Big Brother 25-Wednesday Recap for 8/16/23

Good morning all! It’s eviction day again and to be only the 2nd one, we’ve had a very active BB house. So far, this season isn’t disappointing. I’m talking about the feeds because the episodes have sucked! The premiere was a long, drawn out slog. The second episode was decent and then everything else was terrible until last night Last night was better but naturally, it came with some controversy.

We have two versions of Matt’s storyline and his time in the house. His intro package focused on him being the first deaf player on the show. Production leaned into this and the fact that he’s an athlete. On the day a veto comp was airing that Matt played in, which was based on listening to audio cues, an article was released about it. It was written by Dalton Ross and you can find it on ew.com. It’s a story about all the things production did to insure Matt would be on a level playing field while competing. It’s actually a good read and I found the adjustments they made interesting. I’m also sure they did all the things the article says they did. (Yeah us! We did it! It was a ‘pat on the back’ to themselves article)

That’s one version but here’s another one. They had a veto comp based on listening to audio clues. They could’ve had this same comp but with a puzzle, something with adding numbers or something else for clues and it would’ve been just as effective. Thats the first thing, they didn’t have to do this type of comp. The episode didn’t air everyones times when they revealed the winner as they’ve done in the past. Was it because there was a huge gap between Matt and everyone else? The article got released the very day the comp was going to air on TV. (You know, let’s put it out there in advance that everything went smoothly and this is how we did it)

I did like the whackstreet reference in the comp:

The feeds didn’t come back on for hours and hours after the comp. When they did come back, the feed switched anytime anything to do with the comp or Matt was mentioned. From the bits we did hear, it was obvious something had gone wrong. Hisam, who’d planned to use Matt as a backup target if Reilly or Cameron came off the block, changed his mind. He said he would never put Matt on the block after what happened. Other people in the house talked about how bad they felt for him and how no one would put him up this week “after that.” Someone mentioned Matt tearing up at some point after it was over too.

Keep in mind, when we have extended feed outages, it’s because production doesn’t want us to know something. When something happens they don’t want to air, they like to give the house guests enough time to talk about it and get it out of their system. That way, they don’t have to cut the feeds as much because it’s not being talked about as much anymore. Is this why the feeds were down for so long? I don’t know.

On top of that, they announced yesterday that Kirsten’s exit interviews would finally be happening today. Is this just a coincidence? Maybe. Do they want her interviews to go out the day after the comp was aired as a distraction from last night’s episode? Also maybe.

It’s done and over with and they’ve all seemed to move on. However, this feels like a ‘read the room’ situation. It’s obvious something went wrong in the comp. It sucks but its trial and error when doing something new. I can accept that part. They could’ve put new things in place to help Matt and in this comp, those things simply didn’t work. What feels icky to me, is putting out this article after something went wrong and giving yourself a big ole pat on the back. Do better production.

As for the other big thing in the episode, the veto speech was a (that’s it?) moment. There’s no way this was Hisam’s entire veto ceremony speech. It was mentioned by some of the houseguests that he went on and on for around 5 minutes so obviously, we didn’t get the parts that pissed everyone off.

I also liked Bowie coming back and saying she didn’t have anything to report from the nethers. (It fit because when does she?)

I don’t see the need to go over all the conversations from the house yestersay. Most of it was a lot of people repeating themselves. Plus, it gave me the time to talk about the stuff I just mentioned. Here’s a summary of what went on yesterday:

Izzy and Cirie have finally realized they created a shit storm. Their goal for the day was figuring out how to get out of it. (Haha) Once they were willing to admit they got too focused on trying to stick it to Hisam, they knew it was a bad move. It’s smarter to take him out when he doesn’t see it coming. This is mostly what changed their minds about keeping Reilly.

The other part of it was Reilly’s terrible campaigning. I know some are saying Reilly didn’t do anything wrong, it’s so unfair and so on. I think the situation with Hisam is getting too mingled with Reilly’s game. No, she didn’t do anything to warrant the treatment she’s gotten from him. He just blames her for sticking him with the ‘reject alliance.’ It’s irrational thinking and he’s wrong.

At the same time, Reilly is a terrible game player. She’s been told by different people what she needed to be doing. This wasn’t manipulation, it was sincere help being offered. Jag, Blue, America, Cory and even Jared told her she needed to do 2 things. She needed to stop spending all her time with her small group of friends and spend time with other people. (She didn’t) They also said she needed to recognize saying she’d go after Hisam wasn’t a good campaign. OK, she goes after hisam and then what?

She’s been told the reason people want her out is because she has too many people going to bat for her and too many close connections. (She’s played a lot like Jag, with the difference being, Jag isn’t on the block) Anytime someone like Cirie would talk to Reilly or Jag about forming a group and working together, they both do the same thing. Instead of accepting the offer, even if they don’t mean it, they immediately start trying to shove people they’re already close to into this new group. Reilly already having a group formed with people who are obviously loyal to her is the problem. No one wants to join a group with just themselves and 4 or 5 people who are already close.

It’s a situation where if they can’t pull Reilly away from Matt, Jag and Blue to work with her, they’ll just get rid of her so they can work with Matt, Jag and Blue themselves. Even if they don’t work with them, it weakens their numbers.

Reilly’s entire campaign has been about making sure it’s obvious she will always have Jag, Matt and Blue as numbers. When she isn’t making that obvious, she’s saying she’ll protect all the people who keep her. The problem is, she can’t protect the entire house. As I mentioned earlier, after she takes out Hisam, who’s she gonna target? On top of that, she’s won 1 comp that most of the house knows, many of them didn’t try to win. If the entire house is going after Hisam, they don’t need Reilly so it’s a bad campaign.

