Halting Hex

That's it? Yeesh, I thought it would be something severely awful, from the way it was being talked about. Not that it merits a Good Conduct Medal, but I was expecting Stoning Offenses.

Sigh. So Bowie doesn't have the Big Girl Pants to tell Jag she won't let him use the Veto, and if he uses it, Matt goes out and up. She feels bound by an "alliance" that won't respect her wishes. That's your clue that it's not an actual alliance, Sheila! She rightly sees that the Cory v. Cameron anti-podal set-up protects her and tampering with it harms her game. And that the "Sisters" gain power the longer they stay, that they not only dumped her in the Red eviction but worked to set her up as a target. She needs Felicia gone, but she's too chicken to stand up to Jag and Matt. I understand, there's little point about expecting someone who runs around muttering about the dreaded "Blood on My Hands" to play hardball, but still. This removes an active player and just lets the Turds, er, Sisters (Sisturds?) keep on floating to the end. (Rachel Reilly must be deeply annoyed.) And Cam is probably very, very dead. I can't help but think that delaying showing the Veto Ceremony indicates that Cam has been nominated, there's not even a sliver of chance that the vote will flip and so production is working to be sure they don't have to schedule any more than a token "campaign" segment for Thursday. Bummer. One last Steve Miller Band song for the Space Cowboy? Yeah, why not? Here's a little something for Cam in his dark hour: Co-written by Paul McCartney (who plays drums and does the backing vocals). Steve's first producer was Glyn Johns, the Beatles' recording engineer. In March of 1969, he was at Apple Studios looking to grab some time with Glyn when the Beatles had a large fight and pretty much broke up (temporarily), with John/George/Ringo walking out and leaving Paul alone. So this is what was on his mind, at the moment.

I'm all in favor of Bowie Jane's noms, but it is looking as though she herself will have to win the Veto to protect them. The unnominated six players are all looking create their preferred backdoor, who would be voted out to protect the remaining pawn. The only way I can see Bowie Jane not being pushed where she (and I) don't want to go is for her to threaten any Veto holder that their "partner" gets put up. Tell America she would put up Cory, tell Cameron she'd put up Blue, tell Matt/Jag she'd put up the other one. She would have to go completely hard ball, and I don't know if she wants to damage her relationships that way. But I need her to. Think about me, won't you? (I saw the episode live on Sunday. I'm just slacking. Sorry.)

Oh, okay, good. I saw it was gone last night and the next two weeks, but I hadn't thought of a month-long promotion. Thanks.

MeTV has apparently pulled the series from its schedule. A pity, I was looking forward to building a nice little DVR collection. (Yes, very dated, I know. But I've nearly reached the point where never having paid a single quatloo for streaming is a point of pride, and I like being able to see the eps on the big screen without digging out the DVDs. Ah, well.)

Yoicks! I have zero interest in DwtS, but can I resist Aly's wily Willow charms?

Your lips to Lorde's ears. I can't tell you how less-than-thrilled I am to have two "I'm old and useless, so I should get a free pass" lumps trying to slide to the end. (Never mind that Mecole had won as many challenges as I have, while Felicia has not only been HoH, but is a greater threat now that questions comps will play a larger part in the game.) And the sight of CBS running "Cirie vows revenge on Cory!" ads all over the place doesn't exactly make me confident about Grod keeping her grubby paws off of the wheel, either. OTOH, this week is scheduled to go this way Last Thursday-HoH Sunday-Nominations Tuesday-Veto Thursday-Eviction No TBC HoH comp, and hopefully no "dramatic reveal" delay of airing the Veto Ceremony. The classic schedule, back from the dead. (I also much prefer Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday to having Wednesday in the mix.) Huh.

Lol, okay. Certainly a lot of possibilities there. I'm sorry to lose focus on Our Little Patriot quizzing Cory about the Constitution, though. And what is the southernmost land-locked country? Paraguay, right? Unless it's Botswana or Lesotho, but I think South America is farther south than Africa.

I understand that there are logical reasons for either continuing to target Felicia or switching to Cory. Personally, I'm on the "stay focused" side. As two people in a House of 10, AmeriCory really don't pose a threat of numbers as yet. And with Felicia painting a nice big target on Cory's back, I'm not sure it makes sense to get rid of a possible shield this early. But most of all, I think it would be great if Felicia ended up leaving the House because she wandered out of the "house" during the Veto comp. I'll take my cheap irony where I can get it.

