"I'm melting, melting. What a world. What a world. Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?"-The Wicked Witch of the West (My darling Margaret Hamilton), The Wizard of Oz.
On last week's eviction episode of Big Brother, they announced that this would be a double-eviction week, with a surprise second eviction sprung on the guests this Thursday with "a whole week of Big Brother in one hour." Well things didn't work out as planned. Two houseguests still departed, but things went gloriously awry. I ended this column last week with the fervent hope that one of them would be Chima, the Wicked Bitch of the West. (She even lives in West Hollywood. How appropriate!) Well I got my wish. Oh boy, did I! It was one of the best weeks in BB history. Let's dive in.
Sunday. The Pity Party.
Starting up during last week's eviction ceremony, we saw that Chima is, without question, The World's Poorest Sport. They should give her a trophy, preferably clubbing her over the head with it.
In the Diary Room, discussing her reaction to Gandoofus hexing her plots with the Coup D-etat, Chima said, "I wanted to "Shout out loud _______!" Louder please, Chima dear. We couldn't hear your classy obscenity.
Jessie said of his nomination and ouster, "It's a good move. It is." Chima, when Jessie is a better sport than you are, you're a mess.
During a commercial break of last week's live show, this exchange occurred: Gandoofus: "You don't control anything, Chima, just so you know."
Chima: "You usurped my power." No, America did. And you were always told this could happen, so you knew you never had any power, but you just refused to believe it.
Natalie on Jessie's eviction: "Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!" Grow up. "The ugly and the bad get rewarded in this game." No, Chima was fired, not rewarded. Oh! You meant...
Gollum: "[Jessie] is exactly what America thinks he is. He is this self-involved, egomaniac, megalomaniac." Gollum is the Voice of Reason? By the way, Gollum, your clashing plaids are making my eyes bleed.
Jordan to Gandoofus: "You had me so fooled. I had no clue." And what else is new, Jordan?
So Chima, Lydia, Natalie and Gollum, a.k.a. Chima's Coven, held a Pity Party to plot against Russell.
Dr. Michele won Head of Household. The two factions, The Bromance Alliance and Chima's Coven, took opposite approaches to wooing Dr. Michele. The Bromancers kissed her butt, while the Coven threatened her. Guess which she cottoned to.
Russell, wearing glasses to look smart, actually had a non-screamed conversation with The Doctor, and they declared a truce. Russell: "Part of it was my fault." Part of it?
The Coven was toasting Jessie, calling him "Mr. Pectacular," a nickname Jessie, with his characteristic modesty, invented for himself. Natalie, weeping and half-drunk (well maybe not half) said of Jessie: "He had such a good spirit, and such a good presence, soul." Natalie, two points:
1. He's not dead. And ...
2. No he doesn't.
Listening to Chima's Coven discuss Jessie like a fallen war hero, Gollum wanted to puke, but he stayed there. Why don't you leave these idiots, Goll? They're losers, and they'll take you down with them.
Chima: "That's the thing. [Jessie] never said anything bad about anybody in this game." Chima, try visiting earth sometime.
Lydia: "And you know he would pray for all of us, all the time." Even if that's true, and I don't believe it for a moment (Why would Jessie pray? He is his god. Does he need to pray to himself?) that would just mean he's superstitious as well as self-involved. Not a plus.
Chima: "The person that never spoke ill of anybody in this house [Who is that? President Obama? It's certainly not Jessie.] is gone, and it's wrong. And the person who's talked about everybody in this house is still here." Yes Chima, you were still there - then.
Natalie, dripping bitter sarcasm: "Thanks America. You're real stand-up people." Remember America, Natalie hates you, just like Chima does.
When The Doctor said she was thinking of putting up Chima, Russell nearly exploded with joy. He was making the same face I was.
The Reward Challenge was to win food for all for the week. Chima had become so apathetic that she just sort of walked through it, like the zombie she resembles at the best of times, even though they had a limited amount of time, and the idea was to get everyone, including the only person she cares about, herself, off slop. She just couldn't be bothered.
This challenge involved tasting and matching mystery crap casseroles. Jordan: "One of the casseroles that I first tried was something salty and fishy." Was she tasting the damp spot on her mattress after a late-night visit from Gandoofus? The only people to fail to match cassaroles was Gandoofus and Jordan. Jordan thinks "Tastes Bad" is a match.
