Big Brother 4, August 16: Bullet With Stooges’ Wings

We’ve gone entirely too far into the show without the weekly grousing over the peanut butter and jelly diet, so here come Jee, Justin, Robert, and Jack to speculate on the upcoming food competition. Justin tells Jee he’d rather deal with a week of PB&J than eat bull testicles or pig intestines, and notes that thus far he’s managed to escape the dreaded PB&J sentence. They speculate there’s going to be someone in the house who’s going to wind up on PB&J every single time; Robert feels it’ll be him as he’s been on it every time thus far. Jee would rather it be him because he wouldn’t want Robert to suffer so. Indeed, Robert’s Purple Heart is no doubt in the mail.

Erika gathers the HouseGuests in the living room and has everyone draw a ping-pong ball labeled with a day of the week. She tells them Big Brother has cordially invited them to a clambake and they have ten minutes to get dressed and join her in the backyard. Everyone puts on Hawaiian gear and comes out to find that the backyard has been transformed into a Hawaiian luau complete with tiki lights, sand, surfboards, and a fire pit. Erika is dressed in a mermaid-type outfit with a trident (yes, that word means something besides the gum four out of five dentists recommend) and welcomes them to the clambake… “FROM HELL!” she roars in a distorted demonic voice as thunder and lightning crash. I think it was a little funnier last year when Jason did it, just because we weren’t expecting it at all and Jason was just so… well… Jason. It’s much like that same competition - the HouseGuests each have a covered plate in front of them with some sort of exotic seafood. When they see what it is, they can choose to pass it to the person next to them, but then must eat that person’s plate in exchange. If they aren’t able to finish the entire portion in one minute, the entire house, including Erika, gets PB&J for whichever day they were assigned in the ping-pong ball drawing. “Remember, nominations are TOMORROW!” she goodnaturedly roars.

Jun is up first and gets gefilte fish. Jun makes a sour face and declares she doesn’t like gefilte fish as everyone tells her (which is true, comparatively) that she has it easy. “Jun had to eat gefilte fish! EVERYBODY EATS GEFILTE FISH!” roars Alison to us in the Diary Room. Whoa! Easy there - did she just buy a deli? Erika opines to us that it’s because Jun’s Korean, not Jewish. True enough, but according to that logic, I should hate, say, Thai food, and that’s certainly not the case. Jun spoons it in and threatens to throw up as Alison helpfully bitches to us that she was ready to grab the spoon out of her hand and shove Jun’s face in it! Well, I guess with an attitude like that she’ll be certain to finish her allotted dish within the time period with no bitching, right? In the end, despite all the rigmarole, Jun finishes in time.

Justin is up next and discovers to his displeasure that he has lutefisk - dried codfish soaked in a water and lye solution before cooking. He balks at eating the “raw chum” and Jack offers to eat it instead. He takes Jack’s plate in exchange - baby clams in chili sauce, which Justin is considerately more enthused about until he discovers just how spicy it is. “I knew I should’ve brought my other ex on this show!” laughs Alison, who tells us that if it’s seafood or anything hot and spicy, Justin will throw up in your lap. Sure enough, he fails to finish in time. Next, Jack easily downs the lutefisk in a mere twenty seconds, telling us that he’s sat through autopsies and if you can do that, you can eat anything!

Robert gets saddled with eyeballs of albacore tuna. He winds up eating the whole head of the fish because he didn’t know he was supposed to eat just the eyeballs. He gets through it unscathed, but Jun has to vomit and Alison is about to. Alison gets monkfish liver, which Jee offers to eat instead, telling us that Alison was being a drama queen about it. Heh. Alison shrieks at the top of her lungs when Erika takes the shell off Jee’s dish and reveals it to be octopus. “It was so disgusting!” she rants to us. “I thought it was going to jump out at me! It looked like it was still alive!” Yeah, cry Reichen & Chip a river. “It was purple and you could still see the suction things!” she continues. She takes a bite and gags on the texture. “The octopus was like rubber! You can’t penetrate rubber with your teeth!” But Alison, it’s octopus! EVERYBODY EATS OCTOPUS! I swear, you just want to smash her face into it, don’t you? She winds up spitting it back up and isn’t able to complete it in time. Jun notes to us that Justin and Alison both screwed everyone over and perhaps in Pennsylvania all people eat are hoagies, which normally I would find a little snotty but Alison was snotty toward Jun first, so hey. Finally, Jee finishes the monkfish liver, which means that the house only has to be on PB&J Saturday (Justin) and Tuesday (Alison), which everyone’s happy about. Alison says some of these people, including herself, could stand to shed a few pounds, so they’re set!

We’re now up to the now apparently de rigueur weekly Self-Improvement With The Hamsters segment! So far, we’ve tackled quitting smoking with Jee, successfully battling alcoholism with Robert, and now this week shows us the importance of exercise! I swear, if they allowed books in the house, next week one of them would show us that reading really is fundamental! Erika tells us that there’s a lot of exercising going on as there’s a lot of downtime. We see her and Justin lifting weights to illustrate the point. Robert tells us Jee’s looking better than when he entered the house; his abs have gotten a lot firmer. Jack tells us Robert came in sickly and puny but is showing some muscle definition thanks to Justin’s training; Justin tells us that Robert is one of those people who are able to start looking ripped very quickly. “Look at this arm right here!” boasts Robert in the Diary Room. Jun scoffs that Robert could work out for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t make a difference - he’ll never be a “musclehead.” She tells us it’s very entertaining watching him struggle to lift weights an athletic girl could handle. Erika concurs that Robert’s always been a twig for the most part and she thinks she can break him!