Finally, the Big Brother Coaches out of the way

Tonight’s show was the culmination of the excitement generated when the game boils down to one or two coaches playing to the exclusion of everybody else. A Power of Veto competition, Sushi dinner and impromptu birthday party couldn’t wake this episode from the doldrums of Britney and Shane sleepwalking through negotiations with Janelle and Frank over who should be saved by the Power of Veto.

Janelle is the only thing alive at this point in the game, but her strategy is to make nice and get all of her players to kiss Shane’s butt while swearing fealty all the way to the end time or the end of next week, whichever comes first. She spends half the show in the HoH room trying to convince Britney and Shane that she is willing to work with them no matter what the cost and the rest of her time trying to figure out how to get someone to wake up and see that Boogie needs to be stomped like a bug.

Boogie does little to disabuse anyone of Janelle’s claims as we periodically see him in asides making claims such as the game is getting too easy. Early on he stops by the HoH to spit out his little gift of gab and what do you know, two of Janelle’s players are there. To him this is a sign of victory because he has the enemy running scared.

Britney is forced to admit to Janelle in all of these sessions that she doesn’t have total control over Shane. Early on she admits that she knew Shane was going to nominate Joe, but Ashley came as a surprise. Frank was her choice for the second nomination, but Shane went his own way.  Shane let Britney know that he took a chance on Ashley and he didn’t really want to go against her, but he felt he had to do what was best for him in the game.

Janelle thinks she understands Britney’s position, but she has no idea just how little respect Britney really has for her at this point in the game. All of Janelle’s attempts to sway Britney and, subsequently Shane are tainted by these negative feelings Britney holds for Janelle. That’s why when Janelle tries to get Britney’s support and Shane’s trust, she gets stonewalled.  Janelle wants the two teams to work together because they really need to get players out of the house. She thinks it is bad strategy to leave Frank in the game because he is Shane’s biggest competition.

Unfortunately, Britney is hesitant to listen to anything Janelle has to say. She decides to keep Janelle in her back pocket in case she needs to make a deal later in the week, but right now she isn’t buying anything Janelle is selling. If you scratch the surface, it is easy to see that Britney’s biggest problem with Janelle is that Janelle is simply a much better game player than her.

Shane wants to know why Janelle was talking to Britney and Britney tells him Janelle’s team is upset because two thirds of it is on the block. She points out that if he or they win POV they still need him, so either way Janelle is going to be willing to work with him. The key is that if one of Janelle’s players wins the veto competition they can still work with Shane to back door Frank. The potential to back door Frank is what much of the rest of the episode is about.

Where’s Dan in all of this. Who the heck knows? He’s been sleep walking for the past week and a half. His only goal seems to be to lay low and make sure nobody remembers he’s there. He’s doing a tremendous job of it.

One thing Janelle understands is strategy and she tells Wil, Joe and Ashley to be nice to Shane. They are bummed at him, but she thinks as rookies they don’t understand the nuances of the game. She wants them to make Shane feel he is safe if one of them comes off the block. If he feels safe, he might put Frank on the block in their stead.

Janelle knows that the person on her team with the least chance of being saved by the Power of Veto is Joe. She begs him to go and play nice with Shane and Britney to try to get them to remove him from the block.  Joe is so angry about being on the block, however, that by the time he’s done Shane can’t tell whether Joe is trying to get on his good side or if he is trying to get evicted even faster.

Finally the Power of Veto selection ceremony arrived.

Before the names were picked, Joe loudly regaled us with all the reasons Frank couldn’t be one of those playing the game; the least of which being that he would most certainly not help Joe in any way. Shane, as HoH picked first and pulled Danielle’s name, Ashlee picked Wil and then, in a karmic act of justice, Joe selected Frank. Shane chose Jenn to host the game.

The players entered the backyard in clown costumes where they discovered a circus. The game required the players to roll balls up two ramps at the same time. The ramps were in a V formation which required the players to turn back and forth to keep the balls moving. If either ball hit the ground, the player was out of the competition. The last clown to keep two balls off the ground and on the ramps won the Power of Veto.

The only surprise in this competition was that Ashley outlasted everyone except Shane who easily beat her for his third straight Power of Veto victory.

Despite losing due to a careless error, Frank thinks he is safe with no worries. At the same time, Janelle is sure she can go to work on Shane and make something happen for her team.

Following the competition, Shane is jazzed that he retains power over who goes home this week. He’s with Britney who says it’s time for Janelle to learn what it’s like to lose a player. Britney and Shane are smack talking about Janelle, and Joe in particular, when Janelle comes to the HoH room.

At this point things get really strange. Britney gets all bent out of shape because Janelle and her team come up to the HoH room to plead their cases for staying in the house while all Brit wants to do is relax and gloat. Shane, on the other hand, is trying to figure out how to stay another week which he can’t do without help from Janelle’s team, but he keeps telling Janelle he doesn’t think he can trust them. At the same time Janelle is doing everything imaginable to convince Britney and Shane they can trust her team if they’ll just listen.

