Big Brother 3, July 24: Pocket Veto

We've got all of the seven deadly sins on display for the summer yet again with jealousy taking center stage tonight. And then there are those lizards. I wonder what they think about all of this.

Tonight we start off with a recap of Marcellas nominating Josh and Tonya. It's just a reminder that Tonya was being used as a pawn to ensure (or so Marcellas hopes) Josh's departure on Thursday’s show. Of course, in theory, this is how it is supposed to work, but that's what Mike Boogie thought last year and Sheryl was still the first person to be booted out. Has no one heard of the phrase, "You learn from history not to repeat it"? You would think so, but they are just idiots. Gerry tells Marcellas that he would have played it the same way just to get Josh out of the house. Marcellas says he's trying to be as good as he can be but he does privately admit that it's beginning to get easier to do things he has rallied against in the house.

Marcellas talks to Tonya after the nomination ceremony regarding his little speech about integrity and playing fair in the house and all that. However, that speech, he tells Tonya it was not directed at her and Tonya even says that she knows that Marcellas wants Josh out of the house.

However, Marcellas pulls a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on us and says, "I do not like Tonya. I do not like what she stands for and what she puts out there." Please note that I am not making ANY references to what Tonya has out there in the size of medium-sized cantaloupes.

"If she goes I would not be unhappy." Hmm. And to think you did a nice talk about integrity, Marcellas, when it appears that have NONE OF YOUR OWN. Lying to Tonya and then saying that you want her gone. I mean, she's a nice, attractive woman. It's not enough to make me stop looking at Roddy and Eric, but how can you not like her?

Well here's why… Marcellas tells Gerry that Tonya has the heart of a ho and she wants to stay. Well of course she wants to stay and you know what they say about ho's, Marcellas. They tend to be able to recognize each other and don't want them on each other's turf. "She can stay as long as she tows the line," Marcellas says. Oh? And under what rules will you stay? If you don't realize it, dear Marcellas, your butt doesn't have the comfort of an alliance and you are still pretty much outnumbered. Your reign as Head of Household is about to come to an end and fast. I hope you enjoyed it because you are heading back to those nominee chairs pretty soon.

Josh (now in a goatee that comes and goes because our editors have no idea what the word continuity means) says that Tonya trusts him and he trusts her and they have become close. There's nothing like possibly being ousted from a game to bring people together. Josh says that he's not going to sit by and let the game pass him by. He's going to do what he has to do in the most civil manner. Okay, I'm opening a book on this. Even odds that it lasts less than thirty seconds. 280-1 odds that it will last for one day. 3,410,288-1 odds that it lasts for the rest of the game should he succeed in making it past this round of executions.

Marcellas claims that he is "becoming diabolical." Ooh, Marcellas. You have me shaking in my shoes over here. Marcellas and diabolical in the same sentence. It just doesn't work for me. I mean that's like saying Mother Theresa was a Satanist.

"I am embracing what I have to do, good or bad, in order to win the game." Uh huh. Um. Sure you are, Marcellas. Sure you are.

Roddy is not sure how the alliance is going to end. Half of the alliance likes Tonya and the other half likes Josh. However, he does prove that as of this moment he is the ONLY person in the house that has a brain when he states that alliances at this stage of the game are irrelevant. Praise Jesus! Hallelujah! Roddy had helped me reclaim my faith in… well… CBS casting. Oh wait, there is that Chiara/drunk driving thing. Does Roddy know about that? Can we lob some tennis balls at him?

Conversations now turn to the upcoming veto game. Josh is certain that if Roddy or Jason win the veto challenge that he will be removed as a nominee. In fact he is positive about it. Of course, he says this while they show the two of them puffing on some cigars. I have many thoughts about cigars but for the sake of our reading audience those will just remain with me. Unless you reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally wanna know. Then you have to ask… or read the blog.

Anyway, during all of this Chiara tells Roddy he does not want to win veto and Josh says that clearly he is nervous but he can't show it. Of course Eric thinks Josh is nervous because he at least has a modicum of common sense that if you are nominated you are going to be nervous. Then again Eric pulled more than a few strings (none of them within fire station policy) to get on Big Brother, so I guess he doesn't have any common sense.

So what proof do we have of Josh being nervous? Well Jason notes that any time that he is in a conversation in the house there is Josh right there with him being all buddy-buddy. He feels Josh is using his religion (Judaism) as a bargaining chip and brings it up as way of guilting people into voting for Tonya over him. Josh doesn't think he has Jason's vote. I tend to agree.

