Big Brother Recap: Weeks Three and Four

Kristina Carroll ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Editor
It’s been two weeks since my last recap of Big Brother, and power has shifted quite a few times.  This season’s biggest alliance so far (The Moving Company) crumbled after its members voted to evict their leader Nick, and since then several new ones have formed in its place.  And of course, there has been a lot of drama.  Now, we are down to 12 houseguests, and tension is rising as each one fights for the $500,000 prize.  So now let’s take it back to two weeks ago, when Nick was (shockingly) evicted from the BB house.
Helen and Elissa were ecstatic that their plan to evict the men of the house was starting to come through.  However, some houseguests were not so thrilled about Nick’s elimination.  Jeremy, Kaitlin, and Aaryn were all upset that they lost a friend, but there was one houseguest who was more than just a little upset. And that houseguest was….drumroll please…..GinaMarie.  She has been obsessed with Nick since day one, and despite the fact that he was completely uninterested and even mildly creeped out by her persistence, she still stalked him 24/7.  After Nick’s departure from the show, GinaMarie began sobbing uncontrollably.  Since then she has collected various items throughout the house that once belonged to Nick, and has created a shrine in his memory.  So this is what being locked inside for an entire summer does to people, huh?
For that week’s HOH competition, “Overnight Delivery”, houseguests had to answer questions about objects that they witnessed come through on a conveyor belt the previous night.  The hard part was that the conveyor belt went off at random times throughout the night, so houseguests were very sleep-deprived.  Helen ended up winning the competition, creating a complete shift in power from last week!  Look’s like the “Mom Squad” is gaining momentum.
At first, Helen wants to stick to her plan of creating an all-women household, and strongly considers targeting Howard for the next week’s eviction.  Her desire to send Howard packing is only strengthened when she learns from McCrae that he was part of “The Moving Company”.  She confronts Howard and gives him an opportunity to come clean about everything that he’s been hiding from her.  Although he mentions some things, such as voting to keep Nick, he fails to say anything about the Moving Company.  This makes Helen realize that Howard can’t be trusted as much as she thought he could.  At this point in the week it seems like Howard is definitely going home.
However, things take an interesting turn later on in the week.  Aaryn has definitely become the main source of drama in the BB house this summer, and as time goes on she seems to be getting into more and more trouble with the other houseguests.  Her main problem is that she continuously makes racially discriminatory marks about other houseguests, specifically Helen, Howard, and Candice.  At one point she even flips Candice’s mattress onto the floor, solely for the point of causing trouble.  Helen realizes the animosity that the entire house has against Aaryn, and sees this as an important thing to consider.  Ultimately, she nominates her and her ally Kaitlin, still considering the possibility of backdooring on of the men.
And once again, Elissa won the MVP.  In my opinion, at this point the MVP is completely useless.  I really don’t understand America’s obsession with Elissa.  I feel like the show would be much more interesting if they gave it to somebody else for a change!
Elissa ends up nominating Spencer, despite a desperate attempt from Amanda and McCrae to get her to nominate Howard.  And at this point, Helen has decided that she will go through with her plan to backdoor Jeremy.  She even lets Kaitlin, who had a showmance with Jeremy, know that she intended for him to leave this week.  Upon hearing this news, Kaitlin becomes extremely upset.  She even suggests that if she wins the POV, she could refuse to use it so that the houseguests have no choice but to evict Aaryn.
The POV competition, called “Keeping Up with the Jones’s”, involved houseguests jumping on a trampoline to look over a wall at another wall of paintings.  They then had to create an identical wall of paintings on their side.  The player who created this wall in the shortest amount of time was the winner.
And the winner of this competition is…Kaitlin!
Although Kaitlin was previously set on the idea of not using the Veto, she realizes that if she does this, the house might evict her simply because she made a stupid decision.  Therefore, she decides to sacrifice her showmance and takes herself off of the block.  I was very happy with this decision, because she came her to play a game…not to have a showmance.  And Jeremy definitely would have chosen to use the veto on himself if the roles had been reversed.
So with a vote of 9-1-0, Jeremy becomes the next evicted houseguest of the summer, and the Mom Squad is one step closer to reaching their goal.  The houseguests immediately set off to play the next HOH competition.  This competition, “Big Brother Royalty” was a question-style game.  Houseguests were given two houseguests names, and a “royal title”.  They were then asked to determine which houseguest America voted to be more deserving of the title.
The results of this competition made me ecstatic.  Why?  Because Judd wins HOH!  He has become one of my favorite players, because I feel like he is completely underestimated in terms of his intelligence.  And he’s also just plain adorable…
Judd makes a pretty smart decision with his nominations.  He decides to put up “The Mean Girls” (Kaitlin and Aaryn) once again.  This way, he’s not starting any drama, and at the same time is staying true to his alliance.  He also has the support of basically the entire house, because everybody is so fed up with their behavior.
I’m pretty sure the producers of Big Brother caught on to the fact that the BBMVP has become somewhat of a fail, because for this week they have turned it over to America.  And of course, given the chance to nominate any of the houseguests, America obviously chose Aaryn.  But since she is already nominated, the second most popular vote becomes the third nominee.  In this case, it is Elissa.  This completely baffles me.  How could America want her to be the next nominee if they’ve been voting for her as MVP for the past three weeks???  The rest of the house is also shocked that she has been chosen, and even suspects that she has nominated herself as a way of making people think that she isn’t the MVP.
The veto competition for this week is one of my favorite types of competitions.  Houseguests have to crawl through mud and collect tiles, each with a different number of points on them.  They are only allowed to keep four tiles, so they must choose wisely and attempt to collect the highest amount of points.  However, the best tiles also come with punishments, so they must decide if they’re willing to accept a punishment in return for the Veto.  At the end of the competition, McCrae ends up essentially throwing the competition and winning $5,000, Judd lands himself in 24-hour solitary confinement, and Elissa wins!  However, the catch is that she isn’t allowed to play in next weeks POV competition.
Because Elissa was America’s choice for nominee, the replacement nominee also falls in America’s hands, which means that Ginamarie takes the hot seat.
Ultimately, the houseguests decide that although Aaryn is a nightmare to live with, keeping her in the game will also keep the targets off of their backs.  Therefore, with a vote of 9-0-0, Kaitlin is sent packing.
And right when you think that Helen and Elissa have completely taken over the game, the power takes another sharp turn in the complete opposite direction, with Aaryn winning the HOH competition for this next week.  So what does that mean?  I’m guessing that Helen and Elissa are going to be her main targets.  But who knows?  Something huge could happen this week that makes Aaryn change her priorities.  After all, the Big Brother slogan is “Expect the Unexpected.”