Can we all just drop the pretense that Big Brother can be won through strategizing and brain power now? Jordumb won. My cat is thinking about applying to be a contestant next year. He's every bit as pretty, considerably smarter, and he'll sleep with anyone.
The theme this year, dropped like a campaign promise halfway through the run, was "Back to High School." However, ironically the theme reemerged in the last week of shows as, just as in high school, I was thoroughly sick of it before it was fully over. (Sorry if this last BB column runs on a bit long, but it's covering a full 6 hours of CBS airtime.)
Sunday (1): Love and Sushi.
Skankalie (Natalie, for newcomers) on her HOH (Head of Household) win: "I have to make a name for myself in this game. And I did it." Yes, she did. She made several names for herself: "Liar," "Backstabber," and "Skankalie," to be specific. "And I earned it!" she irrationally added. She won by guessing. It was blind luck, not her mathematical genius.
"I lost to an eighteen-year-old," said Dr. Michele. Can they rescind PhDs? How can you claim intelligence on the one hand, and still buy Skankalie's lie about her age after all this time on the other? It's in the Big Brother rules loud and clear. Anything illegal is against the rules. Alcoholic consumption by people under 21 is illegal in California. The first time Skankalie took a drink and wasn't reprimanded by the producers, the jig was up. She had to be over 21! You didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve it. Inspector Clouseau could have worked it out. Sarumoron (Jeff) and Jordumb at least have a stupidity defense, but what is Dr. Michele's excuse?
Skankalie's big plan for the penultimate week was to make Dr. Michele believe that she and Gollum (Kevin) now suddenly hated each other. Why? What could it possibly matter? If Dr. Michele won the Power of Veto, she'd be staying. If she lost the POV, she'd be evicted. Whether she thought Gollum and Skankalie were thick as thieves or believed they were at each other's throats would make zero difference. Skankalie was just lying and scheming from force of habit. But, as would become increasingly clear this week, and has been clear since Day One of the competition, Skankalie is a compulsive liar, who lies without motive or reason, just out of an inability to tell the truth. She may have a future as a White House Press Secretary, if she ever learns what foreign countries are.
The only quark-sized trace of a reason for the pretense would be if that if Dr. Michele thought she was safe, she'd slack off on the POV competition, and not bother to try and win. Puh-leaze. No one could possibly be so overconfident as to be so convinced that they are safe that they wouldn't bother to go for the win in a POV competition. It's nonsen -- Oops. Hi Casey.
There was a final luxury competition involving a clothing shopping spree. This was perhaps the easiest, and certainly the most boring competition of the entire season. Yawn! Plus it involved Gollum posing, displaying, even bragging about his fashion sense and taste, of which he has none. Gollum remains as relentlessly badly dressed in September as he was in July.
At one point, Gollum, not content with collecting all the ugliest clothes off the racks, attacked a mannequin, and ripped off its pants, combining the fun of shopping with the joys of sexual assault: The Best of No Worlds. CBS blurred out the now-nude mannequin's butt cleavage and crotch bulge, thus sparing the blank eyes of child mannequins from not-seeing - what? What kind of grossly anatomically-correct window-display mannequins were they using? They showed the Emperor Palpatwit (Ronnie) shirtless, but they blurred out the single, smooth butt-cheek of a window dummy. CBS, you're insane.
Gollum's statement of principles: "I'm so at the point of this game where if I need to sell out [Skankalie], betray her, backstab her, whatever, I will do it. I will knock a bitch out for the half-a-million dollars." Gollum arrived in the Big Brother house already at that point.
Gollum's whole game play was based on cowardice. Every indecision he agonized over in his flesh-crawling whine was over which action scared him more. Terror motivated his every decision, his every move, his every treachery.
His gay "style" only came out in the Diary Room until the last man was voted out of the house, and he finally had the guts to start playing his fake persona in front of others.
And about Gollum's gay persona, not about his being gay, but about the affected "style" he put on in the Diary Room, on the live shows, and alone with his girlfriends: It's synthetic. It's not actual style. It's an imitation of styles he's seen put on by queens with the wit and originality to pull them off. I've spent my whole life surrounded by gay men of all varieties, from butch muscle-heads way too much like Jessie, to regular guys-next-door whom you only know are gay because they live with a hotter man than yours, to drag queens and attitude bitches like the ones Gollum imitates, the ones who entertain you, and who sparkle with style, wit, cleverness, and something genuine and real inside them. Gollum, devoid of wit, empty of soul, barren of humor, bereft of ethics, can only ape his betters, presenting imitation bitchiness in counterfeit style.