Josh takes it a step further when he goes into the Head of Household room to talk to Marcellas and Danielle. He talks about the anti-Semitism he faces and that he can empathize with Danielle and Marcellas. Josh thinks that he has won them over and can get into their head. Now I talked to one of my Jewish friends about this to get his perspective and he said, "Brian, as you are fond of saying, 'Crack is not a breakfast food.' I would never think of comparing being Jewish to being black." [Editor’s Note: And I would add: Especially not in this situation, where we have seen nothing to indicate that his religion has anything to do with so many people disliking him. He’s crying “Wolf!”]

Now CBS proves that they suck at editing and storytelling when they get away from the Josh Show and turn to Marcellas primping in the mirror and telling us that he is a germophobe. He doesn't want people breathing on him or near him. He doesn't even like to touch things that other people have touched. Marcellas brought 90% alcohol with him and he uses it to clean the toilet and other things. We even see him turn on the faucet in the bathroom with his elbows. Roddy thinks he needs a haz-mat (Hazardous Materials) suit just to survive. But to prove how freaky he is about it, Marcellas says he allowed Tonya to use his clippers to shave Josh's chest hair. Tonya seems to have fun doing it but Marcellas is repulsed.

"That beast fur in my clippers! Yuck! It took a Herculean effort and a lot of alcohol before I could use then again. Those clippers are going into the garbage the moment I walk out of here $500,000 richer." Marcellas, something tells me you are going to be throwing them away much sooner. Incidentally, if you thought the come-and-go goatee was bad, the chest-hair shaving is even worse for the editors, because it happened a while ago and we have seen Josh clean-shaven before now.

Now it's time for the veto competition. Each person has a box that they select on from the lazy Susan portion of the table. One box on the table contains the veto. The object of the game is to make someone an offer they cannot refuse. If your offer is accepted you get their box. They spin the table and Jason says he didn't want Josh to win it at all. Once again more foreshadowing that Josh's days might be numbered.

Danielle takes Jason's box when she promises him six days of abdominal class. He says in the diary room that it was a pretty lame offer but since he didn't want the veto power at all, he readily gave his box over to Danielle. Amy tells us in the diary room that she wants to win the veto but Danielle wants the power of veto even if she doesn't use it. Lisa even says that she is not going out of her way to help Josh out.

Back to bargaining, where Josh tells Danielle that he would not touch her ass of the rest of the time he is in the house for her box. Since there doesn't seem to be that much time left for him that is not exactly a great offer and she rightly refuses. Gerry offers Amy all of his cheese for her box knowing that Amy's weakness is the orange or yellow or white loveliness of the power that is cheese. She turns it down. Shocking.

Eventually Jason, Chiara, Lisa, and Roddy were out. Round Two and Marcellas says he will give his box to Josh if he is nicer to Gerry. Knowing that it might have the veto medal inside, Josh still declines, saying he would do anything to get Gerry out of the house. Danielle takes Eric's box when he says he will give her a hug whenever she needs it. Gerry just offers it his box to Danielle and she accepts it. Amy offers Danielle her nail polish to use when she wants and she declines. So they go around the table and open the boxes they have and finally Danielle opens the last box she has to claim the veto power. Marcellas says of Danielle that she thinks he is not smart enough to know she is putting herself first. Well, Marcellas, this is a game where only ONE person will win half a million dollars. OF COURSE she is going to be thinking about herself. Do you think that she would really give a damn about what you want if it means she won't win the money? Puh-leeze. You should be bitchslapped and buried alive.

Marcellas tells Danielle that Gerry is the hump on his back and he cannot nominate him because of what he did (i.e., saving him from being put up for eviction by vetoing the nomination last week). Danielle tries to get Marcellas to nominate Gerry should she opt to veto someone out. Marcellas says that Josh could be useful if he could be trusted and not turn on them. Danielle says that no one would expect him to nominate Gerry and Marcellas says that he would nominate him only if she saves Tonya. And, if Danielle screws him he is going to come after her.

Finally, we are getting some real drama here. Not the pained staged stuff we saw in the past two years. But here we go on another tangent when the Marcellas/Josh Love/Hate Fest is put on hold.

Danielle talking about Roddy and Chiara getting chummy, but Amy is getting jealous and sticking her nose in. Amy thinks Roddy’s a hottie and she HATES Chiara. It gets on her nerves because she wants what she wants and she never leaves without what she wants. Chiara on the other hand says she's no Helen Keller and she knows that Amy would love nothing more than to do evil wicked things with Roddy that would make webcam viewers sit up and take notice.