Waaaay late, but it's worth pausing the new ep to get this up. Never change, Buffy. *************** I obviously don't like Cam giving Cirie a pass (and I have to worry about helpful whispers from the DR), but if he thinks Felicia would be the more-bitter juror, that's a valid concern. (She is 10 years older than Cirie and perhaps more likely to stand firm against him.) And he would be splitting the FeFeMeMe pair (and their possible 4 with "AmeriCory"), whereas Cirie is, for the moment, somewhat isolated. That said, meh. ************* Hey, if Jared begged Cameron to protect Cirie, did he give a reason for that? (Rather than asking Cam to protect, say, Blue. She was "Poo" 's showmance after all.) Does Cam now know the Fields Family Secret? Might have helped to show that convo, Grodner.

Sooooo…did we really need to know that America was given Cory his "birthday present" in the shower? Yes, sex happens in the house, but the show is rarely so prurient as to get explicit about it. (IIRC—and the Brain Bleach makes it difficult—in S21 they showed Anal-Ease going to the HoH to visit Jack, but not that they were making a specific use of the HoH shower. [Or that they had a schedule to avoid running into Jackson and Holly there]) [Sleazy pun] Clayton (announcer guy) can also suck it, overdoing the "Transylvanian accent" in the recap [/pun]. A little of that goes a long way. I was pleasantly surprised by the limited screentime given Cirie this episode. It seemed as if she barely said two words. ("Slow" and "down" specifically.) I even sort of felt bad for her, when Felicia and Mecole (I think I'll call them "FeFeMeMe") were there while Jared was crying over his failure. I imagined that she was fighting not to snap "get out of here and let me comfort my son in private!" Yes, that's her getting hoist on the petard of her Unfair Advantage, but even so. Nice one with Matt spotting Cory using his hand to block the lip-reading, and realizing what that meant. Yeah, guess what, Boy Wonder…you aren't the first to think up that one. So is it going to be 4/5 of The Handful ("Tingers") v. Comerica and FeFeMeMe? Not bad, but let's keep Cirie off the Jury first, okay? (Btw, the fact that Julie did not say "you have all made Jury" to the 10 HGs at the end should dispel any fears of a Final 3. Julie did specify a seven person Jury after Izzy's eviction.) If Cory had had a, er, vocal response to his showmance's shower-ing of attention, would that qualify as a "Song for America"? Kansas may be down to two original members (Rich Williams, guitar; Phil Ehart, drums) in the sextet, but Ronnie Platt (vocals), Billy Greer (bass), and Tom Brislin (keyboards) have enough time in the band to qualify as legacies, I think. (Sorry to lose Dave Ragsdale on the violin to retirement, but the new guy seems capable.) They're currently on tour, and will be in Montgomery and I think Charlotte this month. Not exactly around the corner, but a possibility. (Why can't we have decent Amtrak service in the South? You can't get anywhere and the one train per day arrives in the middle of the night. I miss the Boston-Washington corridor. If Kansas was in Baltimore and I was in the NY area, it'd be two trains and done. Grr!)

Obvious error in 1.08. Grandma doesn't want to watch the NBA All-Star Game and suggests watching Dynasty instead. 1) It's the afternoon in Los Angeles (Pacific Time). Notice all the sunshine coming through the window. There's no prime-time programs on other networks for hours and hours. 2) This is 1980. Dynasty doesn't premiere until 1981. Gammy might be following the exciting 3rd season of Dallas, culminating in the famous cliff-hanger. But as both Dallas and the NBA were on CBS, switching channels isn't really an option. She's probably just hallucinating, but still. (The obvious error in 1.07 was that "Johnny Most" was nowhere near drunk enough.) Salacious side-bar under the spoiler

