TV

“Big Brother” recap (17.21-17.23): Week Seven

I get so emotional, baby-every time I think about Vanessa possibly getting evicted from the Big Brother house this week. A few things have happened in the past couple of weeks. For one, #SixthSense has ruled the BB house and the “other side” of the house has slowly caught on to their scheming ways. Despite their group efforts to run the show and evict target after target, those outside of #SixthSense are catching on to the power behind every single eviction. And they’re convinced it’s all due to one blonde we’ve come to know and love.

With Clay gone, and the numbers stacked against her, this week had all the makings to be Vanessa’s last week in the BB house. But expect the unexpected, so they say. Come Thursday night, everything changed. Was it enough to save Vanessa? If you tuned in last night-you know exactly what went down. Let’s just say, this won’t be our last BB recap of the summer, yet. Our girl is still in the race.

SUNDAY: Nominations

As the episode begins, we’re shown a glimpse of what went down right before Clay’s eviction last Thursday night. Apparently, a fight broke out-well, technically, two fights. James and Johnny Mac are having a discussion about Clay’s decision to make sure the whole house vote him out, in the name of love. They think that’s a wildly terrible idea, but they’ll go with the house so as not to stir up drama with Shelli. Johnny Mac exits the room to go tell Clay the same, explaining that he thinks Vanessa is in Shelli’s head. Clay says, “Yeah, Vanessa has been acting sketchy lately.” He gets up and goes and finds Vanessa to tell her she should probably talk with Johnny Mac, because apparently James has been telling Johnny Mac that Vanessa is in Shelli’s head. “James is telling Johnny Mac,” he says to a very confused Vanessa. Wait, James? Johnny Mac said nothing about James. All he said to Clay was that he personally feels like Vanessa is in Shelli’s head. So, then why did Clay tell Vanessa that James is involved?

Vanessa goes and asks James why he said that to Johnny Mac. This isn’t good, because James knows something screwy is taking place. He storms into Clay’s room. He’s pissed off. They get in each other’s faces. As predicted, Clay denies he lied, and he’s amped and ready for anything. Meg tells the boys to slow their roll. Vanessa takes Johnny Mac aside to get to the bottom of it, and he assures her that this nugget of info is just straight out of his head, nothing that James told him, nothing that Clay told him. Now, Vanessa is completely confused. She and Johnny Mac go back out into the room where Clay and James are still going at it. She asks Clay to explain why he lied. Clay denies ever telling her that James was a part of this. Johnny Mac continues to just stand there saying: “I came up with it, in my own head.”

To make matters worse for Vanessa, she begins to assume that Johnny Mac is lying, too, only infuriating Johnny Mac more and more when he gets into the diary room later on to tell the cameras, “There goes Vanessa again,” as she suddenly begins to cry and beg for Clay to explain why this is happening. “It seems like you’re lying, dude,” she says to Clay with tears in her eyes. Clay acts cool, calm and collected, to a point that will exacerbate the other houseguests’ emotions. He’s just done so to James, so he’s about to do the same to Vanessa. Shelli, Becky, Jackie and a few others are sitting on the other side of the wall listening-but what they don’t know is that Clay’s clearly set up Vanessa, knowing she plays emotionally, knowing she would get the story so twisted that she pisses off Johnny Mac. He’s good, but he’s still out the door this week. Bye bye, Clay.

In the HOH competition, Becky wins everything: Never Have-Not (she’ll never have to eat slop again!), a big cash prize of $5,000, and HOH. It’s a bad situation. Becky’s been known to flip flop but we all know she’s with Meg, Jackie, James and Johnny Mac, even though she came to warn Shelli and Clay that James was putting them up on the block next to each other. Up in her HOH room, Becky tells her allies: “We’ll work with what we have,” grinning with excitement, referring to the morning fight. She says she’ll put up Shelli and Steve, but that Vanessa will be the replacement. She loathes Vanessa. Everyone is on board. But how will she get Austin and the twins to vote? James should know a thousand percent that Shelli will target him if she stays in the house, he should be able to see through how Clay set up Vanessa for public uproar-but agrees that Vanessa needs to go. Everyone starts to diss on Vanessa for playing a role in sending Jeff home, Jason, Audrey, and so on. What they don’t totally get is that there was a complete alliance at play, or that Austin was actually spared to send Jason home despite how betrayed Vanessa was by Austin’s lies, and that his mainstay in this house is due to the #SixthSense trying desperately to maintain their numbers (the number of people who will vote to keep their alliance intact on eviction night).

