Is Jessie a tool? Steven says he is but I’m not sure I agree. On one hand, it seemed that it was only the pressure of the rest of his alliance that kept Renny off the block. He was really itching to put her up but they talked him out of it. So I’m not sure that I can give him full credit for not going down the emotional-nomination route that many previous HoH’s have taken. On the other hand, despite not being the brightest bulb in the BB house and having a rather sizable ego, he seems like a nice enough guy. So the jury’s still out on Jessie.
Tonight’s nomination episode included a food competition involving wine (or what was supposed to wine), corks, bottles and a really cheesy French theme. Wine and cheese go well together, afterall but judging by the number of bottles BB lined up for the contestants to fill, I think they grossly overestimated the groups’ abilities to catch dripping wine from giant tubs. The house was split up into two teams. Among the teams the houseguests were assigned different duties. Two had to find colored corks buried in a pile of regular corks and toss them up into a giant tub of wine. In the tub were two teammates who had to grab the corks thrown to them and plug them into holes in the bottom of the tub. The two remaining teammates had to fill wine glasses with the wine falling through the holes in the opposite teams’ tub. Once a team got all of their holes plugged up and no more wine was leaking out, the game was over. Whichever team had the most wine collected in their bottles won food for the week.
I haven’t totally chosen favorites this season yet so I wasn’t sure which team I wanted to win. At first I thought I wanted the red team to win since that one had both Renny and Jerry. I like to root for the underdogs but hearing April and Libra whine about having the two old people on their team kind of soured me towards that group. On top of that, the green team seemed to have it more together, with Dan calling out the number of corks thrown so the two tub-people could keep track of how many more holes they had to find and plug. The green team ended up winning, having one and half wine bottles full as opposed to the red team failing to fill up one bottle.
Before we get to the nominations, let’s talk about the alliances. The house is pretty much divided between the people who wanted Brian to go and those who wanted him to stay (even though most of them voted for him to be evicted). The first alliance consists of Jessie, Memphis, April, Ollie, Michelle and Libra. In the other alliance is Angie, Keesha, Steven and Dan. Jerry seems to get along with everyone and from what I can tell, no one really cares much for Renny. Keesha had some nice things to say about Renny tonight after the food competition but I think she’s more about saying the opposite of whatever April thinks than anything else. In fact, Keesha wanting to distance herself from April appears to be what put her in the Leftover Alliance (that’s what I’m calling them). Whether or not these two core alliances stick, only time will tell. It’ll all depend on who gets HoH next week.
The food competition was a brief distraction from the real situation at hand: Who should Jessie nominate? His alliance put in a strong effort to keep Jessie from nominating Renny. Jessie and Renny have been at odds since day 1 (or night 1) but there are bigger fish to fry here and his alliance members put the pressure on, not entirely unlike what happened last week with Jerry. Dan, Steven and Angie all knew there was a good chance they’d be going on the block. Angie put her neck out when she tried to save Brian and while it turned out to be a mistake, I sort of respect her effort there. Players like that make the game interesting. Dan was the lone voter for Brian during last week’s elimination and his association with Brian hasn’t helped him win anyone’s friendship. Steven was also on Team Brian last week and what’s more, he refused to go up and visit Jessie’s HoH room. I love it when a houseguest does that. On one hand, it’s great to see someone refusing to fake it and pretend they care about the HoH’s pictures. On the other hand, it’s a foolish move because it makes the person appear to be resigned to their fate and unwilling to even try to appeal to the HoH. It’s a bit too early in the game to have that kind of attitude.
In Steven’s case, he probably would’ve gone up on the block regardless of whether or not he went up and pretended to be impressed with all of Jessie’s photos of himself. Jessie’s alliance was pushing for Steven to go this week, though things weren’t looking good for Angie and Dan. Angie attempted to talk to Jessie about it only to have Jessie argue with her over the brief time she spent last week trying to save Brian. Meanwhile, Dan tried to get Jessie on his own, which proved to be more difficult than you would think. When he did finally pull the HoH aside, he reminded Jessie that while he did vote against the group last week, he kept his word. That was pretty much the only card Dan had to play but at least he was smart enough to play it. Dan is the only person in the house thus far that has proven he’s good for his word.
Dan ended up on the block anyway but it seems like Steven is the main target. Personally, I don’t want either of them to go. Dan seems like he has a lot of potential in this game and Steven, while making the poor choice not to stroke Jessie’s sizable ego, seems to have a decent read on people. So it’ll all come down to who wins the Veto and whether or not they decide to use it. If you want to know who that person is before Tuesday, Jokers Updates has it up on their site.
Of the two people I’d love to see nominated against one another are April and Libra. While I’m a fan of Libra’s (so far), these two are friends and their brief spat after the food competition tonight showed that it might not take much for them to go from BFF’s to total enemies if their place in the game were in jeopardy.
