‘Big Brother’ Recap: Queso and JoJo

There was a beloved, albeit short-lived, Nickelodeon game show in the ’90s called Wild & Crazy Kids in which wild and/or crazy kids competed in what was essentially a televised Field Day. The games would range from silly (Dizzy Bat) to gross (food fights) to downright ridiculous (Donkey Basketball) and one’s victory was announced by Omar Gooding or Donnie Jeffcoat. (How in the hell is Donnie Jeffcoat not the name of a current reality show contestant?) 

Big Brother is essentially Wild & Crazy Kids, if they had locked said kids in a house for a long period of time, promised them an absurd amount of money to stop at nothing to win, and replaced Omar Gooding with Julie Chen. Wild and crazy? Absolutely. But hey, at least they still have those inane games to play! Tonight those wild and crazy kids played a memory game in which they willingly dressed up like tortilla chips and jumped into tubs of dip.  Ah, to be young again! Or just to be an adult with absolutely no sense of shame or self-awareness. 

Of course, unlike Wild & Crazy Kids, Big Brother has that whole manipulation and extreme paranoia angle. (Okay, no wonder that show didn’t last very long.) With Willie now out of the picture after physically attacking Joe (which Ian totally would have broken up if he wasn’t in a towel or Ian), the house was now down both a villain and a number one target. Boogie and Shane to the rescue! 

Willie played his Big Brother villain card all wrong too early in the game by going with the bully angle instead of creepy mastermind who resembles Herbie the Dentist gone terribly, horribly wrong. The ol’ Boogster, on the other hand, got that one down pat. Willie’s villain void left an opening for Boogie to attempt to scheme his way into influencing Frank’s decision-making process on who to put on the block next. While Danielle and Willie’s allies Shane and JoJo were the obvious choices, Boogie wanted to shake things up and sacrifice a pawn. Frank, who is damn good at not showing his cards yet, was on the fence about that possibility and had to think it over. 

As Frank mulled over his next move, Shane and JoJo came to terms with their fate that they were likely to be put on the newly vacant spot on the block. “Ohhhh myyy gaaaaawwwwd, we’re going on the blaaaaawk,” JoJo commis-uh-rated to Shane. In what was presumably an act of solidarity, Shane also wore a pink tank top. These colors don’t run! (I don’t think there was a pink team on WIld & Crazy Kids, but for the sake of my analogy, Shane and JoJo were now on it.) 

JoJo wasn’t going to let her fate be left to Frank, she decided. So she did what any logical person in this situation would do to stay alive in the game: she bold-faced lied (telling Frank she has his back, despite all evidence to the contrary) and swore on the life of her grandmother. Somewhere, JoJo’s spirit animal JWOWW is shaking her head in disbelief at the lack of keeping it real. But, Frank wasn’t buying the act. “I gave you a chance, JoJo,” he warned. Pray for JoJo. 

Still, no one had more reason to be nervous about an impending eviction than Shane. After the two were, unsurprisingly, put up on the block by Frank, it became abundantly that Shane’s “loyalty” to Willie could lead to his own undoing on the show. If there was going to be anything to save sitting ducks Shane and JoJo from imminent eviction, it would be the Power of Veto competition. 

And wouldn’t you know it, both Shane and JoJo got picked for Power of Veto competition, alongside Frank, Ian, Wig, and Ashley. Before getting around to this week’s incredibly high stakes POV, Big Brother decided to give us a little levity, as they so often do, with a quick getting-to-know-you segment. This week it was POV competitor Ashley who proved us all wrong about our notions of her being a completely vapid floozy… by announcing to her housemates, and the nation, that she wants nothing more in this world than to be barefoot and pregnant and married to her dream guy. Some of her dream guy’s qualities, you ask? Well, among other traits, he must be attractive, only have eyes for her, play Monopoly sometimes, and enjoy one of the following: eating, snacks, and/or food. 

So it was no wonder, really, that a wide-eyed Ashley marveled “This is the coolest thing ever” when she saw this week’s POV. Hosted by Joe, a man Guy Fieri would describe as “overdoing it,” the game consisted of the players (dressed up as the aforementioned chips) digging through vats of sauces to find menu items, which they would have to place, in order, on a menu board. (See photo.)

Everyone had a strategy: Ian was going to use his photographic memory, JoJo was going to pretend she wasn’t swimming in a Staten Island beach and Ashley was going to use secret code to align the menu items. (B = burrito, F = fajita, and, dear God, Ashley is probably going to outlive us all, isn’t she?) While the game was undoubtedly memory-based, it still had one of the key Big Brother ingredients: it was really freakin’ slippery. 

No matter what the outcome of this little exercise in the human spirit was, it already made for two of my all-time favorite Big Brother sound bites: JoJo’s declaration of “What I need is a Veto Burrito” and Wig’s grievance “It’s the darn toot.” Never change, Big Brother. With the exception of Ashley, who finally debunked that ridiculous theory that slow and steady wins the race, everyone got perfect scores. But it was Shane who finished first, earning him, for the second week in a row, the Power of Veto. “That’s what you get, America!” Shane cried. Indeed. 

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