Big Brother 7 Recap – Episode 18 (August 17)

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After some prattling from Julie about the Coup d’Etat, we are shown the aftermath of the veto ceremony. Erika says she is surprised that Marcellas was nominated but she thinks she has a better chance of beating him so she’s also somewhat relieved. Marcellas, for his part, knows that even though Janelle is re-assuring him that he’s safe, many previous evictees in BB history were told that as well so he’s not all that confident.

Marcellas and Erika are bemoaning their fates in one of the bedrooms. Marcellas says he is not going to campaign against Erika for votes. Immediately after Erika leaves the room, Marcellas asks Danielle for her vote to stay in the house. Danielle is torn; on one hand, she promised Marcellas that if she ever had to ‘cut him loose’ she would let him know about it, on the other Erika is her friend and Danielle doesn’t want to vote her out.

The Legion of Doom discuss the situation in the backyard. James says he wants Erika to stay, win the HoH competition this week, put Janelle out of the house, and then get booted out herself the following week. After a DR comment from Will making an analogy with Chilltown as the Beatles and Erika as Yoko Ono, saying Erika needs to go, Will laughs about how he’s glad he’s in the Legion of Doom as the other three are ‘mean *wordcensoredbyCBS*’.

Both Erika and Marcellas approach George for his vote. First he tells Erika that he will support her but when Marcellas talks to him, George says he hasn’t made any commitments yet. Marcellas tries to win George’s support by pointing out all the times that Erika has eliminated George from various competitions (well from two HoH competitions anyway).

After hearing from Janelle that Chilltown has promised to keep him in the house, Marcellas decides to approach Will and Boogie. When asked, they confirm they are voting to keep him the house. Of course, once he leaves they just laugh at the gullibility of Marcellas.

Julie talks with the houseguests who are all dressed up for the big ‘prom night’ theme. Howie hits Julie up for a date but she shots him down. Howie, after being asked about April, says it was good to see her. Julie wonders if he’s telling the truth or if it’s all just a ‘spool of lies’. There’s also some making fun of Boogie for his terrified reaction to the first appearance of the ‘ghosts’ from last week.

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And it’s time for another ‘what do their mom’s think?’ segment, this time centered around Danielle and Janelle. Janelle’s mom mentions she’s very selective of her female friends as women are often jealous of her. We learn Danielle was ‘a real pistol’ growing up and that she really matured a lot after becoming pregnant at 15. Both mothers seem to be not entirely sure who will win in the battle between Danielle and Janelle though Janelle’s mom suggests that they really should have teamed up as they would have dominated the house.

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Now it’s time for the weekly HoH chat. Janelle tells Julie that she wants to trust James but his actions have shown that he’s not particularly trustworthy. She seems quite sure that he threw the last veto competition and she doesn’t by the excuses he came up with to explain his actions. Janelle also lets us know that she is trying to mend her friendship with Marcellas but that she no longer trusts him enough to try to take him to the final 2; she wants her S6 alliance to make it to the end.

After a brief recap of the events surrounding the first two clues for the Coup d’Etat (aired on the Tuesday show), they show Mike making a guess. From the way it was edited it seems like he made the guess around the same time as Howie made his, but it was kept from us (and thus, I’m guessing, allowing the live feed viewers to know who was correct even before the final clue was revealed). Mike’s guess was “You reap what you sow.”

At some later point the houseguests see a reaper inside the house, basically confirming to Mike that his guess was, in fact, correct. Janelle goes and makes her own guess of “You sow what you reap.” So either she knew what Mike had already guessed and thought she’d try a variation for the hell of it, or she’s not so much with the knowledge of popular sayings (given that she didn’t know about ‘pulling the wool over your eyes’, I’m guessing it is the latter).

Mike is called into the DR and told he was the first person to guess correctly. Julie explains about the power he just won. If he wants to use it, he’ll have the opportunity to identify himself as the winner/put up two new nominees just before the live vote occurs. He is allowed to put any two people on the block save for the veto winner and the just deposed HoH (I wonder if that means he could even put himself on the block, not that there would be any good reason for him to do that, just wondering). He doesn’t get to vote between the nominees but neither does the former HoH. In the event of a tie, Mike gets to decide who goes home. Understandably, Mike is quite happy/speechless over this development.