And you know what the defining characteristic of a great bitchy queen is? Courage! It takes guts to live openly as they do. It takes balls to reinvent yourself as something you were told never to be, and to be true to yourself. Gollum utterly lacks any trace of such bravery.
But at least he dresses abominably.
Skankalie was offered a Pandora's Box temptation. She was given the chance to spend a few minutes visiting with "Jason," her adorable, pathetic, sad sack boy friend, with Big Brother carefully monitoring every word, since he could not be allowed to slip her information gleaned from watching the show, which could give her an advantage. However, to win these few minutes, she had to give up the competing in the final POV competition. She went for it.
Never did she seem more 18 than in this immature decision. You're there to play and win a game. No serious player would have taken that choice this late in the game, unless they were wildly overconfident. You don't pass up the chance to win power, and influence the game to your advantage for a few minutes with your boyfriend (with only 11 days to go until you're free to be with him full time anyway) unless you have the emotional maturity of a 15 year old. It's not something "Champions" do.
So that's how she pulled off her pointless "I'm 18" lie. Does he look 18? No. But she acts 15. Only the deranged Lydia behaved more immaturely than Skankalie.
It was grizzly. Here was Jason, a very nice-looking young man of, I must assume, limited intellect (He's "in love" with Skankalie. How bright can he be?), waiting with his silly romantic gesture. Because - Gasp! - he proposed marriage, giving her a twist tie for an engagement ring (He can't very well spend her $500,000 before she's won it, now can he?), in one of those idiotic romantic gestures you see in B movies (the ones in which I starred, in fact) but never expect to see anyone dim enough to try in real life.
What is this handsome, sweet dope thinking? She's spent all summer on national TV, mooning over Jessie, following Jessie around like a puppy, sleeping in the same bed with Jessie (and with Lydia at the same time. Hello?), having an emotional meltdown over Jessie's eviction, carrying on like Jessie had died (no such luck) when he was evicted, and so on. I guess Jason is going for an "open" marriage.
Plus, he's watched her lie about everything and anything. He's seen her lie to advance in the game, and also lie for no reason, just out of habit. She's been lying non-stop all summer. Does he think she'll be honest with him? He's seen her manipulate and backstab, and brag in the Diary Room about how she has no problem nor qualms about her own endless dishonesty. Doesn't he realize that he was being shown a preview of just exactly what she'll be like as a wife? She justifies all her dishonesty as being "game," just to win money. Oh, so lying, backstabbing, and displaying personal ethics that would appall even Dick Cheney are okay as long as it's for money or to get something she wants?
Jason, quite apart from the fact that this is how she will be getting what she wants from you as well, and with the identical justification, there's the little matter of this: people who lie, deceive, betray, and behave without any morals or ethics to acquire money, and who are not very smart, end up in prison eventually. Will you wait for her to get out, Jason? Will she drag you down with her? Or will you wise up before then, take the kids, and get the heck away from that lying skank?
Some people try to excuse the houseguests' moral aberrations by saying that the house is such a stressful pressure cooker that you become someone else in there, and behave as you never would outside. No. Oh it is certainly a high-pressure, unnatural situation, but it doesn't make you into someone else. It makes you more nakedly who you are. It reveals you. Jason, Skankalie stands revealed on national TV. Wise up now, before you make the worst mistake of your life. Don't be the first of Skankalie's lengthy string of future-ex-husbands. (And that's if you're lucky! Remember the jealous harridan she became whenever Jessie spoke to Lydia. You could easily end up in a pool of your own blood. Remember the famous Jason, whose wife Medea, when she got good and pissed at him, murdered their kids. This could all wind up in a Greek tragedy.)
Time for another pointless lie from Skankalie. Why? Because she's awake. Rather than risk pissing off Gollum, she decides to tell a lie to indicate that she got something bad from opening Pandora's Box. But her lie was, let's say, poorly thought out.
She told them, "I just got screwed royally." If only. That certainly would have been more entertaining to watch than Jason's proposal over a twist tie, and then sipping champagne and Sushi. (Well, Sushi does, in fact, constitute something of a penalty. Sushi is not food; it's bait.)
She had "won" what she called "Final Two Reversal," which, she unexplained, meant that if she was in the final two, and the jury vote made her the winner (as if), she'd lose. If she wins, she loses; only if she loses can she win.
