Big Brother 18 Episode 6

Jozea unsurprisingly played himself out of the game and was eliminated in Big Brother 18 Episode 5.

Paul is stuck in the HOH competition with Zakiyah and Da’Vonne, who think that very slow and very steady wins the race. It doesn’t. Freakazoids are doing a pretty good job, but eventually Tiffany decides to just give up and let Corey do the last 1/4 of the challenge by himself. Then Corey starts to rush, and that team has been eliminated. James hops off as well because he doesn’t want to win since his team, other than himself, are highest on the list of targets.

In the end, Paulie’s team wins and lets him take the HOH, which means that Frank, Michelle, and Bidgette are also safe.

Eight Pack should be able to relax now because Paulie’s goals align with theirs. The minority alliance tried to get rid of him last week. Paulie probably shouldn’t trust the other side, but doing the dirty work for a massive alliance isn’t helping him either.

Paulie’s target is Victor, so he talks Paul into being a pawn.

Nominations
Paul
Bronte

Bronte isn’t the target either, but the plan is to backdoor Victor. Bronte has decided that she will not trust a single boy again. It’s statements like that which should worry the guys as their numbers dwindle.

The roadkill competition requires them to mark six items that add up to exactly $18. Multiple people tell us they have the skills to do this elementary school math. Victor is the one who wins, which at least prevents him from being the third nominee, if not the veto replacement nominee.

For some reason, he shares this information with Paulie and Frank. Paul warns him not to trust them because they’re all working together, which is true, but he doesn’t believe it. Every nominee he suggests is a member of the Eight Pack.

Roadkill Nomination
Tiffany

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 7, which airs Wednesday at 8/7c on CBS.

Big Brother 18 Episode 5

To the delight of nobody, Paul won the power of veto in Big Brother 18 Episode 4, and Bridgette was nominated in is place by her teammate Frank. Of course, none of this really matters because Jozea is delusional and never shuts the hell up.

But first we have to go through the motions of pretending someone else may go home.

For his part, Jozea thinks he has at least six votes, but they decide to have him kiss Nicole’s butt in case there’s a tie. Sure, the person who you have said is your target from the beginning is going to help you.

Bridgette’s really bad attempt at spying (or rather Bronte telling everyone about it) comes out and makes people suspicious of her.

Nobody seems to really be paying attention to Paulie at all, other than Jozea and the few people who actually support his plan.

There’s also a new all female alliance named Fatal Five of Zakiyah, Da’Vonne, Tiffany, Nicole, and Michelle, which is the female subdivision of the Eight Pack alliance where the guys are outnumbered. They decide that Bridgette is becoming more of a problem than just the earlier spying, demonstrating the sort of cattiness that tears these alliances apart.

Meanwhile, Natalie has decided that she hates Victor for nitpicking at her because she can get any guy she wants. This leads to girl talk (plus James), which somehow causes Bronte to be told she’s clearly more useful in there with the other girls than talking with her poorly chosen alliance.

Votes
Victor: Paulie
Zakiyah: Jozea
Paul: Paulie
Frank: Jozea
Da’Vonne: Jozea
Michelle: Jozea
Bronte: Paulie
Natalie: Paulie
James: Jozea
Tiffany: Jozea
Corey: Jozea

With 7 votes, Jozea has been evicted from the Big Brother house. He would have been hard pressed to play a worse game. He says he feels most betrayed by Natalie, who voted for him to stay. Yes, he’s still getting everything wrong.

Despite the Greek tragedy that was Jozea’s game, he is going to get a chance to return. The first five people evicted will compete to try to win their way back into the house. Each week, there will be a battle back competition in which the loser goes home and the winner will return to compete again.

The HOH competition is a balance beam challenge in which they must return berries back to the start. If they fall, they are eliminated, which seems rather dumb for something like this. Natalie is eliminated in about a minute, and that’s probably how the rest of this is going to go.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 6, which airs Sunday at 8/7c on CBS.

