T. Green
Yet another splinter alliance was being formed, as Frankie, Zach, Cody, Hayden wanted to team up with each other. One of them suggested calling the new faction the “Bro” alliance, but it’s doubtful that the name will stick.
Even though Nicole and Christine took themselves off the block by winning the BOB, they were still on have-not status. Zach decided to agitate the girls again, taunting them with food they couldn’t eat. Zach was in danger of alienating himself with everyone. Even his alliance friends felt that they might have to target him if enough of the house was set on getting him out.
Frankie went to Zach to try and tone down his behavior. The tricky part was that Frankie still needed Zach to explode just enough to fulfill the current Team America assignment. The team’s last chance was pit two houseguests in an argument during the POV meeting. Since Amber was likely going to be backdoored, the plan was for Zach to instigate something with her.
One of the funny moments from this episode was Nicole performing a horrible striptease in her germitard for Hayden. Hayden still appreciated the effort though. Besides Nicole, Hayden also had eyes for Victoria. She was an outsider in the house, but Hayden viewed her as a potential vote for himself down the road. Hayden talked to Victoria and said he would save her if he won POV. Nicole got a little jealous about those two being friendly with each other.
On a more somber not, Derrick learned that his grandfather passed away. This occurred only a few days after Frankie’s grandfather died. While, Frankie wore his emotions on his sleeve, Derrick tucked his feelings away for the most part. He sat alone for awhile in his room. His family wrote him a letter encouraging him to stay. Derrick was going to use this situation as motivation to win.
One of the interesting themes in the house has been the guys getting touchy-feely with each other. Zach (straight), in particular, was very hands-on with Frankie (gay), giving him a back rub in the HOH room (there’s even a “Zankie” hashtag permeating throughout social media). It’s definitely a shift from the homophobic tones from last season.
Soon, it was time to draw names for the POV contest. Joining the HOH and nominees in battle were: Donny, Hayden (picked by Victoria after drawing a “houseguest’s choice” ball), and Christine.
For this POV competition, players had to rock their own mechanical horse 60 times. After that, they had to go to a set of gold bars and stack them up. The catch was that there was a 30 second timer running during the bar-stacking process. If a player didn’t get back on the horse in time, he or she was eliminated. However, an eliminated player could re-enter the game if they agreed to eat slop for the next week. The winner would have to stack 50 gold bars vertically, go back to the horse and repeat the rocking process, then go the buzzer and ring it.
Jocasta’s time ran out during one of her intervals, but she took the slop punishment to get back in the game she needed to win. Frankie had a huge stack working, but had some of his bars fall off when he got close to 50. Christine thought she had won when she hit the buzzer, but found out she left a few bars on the ground. That gave an opening to Hayden, who completed his tower and won power of veto.
With the veto power likely to be used, the guys worked on turning Caleb against Amber. Zach, the mustache-twirling villain he was, stirred up the drama by telling Caleb that Amber was talking bad about him and was looking to put him up. Amber had already been ignoring Caleb, so this new information just made him more enraged. He suggested putting Amber on the block to “teach her a lesson”, not knowing that a plan was already in place to backdoor her.
Hayden did indeed use his veto power on Victoria. Frankie backdoored Amber by naming her as the replacement nominee. Now it was time for Zach to go to work. He laid the guilt trip down on Amber by pointing out all the favors Caleb did for her. He called Amber out and accused her of treating Caleb like crap. Even after all that, Amber refused to take the bait. With no argument commencing, Team America failed for the first time. Amber appears on her way out, but there’s still time for others to reconsider their votes.
