Well, that was fun. We got to see the jury house for an extended segment last night and it was great. The majority of the houseguests seem to have broken free of whatever power Paul had over them and were seeing the game clearly. There was the slight exception of Raven who is convinced she was in control the whole game and can't understand why the rest of the jurors don't see that. She was the true puppet master! (Well, in her own mind anyway.) I think she thinks Julie will name her the winner despite her being voted out. Raven's not the sanest houseguest we've ever seen. I loved it when someone (Mark?) said they all worked to get Paul farther in the game and Cody said "I didn't." That earned him some pats, lots of smiles and a fistbump from Alex. Who knew Alex and Cody would bond over anything?
Back at the house the first stage of the three part HOH comp took place with Paul winning. (No real surprise there.) They apparently had to ride unicorns while getting blasted with colored powder in an endurance comp. Josh fell off first, followed by Christmas with Paul winning the first stage. The whole comp reportedly took less than an hour. Stage two will be between Josh and Christmas with Paul facing the winner of that stage in the third and final stage.
Round two will take place either today or tomorrow, then the doldrums will take over the house as they kill time waiting for the finale. Round two is typically a comp that requires knowing the order of events. Josh is likely to take that if he doesn't get rattled.
Paul wants Josh to win round two of the comp so he and Josh can take each other to the finale. (Paul may want to rethink that a tad as Josh has been thinking a whole lot for a long time about cutting Paul. "I know I can't beat Paul.") Paul's "no blood on my hands" strategy makes me suspect he'll throw the final comp to Josh so Josh can evict Christmas and thus keep Paul's hands blood-free. (Paul's wading in blood up to his eyeballs, but his hands are free of it, or so he thinks. Sadly for Paul, the jury isn't as stupid as they were in the house and know he's responsible for getting them axed.)
Paul's jury talk will be interesting. He's been using his goodbye messages to make it sound like he played no role in everyone getting evicted and he was powerless to stop the evictions. That strategy seems to have worked with Raven (and maybe Kevin, but I have my doubts about Kevin) but the rest of the jurors have seen through it and find it laughable. If he tries to use that as his argument before the jury he could get killed. "I was shocked and horrified that the rest voted you out, but I never betrayed you!" is not a good strategy when they all know you did.
Paul needed to, and continues to need to, own his game. From Cody on he should have been telling the jurors exactly how he manipulated the house from day one. Instead he's been saying stuff like, "If you're seeing this something must have gone horribly wrong." Josh on the other hand has been telling the jurors that he, Christmas and Paul have been in an alliance from week one and that's why they're in the jury. With the final three being Paul, Josh and Christmas, Josh's goodbye messages have been proven true while Paul's have been exposed as a lie.
So, why lie to the jury unless you're planning to maintain that lie right up to the end? Is Paul going to try and spin it that he was a powerless victim of evil Christmas and Josh's votes to evict the jurors? Really? Paul's jury management is a mess and if he tries that tactic the jury may just hand Josh the winning check since he was the mastermind behind everything, at least according to Paul. Paul's been throwing comps to his allies and letting them get the blood on their hands and forcing tie votes to further add more blood to their hands while he claims innocence, but if that's his argument to the jury, he'll get killed.
So now we pretty much have to wait until Wednesday for anything too exciting to happen. Part two of the HOH comp will take place between Josh and Christmas, but I expect Josh to win that. I think either Josh or Christmas may dump Paul on Wednesday given the chance and I suspect if Paul sticks with his "no blood on my hands" approach he'll try to throw the final stage to them so they can evict the other one and assume they'll take him.That could be a very mistaken assumption on his part. (Or maybe not. Cody was stupid enough to take Derrick over Victoria, so who knows.) Paul's priming the pump by telling each of them that he can't possibly win and that the other one would likley beat them in the final two. (I'm pretty sure Josh isn't buying that argument, but Christmas is iffier. Though if Paul tries the no blood on his hands argument, he might be right that he can't win.)
We have a show tonight and other than learning what bad actors the houseguests are, there will be nothing new in the show. It's the typical recap show of the stuff that went down in the house. The houseguests will get roused later this morning to film that segment. Each will be given an earpiece and production will guide them in setting up the prepared clips of highlights. They'll wander the house sipping champagne and saying stuff like, "Remember when so and so did such and such here?" (Much of the time the final three had no idea the stuff on the clips ever happened and weren't there to remember it, but that's besides the point. BB has the clips they want to use, so the house guests will 'remember' it.) At the end of the show they'll show the very start of the first stage of the HOH comp which we already know Paul won and advise us to tune in on Wednesday for the conclusion.
After seeing the jury last night and hearing Paul's goodbye message to Alex and Kevin, I'm thinking Paul may have a harder time than anticipated pulling out the win. If he doesn't own his game and instead tries to pin the ouster of the jurors on the others, he could just hand the game to Josh or Christmas. I'm thinking Paul might be the type who wouldn't vote for the person who gave him the boot, and he may be assuming the jury thinks that way also, so he's trying to appear as the person least responsible for the jury being where they are. The problem is the jury knows better and Josh has told those that didn't know. Paul's jury argument will be quite interesting to watch. If he tries to tell Alex, Jason, Kevin, Raven and Matt that he had no idea they were being evicted, he'll get roasted. Raven might buy it, but it was pretty clear the rest won't.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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