You will note that this is insane. Just to put the icing on this rotting garbage, she added, "And then I got tied, ear muffs, and blindfolded." I was reminded of Pinocchio lying to the Blue Fairy about how he fell into Stromboli's clutches. "And how did you escape?" the big fairy asked him.
"I didn't," said Pinocchio, "He chopped me into firewood." I'm sure that, given one more minute, Skankalie would have mentioned how then, Big Brother killed her, sliced her up, and served her with sushi as last night's dinner. (Well, sliced Skankalie would make sushi seem a tad more palatable.)
Even Jordumb realized this was a clumsy lie. Of course, the first new theory, proposed by Dr. Michele mind you, who is supposed to be smart, was that it went the other way around, and if someone else gets voted the $500,000, Skankalie gets it. You'll note that this "reverse" is just the same thing stated the other way around. And it is still insane.
When it became obvious to the Skankster that this lie wasn't going to float, her next tactic was Case Closed! "I just got one request," Skankalie ungrammatically stated, "Please don't ask me anything more about Pandora's Box." I was reminded of a five-year old saying, "I have just one request; please don't ask me about that broken window in my room, or who shaved the cat, or why the police are at the door."
When Gollum pointed out to her that they all knew she was lying, her next tactic was to come clean but pretend it was trivial. "It's nothing big." Were you listening, Jason? She said of marrying you, "It's nothing big." You really want to marry her?
So tactic number four became, it was her joke on them. "All you all just got got by a eighteen year old. I just pranked all you guys." Still with the lies! Since no one ever believed her for a second, they didn't get got (What an awkward phrase!) at all, and of course, she isn't 18. She is incapable of not lying. I'm surprised her next statement wasn't "I just got married -- to Morgan Fairchild. Yeah. That's the ticket."
She went through so many lies, that when she finally did tell the truth, no one believed her. She was the Skank who cried "wolf." They were conditionally happy for her.
At the nomination ceremony, Skankalie wore her fiance's too-large bathrobe and an inflated, red rubber crown, and carried a pool bridge as a scepter. Dressed like a six-year-old playing "King" on a school sick day, she never looked younger, or more stupid.
Tuesday (1): Doctor Where.
This was a live eviction show with the Power of Veto competition tossed in first. There was some boring maneuvering as everyone tried to kiss everyone else's butts, just in case that person won the next HOH. Frankly, at this point in the summer, I'm ready to slap out the POV competition, evict someone, and go home. BB, I don't know how to break this to you, but when you have no hot guys left in the house, and three out of the four people who are left are horrible, it's really hard to maintain interest. Frankly, a half hour show would have suited me just fine.
The POV competition involved stacking blocks on a pole that provided the answers to a stack of questions. Dr. Michele began with a brilliant tactic, arranging the blocks on the ground, working out the order first and then stacking them on the pole, but then she got spooked, and abandoned it, blowing the competition. Gollum won, and few things are more sickening than a smug, victorious Gollum. The real problem now was that there was zero suspense as to who would be evicted, but they still had half an hour to kill, and it promised to be a slow, painful death.
Oh, Dr. Michele tried to work Gollum to evict Jordumb instead of her, but Gollum was too afraid he couldn't beat her at competitions, despite having just done so, and his decision was based, as all of his decisions were, on his cowardice. We can't know how things would have gone if he had kept The Doctor, but his chicken-hearted choice certainly did end up biting him on the butt. Although it seems virtually impossible to underestimate Jordumb, both Gollum and Skankalie managed. Meanwhile, poor, socially awkward Dr. Michele was out facing the Chen fetus. Not only did this leave us with a Final Three that consisted of two vile slimeballs and one moron, but it achieved Chima's stated goal, all-girl finals: a bimbo, a skank, and a queen.
The final HOH competition was broken into three parts, one for each remaining episode, except for the clip show. As the Tuesday show ended, The Three Stoogettes were walking a rolling log. Last one still walking wins round one and advances to round three. This was the first endurance competition where I didn't even bother to go online and find out who won. All I wanted now was a three-way loss, and that wasn't going to be happening.
Thursday: Running in Place.
Why did they do a live show last Thursday? No one was evicted. Yes, they played the second part of the final HOH competition live, but they could have shown it on tape. The only "live" event was telling the houseguests that the last eviction was not going to happen until the final broadcast. This wasn't exactly an earth-shattering twist, although the remaining houseskanks tried their best to pretend it was.