I enjoy seeing Queen Cirie's game go to shit, even if it means we have to endure her "paw-paw-PAW Suh-Wee feels so all a-WOAN!" DRs. It just sucks that unless she follows Jared out the door next week, she makes Jury and probably slides a bit farther. NGL, since IMO Grodner made racial politics an explicit part of the game two seasons ago, I've been worrying that some of the fandom is bemoaning the current house split as "those evil RACIST White People are ganging up on Cirie and her friends, just because they're black!" (Never mind that the "white" "alliance" includes a Latina, a Korean-American, and a Sikh…) Whereas IMO the reason Cirie's group lacks diversity is that Grodner preselected her closest allies (her son and the other "older woman" in the house*) to be black as well, leading to this result. (*-in fact, at age 53, Cirie is closer to Bowie Jane [45] than to Felicia [63], but I'm still rather certain that Felicia is the one cast to ally with Cirie.) At the moment, 1/8 of the US population is being represented by 4/11 of the cast, yet I still have to worry that the HGs' possible fear of being attacked for being a "white oppressor" may keep them from giving Cirie the boot I've been itching to for her to get since Night 1. Thanks, Grodner! JMGrrrrrr.

"Holy shit!" "Holy shit!" "Holy shit!" "Holy shit!" "Holy shit!", "Holy shit!", "Holy shit!" That was me watching episode 1x06 (I don't have HBO and am only now catching up on downloading) when "Prove Your Love" came on during the scene where Westhead is sitting with the comatose McKinney in the hospital, right before Westhead's first game as interim coach. I mean, nobody knows "Prove Your Love". You don't even know it's a Fleetwood Mac song. It wasn't a single, and FM have literally never played it live. I only discovered it this year. (Nowadays I'm so annoyed by how Mick Fleetwood has tried to bury the Bob Welch-era Mac records, that I'm starting to hate on Stevie Nicks just for revenge. And I know that Stevie and Lindsay Buckingham made some excellent records for the group, leading to riches and glory. But my love of the underdog gets my back up about how Mick just wants to delete the struggles between the early Peter Green-era hits [in 1969, Fleetwood Mac sold more records in the UK than anyone else…Beatles Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin, the Mac beat them all] and the Rumours mega-success. While I think that Christine McVie and Welch [and others] made the best music in the catalogue.) Since then, I've been trying to get music reactors to listen to the song, give it the audience it deserves. (Ken Barnes of Rolling Stone did call it "exquisitely pretty", after all.) No luck at all. (I did get somebody to listen to the tune that precedes it in the episode, "Dear Mr. Fantasy" by Traffic…but that's a very different matter, as the millions who saw Avengers: Endgame could tell you.) And yet, here is "Prove Your Love" coming right out of nowhere. Wow. Big ups to the music department. (There must be a Christine Perfect McVie fan on the staff; "I'd Rather Go Blind" [the Etta James classic that plays as Magic strays with Cindy Day] was a staple of Christine's act, going back to her days in Chicken Shack.) Sorry to see the series go. I was looking forward to seeing Westhead at Loyola-Marymount, naturally. (Remember, it was Tarkanian and UNLV who ended that Cinderella story.) Ah, well. Maybe Showtime will pick it up? For obvious branding reasons, if nothing else. (No idea if the series will get into the Magic/Isiah rumors. But if they do, I hope somebody asks Stormin' Norman about the tales of his wife Debbie Allen, er, "mentoring" a whole bunch of young actresses in the cast of "A Different World". Fair's fair, right?)

The Zombie Week was planned long ago. That's why there is no Veto episode this week. LMAO! To quote the eminent Prof. Wayne Campbell, "Sheee-uhh, yeah! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!" The odds of Cirie winning any Veto are nearly infinitesimal, but especially not this one. DE Vetos tend to be very physical and very fast. And Cory knows this, which is why he was IMO rightly concerned about Blue playing spoiler. Cirie, not so much. Taran is twisting the facts here. Somebody will be going home on Thursday, which will make it 3 evictions (Red, Izzy, and TBD) in 5 weeks. That's not too much of a stretch, I wouldn't say. Entirely true. And entirely irrelevant. A large section of the online fandom would be likely to come after anyone who made a false claim about two black people looking alike, and the players know that. Now in this case, it isn't a false claim, since Jared is indeed Cirie's son. But the players don't know that as certainly as we do (except for Blue, and she's still mostly guessing). So I can see their being rather hesitant to follow in Kyle's (perceived) footsteps. JMO

Someone needs to tell Julie that the OG Charlie's Angels has been off the air for over 40 years. There's no point in trying to take Kate Jackson's spot any more.

