Sunday, August 16: Oh, the drama!  The fallout of Jessie's surprise eviction was one for the Big Brother history books.  Natalie, Chima, and Lydia all dissolved into a mess of tears as if Jessie had been murdered in front of their eyes rather than having been evicted from a game show.  The three sat around the dinner table telling Jessie-stories, remembering what a kind soul he was, and cornering the market on Kleenex as if they were hosting his wake.

Reaction from the House Guests to Michele's winning the HOH was one of subdued panic as Michele really has no strong alliances with anyone in the house.  Michele has been a huge question mark in this game as far as where her loyalties lie and Chima, Russell, and Kevin all had concerns about what Michele would do come nomination time.  However, Jeff seemed confident that he was okey-dokey with Michele.

Very quickly, the house seemed to break up into two camps: Michele, Jeff, Jordan, and Russell had a pow-wow in the kitchen while Chima, Natalie, Lydia, and Kevin commiserated in one of the bedrooms.  Michele's demeanor toward Jeff during the kitchen convo suggested Jeff was correct in feeling that Michele had no malice toward him.

Later, in the HOH room, Russell and Michele talk over their past differences, and Michele, to her credit, decides to patch things up with him.  Privately, she realizes that she still has to keep her eye on him because Russell hasn't always been trustworthy in the game.

At the Have/Have-Not competition, entitled "Chaosserole," the HGs had to go down a slide into giant casserole dishes and then run to tables filled with unlabeled casseroles and taste them to find two that match for each of the following seven days and the extra luxuries that were being offered.  Now, there was no actual point to having them slide down into a giant dish of some puke-looking concoction before tasting the casserole dishes, but Big Brother just loves to screw around with the House Guests, and you know what?  We love to watch them do it.  When all was said and done, and the ten minute time limit had elapsed, the HGs ended up with food for every day except Monday.  They also earned luxuries of no cold showers and a barbecue grill.

Back in the HOH room, Natalie tries to work Michele to put up Russell, but Michele says she has four (other) people she's considering, namely the three Jessie-worshippers and Kevin.  As Natalie exits, Chima enters and Michele comes right out and says "I'm not going to B.S. you.  You're not going to like my nominations."  More bonus points to Michele.  After going through most of this game as a non-entity, Michele is really showing that she's a strong competitor and is not afraid to be direct with people.

America's vote for a food item to give the Have-Nots at the next competition include Cucumbers & Carp, Mince Meat & Marshmallows, or Churros & Chitlins.

At the nomination ceremony, Michele says that she made her picks based on strategy and nothing personal.  She based it on who would be likely to take her to the final four or final two.  The HGs gather around the table and the keys are pulled as follows: Jordan, Jeff, Russell, Kevin, and Lydia.  Therefore, the two nominees are Natalie and Chima.  Michele explains that she sees Chima as the biggest threat in the house and someone who would not take her to the final two.  We found Michele's nomination ceremony to be as good as her word: all business and nothing personal.  Just in the order that the keys were removed from the box showed us and the house guests that Michele has no problem being up front about with whom she is aligned -- a rarity on Big Brother.  Looks like our prediction of Michele going along with Chima's "girls' club" was off base, and now we're wondering if Michele's true strategy is to take Russell to the final two with her because she knows that the other house guests on the jury would more likely vote to make her the winner of this season over Russell.

These nominations are sure to kick the drama level up a notch, and the announcer even previewed that on Tuesday's episode one house guest will "self destruct" and will be removed from the game.  We're spoiler free here so we won't tell you who it is, but we'll give a full rundown after Tuesday's episode.

Tuesday, August 18: We're gonna need some dramamine for all this drama.  At the closing segment of Thursday's episode, when we "eavesdrop on the houseguests" after the HOH competition, Chima could be heard getting testy with the producers because the HGs were kept in the yard and not allowed to go back in the house.  She also wanted to have a talk with the producers, seemingly to give them a dressing down over the Coup d'Etat that allowed Jeff to usurp her God-given HOH powers.  Darling, this ain't the Chima Show ; you are a contestant in a game show and have to abide by whatever rules (or changes in the rules) that the producers of the show create.  Somehow, this was all lost on Chima, but luckily for us, it provided us with yet another time capsule worthy episode of Big Brother.

Seconds after the nomination ceremony, the house splits along alliance lines once again with Chima visibly upset and feeling that Michele stabbed her in the back.  Later in the bedroom, Chima tells her three buddies -- Natalie, Lydia, and Kevin -- that she's just going to go home and not give the other side the satisfaction of evicting her.

Later, Big Brother puts a piece of a miniature golf course out in the backyard for the HGs to practice on for the next day's veto competition.  When Chima deigns to go out, she does so in a surly mood, and does so without her microphone.  Big Brother's repeated requests over the PA system for Chima to put on her mike go unheeded. 

