by David McAlpine

Last time on Big Brother 11, Ronnie, the ultimate middle man, won Head of Household. He waffled between the two sides of the house, trying to reassure each side that he voted with them at the previous eviction. Eventually, Jeff, Laura, Jordan, Casey and Michele called him out on being the stray vote and made a last minute plea to keep their group off the block. Ronnie, however, didn’t take any chances and nominated Laura and Jeff under the premise of backdooring Russell.

Laura is pissed that she is nominated, but, like the player I knew she was, she’s ready to compete for veto and hopefully get the spotlight on someone else. Jeff doesn’t seem so concerned, but I wouldn’t be if I were him, either, because Laura is definitely the one with the bullseye on her back this week.

Ronnie continues his “mastermind” stunt by telling Laura and Jeff he has a “master plan” (we’ve heard this how many times now?) and that, if he has his way, Russell will be going home on Thursday. Right, Ronnie, you have all the cards in your hand right now.

Randomly, Russell starts to get irritated with the game and how hard people are playing it, so he snaps on Lydia. Cue Lydia crying in the Diary Room about someone making something personal, and now she’s all of a sudden gung ho on backdooring Russell. Sudden and highly edited, but welcomed nonetheless. Anything to save Laura or Jeff at this point is fine with me.

Instead of showing us the good stuff, we find out that Jordan doesn’t know how to tell time on a clock. But she’s still cute as a button, so it really doesn’t matter, right? Power to America’s alliance of the season!

Casey and Chima get to share some alone time in the HoH room for their sneak preview of “The Ugly Truth.” Casey seems to enjoy the movie, but Chima is all over Gerard Butler. At least close your mouth, girl!

Laura repeats what Lydia said last week: “I hope that Russell, Jessie and Natalie don’t play in the veto.” Lo and behold, Ronnie picks Russell, Laura picks Natalie and Jeff picks Casey. Two for three, but still, the Athletes have an uncanny way of finding themselves in the veto competitions.

For this week’s veto competition, the houseguests are getting tested on their ability to count change. Each round, the houseguests will be given an amount of dollars to collect in a specific type of change and the contestant farthest from the actual dollar amount will be eliminated. In addition, the houseguest closest to the dollar amount could choose to eliminate themselves in exchange for picking a bag which could contain $5,000, a slop pass, or nothing.

In the first round, the players had to collect $100 in quarters. Natalie almost loses by being more than $400 over (which is over 1,500 extra quarters), but then Ronnie is $500+ off, which looks like he threw it to me! And no matter how much he says he didn’t throw it, I don’t believe Ronnie. The next round is $75 in dimes and Laura goes $200+ over, putting her out next. $40 in nickels is the third round and Casey is eliminated, while Natalie wins. Natalie decides she doesn’t need the veto and takes a bag, which turns out to be the slop pass.

It’s down to Russell and Jeff, who have to collect $10 in pennies. Russell collects $8.59 and Jeff collects $10.97, which means Jeff wins the power of veto this week!

Enter phase two of Ronnie’s “master plan,” where he starts seriously talking to Laura and Jeff about backdooring Russell. Laura agrees to not target any of them if she wins HoH (of course), and then Ronnie moves on to seek approval from his pretend-bff jocks, Jessie and Natalie. They do the whole, “we’ll go with it, but we don’t agree” thing, but it’s clear that Ronnie is balking at the potential backlash of the Athletes.

At the veto ceremony, Jeff saves himself (no surprise there), but surprisingly without a speech from Laura. Editing note: apparently she had a lot to say about Ronnie and the producers felt it was ok to drop. It doesn’t matter, though, because Thursday’s episode will make up for all of it, I guarantee it. Ronnie, the “mastermind with a master plan,” decides to go back on his plan, wimps out and puts up Jordan, setting us up for an interesting eviction.

Sidenote: for everyone who does not have the feeds and/or hasn’t seen what’s been happening in the Big Brother house post-veto, I highly suggest you spoil it for yourself anyway by poking around on forums or YouTube, because the sheer amount of usable tape they have is well over the show’s length on Thursday.

Tune in to Big Brother 11 on Thursday at 8/7c on CBS to see if Laura or Jordan gets evicted and which houseguest will become the new Head of Household!

(Image courtesy of CBS and RealPlayer)

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