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Julie asks if the winner of the special power would like to identify themselves/use their power. Not surprisingly, Mike opts not to waste his newfound power in this situation.

Marcellas and Erika are given one last chance to plea their case before the vote. Erika says she’s going with what Danielle said last week, if she’s useful vote for her. Marcellas goes for a decidely more bitter speech. He accuses many people of ‘scumbagging’ their way through the game. Marcellas says he’s played an honest game and if people can look him in the eye and lie to him, then he’ll go home tonight.

No real suspense in the DR room as each and every vote is cast to evict Marcellas (though Howie does make a joke vote to evict James and then repeatedly refers to Marcellas as ‘Margellus’ for some reason). After the votes are revealed Marcellas hugs Erika, gives Danielle a quick peck on the cheek and then leaves rather quickly (I didn’t time it or anything but I suspect it was probably 15-20 seconds between the announcement and Marcellas actually leaving).

Before the interview with Marcellas we see Erika and Danielle are both rather upset about Marcellas’ departure, particularly Danielle.

Julie sits down with Marcellas and asks him his thoughts on Janelle, mentioning some of the comments he had made about Janelle in recent days. He does seem to feel bad about some of the things he said, saying the game as a very emotional one but he also says Janelle ‘lies as much as she breathes’ so he wasn’t at all surprised when Janelle’s promise that he was safe this week didn’t turn out so well. Interestingly enough, Marcellas says that even if he had won HoH this week, he probably wouldn’t have ended up putting Janelle up because he’s too much of a softy.

We get the standard goodbye messages from the houseguests. Of the ones shown, George just makes a joke about slop; James actually tries to make it seem like if Marcellas goes out this week, Janelle must be at fault (presumably the innocent act here is due to the fact Marcellas is in the jury, but chances are someone else in the jury house will let Marcellas in on the lie before the vote so this seems like a risky strategy on James’ part); Janelle reconfirms that Marcellas was only supposed to be a pawn but admits it was a stupid move on her part; Will compliments (and apologizes to) Marcellas but says he was a threat so he had to be eliminated; Danielle is quite upset in her message as she tells Marcellas that it is an ugly game.

Marcellas talks a bit about how he hated Danielle for four years; he says it felt very good to be able to let go of that hatred and make a friend of Danielle.

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Julie tells us that this week is going to be a double eviction week. So the winner of the HoH competition will immediately be forced to name two nominees, with the eviction taking place (well airing anyway) on the next show.

As the houseguests enter the backyard, they are distracted by all the stuff set up in the backyard. It takes Julie a few tries to get them settled down and ready to play the competition. Before they play, Julie reveals the results of the prom king/queen vote with Janelle being crowned Prom Queen. The winner was supposed to get an advantage in the HoH competition but as Janelle isn’t eligible to compete, she has to settle for a tiara.

The houseguests all have to wear blindfolds and stand on a grid. They are asked a series of questions about who won fan voting in various categories. If they think it was person A, they hold up one hand, if they think it was person B, the other hand. If they get it right they take a step forward and whoever makes it to the end first, or is closest to the end after 8 questions, is the new HoH.

The competition goes back and forth for a while but by the end of 8 questions, there’s a tie between Chicken George and Danielle. George is rather excited to have made it to the finals of something for once.

Julie asks how long the house went without hot water as a result of last week’s veto competition. George writes 360 while Danielle, after struggling with the numbers for a bit, writes 308. I’m not sure if they both were trying to throw the competition or they just really suck at math (at least when under pressure) as the real answer is “over 6000 minutes” (and even if you are really bad at math, you should be able to do some simple math to figure you’re going to need a much higher number than they supplied). So, to his shock and elation, George is the new HoH.

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George doesn’t have long to bask in his new power as Julie tells the house about the double eviction and asks George to put two people on the block. After a few seconds he puts up James, and after a few more seconds, Erika also finds herself back on the block.