Friday, September 10, 2010

Searching For Signal: #168 - “Big Brother” - Season 12, Episode 28

We’re live, with Julie and the caterwauling audience. While they destroy the soundstage with the sheer vibration of their over-caffeinated yodeling, Julie babbles: “Enzo! Hayden! Lane! They have orchestrated every eviction this summer!” (Um, no they didn’t. But yelling at the TV screen apparently does not make Julie retract her statement.)

Then it’s the Announcer Guy, reviewing the last few episodes, and the way they frame it you would think Hayden is single-handedly saving the planet. Oh, and “The Beast, The Animal and Meow-Meow are battling it out in the jungle right now.” (Um, no, they’re sitting on swings in the relatively tame courtyard. This is not a battle in the jungle. This is a crappy ride at a sucky amusement park.) “And emotions explode in the Jury House!”

Julie: Let’s go back to the Big Brother Rainforest for the exciting conclusion of Part One in the HOH Competition! The audience screams themselves into a frenzy at this apparently life-changing opportunity.

The camera cuts to the courtyard. Enzo, Hayden and Lane. Sitting on swings and slamming into a padded wall. Over and over. Totally boring.

So we go to the Diary Room for some confessions.

Hayden: “The Brigade is dead! It’s every man for himself.” (Then he just kind of sits there, waiting for an actual man to show up, because we haven’t seen a lot of them this season.)

Enzo: “I gotta win. They aren’t gonna take me to the Final Two. I’m popular in the Jury House.” (Maybe for now. Wait until Britney shows up over there with a mouthful of choice words.)

Lane: “It shoulda been me and Britney in the Final Two.” (Well, Lane, you only have yourself to blame for that. If you’d acted sooner, Enzo and/or Hayden would be sitting in the Jury House right now, trying to avoid lacerations from Rachel’s hair extensions or Kathy’s eyelashes when she blinks.)

The we have more shots of the swings and the wall-banging in the “rainforest”. Enzo is hollering the whole time like an idiot.

Lane in the Diary Room, discussing what it feels like hitting the padded wall: “It’s like being in a Texas bar fight, when you wake up the next morning and your testicles hurt.” (One, I clearly don’t understand what happens in Texas bar fights, and two, does Lane even understand what a testicle is?)

Then Enzo falls off his little swing. A mere 19 minutes into the competition. Puh-leeze.

Hayden in the Diary Room: “Enzo has zero intestinal fortitude.” (Again with people using phrases that I don’t think they actually comprehend.)

More shots of the remaining two swinging and banging.

Lane: “Where’s Enzo?”

The camera shows him inside the house, making soup and pizza. Really? This is a clear violation of Big Brother tradition, where even though you may get eliminated in a competition, you remain in the courtyard and pretend to cheer the other players on, even if you are bored out of your skull and/or hate the people still playing.

Then Enzo actually brings his piping-hot pizza out to the patio, and noshes away in full view of the starving and cold guys on the swings, another violation. He truly just doesn’t get it. (Lane is furious in the Diary Room.) To top it off, Enzo is still obnoxiously whooping and hollering, in between rounds of wiping grease off his chin.

Lane falls at 2 hours and 35 minutes. Hayden wins the first round.

Back to Jules. “Lane and Enzo will face off in round two a little later. But coming up, the Jury House explodes!”

Okay, with all this promo, there better be something damn good happening in that Jury House, or I’m going to cut somebody.

Commercials. Did you know that you can get meat wrapped in meat, with a meat sauce, on a meat-flavored bun, at your nearest fast-food restaurant? Hurry! Your arteries aren’t going to clog themselves!

Julie: “Let’s go talk to the Final Three in the Couch Room!” Julie: “Enzo, how’d you make it this far in the game?” Enzo: “No idea.” Julie: “Lane, how hard was it to keep your alliance secret?” Lane: “Very.” Julie: “Hayden, now that Britney’s on the jury, are you concerned about the reaction?” Hayden: “They’re gonna hate us!” Then all three of them laugh.

Thanks, Julie. Very insightful. Learned a lot.

Julie explains some protocol for the rest of the season: The winners of Round 1 and Round 2 in the HOH Competition will compete in Round 3 LIVE on Finale Night. The winner will then pick his Final Two buddy, and they will go face the jury, who will question them and then vote. Got it?