They opened with Skankalie celebrating Dr. Michele's eviction, though neither Jordumb nor Gollum wanted to join in. After all, The Doctor was a far more pleasant companion than the increasingly deranged Skankalie.
Skankalie, referring to The Doctor: "Whoo! The devil is gone. Feels - Don't you guys just feel rejuvenated?"
Gollum, disgusted: "Stop it."
I don't get it. Have I forgotten something? How was Dr. Michele a devil? She was a nerdy girl, too shy to realize that she could be pretty or smart or fun. As diabolic contestants go, she's a piker next to the revolting Skankalie.
Skankster: "Evil is gone!" No skanky one, you're still there. Dear readers out in Realityland, should you encounter Skankalie in person, in a playground or a police line-up, please spit on her for me. I'd do it myself, but I can't afford to waste the moisture.
Meanwhile, back at the Falling Off a Log competition, The Skanky One, still gloating over Dr. Michele's departure to Jordumb, delved deep into this insane reverie, further cementing her great distance from Reality: "At least Michele will get to - ah - spend time alone with [Sarumoron] like she's wanted to this whole game."
Never, at any time, has Dr. Michele exhibited or expressed the slightest trace of desire for or sexual interest in Sarumoron. She is happily married to a man who clearly loves her. Not even Jordumb was stupid enough to believe this crapola. Jason, are you paying attention? Skankalie isn't telling us anything about Dr. Michele; she's telling us about herself. She is not going to be faithful to you. She assumed a married woman was lusting for Sarumoron because she herself has no faith, as she demonstrated by throwing herself at Jessie. Jason darling, run!
The horror! Gollum: "I'm from Southern California." No! I was praying that he lived somewhere far away, maybe somewhere where he could see Russia from his house. The last person I want to run into in a So Cal gay neighborhood (where I am sometimes to be found. I am such a gay icon.) would be Chima, who lives in West Hollywood, with Gollum running a close second.
The CBS Sadists were rolling the log, stopping the log suddenly, reversing it, and hitting them with wind, rain and snow. (You do not normally encounter a lot of snow in Studio City in September, particularly on a day that had been in the high 90s during the daylight.)
To no one's surprise, Jordumb fell off the log. Once she was gone, Gollum and Skankalie began swearing loyalty to each other to get the other to drop, intercut with their Diary Room confessions that each was planning to stab the other in the back. At one point, Skankalie called America to witness Gollum's swearing. What did she think? That, when Gollum betrayed her, America would cry foul, and undo it? Meanwhile, they were both counting the money they were certain they were about to win, as neither believed Jordumb would ever beat them in a competition (a mistaken belief I shared), and each secretly believing that the jury would happily give them the big prize over Jordumb, because, well, come to think of it, I have no idea why either of these two idiots would expect anyone to vote the money to them. They'd forgotten that the jury has met them, and half of them were there because Gollum and Skankalie had connived to put them there. Yet there was Skankalie, convinced she's smarter than Jordumb, when she's every bit as dumb, just not as ignorant, and there was Gollum, already mentally spending that half mil on atrocious clothes.
Finally, Skankalie fell. It was not as amusing as the flop-and-crash s'mores challenge. But at least she once again put the "Doh!" back into Tae Kwon Doh!
Julie Chenbot: "[Sarumoron] has left the game, and must now face his worst nightmare: the jury house." No Julie, Saromoron's worst nightmare is being locked in a room with a copy of Dickens' David Copperfield, and being told he had to read the book before he could ever have food or sex again.
At the jury house, we had this bit of fantasy:
Russell, speculating on who will arrive that day: "What if it's [Skankalie]? What'll you do then, Jessie?"
Jessie: "What am I going to do? The same thing I did inside the house: respect her as a woman." A more honest answer would have been: "The same thing I did inside the house: sleep 18 hours a day. And when I am awake, as long as she doesn't get between me and a mirror, I'm cool."
Russell was very happy to have Sarumoron show up. The Bromance was back.
They brought back four past finalists to fill up time with blather:
The entertainingly awful Evel Dick, who still dresses and grooms like a petulant, rebellious 13-year-old. (Just never going to grow up, are you Dick?)
The tiresome Mike Boogie, whose popularity I always found inexplicable.
