Big Brother 18: A Season of Showmances

Hi, y’all!

Well, it’s a pretty quiet in the house right now.  I just checked the LFs and Frank was clipping his toe nails.  I took one look at that and I said, “Agck!”

Frank has been making an effort to convince people to keep Tiffany.  Now that Da’Vonne has been nominated, he’s been making sure that everyone remembers that Da’Vonne can be an unpredictable and ruthless player.  He’s making sure that they know they shouldn’t trust Da’Vonne.  Of course, the problem with that strategy is that everyone already knows that Da’Vonne can’t be trusted.  Everyone also knows that Tiffany is just as untrustworthy.  Tiffany has spent this entire week blabbing everyone’s secrets and pretty much proving that she’s not a reliable ally.

You can never tell for sure, of course.  Last week, at this time, we all thought Tiffany was going to be evicted and then, suddenly, everyone decided to vote out Bronte instead.  Things could change but, as of right now, it still looks like Tiffany is going to be evicted by a 6-2 vote.

(Everyone keeps telling Frank that they’ll vote for Tiffany if he can get everyone else to agree to vote for her as well.  Frank doesn’t seem to realize that this is simply a polite way for saying, “No, I will not vote to keep your new ally.”  For all the talk of Frank being a threat, he’s not good at reading people.)

If anything is going to save Tiffany, it’s going to be the fact that this season has been dominated by showmances.  As of right now, we have three couples in the house: Paulie & Zakiyah, Corey & Nicole, and James & Natalie.

Of the three couples, Paulie and Zakiyah seem to be the most genuine, though I worry that Zakiyah is allowing her new relationship to distract her from playing the game.

As for Nicole and Corey … well, Nicole appears to really like Corey and Corey seems to be rather indifferent.  (Seriously, Nicole is going to get her heart broken.  A part of me suspects that she’s not really over Hayden.)

And then there’s James and Natalie.  They are hard to figure out.  Sometimes, it seems like Natalie is just using James but then, at other times, she has said that she genuinely likes James.  (She was holding her big wooden spoon of truth when she said it, for whatever that is worth.)  James seems just as confused as anyone.  You can tell he likes Natalie but he doesn’t quite trust her motives.

More than the returning vets or the siblings or any of the other twists, this season has been dominated by the showmances.   Not only does each showmance constitute a two-person alliance but each one has managed to distract a potentially strong player.  Zakiyah, James, and especially Nicole are all so wrapped up in their showmances that they often seem to be unconcerned with everything else that is happening in the house.

Da’Vonne has noticed the showmances, too.  Quite correctly, she sees the showmances as threats and she wants to start breaking them up.  Unfortunately, she made the mistake of telling all of this to James.  She asked James if he would be able to let go of Natalie.  James said that he was capable of betraying Natalie but his voice and body language suggested otherwise.

In short, Da’Vonne has just reminded James that she is a huge threat.  That’s always a big mistake when you’re on the block and it supports everything that Frank has been telling James about Da’Vonne.  If the house somehow flips this week and decides to get rid of Da’Vonne instead of Tiffany, it will be because of stupid mistakes like this one.

Finally, a quick programming note: Immediately after Thursday’s eviction show, the feeds will go down.  They will not come back until after the returning houseguest enters the house on Friday.

In other words, we’ll all be in the dark together!

Just judging by who has been evicted so far and who will probably be evicted on Thursday, I’m going to predict that Victor will be returning the houseguest.  Just a feeling I’ve got!

We’ll see what happens,

 Lisa Marie