Chima to Russell: "Don't look at me." Chima, no one wants to look at you. It's not a pleasurable experience.
They ran a short segment of Lydia yapping about her stuffed baby unicorn, "Mr. Yum Yum." (It's a fake unicorn. No live baby unicorns were harmed in the making of Lydia's pathetic stuffed companion.) She's so street. I didn't see the whole segment, as it made me physically ill.
Jordan and Gandoofus got pretend engaged. (At least I hope it's "pretend.") Gandoofus said, "Jordan would make a great wife." How? Out of a quilt? Gandoofus, I'd tell you to reread the chapters of Dickens's David Copperfield about his doomed marriage to his pretty-but-hopelessly-stupid first wife Dora, except it would do no good. You don't read. There's a very good movie of it with W. C. Fields you could watch though.
The Doctor nominated Chima and Natalie. Good choices, two of the three most immature houseguests.
Tuesday: The Chima Syndrome.
This was the Best Episode of Big Brother of All Time: Chima's nuclear meltdown. As a bonus, it had none of Chima's irritating laughing at her own non-jokes.
My friend Dame Edna Everage often refers to PLOM Disease, that is Poor Little Old Me Disease. Chima has a terminal case, and Natalie and Lydia have life-threatening cases as well. The Ptiy Party had become a Self-Pity Orgy.
At one point Dr. Michele started a sentence with, "Even though I really like Chima as a person..." How? Why?
Gandoofus on Chima: "She was one the hugest bitches I've ever met in my whole life." Such wisdom couched in such lousy grammar.
Gollum to Chima: "If you left, you would be screwing me. You would be screwing us who are left." Gollum, your logic assumes that Chima gives a crap about someone besides herself. Get a clue.
Chima on the Bromance Alliance: "I'm not giving them the satisfaction of voting me out of this house." No, you're going to give them (and me) a far greater satisfaction.
We had a montage of Chima's rule-breaking. She apparently thinks the producers work for her. She works for them. After watching her on this show, who in their right mind would hire her for any job?
Sometimes when a real bitch like Chima defends herself, she'll say "If a man behaved like this, you'd just call him a strong man, but when a woman is strong, she's a bitch." A man behaving like Chima would get fired also. I have had a request not to refer to Chima as a bitch, but it came from an organization of female dogs.
We didn't see on TV the extent of her acting out. We saw a practice golf run put out for the houseguests to practice for what was then thought to be a Power of Veto Challenge. We did not see Natalie try to monopolize it "all night" to keep any Bromancers from learning how to play it. Along with being childish, it ignored the fact that Russell and Gandoofus already golf.
We saw no hint that Lydia was taking Gandoofus's clothes and possessions, and hiding them all over the house. We saw Chima sitting on the washers and dryers, but didn't know she'd been there all day, for the stated purpose of preventing anyone else using them and doing any laundry, while she washed loads of one sock at a time. The pettiness, bad sportsmanship and childishness of these three ghastly, spoiled, immature women was reaching epic proportions, but you could only see it on the live feeds.
All day, Chima kept refusing to wear her microphone. The houseguests are contractually required to wear them twenty-four hours a day. She refused. She hadn't gotten her way in the game, and so she refused to play by the rules. This climaxed when Chima tossed her $5000 mike into the hot tub, ruining it.
Chima: "The whole f___ing week was like Ha, ha, look at Chima. She thinks she's running things. She's not." Yes it was. That was what had made it so good.
Finally Allison Grodner, the Executive Producer, the Big Boss. Mom, had to stage an intervention. She got Chima to go to the Diary Room. (After endlessly repeated polite requests) As Chima headed there, Natalie was saying, "It'll be fine honey. And tomorrow you're going to win the POV, and then on Thursday you're going to win the HOH, and you're going to put these bastards on the block. And it's going to be vend - vindi - and when you do that, it's gonna be 'This is for Natalie and Jessie!'"
When she does all that, Natalie, swine will be soaring out of your seat. Natalie, you haven't been this delusional since you thought you were having a showmance with Jessie. This diva isn't returning. The bitch ain't back. Guards were waiting for her in the Diary Room, as we heard Allison say, "All right, don't even sit down. Go out this way." (The screen showed a caption saying "All right, no need to sit down" but we could hear Allison saying what I've written here.) And Chima was gone, evicted. FIRED! Don't be fooled by Chima's self-serving emails to the media to the effect that she quit. (Still under contract to CBS, she is not allowed to speak to news media.) She was fired.
