As I said yesterday, I was already so over last week, so I'm not going to dwell on the show at all. Howard was booted on a 7-1-0 vote, with the 1 vote not for him being from Spencer to kick Candice. Howard went out and had a relatively coherent chat with Julie. She told him America was MVP, and he thanked us for putting up Amanda. Julie also asked why he didn't go off on anyone for their racist remarks, and he said basically he chose to rise above it all. That got a huge cheer.*
Julie let us know that we're MVP again, which is pretty pointless other than watching them freak out. The HGs are going to vote out whomever they want, and we keep putting up people who annoy the crap out of us, but are generally safe in the house. The leading contenders for MVP nom are Helen, Amanda and Aaryn. I'm kind of expecting Aaryn because of the TVOV voting block, but I'd love for it to be Helen just to watch her lose it. Amanda's already had her turn.
The endurance comp was basically a rerun of the BB11 Final HOH end. comp. with the added feature of smashing china. Other than a slip-up and an impressive recovery by Elissa while the liveshow was still rolling, they all stayed pretty solid for the first bit of the comp. Spencer was breathing so hard I thought he might pass out, but he was managing to hang on. But then BB started rolling the log in reverse and they fell like dominoes.
Spencer, Candice, Helen were the first 3 off and got to open the mystery boxes. Candice got the $5K, Helen got a BBQ to which she gets to bring 3 guests (and likely they get to keep the grill), and because BB hates us, Spencer got a bullhorn which he must do all his talking through until nominations (I believe). At least the bullhorn didn't go to Helen.
The rest of them fell quickly after that, leaving Jessie, GM and McCrae. There was barely a camera shot of Jessie, but she lasted another 10 minutes or so before rolling off. McCrae and GM went into stupid negotiations. GM offered safety to McCramanda, and use of the HOH bed. McCrae reciprocated the safety deal, but GM kept saying she wanted her hair dye, letter and other perks. GM then offered that McCrae could pick one of the noms, and he countered with she could pick both of his. He kept saying he needed to keep Amanda safe, not from GM, but from the MVP, which makes NO sense. GM kept saying she needed her hair dye. McCrae came off at nearly exactly 8PM BBT. He is, of course, saying he fell, but it might have been intentional.
Aaryn and GM quickly confer and seem to agree on Candice as Target #1. Aaryn's pushing for Spencer as the second nom, letting GM know Spence was saying he'd nom GM if he won HOH. GM's still mad at him for voting out Nick, so she's on board with that. There's also a lot of talk of Jessie as another nom, maybe extracting a safety deal from Spencer for next week.
This should be an interesting week, I'm just not sure if it's going to be interesting in a good or bad way. Only time will tell.
* As it turned out, this was a stunt audience. The super enthusiastic reactions were staged, and the entire thing happened about 6 hours before the allegedly live show. This also explains some odd cuts and blips during the broadcast and about 30-seconds of black-screen before the part of the show that was actually live. I noted this at the time (even commented on Twitter) but I figured it was a transmission problem, not a completely staged "live" show. I've got to say, I'm disappointed in BB/CBS for not wanting to risk too much reality in their reality TV.