Big Brother Recap: Week One
Kristina Carroll ’16/ Emertainment Monthly Editor
A lot has happened in the Big Brother house in just one week. We left off with alliances, friendships, and even a few showmances beginning to form. Now, not only has the social activity of the BB house picked up, but so has the tension. And of course, we are one houseguest shorter. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s start from where we left off last week–with McCrae winning HOH.
McCrae spends a lot of time struggling to decide which two people he should nominate this week. Should he make a big move early in the game and nominate two big players, or should he avoid drama and make himself less of a target by putting up smaller players? His alliance, which consists of himself, Nick, Howard, Jeremy, and Spencer, initially encourage him to put up Elissa. Everyone in the house has basically figured out that she is Rachel’s sister, one of Big Brother’s most legendary players, and therefore consider her to be a huge threat. However, he decides to put up Jessie and Candice, because they’re two of the least-liked women in the house. He also considers the possibility of backdooring Elissa if one of the two girls wins the Power of Veto.
But wait…we’re forgetting something: the BBMVP. This week, the MVP goes to Elissa (surprise, surprise), giving her the power to anonymously nominate yet another person for eviction. She chooses to put up David (the blonde surfer dude), because his physical strength is a serious threat to the other competitors. Even though she is given the option to remain anonymous, she stupidly tells McCrae that she’s MVP (in a desperate attempt to avoid being nominated herself). This causes him to spread the word around to several other houseguests.
Before the POV competition, the houseguests compete in a Have/Have Not competition. The losing team in this competition become Have-Nots, and are forced to conform to a strict diet consisting of slop and two other mystery (usually very disgusting) foods, sleep in a terribly uncomfortable room, and take cold showers for an entire week. This week’s comp involved three teams, and they had to take turns running through a sticky pool of honey, in order to grab a block and make a tower. However, the other teammates had to hold the platform that the tower is built on, and the slightest move led to the tower tipping over. The losing team this week was Howard, Andy, Judd, Elissa, and Helen. The Have-Not room this year is also amazing, as it is designed to look like an airplane, with airplane seats for beds. In my opinion, Big Brother went above and beyond this year in making the Have Not experience the most torturous it has ever been in BB history.
And now on to the POV competition. Only a select few compete in this competition, and fight to win the Power of Veto, or the power to take oneself (or another) off of the chopping block. The competitors were the three nominees, the HOH, and one random houseguest, which ended up being Elissa. The competition was one of BB’s classic games. They had to run into a swamp-like area and pop “blueberries”. Each berry had a letter inside, and the houseguests were told to attempt to spell the longest word they could with the letters in a limited amount of time. At the end of the competition, David failed to spell anything (boy, he’s dumber than I thought), Elissa was disqualified for spelling “potroasts” as one word (also not the sharpest tool in the shed), and McCrae won with the word “delivery”. Looks like being a pizza delivery boy pays off in the Big Brother House.
Because McCrae won again, he has the power to keep his nominations the same, or replace one of his nominees with another. Throughout the week, McCrae is set on the idea of backdooring Elissa. However, at one point Nick approaches him and tells him that it might be a good idea to leave Elissa alone and focus on evicting David this week, seeing as he is the bigger threat to their alliance, the “Moving Company”. Ultimately, though, McCrae decides to stick with the plan of backdooring Elissa, and uses the veto on Candice. But in the diary room he lets America know that his plan is to get David out of the house. The only reason Elissa is being backdoored is so that the rest of the house doesn’t get mad at him for keeping her in the game. In my opinion, this is an extremely smart move, because McCrae now has virtually no enemies in the house.
And in the latest episode of BB, we see David become this season’s first evicted houseguest, with 7 votes against him. Sadly, it seems like the only person who will miss him is Aaryn, with whom he had a very brief showmance. However, after talking to Julie Chen upon his eviction, he told her that he’s a beach guy who needs to be outdoors, and that the BB house wasn’t really for him. He also commented that he came into the house looking for romance, and Aaryn is definitely someone he’d be interested in starting a relationship with. So…keep an eye out for more BB romance in the future!
The live episode ended with the houseguests starting their second HOH competition of the season. This week’s competition consists of the houseguests traveling back and forth down a slippery bowling alley-type path, while filling up a big jug with a measuring cup. This competition is another BB classic, but this season the show has put a new twist on it, by dividing the houseguests into pairs. The pair that fills up their jug first must then decide amongst themselves which one of them will be the next HOH. This is definitely something that has never been seen before, so it will be really interesting to see how it goes. Will there be drama? I certainly hope so. Unfortunately, though, we have to wait until the next episode to see who wins!