Via flashback, the producers show us other incidents of Chima breaking the rules such as disregarding Big Brother's requests for her to go to the diary room.  Chima also threatened that Big Brother will have to "fishtank" her (in other words, break away from her to show the fish tank on screen, which BB does when the HGs do or say something that can't be aired on television) if it turned out that Jeff had the mystery power, and when they went to bed after Thursday's live show, Chima obstructed the camera over her bed.

Back to the present, and while Chima is practicing her miniature golf, Kevin gets her microphone pack.  Natalie takes it, hands it to Chima who promptly lobs it into the hot tub.  Dramatic music flares from the BB soundtrack alerting us couch-voyeurs that something IMPORTANT has just transpired!  Chima seems completely unfazed by this and the possibility that she might have to reimburse BB for the drowned mike pack. 

Back in the bedroom, and Chima's mood has not abated.  Big Brother calls her to go the diary room, and once again, she tells them she's not coming.  She then tells them to f-off and that she's going to be causing "all kinds of havoc this week" as payback because she saw Jeff's receiving the Coup d'Etat as Big Brother setting up the game to make Chima look foolish because she never had the power that she thought she had as HOH.  Further requests by Big Brother to go to the diary room have Chima responding that the producers can come out from behind the house walls and talk to her personally if they have something to say to her.  With that, Allison Grodner, the Executive Producer of Big Brother, comes on over the house PA system personally and requests that Chima go the diary room.  With a heavy sigh, Chima drags herself out of bed, heads to the diary room, and is escorted out of a side door and out of the game entirely.

Kevin's gut tells him that Chima is not coming back to the game and within minutes, Allison Grodner once again comes on over the house PA system and calls the HGs to the living room.  Once assembled, Allison tells everyone that because of the multiple rule violations committed by Chima, she has been expelled from the game.  This gives Kevin's gut a score of 2-0 as he also correctly deduced that Jeff had the mystery power.  Allison then tells everyone that an annoucement will be made in the morning regarding how all of this will affect the nominations and the rest of the game going forward.

Following this, another bitchfest occurs when Natalie starts unravelling and declares that she wants "vindiction," not because two of her friends were evicted from the house in as many days, oh no.  It was the way that it happened that Natalie just CANNOT brook.  Lydia and Kevin talk Natalie down from the ledge, but things won't stay quiet for long.

The next morning brings the news of how the game will proceed.  Michele gathers everyone into the living room and reads a Big Brother announcement that states that now that one of her nominees, Chima, is gone, she is no longer HOH, and that they will all play the next HOH round that day.  The usual rules apply, and Michele is not allowed to compete. 

The HGs head to the backyard and they see a more elaborate version of the miniature golf set up that they practiced on just the night before.  By all appearances, this was the veto competition rejiggered into a Head of Household competition.  Just as in golf, the lower the score the better and as each HG is eliminated from the game, they get to choose a prize, which a contestant who is eliminated later can steal if they want.  In general, the guys play much better than the ladies and Jeff, Kevin, and Russell all score multiple holes-in-one.  Lydia is eliminated first and her prize turns out to be the HOH key.  Sitting at the elimination table, Lydia begins to partake in the champagne and orange juice that Big Brother has provided.  And partake.  And partake.  In round 2, Natalie is eliminated and her prize is revealed to be a Hawaiian vacation.  Russell is eliminated in round 3, and his prize is a phone call from home.  He decides to take Natalie's vacation and give her the phone call.  Natalie is ok with this as she wants to talk to her father.  In round 4, Jeff scores his fourth consecutive hole-in-one, while Kevin narrowly misses his fourth and ends up with the highest score, eliminating him from the round.  Kevin's prize is $5000, which he decides not to exchange for any of the other prizes.  In the final round, Jeff asks Jordan if she wants HOH, and when she says yes, he purposefully throws the competition by taking a bad shot, and allows her to win -- the way a real man does, according to Russell the Love Muscle.  Jeff's prize is a "spa experience," which he promptly exchanges for Russell's Hawaiian vacation.  Jordan's prize is revealed to be the "Captain Unitard" superhero suit.  Tempting as that was, Jordan wisely trades it for Lydia's HOH key.  Lydia, practically three sheets to the wind at this point, calls Jordan Jeff's puppet, or more precisely, Jeff's "ho-puppet." 

Still more drama!  After the competition, Lydia, the only Jessie's Girl not to unravel, begins to unravel and starts to cause mischief.  She's either still drunk or drunk again, and she pours out Michele's bottles of beer in the sink and dumps Michele's food in the garbage.  Lydia, fed up with the other alliance (and drunk), demands to be voted out over Natalie, but Jeff instructs her to "get comfy" because she "ain't goin' nowhere."  As much as they might not want Lydia in the house, Jeff's alliance clearly has its sights set on Natalie, whom they view as being the better player.