It doesn’t help her case that Matt, Jag and Blue are trying HARD to keep her. If she hadn’t made it so obvious who ‘her people’ were, maybe things would be different. She was intentionally having them campaign for her yesterday. (Wrong move) Reilly seems like a great person and I’m sure she’s a lovely young woman. She just can’t see the forest for the trees this week. It happens.

Matt also told Reilly he had crush on her. He said he wanted to say it in the event she did leave. Matt has talked about how much Reilly gives him information that he misses throughout the day. He really likes her but that’s another reason he doesn’t want her to leave. Many of the other houseguests have talked to him about this and assured him they won’t leave him hanging. I believe them because he spends most of his time with Reilly. I’m sure if he’s talking to other people more, they’ll do the same thing for him too.

Jared and Blue continue to flirt with each other. They’re are also secretly targeting each other. It’s the kind of shomance I could get behind except….its so cringeworthy. They both say things to each other that are over the top. Think of the worst pick up lines you’ve ever heard and that’s basically their conversations. I do like that neither one of them trusts the other one. If I had to choose one that believes the other one more, i’d have to say Jared may be buying Blue’s bullshit more than she believes him. Shortly after a long flirty conversation between them, Blue told Jag she wanted to target Jared. Thata girl! (Haha)

Mecole and America got together and decided to work together. They agree they’re on opposite sides of the house and will feed info to each other. It’s more of a working relationship than an alliance at this point. (This should’ve already happened) I don’t know how useful it’s going to be since no one in this house can keep a secret but I’m glad they’ve finally connected.

side note: No one whispers either. People go to the have not room to secretly talk game but then they start clapping, laughing, yelling and screaming. It’s just a matter of who gets busted first.

America’s a gamer. Here, she’s hugging Blue, pretending she’s with them. There was an eye roll involved during this hug that I didn’t catch for the image:

Cory has worked on both America and Mecole individually for awhile now. America has bought into it more than Mecole has at this point. Mecole needs to wake up a little bit and start picking up what Cory’s putting down. These 3 working together could be good for all of them.

We know Cory is in an alliance with Izzy, Jared and Cirie. This is really good for him for right now. I think Mecole and America are his exit strategy for when the time comes to take Cirie out. I don’t care what he’s telling Jared when they talk, he has no intention of going to the end with Cirie. He want his own numbers for when they get down to around 6, 7 or 8 people. (This is just my opinion)

America told Reilly that Izzy and Cirie control what happens this week. Reilly started repeating this and it got back to Cirie. They’re trying to use this, mixed with saying people are getting scared and backing out, as a way to tell Reilly they may not have the votes. Naturally, this put the campaigning into overdrive. Cirie especially was disappointed because she’d said she wanted to have a more relaxing day than the crazy day before. (Sorry, Cirie, you can’t. You have to start doing damage control from a mess that you and Izzy caused)

As for Hisam, he better rethink his strategy of laying low after this week. I’m anxious to see which thing happens first. Does Hisam end up on the block with the back door plan before or after he finds out about all the shit that went on under his nose this week?

Hisam also found out that Matt didn’t appreciate the way his convo went with him yesterday morning. This was when Hisam sort of threatened him about voting to keep Reilly. Red told Hisam that Matt didnt like him because of this convo. You could see the confusion on his face too. From Hisam’s perspective, he felt he was just telling him the truth. He felt it would be stupid for Matt to vote to keep her.

When Hisam brought up the Matt convo to other people, I don’t think he got the validation he wanted. Several people told him, of course Matt would vote for her to stay, even if he knew she was leaving. It was to be expected as far as they were concerned. (He may be about to learn the same lesson he said Reilly needed to learn, huh?)

I have no idea if they’re going to tell Reilly she’s leaving today or let her find out during the vote. So far, Izzy and Cirie have managed to convince Reilly and her group that they’re trying and everyone else is backing out.

All it would take to bust them is some simple math. If Reilly has Matt,Jag, Blue and either America or Cory, (she thinks she has both) she only needs Izzy, Felicia and Cirie to get the 7 votes she needs. If she has both America and Cory, she doesn’t even need Felicia.

This image of Felicia is how I feel about the vote. Don’t get me wrong, I preferred Reilly to stay because I don’t really like Cameron. Other than that, it’s too early in the game for me to care about which one of them stays. I just wanted a big ole mess to happen and have the hoh be blindsided. Would that be bad for a lot of people’s games? Yes, it would. Would it be great for my entertainment? Yes, it definitely would.

Some extra tidbits:

America said her message to Reilly might be “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Matt for you.”

Felicia lost one of her teeth but Mecole found it for her near the sink. She’d thought it was in her pocket. (Haha)

Some quotes:

While joking around- Cory: “I don’t know why anyone would be into you while I’m in the house.” Matt: “Because I’m a great listener.”

Cameron to Cirie about working together: “I don’t want to be seen around Jared too much because I know he’s directly related to you.”

Cory in a game of bumper pool against Cirie: “Once I’ve beaten the Olympian, I think I can handle Cirie fucking Fields.”

Cory: “If I end the season with Felicia backstabbing me, I can sleep in that bed. That’s badass.”

Hisam: “I knew I could trust Cameron once I found out he was a Hufflepuff.”

Regarding Hisam- Izzy: “He’s on a power trip.” Cirie: “I hope that doesn’t happen to you when you get HOH.” Izzy: “It won’t, have you met me?”

Izzy: “You all better watch out, I’m having 2 cups of coffee today “

Have a great Thursday everyone!

Mel