Big Brother 18 Episode 4

The stupid twists have still not concluded, and a new competition was announced in Big Brother 18 Episode 3. After Frank won the first ever roadkill competition, he and his allies made Paul the third nominee.

Frank is happy that he has a “big secret” about his nomination, though most of the house knows who did it.

Jozea is sure that Michelle won, just like he was sure before that Paulie won. He reads faces and is always right, except for every time so far. Keep guessing, and you’ll get it right eventually.

Next up, Paul and Victor set their sights on Bridgette, which they tell her alliance Bronte and Natalie about. They seem unfazed by that and still want to work with them.

This year, the HOH does all of the random drawing for veto. If she picks a nominee’s name, they get to choose who they want. I’m not sure if that’s a good change or a bad change, but it’s interesting. Da’Vonne is the first pick. Then Nicole draws her own name and picks Corey, letting everybody know how close she is getting to him. They join Paulie, Paul, Jozea, and Nicole for the first veto competition.

Their task is to spin around 15 times to add 45 seconds to their clocks, then make their way to the other side to stack 40 bones, making their way back before time expires. Paul wins the power of veto. At least Jozea didn’t win.

The interesting thing about this twist is that the HOH isn’t the one getting any more blood on her hands because it’s not her nominee. He has two paths to take, neither very appealing. He can either nominate someone from his team, or he can nominate someone from his alliance. Seeing as the alliance is made up of most of the house, it would seem Bridgette is the target unless someone volunteers.

Tiffany tells Paulie that Vanessa is her sister. C’mon. This really can’t be a surprise to anyone.

Jozea running his mouth with Da’Vonne is one of the things that got him in trouble in the first place. Now he tells Frank he’s the messiah, too.

Then he holds a not so secret meeting that excludes the HOH, Paulie, and a few other select people who will be told exactly what’s happening. An uninvited James decides to crash the meeting because he sees everybody going in there and wants to know what’s happening. Then Tiffany stumbles into the room as well. This is all just silly, and not just because most of these people don’t even like Jozea.

Paulie is a bit stressed to be sitting on the block, but he should be happy that he’s on the block against perhaps the most clueless person to have played the game in the last 17 seasons.

Not to be outdone by someone opening his mouth when he shouldn’t, Bronte reveals that Bridgette went upstairs to infiltrate the HOH room. I don’t think these three know the meaning of the word spy, despite their alliance name suggesting otherwise. As if Frank needed any more ammo to nominate her. It doesn’t seem plausible that she’ll go home against Jozea and Paulie, but they’re painting an unnecessary target on themselves. Then again, Jozea is a blatant weasel, while Bridgette is trying to be sneaky about it.

Veto Ceremony
Paul removes himself from the block.
Bridgette is the replacement nominee.

So much for teams. A Bridgette nomination seems moot to the game, but she’ll still wants revenge if she finds out, which she probably will since eight people know who the roadkill winner was.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 5, which airs Thursday at 9/8c on CBS.

Big Brother 18 Episode 3

Glenn got the bad end of the twist to eliminate one person as quickly as possible in Big Brother 18 Episode 2 after he lost the competitions and was evicted. Then Nicole became HOH and nominated Jozea and Paulie.

There’s a new competition this year. Each week, the winner of the BB Roadkill competition will be able to nominate a third person anonymously. Another dumb twist. This is what happens when you feel the need to announce a new twist every night for the sake of creating a twist. This doesn’t so much add a new element of strategy as just throwing a random wrench into the works.

Da’Vonne is going around and trying to get people on her side, but some of these people don’t even really need convincing. So more than half the house is in an alliance now. That should last. Da’Vonne, Nicole, James, Frank, Michelle, Zakiyah, Corey, and Tiffany form the Eight Pack.

The first roadkill competition requires them to take off their clothes while trying to avoid letting go of buttons to keep their time running at normal speed. Time flows 30, 60, or 120 times faster depending on how many buttons they are not pressing. Frank is the winner.

Jozea starts spreading the rumor that Paulie won. He reads faces, and he’s always right.

