Tonight’s episode of ‘Big Brother’ ended with last official elimination of the “All Stars” season, leaving us with a somewhat disappointing final two. Janelle made a gutsy move earlier this week by voting to evict Will. The upside to that was seeing Janelle see the light and give Will the boot. The downside to that was that we were left with a pretty weak final three.
The episode picked up right where Tuesday’s episode left off. We got about five minutes of clips from the previous show. Janelle voting out Will, Boogie looking stunned and Erika in the diary room screaming “you go girl!” and all that. The sweet reward to Will’s eviction was seeing Boogie’s teary diary room sessions. Ex-houseguest Jase put it best on the CBS internet talk-show ‘House Calls’ by saying (paraphrasing), “it’s like Boogie’s sitting in the sidecar and he looks over at the motorcycle and sees that no one’s driving it”. While Boogie was devastated that Janelle put an end to his bromance, he wasn’t down for the count.
Boogie was civil towards Janelle and Erika after the eviction and the totally botched endurance competition. We got to re-watch the Volcano competition in all it’s 3 minute glory. Boogie jumped off the volcano and Janelle, surprised by Boogie’s move, took her hand off the key for a second and lost the competition.
There’s some more diary footage including an amusing one-sided “phone call” from Boogie. We get some clips of the girls reaffirming their alliance to take each other to the end and then even more footage of Boogie crying over Will’s eviction.
Part 2 of the final Head of Household competition involved harnesses and lazar beams. Boogie and Janelle competed separately in the competition. Each was elevated by the harness and the point of the competition was direct the lazar beams towards mirrors above various keys with the names of the previous six winners of ‘Big Brother’. Above the competition set was a GM Pontiac Solstice. Whoever completed the competition the fastest won the car as well as part two of the competition.
The game required some serious upper body strength on the part of the houseguest in order to pull themselves around the structure. Janelle had a hard time getting around the structure and lost to Boogie by about two minutes. Boogie can get bragging rights for three things 1) he won the car 2) he won part 2 of the HoH competition and 3) he did it all with red, white and blue sweatband on his head and corny video-game-sounding music playing in the background.
After the diary room session, a disappointed Janelle seems to think it’s unlikely that she’ll be taken to the final two. We then get a few clips of Boogie talking with Erika about who they’ll take to the final two if either of them wins part three of the competition. What the editors left out was some serious making-up that took place between Erika and Boogie last night. Apparently after he won the competition and the car, she forgot all about the humiliation she was feeling when she realized he was playing her for a fool this whole summer. I guess some women really do go for guys with nice cars.
Feed watchers spent the day on edge after the conversations that Erika and Boogie had after the competition. It seemed Erika told Boogie that she would take him to the final two and then, after considering how it would appear if she went back on her recent deal with Janelle, told him that she’d throw him the competition. For the record, I don’t believe she did throw the last competition. The question she got wrong was Will’s answer to “What was the most shocking moment this season”. Will chose the “Fast Forward” Head of Household twist but Erika guessed that he would say “his own eviction”. Somehow Boogie got that right and Erika (as well as probably 90% of the viewers) were wrong.
Boogie won the final competition and, after sucking up to Janelle profusely for her awesomeness (in an obvious attempt to secure her vote although I think part of it was genuine), he evicted her. Janelle left the house and Boogie and Erika shared a kiss. Thankfully, we only had to witness a few seconds of that before the show cut to Janelle exiting the house. Janelle sat with Julie and, though she seemed sad, she kept it together when talking about her mistakes in the game. She politely refused to answer any questions about Will.
Who ever thought the game would come down to Erika and Boogie? Many viewers (myself included) were fans of Chilltown but I believe a large part of Chilltown’s popularity was due to Will’s charm and charisma. I could’ve done with out Boogie’s rants about Janelle, his enjoyment at humiliating Erika which included bragging about how far he could get with her, his 90’s-slang which included remarks like ‘get ta steppin’ and most of all his hats. How many hats did this guy bring into the house with him?
There were two somewhat redeeming moments in this episode. The first was getting to see the evicted houseguests’ reaction when Will walked into the sequester house. Though I have to say, the downside to the sequester footage was the bitter comments coming from James and Danielle when they watched Janelle’s eviction speech. Janelle genuinely felt bad about Marcellas’ and Howie’s evictions. When she realized Will had pretty much orchestrated both of them, using her to do it, she was pretty upset about it and mentioned it to Erika (on the live feeds) and to Julie in her brief interview. I don’t think her mentioning it in her speech to evict Will was a vote plea. She just wanted to make it clear to Will why she was doing it. Get over it James. No one can blame anyone else for losing. Everyone plays their own game in that house. Some just play it better than others.
The other redeeming moment of the episode came at the end when Mr. Big Brother voice-over announced that there would be an America’s Choice prize (aka the Rupert award). America can vote by texting in their selection for which sequestered houseguest they would like to win a special $25,000 award. This was suggested by fans last year after two unpopular houseguests made it to the final two. I guess the producers felt they needed to do something to make the finale worth watching.
The final episode of ‘Big Brother: All Stars’ will air live on Tuesday night at 8 pm. Will Boogie be able to count on Will to secure the votes he needs to win the jackpot? Will Erika crack under the pressure of the jury’s grilling session? Even though I’m disappointed that the final two consist of Erika and Boogie, I’m excited to see how it all turns out next week.
