Home Television Television Episode Blog TV FLASHBACK: Big Brother 11
TV FLASHBACK: Big Brother 11
Written by US Townhall staff   
Monday, 13 July 2009 00:38

Sunday, September 6: Following Natalie's win as HOH, she assures Kevin that they are going together to the final two, and that she will try hard to win the final veto competition to make sure nothing upends their plans.  Later in the Red Room, Natalie sticks to her lying ways and tells Kevin that she wants to convince Michele and Jordan that she is no longer aligned with Kevin by putting Kevin on the block.

Later, Natalie puts her plan into motion and tells Michele and Jordan that she's going to put Kevin up because even though they're friends if Kevin goes to the final 2, he would win.

At the luxury competition, "Big Brother Boutique," the house guests are competing as a group to get a shopping spree for clothes.  The competition will have ten minutes on the clock where pairs of house guests who are in two separate partitions in the backyard have to find identical items of clothing just by shouting descriptions of them at each other.  After 10 rounds, whatever time is left on the clock from that ten minutes is theirs to go on a mad-dash shopping spree in the house.  Michele and Jordan are one pair, leaving Natalie and Kevin as the other pair.  After five rounds each, the house guests are left with 3 minutes and 28 seconds to put on as many articles of clothing from the racks of clothes in the living room, and whatever they are wearing at the end of the allotted time, they can keep for themselves.  For his part, Kevin went hog wild and stripped and practically dismembered to take its clothes.

Later in the HOH room, Kevin opens the lines of communication with Michele and floats the idea to her to team up together to get Natalie out of the house.  In the Diary Room, Kevin says that he's willing to "knock a bitch out" for the half-million dollars, but a lot of Kevin's Diary Room waffling and scheming seem to be egged on by the Big Brother staff to generate phoney suspense rather than having anything to do with the truth, so it remains to be seen exactly where Michele fits in with Kevin's plans.

In the backyard, Natalie tells Jordan that Kevin and Michele are her two targets, and that she hasn't lied to Jordan about her plans and makes a final two deal with Jordan.  Hardey-Har-Har. 

Back in the HOH room, Natalie arrives to discover Pandora's Box has returned.  Her deal is that, for the first time in Big Brother history, she would have the opportunity to spend time with a loved one inside the Big Brother house.  The video screen in her HOH room shows her that the person waiting inside the secret room is her boyfriend, Jason.  However, the second part of the deal is that if she does meet with her boyfriend, she will not be eligible to play in the final veto competition, leaving Kevin on his own against Jordan and Michele.  Therefore, if Kevin does not win the veto competition on Tuesday, he would definitely go to the jury house because the veto holder is the only person who will cast a vote on eviction night.  Only if Michele is dumb enough to listen to Kevin's lies would she choose not to evict Kevin if she won the veto.

Of course, Natalie takes the deal and enters the room to find her boyfriend wating there with a rose and a marriage proposal.  She accepts and then Jason hands her an envelope which offers her a further deal: she can get an additional 15 minutes and a sushi dinner on top of the five minutes that she already won with Jason, but the other house guests "might get a little annoyed."  Natalie wastes no time in accepting the new deal not caring how it would annoy her roomies.  With that, two actors dressed in a baby costume and a cat costume enter the house and begin following the house guests around and, as advertised, annoying them.  Then, an actor in a roach costume comes out and begins spraying the roommates with fake bug spray.  Natalie decides to keep her meeting with her boyfriend and the marriage proposal a secret so that it doesn't hurt her in the game.

After the pests leave, Kevin, Michele, and Jordan go up to the HOH room to find Natalie who tells them that she just got "royally screwed" because she opened up Pandora's Box.  She truthfully tells them that she can't play in the veto competition, but then makes up a bad lie that makes Kevin suspicious.  She tells them that there will be a "final 2 reversal," which meant that if she got to the final 2 and got the votes to win, then it would be reversed and the other finalist would win the game.  Once again, Kevin's gut comes to his rescue and realizes that it doesn't make sense that she essentially just lost Big Brother.  He knows that something good came from Pandora's Box and that Natalie got it.  Later, after talking with Kevin, Natalie realizes that no one is buying her story, so she confesses to the others that she got to spend time with her boyfriend and tries to play the whole "final 2 reversal" thing off as a joke.