I see it like this:
Allison: "You're fired."
Chima: "You can't fire me. I'm Chima! I rule the universe! I quit!"
Allison: "You can't quit. We just fired you."
Chima: "You can't fire me because I just quit!"
Allison: "Sayid, take this bitch out back and 'explain' things to her."
JOY! The only sad aspect of all this was we didn't get a bitter, angry exit interview with the Chenbot. But if I were pregnant (Heaven forbid!), I wouldn't want to come within arm's reach of that crazy harridan.
When Gollum suggested that the producers were going to make Chima pay for the mike, Lydia said, "[Gollum], it dropped out of her hand of her hand." and Natalie said at the same time, "It fell out of her hand." Yes. It fell/dropped upwards out of her hand as she deliberately tossed it into the hot tub. Don't those two idiot girls (they are too immature to deserve the title 'women.') remember that everything they do is on camera??? I've seen the clip over and over. Chima threw it in the pool.
The Voice of Goddess (Allison) summoned all the houseguests to the living room for the Big Announcement: "I have an announcement to make. It was very clear Chima did not want to follow the rules of the game. And tonight she made the decision to willfully destroy her microphone, a piece of production equipment that you all are very much aware is a big violation. For this reason, and because of multiple rule violations, She needed to be expelled. ... I will make an announcement tomorrow on how this will affect nominations"
Just to show that he could be even lamer than he already has been, Gollum wept and bewailed over this joyous event.
Natalie, never at a loss on how to react like a child, began blaming it all on The Doctor. One person, and one person alone was responsible for Chima's meltdown and expulsion: Chima herself.
"No," said Lydia, having a rare mature reaction, "Natalie, now is not the time."
Natalie was not to be stilled by reason. "It couldn't have not got worse for her, at all," she blathered in a bewildering pile-up of non-grammatical triple negatives. She went on and on about how unfair it was when Chima's HOH power was overruled, ignoring the fact that if Russell had been HOH, and if Chima had been granted the Coup D'etat power (If it had been voted on by Martians instead of Americans), Chima would have used it and gloated over it unmercifully. It was only "unfair" because it wasn't Chima who had it. "The only reason I'm staying right now is because I want vendiction." Is vendiction anything like technotronics?
Lydia said, "Every day we have a choice in this house: we have a choice to abide by the rules or break the rules. Chima made a choice."
Lydia being so reasonable and sensible left Natalie bewildered and disoriented. "What happened to you, Lydia? You just turned all around all of a sudden," said Natalie, ready to check under Lydia's bed for a giant seed pod.
The decision was that, since one of The Doctor's nominees had left, her reign as Head of Household was over, two days in. Some posters on my column for last week complained that this was unfair to The Doctor, but she was okay with it.
The miniature golf competition originally planned to be the POV challenge was repurposed into an HOH challenge.
Russell, who actually plays golf (why?) almost won, but had an unlucky bounce which almost allowed Gandoofus to win, however, the Wizard deliberately tanked his last putt, allowing Jordan to take HOH. Very classy, and bound to get him laid.
Natalie competed with her hair done up like Minnie Mouse. "I have been running this house," said Natalie, continuing her trip into a delusional state on a level unseen since Norman Bates hid his mother in the fruit cellar.
Lydia, after a few cocktails, referred to Gandoofus's Wizard power as a "Coup D'crap." It was funny, even as she further retreated into childish behavior. But then, she won the booby prize of wearing the "Captain Unitard" outfit. In the spirit of good sportswomanship which she must have learned from Chima, Lydia then called Jordan a "Whore Puppet" for winning, and then went and sat in a corner, hollering at everyone obscenities that were bleeped out. As they sang in Chicago, "Whatever happened to class?"
Lydia and Natalie, in an attack of even greater childishness, went to the kitchen and dumped all Dr. Michele's beer down the sink. They poured booze down a drain! Evil cows! And they weren't fired also? Talk about a double standard! All that insane gigashrew Chima did was destroy a $5000 piece of electronic equipment. Lydia and Natalie wasted alcohol! Isn't that a war crime? Not so much inglorious bastards (I apologize for spelling it correctly), as in-gluteus maximus.