Anyway, Roddy kissed Amy on the lips when Chiara was cuddling up with Jason outside. Chiara got all up in arms over it when it looked like a simple kiss. Or was Roddy trying to make Chiara jealous? Oh I really wanna see a cat fight in the house. Cat fight! Cat fight! Cat fight!.

So the sexual tension continues when Roddy asks Amy to lie naked on the lazy Susan table in high heels and let him spin her around. Does this involve honey and snails? I mean that would be so totally hot if it did. Oh yeah, baby, baby.

Chiara calls Amy a f*ing bitch and lets Roddy know that she doesn't like her or what she is doing. Roddy kinda blows it off and lets Chiara feel that she has just vented and gotten it out of her system. So Marcellas brings these two together to hash it out and Chiara immediately accuses her of making advances (or as she calls them, “advancements”) on Roddy and Amy says she didn't do it, but it looked like she was trying something to me.

So they civilly hash it out, but you know they were being fake to each other. Amy thinks Chiara is needy. Chiara talks to the girls about it and they tend to think that Amy is fake. Isn't it nice to know that despite their best efforts to be nice to each other and put this behind them that they are both two-faced lying sluts? Sigh, it's so good to know that everything old is new again.

So we're back to the Marcellas/Josh Love/Hate Hour as Amy steals the Head of Household room to talk to Josh. Marcellas is a little confused but he says yes. And he should be confused. Amy tells Josh that she wants him to stay in the house. Josh thinks that Amy is his vote to stay in the game. Amy is trying to negotiate with Josh in the event that he stays in the house and wins the Head of Household competition that he will put Chiara up for nomination. Now let's think about this. It's a long stretch to ensure that Josh or Amy gets Head of Household and that they nominate Chiara and then they make sure they get veto power to keep her in there. I mean the odds of this happening are so remote. This is worse than ANY plot that Chilltown had - even that plot about Will pretending to be sick so people would let him stay in the game.

So it's the America's Choice question to pick new exercise equipment. America was give three sports to choose from and the winner is bowling. HUMAN BOWLING even. Each person will take a turn as a bowler and ball. The combined score in both parts of the game will win the right to choose the equipment. This is then followed by some REALLY bad bowling puns. Strike it rich was amongst the worst. Spare us the commentary or I'll split. I just hate it when shows go into the gutter like this.

Danielle won it out. I could go into detail about who bowled who and how they scored but let's just fast forward and say that Danielle won and she chose an elliptical runner for some cardio action. Having done an elliptical runner in a gym before, let me just say those things rock! I used to do an hour on them five days a week. And then I stopped going to the gym. I dunno why. I want my elliptical runner back!

So it's veto ceremony time and Josh looks a little constipated. Gerry hopes that Danielle leaves things as it is while Josh thinks that the veto power will be used to remove him. Danielle tells us to expect the unexpected when it comes to her. Marcellas doesn't know whether or not he can trust Danielle. Josh comes out saying "dead man walking," which is a highly true statement in his case. Danielle has spent her time going around trying to determine what scenarios exist when she uses the veto power on either person. So she gives each person a chance to state why they should stay.

Tonya: I've been an honest person in the house and made a lot of great friends. I'm having a great time and I'm not ready to go home just yet. Besides she hasn't had any conflicts with anyone.

Josh: There is nothing I can say here that would have any effect your decision.

Danielle says that after thinking for a very long time and going over every scenario possible, she chooses not to use to the veto and leave the power as is and let the voting go as planned. She says she did it because Marcellas wanted it to remain the same and she wanted him to think he still had the power. Basically, she is going to need Marcellas in the future. It's best for him to think that she can be trusted. Just watch out for those hugs. She may have a knife in hand.

Josh says people were looking at him like he had a week left to live. Danielle takes Josh into the bedroom and says she couldn't do it and explains the Marcellas situation. Josh starts to get a little teary and we are getting the raw true Josh for ONCE, and not the arrogant New Yorker we have seen. He says he's a sensitive person, but if he was so sensitive shouldn't he be better to other people? I mean really. If you want them to treat you nice shouldn't you treat them nice as well? Or am I just on crack here?

So who gets the ouster? We’ll find out Thursday night.

C. Brian Devinney is a human resources consultant and huge Yankees fan based in New York City. He is the author of his own blog, "Tales From the City" and is currently writing his third play, Poker Night. He can be reached at TheRealityFactor@aol.com.

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