Who didn’t see all of Ronnie’s scheming backfiring on him eventually? The poor guy got himself in over his head and gave the entire house a chance to unite and form one common goal: Blame Ronnie. With Betty and Veronica up on the block, tonight’s elimination wasn’t all that exciting but seeing how the rest of the week unfolded was surely entertaining, if not a bit cringe-worthy.
We saw the aftermath of the Veto ceremony, which included Laura petitioning to Ronnie to help her stay in the house. Now, granted, Laura thought Ronnie was the master schemer of the house but given the fact that his power as HoH had run out, I wasn’t entirely sure why she thought going to him would help her with the rest of the house. Ronnie considered her argument, which was that Jordan and Jeff worked together and splitting them up now could be a very good thing for the rest of the house. He then took that argument to some of the people on the Athletes alliance (which right now includes Lydia and Kevin). They essentially shook their heads in unison. No. Laura was going. I can’t say that I blame the house for wanting Laura out. She’s actually playing the game, while Jordan is pretty much entirely caught up in her budding showmance with Jeff, when she’s not busy learning how to tell time.
When Ronnie mentioned Russell as being part of the reason he was arguing in favor of Laura staying, Natalie had heard enough and stormed out of the HoH room. Word got back to Russell that Ronnie was trying to throw blame on him, all hell broke loose. Laura denied trying to get Ronnie to help her with votes but later admitted to saying she thought she’d make a better ally than Jordan. It didn’t matter though because by that point, everyone was looking daggers at Ronnie. Ronnie, who’s supposed to be a champion debater made a lame excuse about not wanting to divulge the extent of the conversation he had with Laura and inevitably snuck off to his room. He later said to Julie during his HoH interview that he was trying to garner sympathy but the result of his camping out in the HoH room for days and feeding off Pringles and root beer was that the house spent their time downstairs uniting together, blaming everything they could on Ronnie (and thus throwing heaps of blame off themselves in some cases) and agreeing that he would go next week.
So, yeah, Ronnie schemed and lied and his erratic strategizing got him into a big old mess, or to go by BB terms, his “spool of lies” was unspooled, but I think what we were really seeing here was the house looking to create a scapegoat out of the guy, so they’d have a common enemy. No one could predict who would get Head of Household tonight, so why not try to ensure that there’s one person everyone wants gone? Takes the target off the rest of the houseguests’ back for the time being, right? Ronnie pretty much let that happen. Sure, Russell following him around the few times Ronnie scurried out of the Head of Household room either to get a bottle opener or visit the Diary room was probably irritating (and yes, intimidating) but even if he’d just sat around the house, making his presence known, people might have felt sorry enough for him to include him in a few conversations and eventually get over the partially baseless anger at him. It’s a lot easier to talk smack about someone and blame them for everything when they’re not right in your face. Ronnie went to the one place he could be alone and thus, opened the rest of the house up to a big giant blame-fest with his absence as the guest of honor.
The big elimination was no surprise. After Jordan’s long-winded goodbye speech, which included something about Big Macs and Laura’s, which, like part of Jordan’s, made mention of Ronnie’s scheming in some vague but obvious way, the houseguests casted their votes. Everyone except for Natalie, who switched her vote to spice things up, voted for Laura to go. Whether or not anyone will care about the one vote for Jordan to go, remains to be seen. In the meantime, the houseguests went outside to play for HoH. They had to flip a ball off a board and try to get it into the big circle of buckets. The buckets were marked with points like skeeball the buckets closest to the center were worth more points. Jessie and Jeff tied for the lead, each landing a ball in a six-point bucket. Jessie managed to repeat his first flip by getting his second ball in a six bucket. Jeff might have beat him if his ball hadn’t hit the rim of a bucket and bounced away.
Jessie’s Head of Household again. Now, Ronnie said there are still some people on his side and if what I read on the feed-recap sites is correct, his belief in his alliance comes from a conversation he had with Russell (of all people) the other day. Whether or not the Athletes are going to keep Ronnie safe this week, I don’t think anyone knows. Giving Ronnie the impression that they’re still secretly on his side could have just been a precautionary measure to have his support if one of the Athletes (or Lydia or Kevin) didn’t get HoH. But Jessie might think it’s in his best interest to target Ronnie anyway. Winning a second HoH (though technically, he didn’t win the first one) is definitely going to draw even more attention to him and he might decide that appeasing the masses might be a safer bet than targeting Jordan, who’s the last of the Populars, or one of the few remaining people in her alliance (Michele and Casey? Jeff’s an Athlete and thus immune from elimination).
My prediction is that he puts Ronnie up next to Michele or Chima. Michele’s in the other alliance and I don’t think Chima’s formed any strong friendships in the house, so he wouldn’t have to face huge repercussions by putting her in danger. As for Ronnie, he might be able to argue to Ronnie that he has to make it look like he’s not allied with them but the truth is, the numbers on the other side of the house are dwindling and if Jessie’s looking ahead, he might see that Ronnie’s loyalty to him might not be nearly as valuable as getting “the rat” out of the house would be.