Natalie wants to create an all female alliance, which never works. Natalie, Bronte, and Bridgette are the Spy Girls. Basically the least threatening alliance ever. As they are coming up with a name, Tiffany is in the hammock sleeping, except not really.

Because he’s allied with most of the house, Frank’s victory is not a secret for long and becomes a group decision.

For their mystery punishment, Category 4 must wear nothing but pixels for the rest of the week.

Team Unicorn is safe due to their win at the first competition. Freakazoids are safe because Nicole is HOH. When factoring in the giant alliance and the people who are already on the block, that means Paul and Bridgette are the only likely choices for nomination, and Bridgette is on Frank’s team.

Roadkill Nominee
Paul

Eight Pack controls the vote this week, so the nominee may be moot. They have just added another obnoxious person to the potential hit list. It’s really hard to top Jozea, though, despite the fact that he’s convinced himself that everybody loves him.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 4, which airs Wednesday at 8/7c on CBS.

Big Brother 18 Episode 2

We started the season with a bunch of lame twists in Big Brother 18 Episode 1 and left off with the losingest team of Nicole, Corey, Tiffany, and Glenn needing to square off against each other for eviction.

Tiffany tells Da’Vonne her shocking secret that everybody already figured out, that she is Vanessa’s sister. The only way someone would not know is if they didn’t watch last year.

Nicole talks Corey into letting her be HOH, making him think it’s his idea, and he seems to fall for it.

The challenge to determine the first person to go home requires them to gather coconuts from a tree on their unstable islands and put them in the slots to spell out SOS. Nicole wins. Tiffany places second. Glenn looks like he’s going to take the third spot, but then he knocks his coconuts off as Corey pulls his flag. Glenn has been evicted from the Big Brother house.

Glenn losing a competition is somewhat predictable, though he did create a dramatic photo finish at the end. His background as a detective might have made him an interesting player, despite the fact that he’s 50 and leaving behind a group of people with an average age of 26.

Regardless of who is HOH, all three people from the team will be safe this week, which makes being HOH pretty stupid because it’s easy enough to let some other idiot get blood on their hands this way. Nicole “reluctantly” agrees to be HOH, wanting to keep the returning players off the radar. Paul’s not happy with Corey, but it’s pretty safe to say Paul won’t be happy regardless.

Victor spills his guts to Nicole, throwing Jozea under the bus in the process. Not that Jozea won’t harm himself by running his mouth. First he calls himself the messiah for the newbies, then he tells Da’Vonne that he wants to get rid of the returnees with Nicole being first.

Nicole’s plan is to nominate Paulie as a pawn because he’s a strong competitor who could win veto. Such a giant target to make a pawn. Big Brother 101, which the “veterans” should know. Don’t nominate anyone you don’t want to go home.

Nominations
Jozea
Paulie

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 3, which airs Sunday at 8/7c on CBS.

Big Brother 18 Episode 1

The first twist of the season is announced within two minutes. There are four stowaways who will join the 12 contestants who enter the house.

Natalie was a NFL cheerleader. Paulie was a Major League Soccer player and is the brother of second place Cody from Big Brother 16. Bronte is a typical Cali girl who sounds like she is 5, but she’s also a math tutor. Victor manages a gym and is excited to live with girls who aren’t his family. Zakiyah is a preschool teacher but calls herself a bad bitch, claiming the other girls will be intimidated because she’s apparently going to go out of her way to make it so. Corey is a baseball coach who sleepwalks. Glenn is a retired NYPD detective. Bridgette is a traveling ER nurse. Jozea is a celebrity makeup artist. Michelle just finished school to be a dietitian who doesn’t want people to fool themselves into thinking they aren’t fat. Paul is a rocker. Tiffany is also a teacher whose sister Vanessa should have won last season.

Neither Paulie nor Tiffany are likely to be able to hide who their relatives are for very long, which could be a problem since both of them came so close to winning.

Victor likes Natalie. Natalie likes Corey. Corey calls Victor a stud.