You don't, but if that's the worst memory lapse you have this week you'll be doing better than i. When they first brought an evicted HG back in BB3 , an "Operation Revolving Door" was proposed, but only because it was obvious that outgoing HoH Chiara and her showmance Roddy were about to hit the block, so everyone else ignored Roddy's idea and returnee Amy lasted until the F4, instead. It was Kaysar in Season 6 who was immediately re-evicted on his (fan-voted) return, but he made a number of errors to seal his fate. (And I am not simply referring to his conceding the Pressure Cooker, but that's a longer discussion.) Other immediate re-evictions include Brendon in S14 and Scottie in S20 and I'm sure I missed a few. But Amy was not one of them.

So now we know why there is no Veto Episode on Wednesday…there is no Veto. Sensible. I will be watching the Live Feeds, which I do rarely, since I dislike being spoiled for competitions before they air. But with no comps, it is scheme and scheme away time. Will Jared and Cameron have a battleback, or will it be a House Vote? I vote for Battleback, since just waiting for the New Handful (America, Blue, Cory, Jag and Matt) to decide has a good chance of being seriously boring. But we will see.

Looking back at last week's extended Wednesday ep (gotta clean out that DVR eventually, right?), I can't help but notice that Cam really missed a chance to solidify something with America and Cory. They weren't in the OG Handful with Matt/Jag/Blue, so they're probably not as mad as the others are about Cameron floating over to Red. They don't really resent his Week 4 nominations of Jag and Blue, since from their perspective that was Cam keeping the deal he made with America to win the Pressure Cooker. And America was so excited at the Izzy/Felicia noms, calling them "so cool" and calling Cam "a badass", I don't think it would have been that hard to scoop her up and bring Cory along, especially with his knowledge that Matt/Jag/Blue are aligned without him. A group of Cameron/Bowie/Cory/America would still have been in trouble as this week has played out, but it would seem to have been a wiser move than the Space Cowboy trying to ride alone. That said… …it is very unlikely but IMO not impossible that Cirie could decide to flip this vote and "work with" Cameron through Jared, in order to bust up the showmance couple and thus weaken Cory. She knows that For Real For Real is as dead as the other fake-liances, and she has never shown any compunction about making this sort of move. Cirie and Felicia and Matt and Bowie Jane would be enough to bring Jared's tiebreaker into play, and while Jared would completely hate the idea, Mama's Boy does what Mama tells her Boy to do, period. Well, it took me so long to have this "brainstorm" that the episode is already on, so let me hit that DVR again, and I will see if I was clever…or if this was a never.