It's nomination time again, and Jordan gathers the house together at the now mid-sized table to, as she so North Carolina-ly put it, "nominate two people up for eviction."  The keys are pulled as follows: Michele, Jeff, Kevin, Russell.  It comes as completely no surprise to anyone in the house that Natalie and Lydia are put on the block.  Given that Chima has already been expelled, it does appear that Thursday's double live eviction that we were promised will not happen.  Rather, on Thursday, the veto will be played, a single live eviction will take place, and the next HOH will be crowned.

Thursday, August 20 (DAY 47): As predicted, Chima's removal from the game for a rule violation changed tonight's planned double-eviction to a normal single-eviction episode.  However, we still did play a bit of "Big Brother Fast Forward" as we had the veto competition for Jordan's nominees in addition to the normal eviction ceremony and Head of Household competition.

After the nomination ceremony, Lydia contemplates "going off" on the other alliance, but Natalie and Kevin are there to convince her to play hard for the veto and take herself off the block.  Elsewhere, Russell and Michele talk in the "splish-splash" room, and Rus tells Mich that if she ever went up on the block, he would take her off because he needs someone who's been just as big a villain in the house as he has been to go to the final 2 with him. 

One lovely night, Natalie, Kevin, and Lydia tell each other bedtime stories.  Specifically, the hand job incidents between Lydia and Jessie such as what transpired on Day 10 during Jessie's first HOH tenure. 

Daylight comes, and Kevin and Natalie decide that their only hope of all three of their alliance staying in the house after the veto competition would be for them to plant a seed of doubt with Jeff that Russell and Michele have a final two deal, what she refers to as "Operation: Bosley and the Two Angels."  Interestingly enough, with the prior Russell-Michele convo, they sort of do have an unofficial agreement unbeknownst to everyone else.  Later, in the backyard, Kevin is sitting out there alone and, when Jeff comes out, takes the opportunity to start the lie.  Kevin tells Jeff that he was in the "Red Room," and he heard Russell tell Michele in the "swim" / "splish-splash" room that next week would be important and that they would have to "split up the couple" so that Russell and Michele could go all the way to the end together.  To Kevin's amazement, Jeff bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Jeff then goes up to Jordan's HOH room and fills her in on the latest.  Jeff says that they have to consider the possibility of backdooring Russell this week rather than waiting until later in the game.  Jeff and Jordan dismiss the possibility that Kevin could be lying to them.

After eavesdropping on Natalie's tear-filled conversation with her father that she won in the prior HOH competition, we flash forward to the present and the live veto competition being held in the backyard.  Once again, this looks like a competition that may have orginally been scheduled for later in the game, but was moved up due to Chima's exit.  We think this because the veto competiton, hosted by Julie, was "Before or After," which had been played often in prior seasons as a Head of Household competition.  In this competiton, Julie relates an event that took place in the competition and then asks the contestants if that event took place before or after a second event.  With each round, the contestants that answer incorrectly are out of the competition.  Everyone except Russell was selected to play this veto competition.  Everyone got the first question correct, but with the second question, Lydia, Jeff, and Natalie are all dropped from the competition.  This leaves Michele, Jordan, and Kevin who each get question 3 correct, but with question four, Kevin is out, leaving Michele and Jordan.  They both get the next four questions correct, so they go to the tiebreaker question.  They are asked to guess the number of truffels that were in the mud pit in the veto competition entitled "When Pigs Fly."  Michele wrote "50, " and Jordan wrote "60."  With the correct answer being 104, Jordan wins the veto competition and, as she is already HOH, holds all the power in the house.

At the abbreviated veto ceremony, Jordan decides not to use the power of veto and leaves her nominations intact.  The house guests cast their votes to evict as follows:  Russell evicts Lydia; Michele evicts Lydia; Jeff evicts Lydia; Kevin evicts Natalie.  Therefore, Lydia is evicted from the Big Brother house, 3 to 1.  With that, Lydia gives Kevin a big hug, walks past the other house guests without saying a word, and walks right out the front door to talk to Julie.  When quizzed about it by Ms. Chen, Lydia says that Kevin, being her Sugar-Sugar Bear, is the only one whom she wants to see win, and everyone else can "kick rocks."

The HOH competition begins in the final minutes of tonight's live broadcast.  It's entitled "Can Do," and the house guests each have to grab tin soda cans and drop them from from a raised platform into recycling tubes positioned at least 6 feet below them.  The first house guest to get 24 cans into his or her tubes becomes HOH.  When Julie first read the rules, she said that the game had a time limit and that if no one had won by the end of the hour (only about 10 minutes away), then the HG with the most cans would become the winner.  However, after we returned from a commercial break, the rules seemed to change (or the rules had already changed prior to tonight's show and no one bothered to update Julie's teleprompter) and the competition continued past the closing of the show.  Those people who only watch the CBS version of the show wouldn't find out who was HOH until Sunday's episode.