This week of Big Brother can’t be discussed without giving a proper shoutout to production and the editing department who someone managed to stretch two five minute competitions (HoH and veto) into episode anchoring segments. For Head of Household, all you had to do was roll a ball down the center of a winding ramp. Easier said than done but you basically just had to do it and collect your score like Chuck E Cheese ski-ball tickets. You got one try with the red ball but could practice as many times as you wanted with the yellow ball first. I think fourteen minutes of that ended up airing. Paul won despite being very bad at bowling. Perhaps this is the flipside of Paulie’s transformation into Paul. Paulie and Paul started off as two very different people with very similar names. But then Paulie cut his hair like Paul, shaved his beard like Paul, started wearing cutsleeve sweathshirts like Paul, and even talking like Paul: friendship, sketch, your boy and all. So if Paulie can become Paul, Paul is now able to win competitions like Paulie. Frankly, Paul wins out in this deal since Paulie was bred for this now maybe Paul is, too.
Next up for veto was a competition that aired last year as an HoH and I called it “possibly the most boring Head of Household competition of all time.” You have to place your hands on two buttons on the ground and your foot on a starting block as if running a race. A bunch of words will flash on the screen but you can’t go until it says READY, SET, GO. This year went with a combination of SEW, AMIGO, and SO to throw everyone off. Doing this as a veto is an improvement over HoH because there are less people and therefore less rounds. The things to always be hopeful for are that 1) someone runs funny. Paul does run funny. He’s kind of stubby and was singing The Sound of Music to himself because DOE popped up. And 2) that someone falls. Corey did. Despite being claiming to be athletic, he’s been kind of goofy although I’ll say that 6’5” is a hell of an awkward frame to throw around. Also, Paulie is very fast. Victor in his pigtails is probably much faster than I am and Paulie made Victor look very slow. Paulie running is like that scene in Maverick where Mel Gibson pulls out the gun during his poker game and Jodie Foster is like “was that fast? That looked fast,” and the guy with the gun pointed at him swallows hard and is like “yeah, fast.”
Paul wanted to eliminate Bridgette so he nominated her with Paulie, who volunteered as a pawn. Paulie really wanted Da’Vonne out, so his plan was to win the veto and get Paul to backdoor her, which is exactly what happened. Paulie is kind of running this game right now and I still don’t understand how he doesn’t have a bigger target on his back. He very clearly threw the HoH, he was the first to throw his red ball and kind of flopped it. But then he volunteered to go on the block, without any reservation that he’d get pawned out of the house. I didn’t see all the feeds this week, but it didn’t sound like anyone was really considering voting him out if he didn’t get the veto. He wins a lot and everyone likes him. He’s so confident right now, he was considering cutting his showmance, Zakiyah, because he felt like she was being too “clingy,” which is just code for “she’s living in the same house as me and there’s nowhere to go.” But Z is scam because she told Paulie she’d vote out Paul and nobody gets in between 2P. Paulie gave her a little attitude about sleeping up in Paul’s room instead of with her. Z didn’t want to go to bed in a fight so she crept upstairs and accidentally woke Paulie up. He came downstairs and they had a back-and-forth about who was being less thoughtful. Paulie’s like “I put myself up to save everyone and now I have to compete that’s all I’m thinking about, I was bred for this did you forget that this is literally what I was bred for, I am cool calm and collected.” Showmance is scam.
Paul was pretty entertaining this week as HoH. I wasn’t initially onboard with him this season, he seemed kind of loud but the more airtime he gets, the more he makes me laugh. Usually, family interview segments are blah but I would move in with Paul’s family in a second. His mom goes into his room every day and kisses his pillow and his dad says “friendship” in the slowest, most drawn out way possible. Plus, his boy has a face tat but isn’t scary, he actually just seems lovely to chat about Big Brother with. There was a moment when Bridgette was talking to Paul about whether she was safe and he told her she was. So she’s like “okay, I’ll just go bake some cookies.” Paul is like “the crumbly peanut ones?” and Bridgette is like “you like those?” and Paul just closes his eyes and purses his lips and nods like “I don’t need to say anything else, you know that’s what daddy likes, me being daddy.”
Paul is a shoe-in for America’s Favorite right now, he’s even outpranking James. He got Michelle with shaving cream in her drink. Then she threw an apple at him. It left a bruise and Michelle started bawling because “that’s where his kidneys are” and she doesn’t want to be known as a violent person. This is the second great cry that Michelle has had. She cried last week because of Frank leaving and she just wanted to hang out with him in jury. Shadily, one of the funniest moments ever because that’s code for “hook up in jury when neither of us win.” Now she’s crying over Paul’s lower back and he’s begging her to stop and she asks if she’s an ugly crier and Paul is like “yes, hideous so please stop.”
Natalie got the season’s first America’s Care Package, which was a Never Not pass so she doesn’t have to be a have-not the rest of the season. This week’s package is to cancel two eviction votes, so it could play a huge role at some point. We also still don’t know who has the round trip ticket. Next week is a double eviction so it could come into play. A lot of twists left in this one. Also, while not a game twist, Big Brother threw a shocker of an announcement out this week that they’re going to do the Big Brother 19 season in the fall as an CBS (PARA) All-Access App exclusive starting in September. And then 20 will be back next summer. We are approaching a full year’s worth of Big Brother which is maybe the only good thing to come out of 2016 aside from The Night Of.
