HamsterwatchTuesday’s Big Brother Canada 11 episode was a big fat blah, especially following last Thursday’s five buckets of popcorn show. Real hero to zero stuff.
After the usual recaps, they went to the HOH comp, which was titled The Invitation per Arisa’s tease on Thursday’s show. One at a time, they sat at a desk piled with money and read a letter explaining this was Whodunit Week, where the HOH and veto winners would be anonymous.
It also said Big Brother was willing to up the prize money by $50,000, to $150,000 for the season winner, but they could bet up to the full amount of that additional $50,000 to become the invisible HOH this week.
The highest bidder would win the HOH, but the amount they bet would not be added to the prize money. And in case of a tie, they each wrote a “check” for what they thought the average of everyone’s guesses would be, and the closest guess would be the HOH.
As we already knew, several of them bid the full $50,000: Dan, Anika, Ty, Jonathan, and Santina. The lowest guess was $24,000 by Renee.
After each of them made their guesses, one by one they joined Kuzie and Hope in another room since they didn’t play (Kuzie was outgoing HOH, and Hope had to sit out as a consequence of last week’s Lettergate scandal/situation.) Wine was served.
The comedy highlights of the episode were all in this segment as Hope confused “invisible” for “invincible” several times when Daniel told him and Kuzie about this week’s twist, Jonathan couldn’t pronounce whodunit when reading the instructions, and Shanaya said she’d never written a check before. Are we feeling old yet?
Then they were all told there was a tie for the top bid of $50,000, and Santina was informed secretly that her guess of $49,000.99 for the average bid was closest, so she won her second HOH, and nothing was added to the winner’s prize.
Santina told Jonathan that she’d won, which proved they are giving us intentional misdirection in the Digital Dailies, since her win wasn’t confirmed until the second DD after the competition.
I noted in my recap of that DD that it seemed she may have told Jonathan previously and sure enough, she had. The first Digital Daily after the comp left many of us, including me, thinking Jonathan had won. So why bother posting those videos if they aren’t giving us actual info? I know, why bother asking why. Sigh.
Tuesday shows mean lots of sponcon, but it was a little different this time. Santina got her pics and goodies in Diary, and she tried on her new Winners outfit in there. Later she placed her Wendy’s order in there as well, then picked it up from Season 9’s Kiefer Collison, and returned to Diary to eat it alone. I figure staffers must have used a lot of Febreze clearing the aromas so none of the others would figure out whose Diary call coincided with a fast food delivery.
Aside from a Claudia/Ty reunion and relationship repair convo, and a quick bit about the blossoming Shanaya/Dan friendmance, the rest of the show was multiple convos and speculation about who the HOH was.
Nominations were delivered on their monitor by a semi-creepy automaton character with a computer-disguised voice, who posted Dan’s and Ty’s names on the screen, and said while there were reasons the HOH nominated them, it wouldn’t say what they were.
By the way, even though the show’s using “Whodunnit Week” with two Ns, I’m going to stubbornly stick with Whodunit, as that’s the preferred spelling according to Merriam-Webster and Google dictionaries. The Oxford Dictionary says two Ns is more British, while North American usage is generally just the one N. Canada does tend to spell some words like Brits (colour and theatre, for instance), but it is in North America so I’ll stick with those collected experts.
The Crown, The Sword, and more comedy
Wednesday’s BBCAN11 Digital Daily ran 2 hours and 17 minutes, and was taped the day before. It opened with Jonathan saying he’d had some bloating issues from dairy products, and that turned out to be a perfect introduction for this DD.
Remember when Santina found that UNSEEN GAME card/clue in the library? There’s still no indication what that was about, but it has come to describe these not-quite-daily videos pretty well.
On this one, we learned Ty and Santina had a heated argument about something the day before, and Anika and Renee also had some kind of confrontation. Anika said she’d apologized to Renee, but we were given no indication what either of those fights were about. Unseen game, indeed.
We previously saw Santina tell Jonathan she was the invisible HOH but we learned that she’d also told Hope at some point. He may have told Kuzie and Anika since they talked about Santina being HOH as a given and a fact. Kuzie mentioned Santina wouldn’t be voting this week after hearing about Claudia’s campaign talk with her, and Anika said it wasn’t fair that she’d get to play for HOH again.
We had further confirmation that The Crown is a solid alliance and that it does include Anika, along with Daniel, Hope, Jonathan, Kuzie.
And there’s also something called The Sword which includes Hope and Jonathan, and possibly Santina? But in my opinion, Hope and Jonathan seem to be loyal first to each other, and then to The Crown.
In more alliance roulette, Anika and Kuzie exchanged notes about Ty suggesting to each that they name the alliance consisting of the three of them plus Claudia and Daniel. That apparently came up Monday night when they’d had a booze delivery. Neither Anika nor Kuzie took that seriously, but they are both covering their bases well, and they noted Ty won’t be coming after them if he’s in power next since they saved him this week via Daniel’s veto.
Kuzie also said she’d explained the whole Zach/Ty ridiculous allegations situation to Ty, saying Hope’s letter was breaking the rules, but they all do that all the time, such as singing and being told to stop. But intentional cheating within the game was a whole different situation, and Hope’s letter was not that. Ty agreed and said he’d wished Kuzie had told him that analogy at the time. (Sorry Ty, but Kuzie’s way too smart to have done that.)
We saw Claudia’s campaign pitches to Santina (who won’t have a vote unless it’s a tie), and to Hope. She repeatedly told both of them she was close with Ty but was playing her own game separate from his, and that being on the block had given her the opportunity to talk to everyone, which she appreciated.
Pro tip for Claudia: it’s Big Brother—you should be talking to everyone all the time, regardless of your circumstances.
There was some talk about Dan’s campaign pitches but we didn’t see those. Several of them laughed that he’d pitched working with them, but that Day 32 was a little late to be initiating that.
Dan’s the forgotten nominee for the second time, but in this round he’s the target and almost surely the one being evicted Thursday. Ty and maybe Shanaya are likely the only ones in Dan’s corner, but even Ty said he’d told him it wasn’t looking good, but that he should keep working to stay.
The surprise comedy bits—my favorite—came when The Crown was meeting in the library/pool room and saying they should be more careful so they aren’t seen meeting together.
Just as someone said they needed to be especially wary around Santina, she walked into the room. And a few minutes later when Hope left, Ty exited the adjacent Diary Room door at the same moment. If it was scripted comedy, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Also Santina made a couple comments about how great the invisible HOH had handled things this week, saying the anonymity was successful and how it was meant to be handled. She said this first to Claudia and later to people who knew it was her. You could almost hear the rimshot: ba-da-dum tsssss.
Renee’s contribution to this Digital Daily came towards the end, when she very loudly orchestrated a blind taste test comparing puddings.
You can get the links and information for how and where to watch Digital Dailies as well as the episodes that post the morning after they air at Hamsterwatch.com. I’m also keeping my usual Power Status section up to date there, along with tracking comp wins, nominations, advantages/punishments, and prize winnings.