Big Brother 2, Episode 9: Tirades, Toothbrushes, and Tantrums
by Susan Schechter
-- 07/10/2002
Tuesday is normally the most boring of the three Big Brother 2 nights, but that was before Shannon went psycho and Will discussed all the places he shaves. One of them will be booted on Thursday, but until then, they continue to plot together.
After watching tonight’s episode, the first thing I did was brush my teeth. I do believe the folks at CBS were planting subliminal messages in my brain to do so.
The Tuesday night episodes are designed to have the slowest pace of the three nights; these are the episodes that show vignettes of the houseguests. The viewers were treated to quite a few of these, not to mention all of the action in the house. As one houseguest said, “No secrets here.”
Think of all the secrets we learned. Will is upset over his nomination and Shannon’s. He wants to bail out of the house. (We can only hope he does – presuming it’s not done for him.) Later in the show, we learned that Mike does not like body hair and neither does Will. Will apparently, taking a page from Survivor 1 Sean’s book, shaves his chest hair. But Will does not stop there. He also shaves his arm pits and his, well, testicles. Way too much information, Will!
The reward challenge this time dealt with, of all things, laundry. The houseguests were first shown doing their laundry, all by hand the way our ancestors did it a century ago. Krista commented that it made her feel Amish. So the reward is a week of professional laundry fluff and fold.
The challenge involved exchanging clothing with the other team using clothes lines, and the team comprising of Nicole, Shannon, Bunky, and Kent won. For her part, Shannon said she was happy she will have clean clothes to wear when she leaves on Thursday (quite an optimist, that Shannon). I think it will be Will, but I don’t know why. I just do not think the women will vote so it will be three women to five men left in the house, despite the fact that Shannon has been acting like a complete and total jerk this past week.
The houseguests also found out what the America’s choice question was – and by the viewer vote, they received a toaster. It also looks like they got a supply of bagels, and cream cheeses. More importantly, when somebody is back to PB&J, at least they can have toasted PB&J! As usual, when everybody else was happy, Will didn't like that they got the toaster instead of something else.
There was even a touching moment between Shannon and Nicole in this episode. According to Nicole, Shannon would make a great personal trainer. We saw them both exercising, and Nicole talked about how she could see the results. Shannon said she was proud of Nicole. I actually smiled, thinking Shannon was nice. Too bad my opinion changed in a New York minute. Earlier in the show, she had told her beau, Will, that she would make Hardy cry. And she did. She constantly teased him about being a coward, and being jealous of her and Will. Sure enough, later in the show Hardy was shown crying on the hammock, with Nicole. Will now has said his only goal is to get rid of Hardy. Well, that makes them even, since Hardy’s goal was to get rid of Will and his pals. Mike told Will to play the sorry heart card if Shannon is evicted (yeah, like anybody there thinks Will even has a heart). Tensions are really rising here.
Shannon reminds me of Deacon Brodie. Deacon Brodie was a real character, who lived in 19th century Scotland, immortalized forever as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Shannon is so two-faced, it’s almost like she has a split personality. She can be sweet one minute and duplicitous the next.
Speaking of Shannon, she and Will saw a big spider in the back yard. Both were convinced it was a black widow, and someone said, “Someone just got a new nickname in the house.” Nah, Shannon is more like a female praying mantis. Can’t you see her biting the head off her mate?
Shortly thereafter, she got an idea about how to upset Hardy. You could almost actually see the light bulb go on over her head. She had just taken a shower and decided to clean the toilet bowl – using Hardy’s electric toothbrush. She then put it back, all the time giggling as she moved it around in the water. Now, to be fair, she did not actually CLEAN the toilet, just gave it a brief once-over.
Big Brother called her into the Diary Room to explain herself. She went in with Will, of course, since at this point the two of them are joined at the hip. She apologized -- if you can call that an apology. It must have had some effect because it was over until Hardy found out the truth – the whole tooth, so help me. He did not buy her story that she was leaning to get the curling iron and broke it. Even during the weekly household meeting, the toothbrush came up, this time by Kent, asking if it was done on purpose. Shannon asked if he really was so stupid as to not know the answer to that.
Aside from Shannon, Krista's strategy of staying on the fence seems to be biting back at her. She has been excluded, in at least some minds, from the TOP alliance (The Other People) because she hangs out with Chill Town and refused to nominate any of them the previous week.
The real drama is Thursday night. I cannot wait to finally see who leaves. If it is Shannon, what will she say to Jim when she sees him, or will he have an epiphany and dump her on live TV, like something straight our of Jerry Springer? Or will it be Will? If it is, will Jim be waiting for him? Nicole made a comment at the end of the show that it might be more interesting to kick out Will first, and the way that Shannon is behaving, she would probably evict herself by her actions as did Justin. I agree with her, and it would be great television, and boost BB’s sagging ratings again. I do know one thing before this happens, I will have very clean teeth. Because now I’m going to brush them again. With a brand new, unopened, toothbrush.
Susan Schechter works for a multinational Financial Markets/News company as a Research Analyst/Biographer covering the UK, Australia and other Commonwealth countries.
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