Janelle goes so far as to offer to let Britney hold her wedding ring for three weeks as a guarantee of safety for Shane and when that isn’t enough adds a pair of snow earrings as additional collateral. Britney and Shane are visibly uncomfortable over the offer and tell her that she is offering too much.  Janelle feels her offers at least made progress on an alliance with Shane and Britney. Her fear is that Joe might be scheming with Boogie.

Her concerns are groundless as Boogie, Ian and Frank are in the backyard staring at the backs of their eyelids.

Janelle tries again to get Joe to go back up to talk to Shane and Britney and ask them to work with their team and work a deal whereby they can backdoor Frank and send him home. She knows it’s against what Frank wants and is everything he hates and he has to kiss ass and it sucks, but if he wants to stay in the game he has to grovel. He knows his life is on the line.

Joe goes to the HoH and presents Shane with a rousing speech during which he even breaks into tears. We could spend a lot of ink recreating it here, but the bottom line is he tells Shane he will do anything, including stabbing his own teammates in the back if Shane will save him.

Just as we are wiping our eyes from Joe’s teary speech, Dan breaks into the house wearing party duds and announces that it’s time for the Sushi party he won in the last coach’s competition.

We all remember Dan’s killer strategy to keep the players away from the coaches so the four coaches plus Danielle and Shane get to go into the backyard for what Danielle calls a fantastic dinner. Britney tells us there is pricey tuna rolled in avocado and someone mentions Edamame which is soy beans, so I haven’t heard much in the way of Sushi yet.

Boogie takes a moment to let us know that he owns a large Japanese restaurant that serves Sushi and he’s been craving it pretty badly. He is quick to let us know that of the six people invited to the sushi party most of them don’t have any experience with Japanese cuisine. As proof he points out they are using forks. Danielle tells us it is the first time she’s ever eaten sushi and she describes eating some brown rice, some kind of peas and some tempura; apparently she still hasn’t eaten any Sushi.

It was also Wil’s birthday and Wil said there is no way he’s letting these kids have a better time than him, so he started a drinking party in the house. Boogie, being the class act he is, brought some not so choice leftover food into the house and called it dessert. A round of spin the bottle ensued and Shane ended up kissing Danielle for the first time.

After the party, Britney and Ian are folding clothes in the back yard and Britney decides to talk strategy with Ian. She asks Ian if his team wins is there a chance they wouldn’t put Shane up. He says there isn’t a foreseeable circumstance where that would happen. She asks several other ways and there are no foreseeable circumstances where that would happen. Britney reads this to mean that team Boogie won’t honor its agreement to keep Shane safe.

Britney being the paranoid that she is immediately passes this information on to Shane. Shane thinks Boogie has been in Ian’s ear and that makes him believe Boogie has been in Frank’s ear and now he doesn’t trust Frank either. It just comes down to not trusting Boogie. Britney and Shane decide that they can use Ian’s statement to break the deal with Frank. They think they might trust Frank, but they can’t trust Boogie. This bit of miscommunication with Ian might be the reason to go with Janelle and backdoor Frank.

Frank tells Britney Ian gave her a weird answer because Mike hasn’t told him what to do. Frank says Ian isn’t good at this game because he is socially awkward and he’s too afraid to talk game with anybody. Frank begins to realize that this freaking kid is going to possibly mess up his game so he pushes Shane to put Ian up as wake up. Shane counters by saying this Veto is the biggest decision of the game for him and it is going to make or break him and will determine whether he is a success as HoH.

With Shane being HoH, the decision whether to use the POV is going to be huge. He realizes he has three options: he can either get rid of Joe, back door Frank or even put Ian up as a replacement. This is by far the biggest decision he can make and is going to be the biggest game changer so far.

Joe is thinking that if there is no change and he ends up against Ashley his days are done, but if he ends up against Frank he’ll be able to smile again. For the first time, Frank is thinking things might not go his way. Janelle offered up her ring and did everything she could to reassure Britney, so she’s hoping that will have some impact on Shane. Boogie, who has been sleep walking for the past couple of days is certain that he and Frank will be chilling poolside during Thursday’s eviction so he’s just chilling. Dan has learned to blend into the curtains.

Shane gives both nominees a chance to say why they should stay.

Ashley says if you use the veto on me that would be amazing; that’s all.

Joe gives a weird speech about the President of the United States being granted the power of Veto and the great ones have used that power in office. Be like a president. Use it.

Shane decides to use the power of veto on Ashley and names Frank as her replacement.

This turn of events didn’t come as a total surprise to Frank, Boogie stomped out of the room. He was super annoyed. His first thoughts are that it’s a shot at him. Then he smiles and says “that always ends up bad.”

I’d like to point out to Boogie that most people could care less about him when push comes to shove, but I’ll let him continue to believe the Big Brother world revolves around him for one more day because I think America will get it right and vote him into the house real soon. He was edited in for roughly four minutes of tonight’s show and that’s about 3:59 more than he deserved, so I’m hoping America got this right.