The wretched Danielle, whom I loathed when she was on the show. She justified her every lie, her every character assassination, her every betrayal with "I'm doing it for my kids." I wanted to slap her each and every time. I wonder how those kids will turn out, since Mom has so clearly taught them that morals are situational, and lies and betrayals are a perfectly acceptable way to achieve your goals, as long as it's for "your kids." You know. I still hate her guts.
And lovely Janelle, whom I enjoyed tremendously both of the seasons she was on.
Unsurprisingly, disgusting Danielle praised Skankalie's "gameplay." Of course she did. Skankalie is playing by the Danielle playbook, with the same non-ethics. They are both moral black holes. Danielle especially respected how Skankalie manipulated a man - well, a male - well, Gollum - to do her dirty work for her. That is just the sort of thing this harridan would admire. At least Skankalie has the excuse of being emotionally 12 years old and stupid, and is not yet a mother setting an appalling example for her kids. (Give her time.) Danielle, please go back to whatever corner of Hell you occupy. "Don't hate." Danielle said. You're years too late with that request.
Kids, being trustworthy and ethical is for suckers - Danielle's Law.
Mike Boogie made excuses for Chima. Why am I unsurprised? Evel Dick was more sensible: "I think she should jump off a bridge." Good advice. Mike, Janelle and Dick all thought Gollum would win. Tell us more, Nostradamus. Danielle, like Chima, got on a sexist huff about wanting a women to win. Well, you got your wish, Danielle, and what a stirring example of strong womanhood Jordumb provides, hopelessly stupid, appallingly ignorant, and got through the game under the protection of a man she was manipulating with the unfulfilled promise of sex. She's Jane Addams and Hilary Clinton combined and lobotomised.
But as much of a placeholder as this episode was, there was one big shock: Jordumb defeating Skankalie in the second part of the HOH competition. Oh Skankalie, I knew you were stupid. I knew you were a loser. I knew your claims to be a Tae Kwon Doh "champion" and a professional poker player were all just more of your compulsive lies, but even I didn't think you could lose a quiz challenge to Jordumb. And you didn't just lose. You were skunked, skank. You have lived down to below my expectations. Congratulations! And thank you.
Sunday (2): Deja Ew!
The final Sunday show was even more of a time-waster. There were no competitions at all, so they ran a clip show. Our three remaining monstrosities, I mean houseguests, wandered about the house and yard, speaking just-shy-of-scripted banter with all the spontaneity of an Oscar Show presenter, while clips of high and/or low lights were run, some familiar, and some fresh.
The Jessie-talks-in-bed clip was worth the whole show. We saw in nightvision, Jessie getting into the HOH bed with both Skankalie and Lydia curled up by his feet, the way my cat sleeps with me when Eduardo, my gardener's son, can't stay over. Skankalie was already sleeping the sleep of the unjust, but Lydia earned the only pity she's ever gotten from me by being awake, and having to listen to Jessie's non-stop monologue on - well - "The Awesomeness of Jessie."
With his eyes glowing like the evil children from the Village of the Damned (Oh my Goddess! Jessie's an alien! In the words of Gollum, I knew it!), Jessie asked, "Want me to tell you the story about when I hit a grand slam?"
Lydia (dripping with sarcastic irony): "Okay."
To my amazement it was not a tale of his attacking his mother's bridge club, nor was it an account of his smashing a delicious Denny's breakfast into egg, sausage, and pancake smithereens, but was a long, rambling pointless blather, full of aggressive, masculine verbs, and over-hyped adjectives. "I crushed this f___ing ball so hard ... It was amazing! And I was like, Yes! Yes! Yes! It was sweet ... When I do that, my mom calls it my moments of greatness..." Is this while she's sewing your name into your underwear, Jess? Men who are actually great, like Nelson Mandela, Christopher Reeve, Albert Schweitzer, and Hugh Jackman, are great at all times. They don't have mere fleeting milliseconds of "greatness," as adjudicated by their impartial "Moms."
Jessie continued, probably for days: "Body building's fun too. [I believe Baron Victor Frankenstein said the same thing.] Because I always win it. Heh, heh... I have friends who are doctors [No he doesn't. Get real. The men in the white coats who watch him through the barred window of his padded cell are not his "friends."] And they are like 'Oh I just did this, this and this,' [I'm assuming "This, this, and this" stood in for, "Cured cancer, helped the lame - like Jessie - to walk, and restored a blind child's eyesight] I go, oh yeah well, I bet one of your clients saw me on TV or something."
