Big Brother 10: Episode 22

We're into the home stretch of this season of 'Big Brother' now, and much like last week's Fast Forward episode, this is ALWAYS my favorite time to watch. All the cute little alliances start breaking down, friends start turning on one another in the name of pure greed and selfishness, and the harsh realities of what people will do in the name of winning come out for all to see. Or am I thinking of the Democratic and Republican conventions? Hmm. Well, no matter. More Big Brother after the jump...

So here we go! Final five time, and it's Jerry, Renny, Memphis, Keesha, and Dan battling it out for a spot in the final four and a shot at 500 big ones. Will Dan's foursome be able to hold it together for one more week and achieve their goal of making it as far as they planned? Or will hanger-on Jerry throw a monkeywrench into the works by booting one of them and making it into the final four himself? We start this episode with a quick look back at the rapid-fire mayhem of last week's Fast Forward - everyone agrees that they couldn't vote for Michelle to stay in the house no matter what happened, the decision to boot Ollie was pretty much a no-brainer, Memphis didn't think Keesha had a chance in hell of getting that last HOH question right either, and Jerry's just about given up. He figures he doesn't have any chance of surviving this week against the four people that have had an alliance for quite a while now, and he very well may be right. However, Keesha's reign as HOH is basically over now that Ollie's gone, so the old man still has a fighting chance in there somewhere.

Speaking of Jerry, he's taken to talking to his bottle of Geritol now that everyone in his alliance is gone and hardly anyone in Dan's group can stomach his yammering for more than ten minutes at a time. "We've got nothing in common!" yells Renny. Well, you're both old and weird. How about that? Anyway, if you're not picking up on the glaring amount of foreshadowing that is being set up by all of this gloating by the fearsome foursome, get your eyes checked. Keesha's not really THAT essential to this final four scenario, is she?

You know you're getting late in the season when the BB crew starts digging up the most inane, embarrassing crap they can find in the tapes from the last few days and cutting it into the show. Out in the backyard, Renny makes total butt of herself by insisting that it's 6:00 in New Orleans even though it's 8:00 in California. She goes on about this for five minutes before the blood finally starts flowing back to her head and she realizes her mistake. Yawn. Damn, and I thought Jerry would be the first one to have a senior moment. If that weren't enough, we get a two-minute segment on the ungodly amount of irritation Keesha spreads upon the world with her laugh. It sounds like a gang of hyenas getting gang-raped by Ethel Merman. Just awful. I can only imagine what she sounds like during sex. She mentions that her boyfriend never says anything about her laugh, and in response to that, I have two things to say. One, he's probably too busy staring at her tits all the time to hear much of anything, and two, I think it's wonderful that Keesha has found it in herself to date a deaf person. Good for her.

Time for the next HOH competition, and it's some circus-themed shenanigans out in the backyard. Well, actually it's just skee ball with a bunch of circus-type lights strewn around it. Oh, and Keesha has a big-ass top hat on. So, yeah... circus. Anyway, the foreshadowing continues with Dan and Memphis rattling on about how if they can't beat Jerry in this comp, then one of them deserves to go home. I've been beaten over the head with things before, but usually when it's the glaring obviousness of what's about to happen next on a TV show, it doesn't hurt quite this bad. Anyway, on with the competition.

So even though the game looks like Skee-Ball and smells like Skee-Ball, it's not really Skee-Ball at all. Keesha describes it as such - the hamsters will be told an event that happened on a certain day in the house. The players will roll a ball up the Not-Really-Skee-Ball ramp at a row of numbers at the back of it, trying to guess the exact number of the day that they believe said event happened. For example, let's say Dan believes that Ollie first denied April anything even remotely resembling an orgasm on Day 4. He'll roll his ball at the number 4 on the back of the Not-Really-Skee-Ball ramp, and if it lands in the number 4 slot back there, he won't get any penalty points. However, if he lands in a different slot with a different number, Dan will receive the difference between the two numbers as penalty points added to his overall score. If he lands in the number 12 slot, for example, he will receive 8 penalty points. The hamster with the lowest number of penalty points at the end of the game wins HOH. Got it? Let's go.

Question 1 - What day did Dan call 'Judas' at the Veto meeting? The answer to that is Day 35, and Dan is the closest at Day 40. He receives only 5 penalty points, but Memphis and Jerry are hot on his trail with 6 and 7 points respectively. Renny? Fuhgaddaboudit. 15 penalty points.

Question 2 - What day were there reports of aliens in the BB house? The answer is Day 14, and once again, Dan gets the closest to that and receives a mere 4 penalty points. Could the foreshadowing be a mere red herring? We'll see.

Question 3 - What day was Brian blindsided at the veto meeting and put on the block? I get a short clip of my lovely Angie as the answer of Day 6 is revealed. For the third time in a row, Dan pulls out the closest answer and only racks up 3 more penalty points. He's doing quite well, but right behind him is our dark horse Jerry. Can he pull it out? He's not that far away from Dan's score, and a single blown shot by Dan could send the house reeling.

Question 4 - What day did past houseguests return with news from the outside world? It was Day 32, and here come the Skee Balls. Renny's a total lost cause at this point (has Skee Ball not been invented on her planet yet, or what?), but for the fourth consecutive round, Dan pulls out the closest score. He and Jerry's score only differ by a mere 6 points. Given that Renny's been missing by ten or more for the entire freakin' game, Dan's victory at this point isn't a sure thing at all.