"Why don't you go back to being a scientist no one cares about?" was Lydia's pathetic excuse for a verbal snap at Dr. Michele, the lamest insult since Braden told Lydia to "Go back to Burbank," in the first week. Yes, what is more pathetic than having an education and contributing to the knowledge of mankind, when you can be a "special effects make-up person" with a billion tattoos and the emotional maturity of a bad-tempered one-year-old? You win, Lydia. (Nothing against special-effects make-up as a field. How do you think I remain so young and beautiful at 112? And without it, Quentin Tarantino couldn't make a movie. Oh wait. That's a count against it.) You know, they shouldn't have called this season "Return to High school." They should have called it "Return to Pre-School," or maybe "Pre-Skule."
Lydia then decided that Chima shouldn't be the only woman to meltdown this week, and began ranting and screaming, demanding to be evicted (an odd strategy for winning $500,000), and shouting abuse at everyone in sight. Natalie, in her first smart move all week, kept her mouth shut. Admittedly, Lydia was drunk, but I've been drunk non-stop since 1915, and I don't behave like this. We had this priceless moment:
Russell: "Why are you slurring your words?"
Lydia: "You Russell, I'm nah slurrin' my whurrs." (Everyone but Lydia roared with laughter.)
Jordan on Lydia: "I didn't do anything to her, and she called me a whore, and she called me fat." That's absurd. Jordan is slim as a rail.
Now even Gandoofus was hollering, while Russell just stood and watched silently. In fact, Russell didn't get into any shouting matches all week. It's Bizarro World.
In her HOH letter from home, Jordan read (Yes! Apparently Jordan can read. I'm as shocked as you!): "I have good and exciting news. We're moving this weekend to a farm." This is what I would call horrifying news, not that I blame Jordan's mother for moving while Jordan is away, but the effect is ruined if you tell her where you're moving to. I've always said, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen the farm?" The letter continued, "Jordan, you will have your own room." I bet it's a really small room, away from the house, one seat, and a half-moon on the door. It turns out that, at 22, Jordan doesn't have her own room yet. Time to move out, Jordan.
Jordan nominated Lydia and Natalie, not the biggest twist of all-time. Jordan's nomination speech was the usual "You're strong players" garbage they always say, rather than something a little franker, like "I nominated the two of you because you're a pair of crazy, childish shrews." To Natalie she threw this lame consoling thought: "You still have the Veto to play."
"And I plan on winning it," said Natalie, her mouth writing a rubber check.
"I'm not just going to lay down and let them drive their wicked bus over me," said Lydia, the woman who, a few minutes earlier, had been screaming "EVICT ME!" at everyone. Who knew they had the Wicked touring company bus at the Big Brother house?
"I can smell the money," said Natalie. No Nat, what you're smelling is Lydia sweating up a storm in that Captain Unitard outfit.
Thursday: Tattoo Removal.
The Voice-Over Announcer, in recapping the week on Thursday, said, "At the nomination ceremony, it was a no-brainer for Jordan." How fortunate. That's the only type of task Jordan is up to handling.
Said Lydia of her fourth nomination, "This is just a poopy feeling." Back to Pre-Skule!
"When I win the veto," said Natalie, "Michele needs to watch out." With so many houseguests expecting pigs to fly out of their butts, the trees of Studio City must have more pork in them than a Senate appropriations bill.
Gollum, wearing purple with yellow (Gollum, are you certain you're gay? Because you have no fashion sense at all!), told Lydia, "you can still get the veto."
Lydia replied, "Uh, haven't you noticed that I can't win [crap] in this house?" I've noticed. But you're wrong, Lydia. That's the one substance you can win!
Gollum, realizing that Lydia was self-destructing, decided, like the rat he is abandoning a sinking ship, to switch his alliance from Lydia to Natalie. If he had a brain, he'd think about going over to the Bromance Alliance side, which is now everyone in the house except the three remnants of the Chima Coven.
Russell proposed an alliance to Dr. Michele "because I need you to get to the end with me, because I need a person who has been just as big as a villain." Maybe he should have allied with Palpatwit and Chima.
In a salacious night-vision flashback, we learned that while Jessie was HOH, Lydia had made a tent of blankets with Mr. Pectacular, and then basically given him my last name. Why do they waste so much airtime on challenges and strategizing (or as Jessie would be more likely to put it, "strategery"), when we could be seeing that?