Becky tells Shelli what the plan is. Shelli won’t tell Vanessa what Becky said because it’ll put a target on her back-and she’s the one sitting on the block. Vanessa comes upstairs to try to make a deal with Becky. “I’m good on my word,” she says. Becky runs her hands through her hair and rolls her eyes. “Can we make a deal?” Vanessa begins. Becky immediately cuts her hand across the air and says, “I’m done with deals. No more deals, no more alliances-get out of my life.” The tension is totally thick now. Unwilling to even placate Vanessa with false niceties, Becky says she plays differently than Vanessa-“organically” to be precise. “I’m basic. Basic Becky,” she adds. Dumbfounded, Vanessa nods and leaves the room. Becky tells everyone in her group about her talk with Vanessa-making a mockery out of her and her “good word.” Vanessa’s allies seem worried for her, but they don’t totally know what they can do to save her. Steve says Vanessa is his biggest ally in the house and they made a deal from Week One. But if he wins POV, he has to take himself off the block and put Vanessa at risk and he knows it. Wednesday might be the most important episode of the summer yet.

WEDNESDAY: Power of Veto (also known as the episode that might make or break Vanessa’s game/holy shit)

With so much at stake, this POV competition just might make or break Vanessa’s game. She asks Shelli to pick her if she gets “Houseguest’s Choice” when they pick players. Vanessa says that in return, she’ll take Shelli off the block and keep them both safe. She goes and tells Steve of the deal she made with Shelli and offers him the same exact deal. In countless ways: It’s fair. People in this house might assume Vanessa is a loose cannon with a dirty game-play, but she’s proven to be a good deal maker. Both Shelli and Steve are hesitantly on board with this plan. But when Shelli talks to Johnny Mac about what to do, he says to give him the “Houseguest Choice” so that he can play in the POV. Shelli weighs over this, but when it’s time to name players, she gets the token she hoped she wouldn’t get stuck with: “Houseguest Choice” and is forced to go with her gut. She chooses Vanessa to play. Johnny Mac goes and asks her why she did that after the meeting and she says her back was up against a wall-if she didn’t pick Vanessa, she would know something is up. And something is totally up. The house has a massive plan to backdoor Vanessa and so far, she isn’t catching onto it.

In the POV comp, “BB Comics,” houseguests must ride a zipline across a window where they have to memorize not only the order of their own faces on each comic poster, but also the differences, as there are two posters each in their bin-one correct and one incorrect. In the end, Steve masters the hell out of this competition and wins. Vanessa goes to James and asks him what Becky plans to do with the replacement nominee and James tells her to go talk to her-probably not the best idea. Becky lies through her teeth and says she won’t put Vanessa up. Later, she laughs some more with the other houseguests about how she just faked it, “Yeah, girl, I got you,” she says, relaying how she played cool with Vanessa. Steve takes himself off the block and forces Becky to put up a replacement-shocker. The girl is giddy over how easily her plan is working. She puts Vanessa up in the replacement seat and tells her that she’s a dirty player who is not good on her word, who has had a hand in every single eviction, and isn’t to be trusted. Shocked, Vanessa walks away from the ceremony and hides out in her bed.

THURSDAY: Live DOUBLE Eviction

It’s a very special double eviction episode this fine Thursday night, which means that not one, but two houseguests will be leaving, and headed to the Jury House. Jury is a collection of houseguests who from this point on, were evicted from the BB house and will remain in Jury until the final episode. They still have a chance to come back in the game—well, one of them does, so Jury isn’t totally terrible. What we know going into this eviction night is that Vanessa just might go home, and that’s scary. But, as per usual, we get a tiny glimpse into the past few scheming days and hours leading up to the eviction, with Vanessa grappling to understand how she became a BD (backdoor) target, and why Becky had such harsh words for her.

