Big Brother 11, Week 2
The One When Everyone Turned on Ronnie
By Eric Hughes
July 26, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jump ahead one week (or up until Thursday's live eviction), and the HouseGuests ditched their former teams for something more stable: total unity. The Athletes are friends with the Populars. The Brains are in bed with the Offbeats.
This, of course, isn't how I remember high school.
Even better, the entire house (save for one lonely soul) shares a common enemy – Ronnie – who should be the next to vacate the premises or something ain't right with the current season.
It's too bad they didn't catch a whiff of the scheming, playing-both-sides rat before it was too late. Otherwise, feisty players like Laura – a guest I rather enjoyed – would still be in the game. It was nice knowing you, oh Georgian bikini model.
Week 2 at a glance
Head of Household: Ronnie
HouseGuests nominated for eviction (pre-veto): Jeff and Laura
Power of Veto winner: Jeff
PoV used on: Jeff
HouseGuests nominated for eviction (post-veto): Jordan and Laura
HouseGuest evicted live on Thursday: Laura
Who should have been evicted: Jordan
New HoH: Jessie
HouseGuests remaining: 11 (Casey, Chima, Jeff, Jessie, Jordan, Kevin, Lydia, Michele, Natalie, Ronnie, Russell)
"I definitely have some big moves in store for the week" – Ronnie
When Ronnie said this at the start of his week as Head of Household, I didn't think much of it. So he's a champion persuasive speaker. What gives? He's also the season's token dork and would probably seal his own fate as a goner if he kept making waves this early in the game.
Even though he voted to evict the wrong person the week before – and therefore putting a serious hurtin' on the Populars' side of things – Ronnie still didn't strike me as someone who could do any more damage to the side of the house that the majority of at-home viewers are pulling for.
What's amazing is that he apparently was only getting started.
Following a witch hunt that basically pitted the screwed eviction on Ronnie, the manipulative mastermind that same evening nominated to get rid of two HouseGuests that in no way could have expected it: Jeff and Laura. Two players, mind you, who put their trust in Ronnie to make up for his voting error by chipping away at the Athlete regime.
Clearly, Ronnie's allegiance was still with the Athletes. As Ronnie would say before Sunday's episode came to a close: "You get lied to in Big Brother. Guess what? That's Big Brother."
The ugly truth about The Ugly Truth
Big Brother this week could very well be remembered as the week The Ugly Truth was shamelessly plugged. And poorly at that.
In a competition hosted by Dan (season 10's big winner), the HouseGuests were asked to vote for how they thought other HouseGuests would have answered the question. One guy and one gal, respectively, would win the opportunity to escape from the game for two hours to watch The Ugly Truth.
Because hey, Big Brother isn't going to let its contestants suffer through a whole summer of torment without allowing an opportunity to view a movie they'd otherwise be missing in theaters. It totally make sense!
Winners of the competish were the mismatched Casey and Chima. Among other things, Casey called his date "the wicked witch of the west" and was in no way looking forward to the screening because he feared Chima'd be bitching the whole time about the movie popcorn.
Turns out this really didn't happen – though maybe these moments were left on the editing floor. What CBS ended up showing us was, of course, Casey and Chima loving the hell out of The Ugly Truth. Even laughing at parts that just can't be funny. It was... awkward.
Ronnie does it again
Well, back to the game play. Also on Tuesday, a very important Power of Veto competition was held, in which Laura and Jeff attempted to right Ronnie's wrongs. Going into the day's game, Laura even secured Ronnie's word that if one of them won, Ronnie's replacement nominee would be the muscled Russell. The guy was a strong competitor and was already under the skin of many a HouseGuest.
So for the benefit of the house at large, Ronnie would be doing everyone a favor – and not just Jeff and Laura – by backdooring Russell.
In the PoV competition, the HouseGuests had to fill buckets with a requested amount of money – whether it be $100 in quarters, $10 in pennies or another combination. Jeff proved to be quite good at the game, winning round after round and therefore inching closer to removing himself from the Chopping Block. Offbeat Casey remarked: "He's like the rain man with this." Loved that reference.
As luck would have it, Jeff won. And by the end of the episode, he no longer would be considered for eviction. However, Ronnie's manipulation continued with him backing out of his plan to backdoor Russell by nominating the sweet-as-pie Jordan. His rationale was that he wanted Laura out of the house for being a competitive player, and the way to do it was to put her up against a player that the rest of the house would be stupid to vote for.
"Ronnie is the rat," Laura said. "Every single thing Ronnie has told me in this game was a lie."
"I thought Ronnie was the biggest dork in the house. Come to find out he's playing everyone." – Russell
Strangely, up to this point a number of HouseGuests still held a certain amount of respect (and trust) in the house's great puppet master. Until, of course, he said something completely stupid. Which, among other things, led to Ronnie barricading himself in the HoH room for two straight days -- or, as Host Julie Chen pointed out, the longest period of time any contestant has spent there in the show's 11-season history.
Sequestered in the room, Ronnie had nothing else to eat but chips and snack food. However, something tells me the guy – who we previously learned regularly plays something like six hours of video games a day – had little trouble with this new diet.
What Ronnie said to put him in the position was this: He made up a white lie that Laura said that Russell said he was trying to rally enough votes to keep her in the house. (Something she, of course, never said).
It's petty. I know. But it's comments like that that'll apparently turn the whole house against you. And for a player like Ronnie, whose seen every episode of Big Brother since it was brought to the States about nine years ago, he should know better.
The best part was watching Laura confront Ronnie about the issue in front of the other HouseGuests. The beginning of her argument, which eventually led Laura to tears, was literally, "You said that I said that Russell said that he would..."
It was awesome. And that, my friends, is how the high school clique gimmick is paying off.
From that moment on, Ronnie lost any friends he had in the house, and stuffed his face with empty calories in the comforts of his HoH room. He at one point sulked in his bed, thinking out loud that his wife would know what to do in this situation.
Though sad, Ronnie's game play up to that point had been slimy at best. I just couldn't sympathize.
Final thoughts
I guess at this point I'll tell you that Laura was evicted (by an 8-1 vote). No surprise there, as Jordan is just too adorable to be going home this soon. At the same time it's a shame, since I would have loved to see Laura exact revenge on a powerless Ronnie.
Then again, no worries there as Jessie, next week's HoH, will surely get the deed done.