Matt Hoffman (BB12) returns with his review of the latest Big Brother episode. You’ll find him here at BBN each Thursday & Friday all season. Read Matt’s past articles.
If you love crying and pouting and Brenchel, then this may be your favorite episode of Big Brother to date. We start off recapping the power shift in the house where Daniele turned on the vets and put up Brendon and Rachel for eviction. She likens herself to Robin Hood, but I think we already have that role filled in the house:
For the first time this season, Rachel actually elicits tears when she cries. Through hazy eyes she gives us a lesson in medieval folklore as she rambles on about swords and Excalibur and other things that you can tell by her awkward delivery were fed to her by production.
Brenchel go back to the Have Not room to pout and cry and complain about how nothing is fair whenever things aren’t completely catered to them. Brendon says that the worst case scenario if he goes home is that they’ll be married for the rest of their lives. Wow…things really are looking bleak.
The tears continue to flow, and Brenchel is able to use their professional experience to turn Big Brother into a poorly-acted, poorly-scripted daytime soap opera. Brendon, even in the face of tragedy, is also able to continue to arrogantly tout his vast expanse of knowledge:
RACHEL: I can’t play this game without you, Bookie.
BRENDON: Yes you can. I believe in you. You have something very big in there. [points to Rachel’s heart]
RACHEL: My silicone bags?
BRENDON: No – back there behind your mediastinum.
RACHEL: I don’t know what you mean.
BRENDON: Your heart, Rachel. You have a big heart. You would have known that if you were a PhD like me.
RACHEL: You’re so smart, Bookie.
BRENDON: Don’t worry about the money. I’m going to cure cancer.
RACHEL: Cancer-shmancer! I want $500,000!
Time to pull names for the veto competition. Daniele pulls Jeff’s name, and Rachel and Brendon pull out the competitive powerhouse of Adam and Porsche. Rachel is happy at the odds of someone in her alliance winning the veto and using it on her. She says, “we have a great chance of keeping either Brendon or myself in the game this week.” Yeah, Rachel – that’s pretty much how it works, seeing as only one of you can go home. Much to the dismay of the viewing audience, Daniele opts for Lawon to be the host of the competition.
Jeff and Jordan lounge around in the purple room to talk strategy. Jeff says that no matter what type of deal he makes with Daniele, he will backdoor her next week if he wins HoH. Production scrambles to put together next week’s HoH competition – a trivia game about Jeff’s childhood.
Lawon busts out of the Diary Room looking like a flamboyant poor man’s Flavor Flav to announce the start of the veto competition. He does not disappoint in my anticipation of him annoying the piss out of me with D.R. snippets like this:
LAWON: I look at the veto competition, and I SEE HE/SHE LAYIN’ OUT THERE! I’m like, HE/SHE’S BACK?! We gotta shave her legs AGAIN??? WHAT?! SHAZAAM! KAPLOOIE! SOUNDBYTE!
Big Brother outdoes themselves in the creativity department once again by rehashing five competitions from this very season. Round one involves quickly putting balls in your mouth. No surprise, Rachel wins that one and eliminates Adam. Also no surprise? – Brendon obnoxiously cheering on Rachel and reminding everyone that she’s his fiancé. Round two finds Rachel trying to put a puzzle together. Tests of mental fortitude don’t work out as well for her as ball-gobbling, and she is eliminated. Assumed pouting ensues. Round three involves Daniele needing to spell something, and she’s out. Round four sees Jeff trying to fill a milk jug up while Shelly (ever masterful in hiding her allegiance to the vets) cheers for him from the sidelines even more than Jordan does. Jeff fails and gets eliminated, leaving Porsche and Brendon in the final two. Porsche uses the same strategy in the veto competition that she’s been using in the house all season – stand around quietly and inconspicuously, and hope that no one knows she’s even there. Brendon, on the other hand, actually tries in the competition and pulls out a victory in the last round. Brendon wins the Golden Power of Veto and we the viewers win a gross slow-motion Brenchel dry-humping sequence.
Brendon comes up with some hair-brained scheme to convince people that he’s using the POV on himself when he’s really going to use it to save Rachel. The major flaw in his plan of deception is that no one believes him nor even cares, and it would not affect the replacement nominee either way. For the sake of humanity, I hope that curing cancer is easier than fooling a house full of nitwits. In a fit of desperation, Brendon puts on his pink warrior bandana and goes up to the HoH room to try and convince Daniele to make sure that both him and Rachel stay in the house this week. Daniele does her best to not burst into a fit of laughter before they all head downstairs for the veto meeting.
To the shock and surprise of nobody, Brendon uses the Power of Veto to save Rachel, and Jordan gets put up as a replacement nominee. A diary room session shows Brendon running his mouth about how masterful he was in ruining Daniele’s “house of cards” while a following diary room session from Daniele proves that he’s an idiot because it’s exactly what Daniele wanted to happen. Rachel talks about being a “fairytale princess” and how Brendon is her “knight in shining armor”, and for once I actually tolerate this drivel because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel…only one more episode, and “The Brenchel Show” comes to a close so we can get back to “Big Brother”.
Brendon and Rachel have a tough rest of the week, knowing that their summer of love is coming to an imminent end. But an even tougher time is to be had by the editors of CBS’s Thursday night show to try and make it seem like there’s even a miniscule chance of Jordan going home. Bye-bye, Brenchel!
For more of Matt Hoffman’s ramblings follow him on Twitter @HeadOfHoffhold and stop by www.TheGremlinCave.com. Also, be sure to check out Matt’s video recaps of the Big Brother season on www.RTVZone.com (@RTVZone).