I think that Josh was one of the more-strategic BB winners, ever. • He gained safety in Week 1 (at the cost of unpopularity) because he knew he might be targeted. • He successfully concealed all season that he was actually a superfan, pretending not to know the rules of the game and deliberately asking questions like "who's Dan Gheesling?" when the other HGs were celebrating the visit of the past winner with the (justified) master-manipulator reputation. •He convinced Paul (a returning veteran who was deliberately given advantages by production to gain early safety and recruit allies) that he was a big, emotional child, a "meatball" who would be loyal to him and terrorize the others while allowing Paul deniability. • He completely leaned into this persona, obnoxiously screaming and picking fights that had other players running to their "friend", Paul, for safety, yet being willing to be seen as this giant baby who had tantrums but didn't mean it and was better when he calmed down. (He once took a 24-hour isolation penalty that worked to his advantage here.) • When the Thursday evictions came around and Paul (who had the various players isolated into pairs that were convinced he was Their Only Friend) was whipping the houseguests (who included some truly horrible people, some deeply stupid people…and Raven, who was a category all her own) against the designated Target of the Week, while telling the Target about how "I tried, bro, but [scapegoat] has them bamboozled, nothing I could do.", Josh would be The Big Weepy Meatball, apologizing for mistreating them and blaming himself (often getting them to give him sympathy) and mending fences at the last moment. • Once the Target was evicted from the House, he or she would go to be interviewed by Julie Chen, often brave-facing about how they enjoyed the experience and at least Paul was loyal, while Julie just listened with her poker face on and then played the Goodbye Messages. GBMs are pre-taped messages that the remaining houseguests prepare for the two nominees. (You can't do this on Survivor, where anybody might get voted out, or here, where anybody might end up facing elimination, but the predetermined "A or B?" voting structure of Big Brother allows for this opportunity.) Mostly they are sincere "I'll miss you" messages, with the occasional direct denunciation mixed in. (Goddess Queen Rachel Reilly to Daniele Donato, S13: "I don't even care about your stupid Jury vote!" [which turned out to be true, as Rachel won the game, but only by 4-3 in the voting]) Paul would feed the evictees some more of the same old same old. "This sucks, bro. I did everything I could. I'll keep fighting to protect [your ally]", with the occasional "If you have been evicted and you're seeing this message, I don't know how this happened! I was sure we had the votes! I'll get revenge for you!" and so on… …only to be completely owned by Josh coming out with "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you this before, but me and Paul and Arbor Day* have been in an alliance from Day 1, Paul was lying to you the whole time, he lied about [this] and [that] and [the other thing], he told [those morons] that you had to go when they wanted to evict [someone else], and then he voted against you." He buried Paul like the Department of Energy buries radioactive waste. Now I grant you that Paul should have seen this coming, but Paul was a recruited player rather than a fan of the game and was so arrogant that he never watched a single episode of the show to prepare, not even rewatching his previous season to figure out how he lost that vote (against Nicole Franzel, Victor's wife.) He left the goal wide open…but it was still Josh who teed up the ball and drove it home. So yes, Paul's arrogance and stupidity and poor Jury management came back to haunt him, but Josh saw the opportunity and took it. Josh navigated a far more difficult path to the finale. And Josh held back the "actually, I know all about the game and I only played the buffoon to avoid being targeted" card for Finale Night, impressing the voters at the last minute. IMO that's far more of an achievement than Nicole basically saying "you don't really want to vote for Paul, do you?" (to a Jury that included her showmance [Cory], her future husband [Victor] and James Huling [her fellow returning player with whom she maintained an alliance throughout the season]) the year before or Kaycee successfully managing a "stay at the back of the pack [to the point when even the producers call you boring], win comps down the stretch for safety, and reap the rewards when the Jury realizes Tyler lied to all of them" strategy the season after Josh. I can't actually respect, much less support, what Josh did, since he was too willing to be too vile (particularly to My Girl, Jessica Graf [<--- check out my avatar] and her now-husband, Cody), but I acknowledge his success. To lump Josh in with Chris "I sat out 75% of the game, made ONE strategic decision and won $1,000,000" Lucky Joke is deeply unfair to Josh, I think. JMO, obviously. (*-"Arbor Day" is actually named "Christmas", we just mocked her in the BB forum by referring to her by every holiday in the calendar, from Ramadan to Yom Kippur. At one point I even went to Wikipedia to look up what was being celebrated at that time and ended up calling her "International Beer Week" and the like.)

LOL I am ALL over the idea of a Jane Austen Powers flick! Shag and Shaggability, perhaps? Pride and Pretty-Juicyness? Groovy, baby! To quote The Wisdom of Cordelia Chase: "You don't change a guy like that. In fact, most times, you don't change a guy. Scratch the surface…and there's just more surface." I was cringing at this. because the last thing I needed to see was a "Cirie's Noble Sacrifice" hagiography. Dickless using the Veto on Danielllllllllle didn't make me loathe him any less. Besides, she wasn't volunteering to be evicted, just nominated against whomever Cameron left on the block. They would only need four votes and Jared's tie-breaker to save her, and she already would have Matt and Felicia in the bank. Get the DR to help Jared woo Blue and Matt to convince his bro, Jag ("America is a real good competitor, bro. And we can't let her and Cory team up with Cameron") and it would be There She Goes, Miss America before we knew it, with some smirking and cackling by Cirie in the DR next episode as the show gives her the Amazing Comeback edit. The only sure way to get rid of Cirie is to put her up against her allies. So as much fun as "Jared tries to pawn his Momma, but oops!" might be, there would be no guarantee of a good outcome there. JMO