And the doctors all replied, "Jessie, you win." Also, "Clients"?
"I need a haircut... I've accomplished something no one else in the United States has... I could tell a few stories, I just choose not to... That would be my dream, like to be able to use my physique for something good... To be - you know, people to see that it is admirable... Anybody? Both asleep right now?" Yup. They were both asleep. Deeply asleep, and I was nodding off myself. But Jessie, you can achieve your dream of using your physique for good. You can be a professional sleep aid, the Walking Insomnia Cure!
But just because the people he was talking to were asleep was no reason not to keep talking: "I'm a caterpillar, and until people want to hear my story, they're not going to see the butterfly." Jessie darling, in that case, no one will ever see that butterfly. Why not just wrap yourself up in a cocoon forever?
That was the best two minutes of the whole season.
We got to revisit friend-of-this-blog Casey's time in the dreaded banana suit. (But we never saw him peel.) As he admired his tropical fruit-suit in the mirror, he said, "It looks like a big pencil," and not, I'll bet, for the first time. (But is there lead in it?) For one week, the man's greatest personal terror was running into King Kong.
We saw again Russell heckling and, to use Chima's racist phrase, terrorizing Palpatwit. When Russell said to him, "It must suck to know you've got to stay here for a week, and you've got me riding up your [butt] the whole time," my ghost writer, Little Dougie, had to stop the DVR and leave the room for a few minutes. When Dougie came back out and he resumed typing, he was favoring his other arm. We saw Palpie again weeping like a little girl over a picture of a kitty and the female face he's pretending is his imaginary wife.
We also saw Gollum screaming at and bullying Palpatwit for accusing Gollum of being a liar. Gollum, have you forgotten that you are a huge liar? But it was nice to see Gollum get all brave and aggressive with the one male in the house who was even less masculine and farther down the social scale than himself. If Gollum had stood up like that to Russell, I might have been impressed.
Jordumb on Sarumoron: "He grew on me." No dear, that's "He grew in me." This girl doesn't know a preposition from a proposition, and she won't end a sentence in either.
We saw the season highlights of course: the eviction of Laura's Breasts, which were the first double eviction, the use of the Coup d'Etat, and of course, Chima's meltdown, which is what this season will be remembered by. We heard "The ugly and the bad get rewarded in this game, and the good just seem to go down in burning flames," spoken by the woman who came in second and took home $50,000. Yup, Skankalie, you called it. "The ugly and the bad."
"Jessie, we only got a taste of you," said Lydia, the woman we saw going down on him on CBS. Open mouth; insert foot, if there's room left over.
The most stomach-churning moment was revisiting Gollum slathering and drooling as he watched Sarumoron spray his hose in the garden, half naked. I can't blame him, but once again, I can't believe Gollum's pretty husband isn't at least legally blind.
The weirdest new clips were the nightvision ones of Dr. Michele's sleep noises: moaning and purring as though she's dreaming of Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, and Russell giving her a trip to heaven on a very small cot: and then her cries, her shouts of "No!, and "Stop that!" Frankly, I felt a tad pervy (which takes a lot for me to feel) snooping on her night sounds, but then there was the moment in one, when from out of nowhere, devoid of any context except deep in her restless mind, she suddenly yelled out "Dad, be quiet!" She should sell T-shirts that say that. (I hope the moaning and purring were from a different dream than "Dad, be quiet!" At least she didn't add, "Mom'll hear.")
Tuesday (2): The Fall off the House of Big Brother.
And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revels, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with the last of the gay.
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death.
The finale lasted two hours. Like any reality results show, it could easily have been handled in one quarter of the time. Summed up: filler, filler, filler, last competition, filler, clip of Palpatwit shirtless, hurried dash to bathroom to throw up, filler, filler, choice of final evictee, filler, filler, jury votes, filler, votes counted, filler, filler filler.
For her maternity finale dress, Julie was wearing some tasteful blue drapes that looked like she stole them from my mother's living room window. I was reminded of Carol Burnett in Went With the Wind saying, "I saw it in the window, and I just couldn't resist it."
Okay, what is the difference between Jordumb and Skankalie that should leave me favoring Jordumb winning, despite my revulsion at rewarding ignorance and willful stupidity? (It's not that she couldn't get an education. She refused an education. "I didn't get along with the kids at that school. They were all worried about grades and stuff." That's our Jordumb.) When Jordumb beat Skankalie in the last HOH competition, she reigned it in, and told us, "I didn't want to rub it in [Skankalie's] face, because I knew she was upset."