Finally comparing notes on how Jessie had played them against each other, the coven girls bonded over what a jerk the man they were wailing over four days earlier had been. Are they:
A. Fickle?
B. Possessors of short attention spans?
C. Stupid?
Well Natalie then proposed, "We need to be the H. B. I. C. for once."
Lydia: "Head bitch in charge?"
Natalie: "Yeah. If the three of us stay this week, dude, we could turn this game around. All we have to do is send one of them home."
C. Stupid. More sky-bound bacon was taking off from their Hershey Highways.
Gollum decided that their only chance was to start lying about Russell, which Natalie "masterminded." Gollum was dispatched to lie to Jordan and Gandoofus about Russell. Gandoofus, no neuroscientist, actually believed this desperate, obvious fabrication. Even Gollum couldn't believe that he had been believed. He's Gollum for heaven's sake! How can you believe him? Next you'll trust him when he asks to hold your "Precious" just for a moment. "I'll give it back, honest."
Time for a live POV challenge, live POV ceremony, live eviction vote, and a live HOH competition.
When Lydia told the Chenbot that she now hated Jessie, and that if she got evicted this week, she'd be giving him hell in the sequester house, Julie dropped her impartiality for a moment and said, "Whoa. I kinda want to see you leave tonight, to see that all happen." Your wish will be the houseguests command, Julie, although I think, in all honesty, that within a few hours of entering the Sequester House, Jessie will have Lydia eating out of the palm of his hand, or actually, out of the fly in his pants.
You know, they say that if you listen to Mozart or Shakespeare while you're pregnant, your child will be born more intelligent, and with good taste in high culture. Julie is listening to the goings-on in the Big Brother house every day while pregnant. I'm afraid her baby will be born a stupid rageaholic, incapable of learning to tell time or do simple math. The question won't be "Is it a boy or a girl?" It will be "Is it a musclehead or a skank?" It may be the first baby ever born already tattooed.
Natalie had won a call from home as her prize in the HOH competition. She was called by the father who raised this immature idiot skank. How can he show his face in public, let alone on CBS, when his failure as a father is being nationally broadcast? He told her he's proud of her, when he should be saying how deeply shamed he is by her atrocious behavior. He said he watches every show with her boyfriend Jason. Her dad is dating her boyfriend behind her back? What an Oedipal nightmare! I assume this is Jason getting revenge on Natalie for having her imaginary showmance with Jessie on TV. I couldn't believe she had a boyfriend. If she's in a relationship, what the hell was she doing with Jessie? Well "Jason" and "Jessie" are very similar names. Maybe she got them confused.
We had this touching testament to Natalie's security in her father's love:
Dad: "Jason and I watch every episode together."
Natalie: "Really? Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday?"
No Natalie. Thursday is his bowling night. He likes you and all, but you can't expect him to watch every episode! After all, you know how much he loves Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. You may be his daughter, but you're no Regis!
The POV competition was a quiz on things that had occurred in the game so far. The questions were so easy that Jordan won. Natalie's fierce determination to win got her eliminated on the second question, as was Lydia. Even Gollum lasted longer than they did, though not by much.
Jordan left her nominations as they were, so the liars' plan to backdoor Russell fizzled out, and Chima's Coven was doomed. Only Gollum voted to keep Lydia. I'll give Lydia this, for once the departing houseguest left without hypocritically hugging the people who voted to evict her. She explained it to The Chenbot thusly:
"[Gollum's] my true sugar bear. He's my best friend in the house, and he's the only person I want to see win this game. Everyone else can kick rocks." Language, Lydia! You're on CBS. That sort of gutter talk may be acceptable out on the playground during recess, but you're speaking to Jule Chenbot. There's a fetus in the room. (Albeit, the fetus is already more mature than Lydia.) I'm shocked, shocked!
They had another annoying HOH competition that didn't have a winner when the show ended. I hate that! If you don't want to know who won HOH before it's revealed on Sunday night, stop reading now.
[SPOILER ALERT!]
The HOH for next week, or until the next houseguest self-destructs, is our lovely Gandoofus. Natalie and Gollum, the last scraggly members of Chima's Coven are in big trouble, which is fine by me. Until next week, Cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to
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