VivaVibe

”Big Brother” recap: Confronting Natalie

Post on the Big Brother message boards from Tad, dated Thursday, April 10, 11:04 p.m.: Lynette: You are a bad judge of character. Rooting for Natalie indicates that you are not paying attention to the show and its accessories (webcams show her giving Matt a –, followed by him pushing her away! And then she fawns all over him? Pathetic!) The only way I can figure your admiration is that you were in a similar situation, where you loved someone that didn’t reciprocate. You didn’t realize this until much later than your friends and family. Thinking back makes you cringe? Am I close?

Not even, bro, unless you count, say, George Clooney and one of the guys who played drums in my high school marching band. Otherwise, I’m really a happily married hen with a coupla towheaded kids — though I’m sporting a big chip on my shoulder right now because of last night’s B.S. ”fact or fiction” HOH competition. My dander was already up when I realized some the questions weren’t exactly rooted in reality — i.e. based on things the HGs actually saw or witnessed in the last two months — and therefore required them to take wild guesses. It’s one thing to have them acknowledge whether it was fact or fiction that Amanda faked her hypoglycemic seizure — after all, that happened right in front of them — but it’s quite another to have them speculate whether Chelsia was escorted by security out of the sequester house. And then, a question about whether a preexisting relationship still exists in the house?! Get real, producers! No one’s going to think about those idiotic guinea pigs (the correct answer) when the Chenbot specifically singled out the HUMANS who had previous ties (Jen and Ryan, Sharon and Jacob). Of course Sharon and Adam were right to say it was fiction, and yet Ryan gets rewarded the point for calling it a ”fact” — all because he suspected it was another trick question, not because he actually believed that any one of them had been previous pals. (I actually felt sorry for the HGs in the closing shots, as they desperately tried to figure out who might have familial ties. Seriously, Sheila? You think Ryan’s your cousin??) So Rye Bread won a point, the competition was then tied between him and Sharon, and the duo got, like, 10 seconds to crunch numbers for a tiebreaker that’s too lame to repeat here but allowed Rye Bread to win the HOH. Now he’s going to put up Sharon and Sheila for eviction on Sunday, and I’m paranoid as hell that Adam will end up booting Sheila because Sharon will get smart and start bawling in front of Baller — because nothing works better at manipulating Baller than bawling like a sniveling dimwit. Sigh. When’s this season over, again?

Back to Natalie, or, more importantly, Tad the doubter. Let’s get something straight, dude: I never actually admired this girl. In fact, her sexcapades pretty much had me pinching my nose since week 1, until someone on the message board quite literally told me to ”move on” because, after all, she only performed oral sex on Matty once (as if there’s some unspoken rule in TV that it’s OK to engage in perform oral sex in front of millions as long as it only happens once). Nevertheless, I moved on! But I also did it because Natalie was doing a pretty decent job of playing the game — that is, until she threw last week’s HOH comp and allowed Sheila to win instead.

Man, I hate it when the HGs make deals, especially this late in the show’s run. They cheat us of out of a genuine endurance competition (how long do you think Sheila could have stayed in the glass box, really?), to say nothing of how it ends up screwing the putz who agreed to the deal in the first place. Make no mistake, I wanted this competition to be over, and not just because listening to Natalie jabber on endlessly about being godly and fair was excruciatingly painful. I wanted Sheila to win because of her bravura performance during the competition. By playing the woe is me card (she misses her son, she’s desperate for a letter from home), Sheila shrewdly steered the attention away from the power of being an HOH and on to the silly, irrelevant perks that came with the privilege. Ryan and Sharon (not Adam — thanks, readers, for the correction — I was sleep-deprived when I wrote this) dropped like flies after hearing that! Granted, that might not have been Sheila’s actual strategy; perhaps she cared very little about being HOH and only really wanted a letter from her boy (however short, simple, and boring it was, but that’s a dude for you.) But it was genius, anyway. Question is, did Sheila honestly deserve the win? Might Natalie have won the comp had she not handed it to Sheila?

NEXT: The bathroom meeting

Clearly, Natalie began second-guessing her decision, thus her move to form an alliance with the gals — which ultimately got back to the boys and prompted Adam and Ryan to call out her duplicity. I speak about last night’s bathroom encounter in which the guys — angered that Natalie was clearly working both sides — decided to convene a house meeting in the bathroom while Natalie was coloring her roots. I’d never be caught dead taking a bottle of Clairol to my head, but damn if Natalie didn’t look like the picture of calm, applying that kohl dye to her fading locks while Ryan outed her for aligning with Sharon and Sheila. Just once, I’d like to hear a player say, ”You’re damn right I was covering my butt — so what of it? This is a game, mister, and you do what you can to survive. I’m playing to win, just like you. I’m sorry if I happen to actually do it better.” Nat kinda did that, I s’pose. She didn’t deny any of Ryan’s accusations — which clearly caught the boys off guard — and she fought back by saying how Sharon was working both sides as well. Only when the boys came back to chastise her again, sans the girls, did Natalie finally break down and profess her loyalty. This is obviously what the boys were after, since they weren’t entirely sure whether to boot her — but Ryan sent her packing anyway (Adam, that weenie, voted to evict Sharon instead, which forced Sheila to break the tie and look like the bad guy for sending Nat packing).

Did they make the right decision, BB fans? In an idealistic world where everything is fair and honest and we’re all size 4s, it’s always nice to take someone with you to the final two who really deserves to be there. But BB isn’t a perfect world; it’s a game in which you have a better chance of winning the cash if it’s down between you and someone hideous, and there isn’t anyone more hideous this season than the bikini barista from Oregon. Did Ryan and Sheila make the right decision by sending Nat to the jury house?

Some other random thoughts: I thought last night’s episode was brilliantly edited up until the eviction ceremony, when Sharon’s half-ass goodbye speech was a clear indicator that Natalie would be going. Either that, or Sharon is just plain dumb. She missed a key opportunity to remind Adam and Ryan that Natalie had betrayed them and totally deserved to go, but instead, Sharon said for the bazillionth time that she was damn glad to be here and? Oh God, I’m already bored just repeating it. I seriously hope she’s gone on Thursday. And James’ stock with me took a major nosedive when he blamed Chelsia’s exit rant for his eviction last week. Man up, dude; Chelsia wasn’t the one who back-doored Matty — it was all you, and Team Christ never forgave you for it. I never really liked Chelsia (and clearly, neither did those of you who inexplicably accuse her of having a ”fat girl haircut”), but she didn’t deserve James’ wrath.

So what did you think? Do you think Sharon was robbed of the HOH win because of that lame guinea pig question? Can Ryan answer a question from the Chenbot without having to use the phrase “you know” at least 30 times? And what, on earth, is going on with Adam’s mouth? If his lips aren’t quivering, he’s constantly clenching his teeth in this forced, creepy grin! Answers, please.

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