Whereas when Skankalie won her HOH, she screamed, shrieked, happy-danced, and yelled in everyone's faces nonsense about her "earning" it with her honesty and integrity, of which she has none. Her reaction to losing to Jordumb was to holler loudly: "Aaaaaaaaahhhh! I just want to - Ooooooh! You don't understand. I want to take one of those balls and hurl it right now." We do understand, Skanky my dear, we just don't approve. Coincidentally, she makes me want to hurl also.
Gollum told us repeatedly that he would betray Skankalie if he won the last HOH, and take Jordumb to the end. I believe him. Cowardly treachery is his modus operandi. But this time, I was okay with it.
Jordumb, with more money than her family has had cumulatively in three generations dangling close enough to taste, finally got some game on, and began hosing Gollum about taking him to the end, while planning to "pull a Gollum" on Gollum. Again, for once, I was okay with it. That Gollum bitch was about to find out just what a bitch Karma is as well.
On the other hand, When I heard Skankalie say to Jordumb, "You know, [Jordumb], despite whatever happens, I hope we actually keep in contact," I feared that Skanky was blowing it. A threat like Skankalie wanting to keep in touch would have me applying to NASA for a spot on a Mars Mission.
For the finale, Gollum, as always, was dressed horribly, this time in a yellow and black plaid shirt, with black vest and orange pants. Somewhere, Stevie Wonder was saying "What an ugly outfit." Gollum relentlessly wore yellow throughout the series, as though announcing to the world that his overriding motivator was cowardice.
Showing his relentless cluelessness, we saw Sarumoron along with Russell convinced that Gollum would be slinking in the door, leaving his usual slime trail. And even when he saw it was The Doctor, Sarumoron managed to get something else wrong: "If Michele's not there, [Jordumb's] chances are slim." At least he's consistent.
"Do you guys want to know a juicy secret?" asked The Doctor, before revealing something that had been broadcast on prime time on CBS, an unusual form of being "secret," to say the least.
Sarumoron asked The Doctor about Skankalie's victim, I mean fiancé, phrasing it tactfully, "How's her boyfriend? Is he a tool?" After the jury house detour ended, we got to see poor little Jason sitting with Skankalie's dad in the front row of the live audience, trying his best not to look humiliated at being called a tool by a total stranger on national TV and in front of the audience surrounding him. Get used to it, Jason. If you marry the Skankster, you'll be in for a lot of that, most of it from her.
When told Skankalie was actually 24, The Doctor had an I knew it moment: "Yeah, that's what I thought... Yeah, no, I was like, you are not 18. Whatever. Liar, liar." Gee, I last remember her saying "I got beaten by an 18-year-old."
Watching the show from last week, Lydia accurately summed up Skankalie's princess look at her nomination ceremony as "The wanna-be Flava Flav." What a terrible thing to say, and so true. Lydia added, "She can be queen of the trailer park." while Sarumoron chimed in, "Dude, that costume alone that she's got on right there makes me - no vote, just for that outfit." Complete sentences are not his forte.
Later, at the jury debate, Sarumoron said to Lydia, "I might as well talk to that plant, like talking to a road cone." What did a road cone ever do to him to be so insulted?
Jessie to Sarumoron during the "debate": "When I saw your face, it was one of the most beautiful things I've seen all season." Aw.
The big shock of the finale was, once again, Jordumb managing, albeit via Jordumb luck, to beat Gollum at a speculative quiz. The quiz was a tie, and they had to guess a number to break the tie, and Jordumb actually came within a single point of on-the-nose right. The gods smiled on her.
The best moment in the finale was Gollum's face when Jordumb evicted him. Much as I despise Skankalie, I still got pure enjoyment from watching Gollum's dreams die in his eyes as Jordumb shoved him into the fires of Mount Doom. However, Jordumb needs to learn when to shut up. She evicted him and just kept on yapping.
Gollum at the door after being evicted, "Do I leave?" Yes, you dopey troll. You're evicted. Get out. Chima got her all-female final two. I wonder if she was smiling. Somehow I doubt it.
When the jury was trotted out, Russell had, in the excitement I'm sure, utterly forgotten to button his shirt beyond one button at his navel. It was a bit of an over-the-top fashion statement, but he could pull it off, or I will. As fashion statements go, it beats the hell out of Gollum's yellow eyesore.