Time for some filler material, since there are only three people left and none of them are all that interesting. Julie: “Enzo never won HOH, but back home he rules the house.” Cut to Bayonne, New Jersey, where we meet Enzo’s family. Surprise! They’re Italian! His wife obviously loves him, so that’s good. His entire family, watching on TV when Enzo slams into Ragan and sends him flying through the air, cheers like the Red Sea just parted, so that’s not so good. In the end, it’s very clear that his family was watching a different series than we were, overly praising Enzo for things he didn’t do.

Cut to the Jury House.

Kathy lets us know that she still hasn’t forgiven Matt for the lies about his wife, and is, in fact, even more upset with him. More than fair.

Ragan saunters in. Fake hugs abound, especially the one between Ragan and Rachel. (And what the hell is Matt wearing? Is he twelve?) Sidebar with Rachel: She’s all aglow with the possibility that Ragan will push her buttons and there will be a fight. She’s such a nice person, that Rachel girl.

Matt to Ragan: “Let’s step outside and talk.” (Kathy to Ragan: “Take a drink, you’ll need it.”) Once on the patio, Matt fesses about his wife. Ragan does not take it well. (In his own sidebar: “I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football out.”)

The rest of the jury house joins them on the patio. Brendon and Kathy are supportive of Ragan, making it clear that they are not impressed with Matt. But Rachel doesn’t care because, well, let’s face it, she’s a bitch. So when Ragan does his own confession, admitting to having a PHD in Communications, Rachel jumps. “Do I have a bad social game?”

Ragan: “Yes, you wear your heart on your sleeve.”

And immediately the fur flies. As we’ve seen before, Ragan is very calm but very straightforward, telling it exactly like it is. While Rachel screams and flips her hair as her inability to remain civil rears its ugly head. (And it’s the same thing they fought about in the house. Rachel causes a LOT of problems because there’s something off kilter with her and human relations. He’s right, she won’t listen.) Ragan: “We don’t share a common reality.”

Rachel finally bellows “Grab your tiara and be a [dramatic expletive] queen!” Then she and her hair turn and stomp into the house.

Okay, from a confrontation aspect, I’ll give it a 3, maybe 4. But we’ve seen much more exciting things. Once again, the BB producers have oversold not much about nothing.

Time for Part 2 of the HOH Competition.

This one’s called “It’s Alive!”, and we’ve seen this before. Behind five curtains are five photos of two house guests morphed into one. Playing separately, Lane and Enzo will have two minutes to figure out the combinations. Whoever makes the most matches wins. If they get the same number of matches, then whoever buzzed in with the shortest playing time will win. And off we go.

Lane is first. He gets all five matches in 1 minute, 13 seconds.

Enzo is next. He gets all five matches in 1 minute, 43 seconds.

Lane is clearly the winner, but Julie throws a curve into things, because the BB producers apparently think we are just as stupid as the house guests that they intentionally pick for their stupidity.

Jules: “We have a tie! We will determine the winner when we return!”

Uh, I can tell time. Lane won. What’s the deal?

Commercials. Need a quick “payday” loan? Head on over to Tully’s House of Fast Money and we’ll fix you up. Tully is missing most of his teeth. Don’t worry about that.

And we’re back. Julie takes us to the Couch Room, where Enzo and Lane are sweating in the nomination chairs. (Why? They aren’t nominated for anything.) Hayden is off to the side, totally chilled, because he thinks he’s got this thing wrapped up.

Julie: It was a tie! (Enzo perks up. Lane is wondering if this is a formal occasion.) So we have to go to the clock. Who finished up more quickly? (We KNOW, Julie. God.) Enzo, you finished in blah blah time. Lane, it only took you blah time. Congrats!

Julie to Lane: How are you feeling right now? Lane: “I feel sweaty and numb and I can’t walk.”

Julie to Enzo: “How does it feel” to have sucked once again? Enzo: Well, I was born a poor black child on the outskirts of-

Julie: Whatev. See you guys next Wednesday!

Roll end credits.

P.S. Apparently Sunday’s show is just going to be a recap of the finer moments in the show thus far. The fact that they have managed to cobble together a full hour of things that might be considered “finer” makes a compelling statement that I should actually tune in, but we’ll see. I usually skip this one. We might not chat again until next Wednesday…

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