Paulie immediately finds Paul to be loud and obnoxious. Michelle is afraid of a lot of things like aliens and North Korea and Paul’s beard.

Michelle already knows that Tiffany must be Vanessa’s sister. They look and sound very similar, and it was just last year, not like they dug up someone from a decade ago.

The first stowaway to pop out is Nicole from Big Brother 16, who says she got distracted by Cody, whose brother is now concerned. This is her third chance because she was evicted twice last time.

James from season 17 comes out next. I’m not sure whether the fact that he was America’s favorite houseguest is helpful or not.

Also from his season is Da’Vonne, who was the second person to be evicted.

Last comes Frank from Big Brother 14. Like James, he was voted America’s favorite houseguest. At least with him they’re going back almost four whole years.

The rallying against the returnees is already happening, as is the returnees uniting to try to overcome the numbers.

It’s not like he was going to hide anyway, but Paulie decides to come clean, especially with all these people returning. He reveals that his brother is Cody. In case there was any confusion, he was planning to walk around half naked all season, and his last name is tattooed on his ribs.

Tiffany is not willing to follow suit, despite the fact that both James and Da’Vonne played with her sister.

This summer, they will play the game in teams of four. As stupid twists go, this seems like one of them. The whole point of Big Brother is for people to form their own alliances to their own advantage or detriment. Hopefully this is one of those lame twists that mysteriously vanishes like the twist every week twist from last year that suddenly stopped.

The former houseguests who planned to work together are all split up to start picking teams. When picking, they must choose someone of the opposite sex.

Category 4: Frank, Michelle, Paulie, Bridgette
Big Sister: Da’Vonne, Paul, Zakiyah, Jozea
Team Unicorn: James, Natalie, Victor, Bronte
Freakazoids: Nicole, Corey, Tiffany, Glenn

Paul is happy with his other two team members, but he is already planning to get rid of Da’Vonne.

Their first competition is to ride a rocket. All four members of a team must fall off in order for the teams to be eliminated.

Tiffany is the first to fall, and as he’s complaining to himself and us about that, Glenn follows. Then Nicole. All three from the same team. Michelle and Bridgette fall together, followed by Frank, bringing another team down to one. Da’Vonne and Zakiyah fall together, and Paul is next. Jozea follows, making that team the first to be eliminated, which means they are have nots for the week.

James is the first to fall from his team. Natalie follows. Then Bronte. That leaves three teams with one member each. Paulie falls, and his team will receive a mystery punishment. Corey gave it a great effort after his team all were the first to fall, but he comes in second place, winning cash for his team.

Victor wins safety for his team. Four people are safe. For two evictions. Dumb.

Da’Vonne is angry that she’s stuck with a team of losers, of which she is the queen loser.

Tiffany plays dumb as Michelle confronts her about being Vanessa’s sister, but she finally admits it. Meanwhile, Tiffany thinks Michelle is Nicole’s sister.

So now we get to the next dumb twist. The winning teams will be safe. The losing team will then have to compete against each other for eviction, and the three who remain will have to pick a HOH.

The first round requires them to build a pyramid that is balanced on a plank supported by ropes the other players are holding. Freakazoids are one piece away for half an hour, and that’s as far as they will get. Unlike Big Sister (specifically Paul and Da’Vonne), Category 4 work pretty well together as a team and win.

The losing teams must go against each other. They must build a sandcastle puzzle. Freakazoids buzz in first but have incorrectly built their puzzle. Big Sister do the same, but their problem is a lot easier to fix. They win, which is too bad because I was looking forward to one of them going home. After this, Glenn has decided he hates his team.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Big Brother 18 Episode 2, which airs Thursday at 9/8c on CBS.

Survivor: Kaoh Rong Winner

In the most anticlimactic penultimate episode ever, Joe’s age finally caught up to him in Survivor: Kaoh Rong Episode 13 when he became the third person this season to be medically evacuated. That leaves a final four of Aubry Bracco, Cydney Gillon, Michele Fitzgerald, and Tai Trang competing to be the Survivor: Kaoh Rong winner.