Question 5 - What day did a 5.4 earthquake hit the Big Brother house? It's Day 22, and Jerry nails it dead on. No penalty points for him at all. Uh-oh. Our current leader Dan chalks up 4 penalty points on this one, and his lead falls to 2 piddly little points.

Question 6 - What day was Jessie evicted? Despite the obvious answer of 'The best damn day of all of our lives', the numerical equivalent of that turns out to be 31. Dan takes a hard hit when his Skee Ball bounces 11 spots away from where he wanted it to be and lands in spot #20. Can you believe this shit? With his score of a mere 3 penalty points in this round to Dan's 11, Jerry is now in the lead.

Question 7 - Final question! What day did America supply the Big Brother house with lollipops? Day 39 is the answer, and Dan needs to rack up a whopping 7 or more penalty points to take over the lead from Jerry and keep him from winning HOH. Dan throws up one of his now-trademark Hail Mary passes and nails the 39 right on the button, but will it be enough to fend off Jerry's lead? No! Jerry beats back Dan's Skee-based ground assault and only racks up 4 more penalty points to his name, keeping his lead to 2 and winning the competition. Gee, I didn't see that coming at all!

Dan and his crew pretend to be happy for the old fart, but then they realize that one of them is absolutely going home this week. Their final four agreement just wasn't meant to be. Jerry's gracious enough about it, but he's gotta be happy to at least milk one more week out of this thing. I gotta hand it to him, too - he pulled off a truly incredible stunt, and to think he might even be able to sway one of the four to strike a deal to get him even farther than the final four no matter what is pretty awe-inspiring. I doubt it will happen, though, and my thoughts are reciprocated by the chat going on in the other room. 'No deals', says Memphis, and they all agree how fucked they are when they realize that they've ALL had issues with Jerry at one point or another in the game. There is no telling who he's going to put up, but the only real sure thing about it seems to be that Dan will definitely be going up no matter what. I told you that Judas shit wasn't gone forever.

Time to see Jerry's HOH room, and I have no interest in it at all except for a slight clue that Dan might have dropped. One of Jerry's items from home that was in his room was this wooden box he made, and as Dan's looking at it, he says 'They should use that for the veto box.' Hmm. Even more foreshadowing in this episode, perhaps? What's more, if Dan does get nominated and then wins POV, he'll HAVE to pull himself off the block, thereby putting one of his alliance mates up in his place. Let the backstabbing begin!

Memphis and Keesha talk a bit, and he dances around the issue that if he happens to end up in the final three with her, he'll make the choice to take her with him to the final two. I love it when people get ahead of themselves in this game. That's usually when they fall the hardest. Speaking of falling, I was really hoping for Renny to take a header into the pool when she woke up one night and started sleepwalking around her room and the hallway outside. She also dishes out a few choice Renny-isms in her sleep, too. Don't eat the ping-pong ball, indeed.

Now it's Keesha's and Renny's turn to idly plot, but they fail miserably at it and only end up spouting cliched bullshit at each other like 'Well, no matter what happens, one of us is going home this week.' Ya think? Dan and Memphis have a little more success at it by agreeing to try and trick Jerry into keeping the both of them around this week. They decide to keep the Renegades alliance a secret again, and Memphis goes up to HOH to chat up Jerry. Jerry asks him for a final two deal, and even though it couldn't be further than the truth, Memphis agrees to that. In response, Jerry lays out his plan for the week, and it's basically to get Dan out. Dan will definitely be going up, and Jerry wants him to fight like hell for the veto so that Dan can't get it and thusly seal his fate. Memphis keeps his poker face on for the rest of the conversation, and even goes so far as to shake on it with Jerry. Jerry tells us in DR that he trusts Memphis more than anyone else still left in the house because he's never seen him make deals with anyone else so far. LOL. Anyway, Memphis leaves HOH, and I have a sneaking suspicion that along with Dan, he's going to be the first to throw one of his alliance members under the proverbial bus. Watch your back, ladies!

So after an endless amount of filler this episode, we finally make it to nominations. Memphis is feeling safe in his F2 deal with Jerry, but Dan's another story. He'll be shocked if he doesn't get put up, and as far as the ladies go, they're definitely as worried as they should be. No matter what kind of deals have been floated around so far, Jerry is still very much a loose cannon here, and there's no telling what he'll do. Alright, here we go.

Renny - safe. Memphis - safe. That leaves Dan and Keesha, and I think it's fairly apparent that Dan is his target here. He must realize that Keesha will probably be the first to come to him for a deal, so I think his nominations were as smart as they needed to be. If he gets Dan out, great. If he gets Keesha out, he breaks up the Renny/Keesha alliance. For him, it's win-win. Hell, any nominations at this point would be good for a sitting HOH, but given the current political situation in the house, I think he did well.

As for me, I just hope Dan survives, and what's more, I want Memphis to win POV and make it happen. They'd totally out themselves as an alliance in that event, but the sight of Jerry's jaw hitting the floor that hard would be epic. So yeah, I have to say that I'm still in Dan's corner here, with Renny a very close second. I'm not sure Dan's got a chance in hell of winning this thing, but to see a floater make it at least to the F2 would please me immensely. I'm just an underdog kind of guy, I guess. As for my second choice of Renny, well... I like crazy people. That's really all there is to it.

Happy Labor Day!

-littlebigmouth.