Well, crap. It's Cam's own damn fault, though. He had two chances to rebuild his ties to The Handful (of the core five, only Reilly has left the House) and stop being thought of as a traitor for falling in with Cirie to keep close to his one buddy, Red. At least if he had listened to Red and gotten rid of Izzy in Week 4, there would be a chance to get back with Jag. Instead he took the heat for nominating Jag and Blue and was isolated with the A-LIE-ance (Cirie/Felicia/Izzy/Jared), who never had the slightest interest of working with him and took pleasure in destroying his friendship with Red. Dumb move, bro. Even last week, it was not enough to "create chaos". You needed to build a new team. Let Bowie Jane do the work if you worry you can't start this on your own. Instead he's making standard pitches to Jared, whom the whole house knows is a stone liar. What good would even getting Jared's "agreement" be worth. You snooze, you lose, bro. So, in Memoriam… Michael "Red" Utley: As Stupid As He Looks. (And have you seen how he looks?) Cameron Hardin, the Space Cowboy. Yeah, You Know Where It's At. Sigh. As Cam will not, it appears, be able to get rid of Jared, or anyone else, perhaps we can spin his helplessness as deliberate pacifism? One last visit to the Steve Miller Band songbook, if I may. (OT: I think I have to aim for the Dec 17th show in Atlanta to get my Steve Miller fix, instead of Greenville as previously discussed. Apparently you can't get to Greenville without going through Atlanta [or Charlotte] anyhow, and the small hall there is selling out too fast. Atlanta it is, then. And then I saw Peter Gabriel's show in Montreal [from last Wednesday] on YT and thought about seeing Peter, but he's too good for the South or something. No Charlotte/Atlanta/Memphis/Nawlins/Florida on the tour; the closest he comes is tonight, when he is currently performing in DC. Other than that, the next best is Texas. Bummer. [/OT]) ****************************** So perhaps I was wrong about Jared not being Paul's son, after all. His commanding women to lower their voice certainly brings back less-than-pleasant memories of Bobblebeard. (Note, this is the unexpurgated version. Hey, Cody, you answer your C.O. with that mouth?)

Only catching up now (I had technical problems Sunday) and I guess Big Brother must have been sweating about how their "stars" were in danger unless Jared won the HoH, huh? How lucky for them that he did! (What do we think, extra-large handholds? Carved finger-slots inside? Molding clay for him to dig into? After all, it's pretty easy for the DR to tell him to take the spot at the end of the "wall". Assuming they didn't simply assign the spots.) Annoying, as much fun as it was to see Jared get exposed like that. At least now we know who both of Jared's parents are. He gets the constant lying and smug smirking from "Mama C" and I guess the aggressive bullying and loudly overtalking comes from his dad…Jeff Schroeder! (I would have guessed Jack or Paul, but they are too young. I might have suggested Dickless, but his voice is too ruined from all the cigs to get that sort of volume. Dickless has banged a cast member from Survivor 20: Heroes v. Villains, but that was Jerri Manthey. So the "perfect" pairing of Dickless and Cirie exists only in my imagination, alas.) ************************** BTW, what a collection of wimps. How long did the "epic battle of endurance" last, 45 minutes? It took April Dowling over 4 hours to get Michele Costa off that wall in S10. *************************** Interesting that with all of Cirie's other A-LIE-ances being exposed, Bowie Jane chose not to bring up "Legend 25". Discretion? Or is she dumb enough to think that's still real? Well, she fell, so we probably won't learn this week, alas. **************************** The utter boredom of "turn two keys to reveal the nominees" really hits you in the face like a giant meatball, right after we did it old-school with the sequential-safety-builds-tension drama last week, huh? Not that it has to be pies every week, but come on. Was the Wheel O'Keys too bulky, as Julie once claimed? Fine, then have a simple box, open on one side, and stack the keys inside, face down. As low-tech as you can get, no larger than the size of any one key, and weighing less than 5 lbs. Anything but this! Gah!

Yes, that was my point about how Izzy had gotten lucky that her insult had a chance of coming true. Had this been any recent season, she would have been up a creek without a pork chop. Which begs the question, did Izzy somehow know they were doing a 7-person jury? Or did she just not think about whether Jury would (as normal now) be starting with 11 left in the game? Did the DR clue her in, for some reason? No idea. So I shall spare you any further ham-fisted puns, lest you start ribbing me.

Nobody beats the Machine!