Meh. I still want Caleb to win. But his buddy Tai has proved to be quite the force in this game despite at first glance seemingly being out of his element.

Oh, and Mark the chicken still survives.

He had planned to play his idol at 5 regardless, but now Tai’s hidden immunity idol is useless because it can’t be used after 5, the third one this season to not be used. Not that they haven’t had an impact. They just haven’t been getting used to nullify votes.

Aubry is concerned about Michele because she hasn’t made enemies on the jury.

For the reward challenge, they will crawl under a net, toss tiles through a target, balance those tiles while crossing a balance beam, and lastly look for matching pairs. Aubry is the only one having much success, but she apparently doesn’t know what the word pair means. In the end, Aubry realizes her mistake and wins reward, a meal.

She can choose whether to bring someone or not, and she picks Cydney. Why play favorites like that if Jeff’s not forcing you to do so, especially this late in the game? Tai and Michele should probably be getting the hint since this is exactly the same thing Aubry did last week.

Michele and Tai discuss what just happened, but there don’t seem to be any real alliances here. Everybody is up for whatever, as long as it’s not them.

For the immunity challenge, they will race back and forth across the water retrieving keys and then solve a three layer puzzle. Aubry builds up a good lead retrieving the pieces, and logic would suggest her as the last standing member of the Brains tribe to be the favorite to win. Tai is the first to advance to the second level and the third level. Michele is kind of in it, while Aubry and Cydney are lost. Then Tai all of a sudden slows way down, and Michele wins immunity.

Despite the fact that she keeps going out of her way to bring Cydney on rewards, Aubry feels her only option is to force a tie. On the other side, Michele wants to get rid of Aubry, so Cydney will go with that plan. They approach Tai, hoping he will just make the easy Aubry vote, rather than forcing a fire making challenge that Aubry is not so sure she can even do. If Aubry does go, Tai’s probably on his own next time if there is a final two instead of a final three, so with that in mind, it makes sense to at least give her a shot to control her own destiny because it’s not like he’s at risk either way.

Votes
Aubry
Cydney
Aubry
Cydney

There is a tie. Tai and Michele don’t see a reason to revote. Cydney and Aubry must compete in a fire making challenge.

Aubry is the first to make fire. As her blaze continues to grow, Cydney isn’t even competitive. Just as it looks like Aubry is going to win, her fire slowly dwindles to nothing. Luckily for her, Cydney is still having nothing resembling success. Aubry wins, and Cydney has been eliminated. Cydney’s waterworks as she leaves suggest she would have had a strong case for a sympathy vote.

Tai just got what he wanted, but Michele fears he just handed Aubry the game. Given the number of evacuations, it would seem there’s still another challenge.

There is another challenge, but there’s also one last twist. They are not competing for immunity. They are competing for the right to vote out a jury member. An interesting twist, though I’d still rather see a final two like classic Survivor instead of the final three where one person is usually just taking up space.

They have to bring balls across a balance beam and build a stack. Michele is consistently in the lead throughout the challenge, and as Aubry’s stack comes crashing down in a last second come from behind attempt, Michele wins.

Michele has already made it clear that she’s afraid of Aubry, which means her winning should be just as beneficial to Tai. Michele thinks there’s one clear vote, Joe. The other likely Aubry vote is Neal. On the flip side, Tai’s former allies Scot and Jason may vote for him, assuming they’re not bitter. Then they start rambling about how they need to get rid of someone who may persuade other votes, perhaps a loud mouth like Scot or Jason. I’m not convinced this is even a consideration or worth the time they are spending on it.

Vote
Neal

Neal is clearly bitter as he leaves, so he can just blow his hot air in departing because he’s now irrelevant. It’s a pretty safe assumption that he was an Aubry vote and that Michele made the right choice. Of course, there’s the risk that Tai’s the bigger threat, but I don’t think anyone has made it quite so obvious they are voting for him.