In the final "America's Vote," viewers are asked to vote on their favorite house guest, and the HG with the most votes will win $25,000.  In seasons past, there was a special "jury prize" of $25k awarded by America's vote to their favorite juror, but this time, any house guest -- even those who did not make it to the jury house -- are eligible to win.  The only exception to this is Chima, who has been expelled from the game.  This change in rules also means that even one of the two finalists could win an additional $25,000.  Given that Jeff was given the Coup d'Etat power by America and received a standing ovation from the studio audience upon his eviction, we feel comfortable in saying that Jeff has the inside track on getting that cash.

At the nomination ceremony now taking place at the tiny table for four, Natalie sticks to her plan and pulls the one safety key, which is Jordan's.  She puts up Kevin as a pawn, but tells everyone that it is purely strategic so that she can get him out before he has a chance to evict her.  She then says that she's putting Michele on the block for purely personal reasons because she feels that Michele is a backstabber and that making a deal with Michele would be like making a deal with the devil.  Pot meet Kettle.  In voice-over, Natalie reveals that Michele is her true target, but has put up Kevin just to throw Jordan off track about her alliance with him.

 

Tuesday, September 8 (Day 66): Tonight's episode was broadcast live, but much of the episode contained pre-taped segments.  Following the nomination ceremony, Natalie headed up to the HOH room to have a chat with herself and congratulate herself on a job well done on convincing Michele and Jordan that she and Kevin are no longer in an alliance.  Natalie feels that if Kevin fails to win the POV, then there would be a good chance that the POV winner would opt to evict the other girl rather than Kevin.  However, Jordan was told by Jeff before his eviction to stick with Michele rather than trust Kevin or Natalie, and Jordan has resolved to do so. 

Although the Power of Veto competition was broadcast tonight, it was one of the pre-taped segements.  The house guests head out to the yard where they participate in the final POV competition entitled "Block Party."  There are two columns of ten clues each.  Each of the clues refers to an event in the game.  The house guests have to take giant blocks that have different combinations of four names on them, and stack them properly so that they answer each of the clues.  For instance, the left column clue might say "5th evicted," and the right column clue might say "Replaced Kevin on the block."  Therefore, they would have to find the block that can be positioned between the two clues such that the name "Jessie" would be on the left, and the name "Russell" would be on the right.  There is only one combination of positioning the blocks that would answer all the clues correctly.  When they are finished stacking their blocks in the center column, they can hit a buzzer which will tell them if they got it all correct or not.  However, in the event of an incorrect result, there will be no indication of which clues were answered correctly or how many were answered incorrectly.  Because Natalie opened Pandora's Box, she was ineligible to play for the Veto.  She was sequestered in her HOH room, while the competition was underway.

Michele hits her buzzer first, but out of the 20 clues, she had 18 incorrect.  Freeze-framing on her answers, it appears that Michele actually had much of it correct, but she stacked the blocks on top of each other in reverse order by accident.  Therefore, she placed the answer to the first question as the answer to the last question; she placed the block that should have gone second from the bottom as second from the top, and so on.  The next time we are shown Michele hitting the buzzer, she has a full 19 answers correct.  However, seconds later, when Kevin hits his buzzer, he gets the ding-ding-ding that he's correct, and Kevin is the winner of the final POV.

For the record, the columns of clues with their correct answers were:

 2nd Evicted  Laura  Russell  4th HOH 
 Hosted BB Mint Competition Lydia  Chima  Watched Both Movie Screenings 
 HOH 2 Times Jessie  Ronnie  4th Evicted 
 Won "Pop Goes the Veto" Russell Jessie Evicted by 3-2 Vote 
 Evicted by Greatest Number of Votes Laura  Casey  Wore Banana Suit 
 Rapped Inside OTEV the Ape Casey  Braden  Evicted by 6-5 Vote 
 Nominated for Eviction 4 Times Lydia  Ronnie  Always "Folded" in Vini-Vidi-Veto 
 3rd Evicted Casey  Lydia  Was Captain Unitard 
 Wore a Space Princess Outfit Ronnie  Braden  Played No Veto Competitions 
 5th Evicted Jessie  Russell  Replaced Kevin on the Block 

Following the competition and seeing Natalie's elation regarding Kevin's victory, the light finally begins to dawn on Michele that just maybe Kevin and Natalie had never broken off their alliance.

