This serves as your spoiler alert warning. The following is a recap of Friday’s episode of Celebrity Big Brother.
“Now it’s time to divide and conquer” – Metta World Peace, everyone. God’s gift to Celebrity Big Brother‘s recap producers.
Shannon starts Friday’s episode with her back against the wall. Up on the block against her only true alliance member, James, she leaves the nomination ceremony to cry alone in bed.
But Brandi is not letting that happen. She slinks into the back bedroom to inform Shannon that her entire alliance, aside from Mark was gunning for her. They are joined by Ariadna, Ross, and Marissa. I have to give Shannon credit, she knows how to spin a conversation. “I’ve never had anyone,” she tries.
Omarosa decides to join the party and instantly becomes the sole target of Shannon’s ire. “I really like you as a human being,” Omarosa tells her…though that’s probably doubtable. Omarosa — the house’s other spinmaster — actually calls Shannon out for not handling being nominated as gracefully as she had.
Shannon turns on the waterworks again and claims she just wants to give up and go home. “I just feel like I’m letting down the animals right now,” she says through sniffles — or, as Omarosa calls it, “actress overdrive” — in the diary room.
James, on the other hand, takes the opposite tactic. “I’m not going to be bitter about it,” he calmly tells Ariadna of being nominated.
But Shannon’s strategy seems like it may be working! Brandi begins to waver and says she might want to keep Shannon. But Omarosa quickly squashes that idea and the conversation takes a quick, shocking turn.
“Did you ever sleep with him?” Brandi asks Omarosa, referring to President Trump.
“Hell no! Oh, my God. Brandi, that’s horrible,” Omarosa replies. “I’m not… There’s somebody in the White House that’s sleeping around with everybody, but she is not me… I’ve never had to do that.”
Brandi says she heard that a few Celebrity Apprentice contestants had slept with Trump. Omarosa asks her to name names but Brandi says she doesn’t know who it was. (Omarosa — and me — don’t think that’s the truth.)
Pause for Marissa and Ross freaking out over watching James take a shower.
Now it’s time to pull names for the veto competition:
Ariadna pulls Ross’ name.
Shannon pulls Omarosa’s name. Cue Shannon’s stank face.
James pulls Brandi’s name.
Pause for Metta’s new best friend, a stuffed owl.
Knowing Omarosa is the key to flipping the house again, Shannon goes to the former White House staffer to attempt to mend fences. “Can we just start fresh? They want you out. And when they wanted to backdoor you I said we gave our word,” Omarosa tells her before throwing Marissa under the bus as the instigator of the backdoor plan. Omarosa admits in the diary room that she’s hedging her bets in case Shannon wins the veto. She goes even further and finds James in the kitchen and tells him that he’s the real target — and that Marissa and Ross were behind it. James runs to his former alliance-mates and tells them what Omarosa has been saying.
The game of telephone continues as Marissa and Ross run to Ariadna and they all decide that Omarosa will be the replacement nominee over Mark now, should Shannon or James win the veto.
The group is telling Brandi what’s happened when Omarosa comes into the room and they confront her about the conversation. She denies she ever spoke to James, so Marissa decides to bring James into the room and have him tell his version of the story in front of Omarosa. She tries to paint him as a liar. Refusing to get involved in a back and forth, he leaves the room but stands his ground. Shannon listens to it all from the other side of the door.
In a conversation with Ross, Marissa, and Ariadna, Brandi decides she could put her hatred of James aside if he was willing to work with their alliance moving forward. She very unsubtly tries to cough to get James’ attention but ends up having to just call him by name, which is observed by Shannon in the living room. She’s turning into quite the Harriet the Spy. Shannon decides to take her feelings to Metta and campaigns to stay over James. Metta maintains that he’s gunning for her still since she didn’t vote to send him home to his wife during the first vote.
Brandi and her group decide to offer James a final five deal and he agrees, but with his fingers (figuratively) crossed behind his back.
Pause for Metta becoming a seal and tummy sliding off the couch during a video message from his wife. Everyone else gets messages from family members but Brandi gets one from The Face of Bravo (a.k.a. Andy Cohen)…it makes me sad to think she might not have actual family to send her a video.
Pause for Omarosa telling Mark all about the “special form of torture” that was working with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. She also reveals her thoughts about the Mueller investigation: “He wouldn’t be this far into his administration if there was something that rose to the level of impeachment, that’s my two cents.”
Back from the break and it’s time for the veto competition. The six competing houseguests head out to the backyard one at a time to enter a pitch-black box and are tasked with making it through all the rooms as quickly as possible. To give it all a theme, each room represents a course in a dining-in-the-dark experience. It’s a fun twist on the blackout challenges that have come to be a staple in the more recent seasons of Big Brother — and at least one contestant (Omarosa) loses her pants.
After the blackout dining, the times are revealed to the house:
9:46 – Ross
12:02 – Ariadna
19:29 – Omarosa (who says she was throwing the comp)
21:29 – Brandi (who says she was not trying to throw the comp)
8:41 – Shannon
6:24 – James
So James is the winner — and BREAKS the veto necklace in the diary room! Is it still valid or is it like a mattress tag?
Not wanting to “poke the bear,” Brandi, Marissa, Ross, and Ariadna begin to contemplate who to put on the block in place of James. They debate between Mark and Omarosa but are scared of making either one of them mad.
Ultimately, James takes himself off the block and Ariadna replaces him with Mark.
After the veto ceremony, Ross tries to keep Shannon calm, telling her to “wait and see what happens” but Shannon is not buying it and tells James that he needs to work on splitting up Ari and Brandi and/or Ross and Marissa. Those four gear up for the “atomic bombs” they expect Shannon to drop during her final days in the house.
But if there were more bombs to be dropped, host Julie Chen doesn’t let us see them play out. After a commercial break it’s right into the live eviction.
Mark uses his live pre-vote speech to say hi to his family and jokes that if he’s evicted the houseguests will be at a loss as to who will do the dishes and the towels. Shannon actually doesn’t even try to campaign for votes. Instead, she makes an impassioned plea for people to get involved in her charity, Animal Avengers, and help stop the practice of rhino poaching. The speech makes voting awkward for the houseguests, who want to make it clear they support Shannon’s charity even as they vote her out unanimously…except for Brandi who surprisingly votes to evict Mark! (Trying to create paranoia?)
It’s a bunch of hugs on Shannon’s way out of the house (and she reveals she hid Metta’s poor owl friend!) but sitting with Julie she says Ross actually used his goodbye to inform her that she had been the target at the last vote. Shannon says she thinks he told her that in hopes that she will vote for him in the end. She says that ain’t happening.
Back in the house, the Head of Household competition beings. “Courtside Seats” seems simple, just stay in your seat. But then the comp begins and the wall leans forward. Marissa is already anticipating being the first celeb to fall, which would mean she’s on slop for the week, as will the next two people to fall. “I don’t want to fall on the live show,” she says in the final moments of the telecast. Well, Marissa, at least you got your wish.
Celebrity Big Brother continues Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.