Nick tells Michele to be intelligent, Tai to be aware, and Aubry to be confident.

Debbie asks a very Debbie question. Does Tai have multiple personalities? Then she tells Aubry she’s very proud of her.

Julia, perhaps the weakest player there tonight, calls Michele the weakest link, and claims that her big move was getting rid of her. She then says Tai was weak after the merge when he had multiple alliances, a secret advantage, and a hidden immunity idol.

Joe says he’s going to ignore Michele, but he pretends to humor Tai.

Jason asks Michele whether she just got lucky, and he asks Tai a question that he’s already answered, why he left Scot and Jason.

Cydney also asks about her own elimination.

Scot mostly just wants to make Tai and Aubry squirm, but he concludes by saying that Michele is the only one who got stronger as the game continued.

Before the vote is revealed, they have one last piece of business to attend to. They have to say goodbye to Mark.

Votes
Michele
Aubry
Aubry
Michele
Michele
Michele

The Survivor: Kaoh Rong winner is Michele Fitzgerald. She’s not an unlikable winner, which perhaps is the point because that means bitter jury members can’t take it out on her, but I’m not sure I can think of what she did.

As Jeff asks Tai questions, someone apparently famous starts yelling. Sia wants to give $50,000 to Tai and $50,000 to a charity of his choice.

Survivor will return again for season 33, Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X. I’m not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing.

The Amazing Race 28 Winners

After deciding to switch detours in The Amazing Race 28 Episode 11, Burnie & Ashley really had no chance of staying in the game. That left Tyler & Korey, Dana & Matt, and Sheri & Cole competing to see who will be the winners.

Tyler & Korey have been one of the dominant teams, and the last two legs have seen their toughest competition fall. They are left competing against one team with a member who was constantly bickering with herself and another team that barely survived, so they are the clear odds on favorite, but one of the underdogs pulling it off is entirely possible and perhaps even likely in a show like this, where the best team often isn’t the winning team.

Teams depart in the order in which they arrived, probably.

Teams must now fly more than 7000 miles to Los Angeles, CA. All teams are on the same flight.

The road block requires teams to jump off a skyscraper to grab their clue suspended in the air.

Road block (in order of arrival): Matt, Sheri, Tyler

A scary but simple road block, but if they miss the jump, they have to try again. Matt makes it on his first attempt. Sheri, who’s doing this because her son is afraid, doesn’t even come close as she jumps through the tears. Tyler likewise misses on his first attempt. With each failed attempt, the clue is moved closer, making it easy like the camel racing task, although Tyler still misses on his second try.

From there, teams will take a helicopter ride to Santa Barbara. Upon arrival, they will search through hundreds of boats for a specific one.

Dana & Matt have been running ahead of the pack, but then they tell their taxi to leave and have to find another one. This is a pretty basic mistake for the final leg. As dumb as this seems, they aren’t alone. Sheri & Cole do the same, and then they leave the only cab in the area because the driver says she doesn’t know where their destination is. By the time they realize they’re not going to find anything else, Tyler & Korey are sitting in that cab. They hope to point the driver in the right direction using her cell phone, but ironically, though you would think being in the US would serve some language advantage or at least not a disadvantage, the barrier still exists.

At Gibraltar Rock, one team member must attempt a tyrolean traverse while lowering their partner down the vertical rock. This looks like a first come, first served task, causing Tyler & Korey to have to wait for the team in front of them to finish.

The final road block requires teams to use barrels to spell cities they have been to based on hashtag clues.

Road block (in order of arrival): Dana, Cole, Korey

Like the previous road block, this doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, as Dana & Matt get it on their first try. It’s pretty obvious how this race is going to end.

The Amazing Race 28 winners are Dana & Matt. They ran a competent race, despite all the unnecessary yelling, but never really performed at the top of the pack. Sheri & Cole finish in second place. After being the best performing team and finishing first five times, Tyler & Korey trip at the finish line for third place, never catching up after struggling a bit to find the first road block.