In the backyard, Michele makes a last-ditch attempt at getting Kevin to cast his vote to keep Michele in the game.  She promises Kevin that she will take him to the final 2 because she doesn't want Natalie to win the game.  Further, she says that if he keeps her this week, she would give him her vote if she gets eliminated subsequently, but if Kevin were to evict her this week, she would not give him her vote.

Back live in the living room, Julie asks Kevin to stand and make his decision as to what to do with the veto.  Obviously, Kevin takes himself off the block, and Jordan, as the only candidate remaining joins Michele in the green nomination chairs.  During Michele's final plea before Kevin casts his vote, Michele whips out a pair of devil horns and places them on her head and tells Kevin that she would be the better person to keep because even if she went to the final 2, there would be no way she could win.  She reiterated her promise to "raise hell against him" in the jury house if she were sent packing tonight.  When Julie gives Kevin the all-clear to cast his vote, he says that he didn't have his mind made up until "30 minutes ago," (a claim that his highly dubious consdering how he and Natalie have plotted to get Michele out ever since she won HOH) and casts his vote to evict Michele.

With that, the final 3 house guests begin the final Head of Household competition.  As usual, the final showdown is a 3 parter, and only the beginning of part 1 was aired tonight.  It's one of Big Brother's endurance competitions, and it's entitled "Log Jam."  Kevin, Jordan, and Natalie are atop a giant log that is rotating, and they have to hold on to their Big Brother keys which are perched over their heads.  Letting go of the key takes him or her out of the game.  Additionally, the house guests are subjected to artificial weather conditions like pouring rain to make their plight all the more challenging.  The winner of round 1 will automatically advance to the third and final round.

Thursday's episode will also be broadcast live.  We will learn who won the first part of the HOH competition, and the 2nd part will be played live.

 

Thursday, September 10 (Day 68): Once again, BB is airing a live episode.  We begin with the pre-taped conclusion of part 1 of the final HOH competition from Tuesday.  The log rolls forward; the log rolls backward; the log stops short; it rains; it snows; it becomes windy.  The house guests hang on to their keys for dear life and for an easier pathway to being the final HOH.

Natalie immediately tries to psyche Jordan out by saying that Michele was jealous of Jordan and is happy she was evicted so that she could spend some time alone with Jordan's showmance, Jeff, in the jury house.  Jordan, knowing that Michele is happily married, immediately called out Natalie as being "a litle instigator." 

Soon after the 3-hour mark, when Natalie asks the others if they are ready to drop, Kevin promises her that he's hanging on until sunrise, "wench."  Finally, at the 3 hour, 27 minute mark Jordan falls off the log first.  This means that she must play and win both rounds 2 and 3 in order to become the final HOH.  Once Jordan goes back in the house, Natalie agrees to fall off in five more minutes as long as Kevin swears to take her to final two per their agreement.  Three days earlier, Kevin and Natalie made an agreement that, since Natalie was stronger in the knowledge competitions, she should throw the first competition -- the log rolling -- so that Kevin wouldn't have to play round 2.  Kevin swears on everything that he will take her to final 2, but in a voice over, confides that his "word means nothing in this game."  He says that his true plan is to take Jordan to final 2 because he doesn't think he could win against Natalie because she would have more votes with the jury.  However, Kevin doesn't realize that, in the jury house, sentiment toward Natalie may have changed because Jessie told the other jurors that Natalie was lying about her age the whole time, and that she is really 24, and not 18 as she had been saying.

With Kevin's restated promise to Natalie to take her to the final 2, Natalie drops off the log, making Kevin the winner of round 1 and automatically advancing him to round 3 of this final HOH competition.  Round 2 was played live in this episode between Natalie and Jordan.  Julie reveals to the house guests one final twist to the season.  After round 2 of the HOH competition is played tonight, all 3 will still remain in the competition and advance to finale night because round 3 will be played out live at that time rather than also being played directly after round 2 as it had been in prior seasons.  Further, the jury questioning of the final two will also happen live after the last house guest gets evicted on Tuesday night.

