As I predicted at the end of the last entry, though there was a lot of last minute talk of flipping and evicting Julia, Vanessa got what she wanted and Meg got the boot. In the end it really came down to Steve. He got all overly dramatic, dry heaving and stress walking around the house. But ultimately neither he nor John wanted to screw up what they have with Vanessa, so they sent smiling Meg on her way.
Then it was out to play DE where I was hoping that anyone but the AusTwins would win and finally split up the AusTwins. But those hopes were dashed when Liz won HOH and Julia took the POV. So, James and John hit the block and James was bounced out on a unanimous vote, once again giving Vanessa exactly what she wanted.
Leading up to the DE, Austin had basically "given his blessing" for someone to put up the twins and free him from the burden of having to protect both of them. So when Steve won the next HOH Austin believed the girls would be going up. But Vanessa, Steve and Johnny Mac had different ideas, and it ended up being Austin and Liz. Steve forewarned Austin, and told him he wasn't the target, which for some reason Austin passed along to Liz. Though Steve/JMac/Vanessa were all telling Austin he was safe, they were actually planning to vote him out.
So, naturally, Austin won the POV. This did give us a bit of drama when Austin vociferously celebrated his win, seeming completely insensitive to the fact that it meant Julia is most likely going up against Liz. The twins were furious, and Austin made things so much worse by parading around with the veto necklace on for about 3 hours. He kept saying he was doing it "for the livefeeders" and "being like Janelle." First place, sir, you're no Janelle. Second place, while we do like to see the veto winner, after more than, say, 30 minutes, it just becomes obnoxious, especially when it's upsetting the other HGs. When James did it last week it was only fine because Meg honestly didn't care.
The whole fiasco also resulted in a few hours of we're so over for Liztin. She was upset, he told he'd ruined his life for her, she got offended. But he also dropped an "I love you" on her, which didn't escape her notice. It seemed they were broken up, but then Vanessa stepped in. She smoothed things over just enough to have all her little puppets getting along, but left enough discontent to be sure they were still first and foremost her puppets. Liz did share Julia's bed for a night, but by this morning was back snuggling up to Austin.
The twins seem to be agreeing that it's better for Liz to go because Julia's less of a target. This is again exactly what Vanessa wants. With Liz gone, Vanessa will have a final two deal with everyone left in the house. I'm fairly sure she plans to just sit back and let them take each other out. Well, just sit back in the way that only Vanessa can, which is to say, by controlling them all from behind the scenes.