Big Brother 4, September 19: I Remember Nausea

OK. So Mary was upset that Jack punched Johnny after Johnny took a swing at him, so she decided to stay with Jill to collect her thoughts, where Jack tracked her down and gave her an engagement ring on the advice of Jumbo Marino. She accepted and they broke the news to Maeve, then prepared to tell Johnny. Meanwhile, Jill was livid when Seneca -

What? Sigh. You’re sure I can’t just recap Ryan’s Hope instead? I can guarantee you it’s more interesting than a recap of this episode.

Sigh. OK. “Paradise Hotel is full of surprises! HALLO, LOS ANGELEEEEEEES!” So while Amy was being the screeching harpy from hell, Charla -

Crap - you’re paying attention. No, huh? Sigh. It’s just that basically, this episode is a glorified clip show designed to stall and kill time because CBS ordered an extra week of this show a while back. (That’s also why lately there have only been two episodes a week.) So not only am I going to be recapping things that have already happened, but in most cases I’m going to be recapping things I personally have already recapped - and it’s a nice day outside and I have more pressing things to do. Like watching paint peel.

On the other hand, it’s my last recap of the season and it’s not like you’ve never done anything to me, so I’ll endure the tedium so you don’t have to. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

OK. One last time into the abyss!

“Alison CUT A DEAL with ROBERT!” thunders Stock Booming Melodramatic Announcer #38. Yeah. That worked out well. “Robert tried to THREATEN the girls!” he booms. Substitute “throttle” for “threaten” in that sentence and most of America would have been cheering him on. “HOW will Jun and Alison GET ALONG ON THEIR OWN?” he wonders. Judging by the way they start dancing around and singing, “It’s our house! It’s our house!” I think they’ll do just fine. “What are the jury members THINKING?” he demands. Good question.

Tonight, we’re back to the original credits with David and Michelle placed at the beginning instead of at the end and everyone’s name and picture displayed. Except for Scott - the producers apparently think that if they don’t acknowledge he existed, why then, we’ll forget he existed too! Scott Weintraub: the Snuffleupagus of Big Brother 4.

Alison evicts Robert again and tells us she thinks she was a little too harsh on him with her eviction speech and feels bad as she was basically sending him home with nothing. That’s interesting. I wonder if she started getting paranoid that people would see her Diary Room interviews? Jun, however, has no such qualms, telling us that the hardest thing for her was refraining from skipping and singing. Which, on the one hand, is displaying more of that storied compassion and empathy we’ve come to expect from her, but on the other hand, if Robert didn’t go, she would have, so that no doubt plays into it as well. She goes on to say that he wasn’t a man and that a real man wouldn’t have weaseled through the way he did. She, of course, has every right to display such disdain, being that she’s been completely forthright and loyal in this game. SMASH! go the windows of Jun’s glass house.

Literally the second Robert exits the house, Jun and Alison start hugging and giggling as some song that sounds an awful lot like “Best Of My Love” by the Emotions but has just enough differences to avoid paying royalty fees plays jubilantly in the background. Yup, Alison’s clearly torn up inside, the poor dear. “As soon as he walked out the door, it was the most amazing feeling EVER!” she gloats to us. OK, Sybil. They shriek in horror as they note that he apparently never washed his sheets, then go running around the house, bouncing on the beds, etc. “I know my parents are going CRAZY right now!” Alison shrieks. The same ones that were practically BEAMING as they were like, “Yeah, she's an old pro at lying, scheming, misleading, and backstabbing - that's our little girl!” in the last episode? Probably so. Jun brings up the jury members and Alison says she’s worried about what they’re thinking. As she should be, quite frankly. She goes on to say that she has no idea where they’re being sequestered.

On that note, the Jury House is finally identified as being in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; or at least if it’s been identified as having been there previously I’ve missed it. The jury members, except for Robert, troop in on cue and file around the kitchen table for dinner. “Last one, guys,” says Jack. “Can you believe it?” asks Dana. Gee, this doesn’t seem staged. On cue, we get the obligatory Pre-Clip Show What This Experience Has Meant To Me confessional essays. Jack tells us this has been the experience of a lifetime. Nathan tells us there was a lot of wacky stuff that happened - more than he can count on his fingers and toes! Which, I have no doubt, is his customary counting method. Erika tells us you can’t understand how emotional it was - especially with the X-Factor thrown at them. Dana will never, ever, ever forget this experience and it’s changed her fer shure! Like, how totally bitchin’! Justin says that they made it to sequester and have a say in who wins the game, so they haven’t lost anything! Except their dignity, perhaps.

Oh God, here comes the Contrived And Forced Reminiscences portion. Basically, if you’ve ever seen a sitcom retrospective, you know how this goes. Everyone sits around the main set, there’s often some kind of photo album involved, and the dialogue is all of the ilk of, “Say! Remember when Blah Blah did blee blee; it all started when CLIP?” “I’ll never forget that - and speaking of things I’ll never forget, what about when Bluh Bluh did bloo bloo, CLIP?” In any case, Justin is the first to have the producers point a gun at his head just out of camera range - er, gets the ball rolling - by reading, “Remember the first night?” off the cue cards. “I remember your face when you saw the exes coming in - you didn’t look too happy!” reads Erika to Nathan from hers. We see a clip of everyone wildly overreacting when Julie announced their exes would be joining them, although thankfully we’re spared the “In a SHOCKING TWIST KNOWN AS THE X-FACTOR” commentary. Various jury members to us: Yak yak shocked surprised and/or relieved theirs didn’t show up. Here’s Jee fretting to us about what His Girl Carmen (I think that’s her legal name based on him continually referring to her as such) might think about him being there with Jun; here’s Jun telling us she felt sick, then pissed off, then announcing she was leaving the room to go vomit. Justin tells us he wondered if it was just a coincidence. Clip of everyone milling around and trying to figure out whose ex is whose. Aha! Scott sighting! Here’s Jun and Erika hugging and commiserating, here’s Robert telling us Erika isn’t being the bitch she can be, and - oh, good God, here’s Alison sobbing and wailing to the high heavens about what her poor boyfriend at home will think! Yeah. THAT inhibited her for all of five nanoseconds. Want to laugh even more hysterically? Let’s revisit Alison’s official preshow interview:

How do you plan to win BIG BROTHER?
Not lying, not cheating and not talking behind backs

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That ranks right up there with “I am not a crook!”