Before round 2 begins, Julie brings out prior house guests, Mike Boogie, Janelle, Danielle, and Evel Dick to question them about their feelings on this season's game.  They agreed that the lie that Kevin and Natalie told Jeff to get him to evict Russell was the best move in the game, and that Jeff's use of the Coup d'Etat was another game highlight.  Dick, Janelle, and Mike all thought that Kevin should win this season, and Dick even added that it really wouldn't matter who Kevin brought with him to the final 2.

In part 2 of the HOH competition, entitled "Heads Will Roll," Natalie and Jordan each play separately and consecutively.  The game involves taking volleyballs with the names of the various houseguests who won HOH during the season and rolling them up an inclined ramp to land in a whole at the top.  The volleyballs must end up in the holes in the exact order that the corresponding house guest won HOH.  The house guest who has the most correct wins round 2.  If there were a tie, the house guest who completed the task in the shortest amount of time would be the winner.  Natalie is up first and, with only two seconds on the clock remaining from her allotted two minutes, ended up with only five correct answers out of the ten HOHs this season.  When Jordan takes her turn, she gets a full 9 answers correct and even has 18 seconds left on her clock.  This makes Jordan the winner of round 2, and it is she who will face off against Kevin in round 3 on Tuesday.

Julie tells the audience that when the final house guest is evicted, there will only be six members of the jury, and that America will be the 7th juror, and the potential tie-breaking one at that.  Viewers are allowed to text their votes (or vote online for free at www.cbs.com/bigbrother) until 5:59 pm Pacific time (8:59 pm Eastern) on Tuesday September 15.  The live finale will begin to air on September 15 at 9:00 pm Eastern.  We are given the 3 possible scenarios: final 2 is Jordan & Kevin, final 2 is Kevin & Natalie, final 2 is Jordan & Natalie.  Votes for a particular house guest only count for the actual ending scenario.  In other words, votes for say, Jordan, in the Jordan-Kevin combo do NOT count if the final two is Jordan and Natalie.  See the cbs.com website for the latest updated rules and policies because that is what truly governs how your votes will be counted.

With Jordan and Kevin facing off in the final round, there is no way for Natalie to become the last Head of Household.  The only way she can make it to the final two is if Kevin or Jordan takes her along.  Right now, with both Kevin and Jordan thinking that Natalie has a lot of friends in the jury house, they've each expressed feelings that they don't want to take Natalie along, but Kevin has made noises about betraying Natalie before and has not done so.  Was all his Diary Room trash talk against Natalie, the "biznatch," just more pretend waffling prompted by Big Brother or does he really mean to betray his ally?

Tune in on Tuesday night to find out.

Tuesday, September 15 (DAY 73 - FINALE NIGHT): In the first hour of the competition, Jordan and Kevin faced off in the ususal 7 question mental challenge.  The finalists were read a statement by Julie that was was made by one of the house guests in the jury house.  After the 7 questions, the score was tied at 3 to 3.  The tiebreaker question, guessing the total number of votes cast to evict this season, was won by Jordan whose answer, "50," was just one under the correct answer.  Kevin's answer of "80" was over, automatically disqualifiying him.  Therefore, Jordan became the final HOH.  She cast the final eviction vote to evict Kevin, taking Natalie to the final two.  Jordan said that it was nothing personal, but that she simply felt that she could more easily win against Natalie.

When the final votes were counted, Jordan proved to be correct in her assumption, as she won Big Brother by a vote of 5 to 2.  The most surprising of the votes came from Jessie, who voted for Jordan to win over his clique-mate and alliance member, Natalie.

For the record, the votes cast were as follows:

America's Vote (taking Chima's place on the jury): Jordan

Jessie voted for Jordan to win

Lydia voted for Jordan to win

Russell voted for Natalie to win

Jeff voted for Jordan to win - automatically making Jordan the winner even before the remaining votes were revealed.

Michele voted for Jordan to win

Kevin voted for Natalie to win

As for the America's Favorite Houseguest prize, it comes as no shocker that Jeff, whom America already had given the Coup d'Etat to, and whom the studio audience had given its only standing ovation upon a house guest's eviction, claimed the $25,000 jackpot.  Julie revealed that it wasn't even close.

And that wraps up another season of Big Brother.  CBS has already renewed the series for another season next summer and is seeking another bunch of applicants.  Head to cbs.com for details.

Discuss Big Brother 11 on our messageboard!



 

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