by David McAlpine

Previously on Big Brother 11, Jessie and the Athletes took hold of the house in the HoH competition. Jessie wanted to target Laura, but Russell instead pointed him towards Lydia. Ronnie formed an alliance between the Athletes and the Brains and prompted Jessie to put Chima up as a pawn.

Chima is totally okay with being up, which shows just how naïve she is, while Lydia is really upset. Everyone seems to be shocked, though I don’t know why because two people had to go up. I can see why she’d be upset, because she did make a connection with Jessie, and it seems like everyone is ready to boot out Chima, because they’re all rallying around Lydia. Chima, eavesdropping from the outside, finally realizes that being a pawn isn’t the best idea.

Chima is worried that because Jeff and Jordan are close, they’ll be able to swing a majority of the house. Ronnie assures her that, since he’s a national champion for persuasive speaking, he’ll be able to figure something out. Wow, Ronnie, that’s a real big trick you’ve got up your sleeve. I have to give him props for confidence, though.

Meanwhile, Laura knows she escaped a bullet, and she’s upset that she thinks people may be targeting her…because of her breasts. I really hope that Laura is just playing dumb, because I had higher hopes for that. The Athletes realize that Jeff may not be on their side and, even worse, the chips may be stacked against them come next week. (Sidenote: I’m a fan of Jeff for repping Chicago, but if he wears any more UCLA gear, my fan status will be questionable.) So, Russell scoops up Laura and, in an all-too-desperate move, Jessie throws himself, Russell and Natalie at her. Laura let’s them know that she’s down, but she’s not going to make a move that will screw her over later on. Now this is the Laura I love, and the one I think can win this game.

Cue a pointless montage about Braden. Is he the pretty boy from California, or is he just a really personable guy? Well, CBS says he’s both, so I guess we’ll have to take it for what it’s worth. When it comes time to pick players for the veto, Lydia doesn’t want any of the Athletes to play. And, of course, Jessie picks Russell, Chima picks Natalie via “Houseguest’s Choice,” and Lydia picks Jeff—all the Athletes are playing! And Casey gets the first hosting gig of the season.

Everyone heads out to the backyard where there’s a giant face, complete with zits and acne cream. Gross. Each houseguest has 10 minutes to pop as many giant zits as possible, where they can collect one tile each with a letter on both sides. Within that 10 minutes, they must spell the longest word they can with their tiles and the houseguest with the longest word wins the Power of Veto. Lydia tries to get the tiles to spell civilization, while Chima wants to spell superficiality, both of which are words that have more letters that one could probably collect in the challenge. Jeff, on the other hand, admits he can’t spell and just doesn’t want to embarrass himself.

Jessie finishes first, followed by Russell, Natalie, Jeff (who doesn’t think his is even a word), then Chima and Lydia. Looking at how many letters some of them collected, I guess I was wrong about how long of a word they could get, but I still wondered how far Chima’s “expansive vocabulary” would get her. The words are:

Jessie: CONTINOUSLY (spelled wrong)
Natalie: LAST (4 letters, insert bad pun from Ronnie about how it’s the “last” word he would think of)
Chima: SUPER IALITY (incomplete word)
Russell: SHOTGUN (7 letters)
Jeff: TECTRONICS (wrong, he meant it to be “technotronics,” which I still don’t think is a word)
Lydia: CI ILIZATION (incomplete word)

So, Russell wins the veto competition and everyone makes their generic comments about how the Athletes rule the house just like they ruled high school. Russell thinks Jeff threw the competition, or he’s just dumb as a rock, both of which make him useless to the Athletes. Jeff, meanwhile, is flirting with Jordan, and I’m not going to lie, they make a really cute, clueless couple.

Further promoting stereotypes of athletes, Russell goes on an ego-induced rage over Jeff seemingly defecting from his own clique by trying to embarrass him in front of the rest of the house. Instead, I think Russell just comes off as an asshole and I genuinely feel sorry for Jeff. So the guy can’t spell, at least he’s nice about it. And Jeff makes a good point: all Russell did was spell shotgun. Then Natalie tries to back up Russell, which doesn’t really make sense. She’s saying that Jeff is isolating himself, yet they never really tried to talk to him, either. It really does seem like this is Stereotype High up in this house.

Lydia starts sucking up to Russell, and he spills to her that Jessie and Natalie wanted her up, not him. You can see the wheels turning in Lydia’s head, because she knows she’s already getting to Russell. Lydia heads up to the HoH room to talk to Jessie, then she gets ballsy and confronts Natalie. They all make up (at least for now), but it’s clear to Lydia that she’s in a much better position.

So, Lydia uses her newfound in to turn the spotlight onto someone else. Her target? Braden. I don’t necessarily get why she targets him, but the caveman train jumps on board. Russell relays the information to Ronnie, who is starting to realize he may have aligned with a sinking ship come next week. So, Ronnie tattles the plan so he can cover his tracks, letting Braden know about what’s going on. Master strategy: your alliance sucks so you decide to risk letting the whole house know you can’t keep a secret. That’s a winner right there.

And it gets even better when Russell confronts Ronnie about it. Ronnie may be a good persuasive speaker, but a liar he is not. Russell and Jessie begin to put the pieces together, and it looks like Ronnie might be the one in hot water now. The ceremony rolls around and Russell vetoes Lydia, prompting Jessie to put up Braden, for which I still don’t understand the reasoning.

Tune in to Big Brother 11 on CBS, Thursday at 8/7c to see if Braden or Chima is evicted and which houseguest will be crowned the new Head of Household!

(Image courtesy of CBS)

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