In answer to the question, "What was your best move?" Jordumb said, "Getting rid of [Gollum,] and I don't mean that in a bad way." What "bad way"? Every way I look at it, disposing of Gollum is good.
"More than half of that jury there are actually, truly my friends," said Skankalie well before she learned of the 5 to 2 vote against her. Heh, heh, heh. Still delusional, Skankalie went on about how she never lied to nor backstabbed anyone, ignoring the scrunched up faces of the jury and the derisive laughs from the studio audience, where Skankalie's father's face had gone from the beaming proud face he had had the week he got to call her on the show, to a controlled face, trying to maintain a proud supportive look despite the humiliation of realizing just how unpopular his daughter had made herself with the other houseguests, with the live audience, and with America's home viewers. Jason too had acquired a frantically fixed smile with sadness underneath, though whether that was sadness for the mess she'd made of herself, sadness for himself for having shackled himself to a skank, or just the sadness of watching $450,000 flying away, I can't say.
When voting, Gollum said his vote was "strictly strategic." Huh? Gollum, you're no longer playing. You have no "strategy." You're so used to trying to fend off any consequences of your actions by saying "it's just strategy," that you did it again, even though it is plainly meaningless at this point.
And so they voted, including America's vote in case of a tie, though even without "America," it would still have been four to two against Skankalie. Then the evicted houseguests, except Chima of course, were trotted out to reveal the secrets that had not been previously revealed to the players. It was nice to see doofusy Braiden again. I'm sure Laura's breasts were a welcome sight to many, and it was fun to see Casey again, albeit without the banana suit. Indeed, he was wearing a jaunty brown cap.
Unfortunately, Emperor Palpatwit was back also, and he was still just as obnoxious. He got to reveal Skankalie's true age to Jordumb and Gollum, the only persons who still didn't know. Casey got to reveal to Sarumoron how utterly duped he'd been by Gollum and the Skank, backed up by the clips of them gloating over what a fool he was to fall for their plot. Sarumoron took being called an idiot in a Diary Room confession on TV with a fairly good will, the opposite of what Chima would have done.
Braiden, still competing to be the dumbest male, told Jessie he was watching him with the girls and taking notes. I see the list in my mind:
Jessie's Tips For Hooking Up With Babes:
1. Talk about nothing but how awesome you are.
2. Sleep 18 to 20 hours a day.
3. Remove any trace of a personality.
4. Lack the attention span needed to read this far into the list.
? Ah, what comes after 4?
There was also a brief everyone-rag-on-Chima segment. No one defended her. No one.
Julie Chenbot had a few clips to give some digs. She reran the clip of Palpatwit calling The Doctor the Worst Human Being he's ever met.
Even better, she reminded Jessie that he'd said his relationship with Lydia was strictly platonic. Then she ran the clip of Lydia going down on Jessie. Then she read the dictionary definition of "Platonic." When asked if the relationship had continued this way in the jury house, Lydia said nothing, what in the Nixon Administration was called a "non-denial denial." Of course, Jessie may not have been lying. He might not have known. He's not good at noticing people who aren't him. He may have thought that good feeling down there was just his jewels feeling particularly awesome that day, and for the last three weeks in sequester. For that matter, he may have slept through a few.
And the votes were counted. Skankalie's face getting the message of utter rejection from the jury, only Gollum and, surprisingly Russell, voted for her, was sweet indeed. There was an additional $25,000 prize voted on by America, that went to the ever-popular Sarumoron by a wide margin.
As Jordumb went on about how she was going to use the money to buy a house for her mom, send her two cousins to college (they must be adopted), pay off her breasts, and get a car (Jordumb, it's only $500,000. Oh wait. I forgot Jordumb's math. If it's more than $20, then it's "many."), Skankalie's father was unfortunately prominent in the shot, looking rather as it he were at his mother's funeral. Way to harsh the mellow, Pops.
And as if all that wasn't bad enough, Kanye West broke in, grabbed the huge novelty $500,000 check out of Jordumb's hands, and demanded it be given to Beyonce. Fortunately, Jordumb was able to body check Kanye with one of her lethal silicone implant chest slams. Those double-0s have a license to thrill.
Yet it's hard to be happy about the outcome. At least it's over for this year. And I'll be back in two days with the start of Survivor: Samoa.
"And Darkness, and Decay, and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.."
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death.
Cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead the Merrier.