Big Brother 4, July 8: Can You Say “Twist”?

The HouseGuests grab some champagne and settle around the circular sectional sofa for introductions; Scott tells us that he was scanning the group for potential allies. Erika tells the group she’s originally from Chicago (Ha! I totally called that in my preview!) but has lived in L.A. for a long time and is a Pilates instructor. Jun snarks to us that Erika is a great-looking girl, “surgically enhanced boobelage” and all, but since she’s 33 she’s hit her peak and is on her way down. Me? Ow. Jun tells them that she’s in finance but as they can see she is so not a cookie cutter finance-type person! OK - people who have to emphasize that they’re not cookie cutter? Generally are. Although in this case I will admit that I probably would have pegged her as being in marketing or something. Scott jokes that “cookie cutter” is exactly what he thought when he first saw her and she laughs uproariously. Scott tells us that Jun is very flirtatious and you can tell that she likes to fool around and have a good time. Nathan tells everyone he just graduated from college and is a personal trainer. Dana tells us that Nathan is the hottest thing on the planet! Jun, however, says that she caught him a couple times trying to look up her skirt. Alison says they can call her Ally or whatever they want to! I’ll bite: “nauseating”? Erika tells us Alison is very young, very adorable, and very sweet. Alison tells the group she’s been working as a retail manager to get money to go into law school; she wants to go into health law. Jack find that commendable and there’s some miscellaneous oohing and aahing. Dana tells us she found fault with the shortness of Alison’s skirt; she’d never wear something like that, but she grudgingly admits it looks cute on her. Well, for her part, Alison would probably never wear the black T-shirt Dana’s wearing in her interview; Dana looks pretty in the dress she’s wearing in the circle, but the T-shirt makes her look extremely frumpy.

Dana asks if it’s her turn. “No, we thought we’d skip you,” smartasses David. (Which, again, would be my exact response.) Dana tells the group she’s from Bayside, Queens (now’s as good a time as any to point out that she has a pronounced Queens accent) and that she manages a karate school in the city. David tells us he definitely likes Dana; she seems very forward. Dana admits to everyone that she can be a little OCD about things; she likes things to be clean. Nicole, is that you? David makes a big show of cleaning up the coffee table as everyone laughs. “Don’t mess with a Bayside chick!” smiles Scott; he then tells the group that he’s from Chicago but originally from New York. (Which is the exact opposite of me, if anyone cares.) He says he’s a Scorpio and he loves long walks along the beach! I think he’s kidding. I hope he’s kidding. Otherwise he just quoted 97% of all personal ads in existence. David interviews that at first he thought Scott was gay from the way he was dressed. WHAAAA?!? Scott is wearing a red-and-white striped collared shirt, a big medallion, and a black knit cap. “Hip-hop manqué?” Yes. “Typical gay”? Not so much. (I’m not into the “typical gay” look for myself either, so understand that I’m not saying that from the usual “No gay guy would wear THAT!” vantage point a lot of other gay men subscribe to.) David needs to get out of the barracks more. Scott continues that he’s a waiter for the Chicago Chop House, the top steakhouse in the country. (The name sounds cheesy, but it actually is a fairly big deal restaurant from what I remember, so Scott is most likely quite a good waiter if he works there. And why am I sticking up for Scott twice in this paragraph if I’m not even sure if I like him yet? Damn Libra rising.)

Jack tells them he’s from Birmingham, Alabama, and used to be an FBI agent. David says that if Jack was in the FBI for as long as he says he was, he should be quite good at this! David (and this is as good a point as any to note that he always refers to himself as “Dave”) tells them he’s a former army ranger. He tells us he’s not allowed to talk about his time in other countries because it might jeopardize future ranger missions. Dana from out of the clear blue sky starts gushing to us about how much of a turn-on it is that David was a ranger! It’s very manly! Just like An Officer and a Gentleman! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA. Before you whip out the karaoke version of “Up Where We Belong,” there, you’re making the guy sound like some dashing, sophisticated Richard Gere type that’s going to sweep you off your feet, and yeah, he’s very attractive, but he’s also only 21 - seven years younger than you. Calm down, Mrs. Robinson. Jack is considerably more restrained when he says that because of David’s military background, he thinks they’ll get along quite well. They can talk the same language about discipline and order. Well, that just sounds like a hoot and a half.

Jun tells us that she’s definitely going to play her role of the happy-go-lucky girl and they already think she’s this high maintenance sexy sassy New York chick, but her wheels are turning and she’s “playing the game.” Oh, I’m sure that’s going to be the last time I hear that phrase this season. As they clink their glasses, Julie pops up from out of nowhere to solemnly inform us that nothing can be taken for granted in the Big Brother household - not even food! Well, there’s the non sequitur from hell. Not quite as bad as Tori Amos’s “What you want is in the blood, Senator/I’ve got Big Bird on a fishing line,” but close. By the way, did you know that there was a TWIST? And it involves EXES? And it’s called the X FACTOR? Julie helpfully reminds those of us who have the short-term memory retention of plankton.

Julie tells us it’s time for the first Food Challenge, where the HouseGuests will get to learn some revealing facts about each other, DRAMATIC PIVOT. She greets the HouseGuests through the living room screen, and they manage to stay awake through her prattling on about how they need to earn the food they eat each week beyond peanut butter and jelly. Julie orders them out to the backyard and Dana tells us how much she wants them all to win their first competition together as a group. In the backyard, they find some huge steel beams forming “X”-es over a giant cushioned mat. Oh, this show has all the subtlety of a Mack Truck. In an interview, Alison wonders, “Are we supposed to ride them?” I guess she had her thinking tiara on, because that’s exactly what they have to do, as it turns out. “As you can see, with this competition, X really does mark the spot!” beams Julie. Ouch! Sledgehammers HURT! The two beams are lowered out of X formation so they’re parallel with the mat, and Julie tells them to climb aboard. Once they’re all on, Julie tells them she’ll be asking them true-or-false questions based on their entry questionnaires. Every time someone gets a question wrong, the beams will be raised. If, after eight questions, no more than two of them have fallen off the beams, they all win. So even if they get all eight questions wrong but six of them remain on the beams, they win.