no longer HoH but, Amanda has barely left his side the last few days). There are probably other smaller alliances. Spencer, Howard and Judd seem close as their own trio within the Moving Company alliance. Jeremy claims the MC is his first alliance and his showmance with Kaitlin comes second, but who knows?
The houseguests began to suspect that Elissa was Rachel Reilly's sister. Rachel tried denying it, but everything I've seen of her on the feeds indicates that she's a terrible liar. So people were suspicious of her and, while other alliances were forming, the only friendship she seemed to form was with Helen, whom I think connects with her because they're both mothers.
Come MVP time, people have already begun to suspect that Elissa would get it. It's a logical assumption, since she's the only one in the house that's very probably related to a former winner and would likely have an advantage over them. (Elissa has since admitted to some that she's MVP and Rachel's sister, but that happened later) So the houseguests began to rally in support of getting Elissa out to level the playing field. It didn't help Elissa that she wasn't doing a very good job of forming close friendships with some of the other houseguests, but that may have been due to them being suspicious of her. The feeds were out for a week so we really don't know much (yet) about what went on in those first days. Tonight's episode might give us a better clue about that. But since the feeds have been on, I saw her pray with Howard and have a chat with David, who confronted her about whether or not she was MVP after he was nominated, which resulted in Aaryn getting on his case for talking to her. Aaryn - not as adorable as I initially thought. She's beautiful, sure and she knows a lot about the game, but her attitude has rubbed me the wrong way more than a couple of times on the feeds, and part of it stems from how she tore into David for having the nerve to have a conversation with Elissa.
Elissa was trying, at the very least, but as I said, she doesn't seem to be very good at lying or faking friendliness, and that seems to be affecting her ability to warm up to people in any kind of genuine way. From everything I saw on the feeds, it seemed like people were willing to be nice to her (some more than others) but just as ok talking about getting her out of the house.
By the time McCrae won the Veto, he knew he had basically no choice but to use it and put Elissa up no matter what. He knows if he doesn't nominate to appease the house, he'll be a target next week. As for who to take off the block, from what was said, it sounds like if the Veto winner saves the MVP's nominee (in this week's case, David), the MVP gets to choose the replacement. So McCrae opted to pull Candice off, figuring she might be good for a vote. Because on Friday night - before the Veto was used - some of the houseguests finally realized that evicting Elissa because of her MVP advantage might not be as smart as keeping her around and using that advantage to their advantage. Among those people: Amanda, McCrae, Andy, Spencer, Howard, Helen and Judd. The group of them rallied and decided that they just might save Elissa and send David packing.
This basically puts the over-25 houseguests against the younger ones. Only they don't want to tell the 25-and-unders that this is happening until David's walking out the door. In the meantime, McCrae still nominated Elissa, which holds up his end of what he promised everyone, and then most of the house votes to evict David.
Now, whether or not things go according to plan is anyone's guess. There's a lot of time between now and Wednesday for this to fall through. Amanda has brought Elissa into the plan, so she knows she might be staying and she also knows she's being kept because of her MVP status, which she might maintain next week, if the Brachel fans keep voting. Of course, Elissa could win HoH and start making her own calls. Or she could shoot herself in the foot between now and Wednesday and do something that causes enough of the house to turn against her again. Amanda laid it out pretty clearly that if Elissa reveals this plan to the "Bieber Fever" alliance before Wednesday, they aren't going through it. So, with her head on the chopping block, Elissa's best bet is to lay low, not talk much, and not make a big show about campaigning, while also not looking too relaxed. I'm skeptical about her ability to pull this off, given her poor acting abilities demonstrated so far.
I'm also not sure if Nick and Jeremy have been made aware of the evict-David plan. Part of their alliance (Spencer, Howard and McCrae) are in on that plan, but some others don't trust Nick and Jeremy. At this point though, given the overlap in alliances (the Save-Elissa alliance overlaps partially with Moving Company, which overlaps partially with the showmancers, which includes David, who would be evicted if this plan happens), I will be amazed if the plan to save Elissa doesn't blow up before Wednesday.
I have to say, the three-nominee thing is making for some serious drama so far. It offers so many possibilities for the houseguests as they prepare to vote. We'll keep you posted if there are any major updates in the game. We may also get some better insight into what some of the houseguests are thinking when we start to see the diary rooms in tonight's episode and Tuesday's as well.
In other news, the houseguests got access to the photo booth, where they can snap photos that I think will be shared via Twitter at some point. And apparently, they can also sneak in there to quietly strategize…
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