In an attempt to get through to Becky, Vanessa asks her straight up: “What was all of that about?” Becky says she’s going to shut this conversation down and stop it right here, unwilling to explain to Vanessa her motives. Vanessa tells her she’s cold-hearted, which feels like a way more accurate description than Becky’s self-proclamation of being “basic.” Becky ain’t basic, she’s just out for blood and now Vanessa knows it.

Freaked out by the change in atmosphere, Vanessa confides in Steve that she’s scared. Steve says she can’t rely on his vote because he doesn’t know how to cover it without everyone coming after him for going against the house. Vanessa doesn’t think that’s a good enough excuse and she’s pissed-this is supposed to be her biggest ally. She decides to go and talk to James again, because in the past, she and James have had an open line of communication and he’s typically receptive to her deals. In the bathroom, she tells him that this is super twisted because Becky is showing her true colors, as someone who is willing to make huge waves, and make no apologies for it. She brings up some former #SixthSense secrets she feels James needs to know about: Like how last week, when James said he was going to put up Clay and Shelli, Becky immediately ran to them to tell them to “act so nice” and “be cool” the whole week because this is what he was up to. James shakes his head and mutters, “Oh, Becky…” It seems to be dawning on him that Becky is way more manipulative than he even realized-he takes his apprehensions back to Jackie and Meg, and they agree that Shelli still remains the most dangerous person to keep in the house.

Not knowing how anyone feels, we go straight into the live eviction led by Julie Chen. Vanessa’s eviction speech is poetic as fuck. And, bonus, she gives a super cute shout out to her girlfriend, Mel. Everyone begins to vote one-by-one. OH MY GOD, they’re all voting SHELLI out. It’s one of those historic BB moments in the making: a true shocker on eviction night. When the votes come in though, Shelli seems to already know her fate-smiling and nodding her head. Becky and Johnny Mac look the most pissed off they’ve ever looked. Julie immediately tells them get ready for the HOH competition, because on Double Eviction nights, what happens now is they play an entire week of BB in like, 25 minutes: HOH, POV, and another eviction. Whoa, you guys. My hands are sweating just thinking about how intense this moment is for everyone.

In the HOH competition, our boy Steve wins, but he doesn’t look totally pleased to be in the hot seat. In a rush, he nominates Jackie and Meg for eviction. Shocked, the two girls take their seats. At home, my girlfriend and I are like: Oh, maybe he’s hoping someone will pull one of them off POV because they’re just floaters and well liked by their alliance, so, if someone pulls one off, he can put up his arch nemesis, Becky! The plan feels solid, but then in the POV comp immediately following, Johnny Mac wins the veto. We can see him and Steve having a brief chat in one of the side rooms right after-but it looks like Johnny Mac is shaking his head, “No.” It’s unclear if Steve is asking him to use the veto to take someone off the block, or if he’s telling him to keep it the same. Either way, Johnny Mac has to know that if he does pull one of the girls off, someone will go up and it probably won’t be Vanessa, it’ll probably be his biggest ally, Becky.

That said, when it comes time to use or not use the Veto, Johnny Mac keeps it for himself and a very shocked Meg and Jackie remain on the block. During voting, all but one houseguest vote to evict Jackie. She’ll join Shelli in the Jury House now. Meanwhile, the episode ends-and a very defeated looking Becky hangs her head in shock. Not only did her plan not work, it completely backfired and the girl she was sure was set to leave is still in the house with her. That’s right, another lesbian on TV lives to see another day. Our girl can’t be “killed off” that easily.

So, what’s next? The single-handed most important HOH competition of the summer: This Sunday! Tune in at 8/7 c and tweet me @the_hoff using #TeamVanessa!

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button