Big Brother 4, August 8: Hubris ‘R’ Us

The HouseGuests roar when Justin comes out of the Diary Room dressed in a huge chef’s hat and declares in his Jee imitation voice, “We gonna slice and dice!” He gives them three minutes to get changed into their swimsuits and get into the backyard for the food competition: the Big Brother Cooking School. Today’s lesson: “How to Cook a HouseGuest.” Unfortunately, they don’t mean that literally. I can think of a couple HouseGuests I wouldn’t mind seeing roasting over a spit with an apple in their mouths. They have to divide into four two-man teams to make “recipes”; one of them has to be the chef and the other the food. Each team is responsible for one meal: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks/Desserts; they have to uncover their menu board and follow the step-by-step instructions to complete their “recipe.” All four meals need to be completed in ten minutes. Any uncompleted meals result in PB&J for everyone for the week for that meal. If they complete all four, they get a special lunch from outside the house all week long.

Erika picks up a sledgehammer to remind us that a week on PB&J is worse than a week on the torture rack. She (chef) and Jack (food) are first up and tackle breakfast, which turns out to be cereal. For the first step, Jack has to dress up as a giant strawberry and winds up looking like a Fruit of the Loom commercial reject. He deadpans to us that being a strawberry isn’t exactly what most FBI agents have in mind when they think about their image. Erika next has to fill a giant bowl with tons of cereal and about fifty gallons of milk. Jack has to sit in the giant cereal mixture to complete the recipe. He woefully tells us he’s finished with the bureau and will never be able to go to another agents’ meeting now that they’ve seen him dressed as a strawberry - sitting in a cereal bowl, no less - on national television. I have visions of him trying to make a serious point in a meeting and someone in the back crying out, “Yeah - listen to the strawberry!” Heh.

Jee (chef) and Robert (food) tackle lunch next. Robert has to dress up as a giant hot dog and lay down in a giant bun. In other words, Robert is a big wiener. How apropos. Jee has to slather on four entire mopfuls of ketchup and mustard each, then dump on buckets of sauerkraut and relish. Alison laughs to us that Robert was screaming “like a little girl” as Jee slathered on the condiments, and indeed he does. He tells us it’s because after this past week of condiment sandwiches, he doesn’t even want to look at condiments - but it was worth every second not to be placed in front of a firing squad - er, eat PB&J!

Next, Alison (chef) and Nathan (food) tackle dinner: a chicken fajita. Nathan has to dress up in a giant chicken suit, which basically consists of a giant bunch of feathers for the tail, a matching feather wig, and a big bright yellow and red beak. He quite understandably confesses to us in the Diary Room that he felt like an idiot. He has to lie on a giant tortilla and be covered with tons of onions, guacamole, salsa, and sour cream, then be rolled up. Finally, Justin (chef) and Jun (food) tackle snacks and desserts and make a banana split with Jun as the banana. She lays down in a giant dish and has all the ice cream, toppings, and whipped cream dumped on her. They finish all four in the allotted time and Erika tells us how relieved she was because if she had to face another week of PB&J, she’d be DEAD! DEAD, do you hear? Erika, you’re one of my favorites at this point, but SHUT UP. They find out their mystery prize is a weekend of lunches from Subway, and in keeping with the level of gratitude, appreciation, and ability to look at the big picture that is rampant among this crowd, according to the live feed updates Nathan is continually bitching about it not being Quizno’s. World’s tiniest violin. Jack tells us he didn’t want the contest to end as he rather enjoyed being a strawberry! Just don’t let the boys back at the bureau hear that, I suppose.

In keeping with the nonstop thrill-a-minute urgency that is this episode, the HouseGuests come in from the competition and are utterly gobsmacked to find that the table has gotten smaller! Why this continues to be such a huge shock to them when THE SAME THING HAPPENS EVERY YEAR is anyone’s guess, but before we know it, off the HouseGuests tumble into reading us their entries in their essay contest, “What The Smaller Table Means To Me.” Jun tells us it jumpstarted her competitive spirit and the gloves are off! Erika tells us it makes her nostalgic for those halcyon days of yore when all thirteen of them laughed and loved around the larger table! Jun further shares that as far as the people who have left, they’re ghosts, they’re gone, and goodbye! Ah, Jun - ever the sentimentalist. I’ll bet she agonizes for hours when she cleans out her closet. Alison then shares that it just reminds her how much work is left for her to do in the house; there’s still a lot of chairs around that small table! It’s right about this point that I feel like screaming, “It’s a FREAKING TABLE!!!” I haven’t done this much eyerolling over forced conclusions since I saw a French film where one of the characters said, “This sweater is blue. I know it is blue because my mood is blue.”

If it’s 32 minutes into a Friday episode, it must be time for Filler Segment Repository Theatre! For our first act, Jun and Jee $%^$%$%^ argue all the #$#$%# time, $%^#$%#% it! Jee tells us that Jun is constantly trying to get under his skin and Jun tells us that Jee needs to learn that he’s never going to beat her in a verbal argument, which I would say is certainly true. In a battle of wits, she has an M-16 and he has a pair of safety scissors. They then $%&$%^$% argue about how she $%^$%$ worked four jobs because she moved out of her %$%$%^@#^#& home and he %^%^^%^& played Nintendo all $%^$%^$%& day. Jun tells us their history begins nine years ago and she’s always had the upper hand in their relationship; he adds that when they met, she was 19 and he was 15 and she became a sort of nurturing maternal figure to him. They then %^&%^&$^& argue about her $%^$%^ always trying to %^&$^$ sabotage his $%$%$% life. The two of them agree that part of the reason they argue so much is for strategic purposes to throw the others off. Well, $%^$%^$%!