The Final 5 reminisce on the season and share some of their stories, like how Chris Kirkpatrick found Justin Timberlake for *NSYNC and how Lamar Odom reacted to the death of Kobe Bryant.
As always, the Saturday before the big season finale of "Celebrity Big Brother," the remaining Houseguests convened over some bubbly and hors d'oeuvres to reflect on the season that passed. But this time it felt like "BB" was maybe also taking care of some necessary business.
One of the biggest criticisms of Todrick Hall's "Big Brother" game has been how nasty and personal he's made things. As the eventual jurors are at home watching the episodes, and even trashing Todrick's game in media interviews, it seems more and more likely this is going to be a part of his narrative come Wednesday's show.
Todrick appears to have no idea what's coming his way, and thanks to the producers keeping a lot of the worst of his behavior off of TV, most of the home viewers weren't going to be prepared to understand it.
Todrick Goes Low
Tonight, we got to see one of the biggest examples of not only his nastiness, but his hypocrisy. We're talking about a man who has lied and manipulated and betrayed every single alliance he's been in, except for his Final 2 with Miesha Tate.
And, as we saw on Friday's show, he's already preparing to break his Final 4 deal with Todd Bridges and Lamar Odom because he suddenly sees Todd as a legitimate threat. To be fair, Miesha is right there with him, but she's not been nearly as nasty as him, and is unlikely to have to face the music like he will.
So we were treated -- that's probably not the right word -- to a rather ugly exchange between Todrick and Chris Kirkpatrick from earlier in the season, after Chris Ki had made the decision to shift his allegiance away from Todrick and Miesha Tate. He'd gotten wind that Todrick was considering turning on him, which was also true.
But Todrick instead took it as a personal attack, denied that he'd ever considered targeting Chris Ki and made it as a statement against Chris Ki's character that he would dare pull this move. Chris Ki tried to say that game is separate from personal, but Todrick wasn't having that, either.
Instead, he told Chris Ki that he hopes he never sees him again and that his kid would be ashamed of him betraying people who'd been loyal to him. This had Chris Ki all eaten up inside until he got out of the House and saw what kind of game Todrick has been playing.
Jury management has been the narrative all season. And as it's becoming more and more likely that Todrick and Miesha will be in the Final 2 together, Todrick is in big trouble when the jury gets their chance to come after how he played this game.
It's remarkable how awful he can be to people, and how personal he can take it and then he turns around and plays the victim any time someone says anything to or about him while he's doing the exact same strategic maneuvering.
Is he that way in real life, or is it strategy to misdirect and confuse in the House? Could he really lack that much self-awareness as to how much he's projecting (and presenting) in the game?
Lamar Gets Lost
If Todrick's nastiness has been an unpleasant surprise -- one Live Feed viewers have really had to suffer through -- Lamar has been a treat of a whole different kind. Perhaps more than anyone who has walked through that front door, Lamar really doesn't know anything about "Big Brother."
We've teased him about it for weeks and weeks already, but tonight took the time to really step back and look at some of the questions he's asked about how the game is played, whether or not Chris Ki could fight for HOH after he gets evicted and more.
He went on a bit of a tirade against the very notion of "losers" coming back to determine who wins the whole thing. While most of these celebrities don't have a real understanding of how the game works, they at least have some clue what's going on.
Lamar perhaps summed it up best with a two-word question he asked in the middle of a discussion about how the game works and why nominees would bother to put on makeup and dress nicely on Eviction Night.
"Who's Julie?"
We even learned that he had no idea that what happens in the Diary Room is for broadcast on television. Instead, he just thought it was a thing the show did for themselves, or as Miesha joked, he just thought it was free therapy.
Other Tidbits
There were some other fun moments across the hour, with perhaps the most entertaining involving Carson Kressley. Even the Houseguests were lamenting that they've missed out on his outstanding Diary Room session. To rub it in, we even got a montage of some of his sillier moments.
At another point, he climbed up on Todrick's shoulders and threw on Lamar's "long robe" to parade around the house as the NBA champ. His focus for this impression, Lamar's tendency to consume large quantities of milk, even though his body clearly can't digest it properly!
We also got to see Shanna Moakler's love of a crystal for telling the future, and her Playboy Mansion truck for levitating someone, while Chris Ki talked about what it was like helping to discover Justin Timberlake when he founded *NSYNC.
And we didn't even get into Lamar trying to argue with Todd how the pyramids and the Sphinx are solid proof of the existence of aliens.
While there were a lot of laughs, there were also more serious moments, like both Miesha and Chris Ki talking about times in their lives when they were homeless and having to live in a vehicle.
At another point, the House got into a discussion about the tragic loss of Kobe Bryant, whom Lamar had known since he was 15 years old. He talked about what an inspiration Kobe was when they were playing together.
Now that he's gone, Lamar said he never realized how much he admired and looked up to his teammate until he was gone.
Todrick, who was in England at the time at a club, shared how globally impactful Kobe's death was as they basically shut off the club to bring up the broadcast of what happened. It's a testament to how big of a loss he was that it impacted a dance club in another country.
Houseguest Predictions
Without any real game happening tonight, we're going to forego our usual report card and do a prediction instead for who we think is most likely to win the whole game and why -- as well as looking at what challenges they might face in the remaining game or with the jury.
Miesha Tate (35) is our favorite to win the game at this point. It seems likely that she and Todrick will pull of their season-long mission of making it to the Final 2, but they did it in an extremely aggressive and, at times, deceitful and ugly fashion. However, the MMA fighter was a lot more direct in her attacks. In a match-up between her and Todrick, we think an angry (at Todrick) Jury will award her. If she's up against anyone else-- well, she outplayed all of them. The only one who might have a case is Todd as he actually started doing things in the game.
Todd Bridges (56) is our second most likely player to win. He's suddenly showing up in competitions, which means even though he's likely to face the Block this next go-round as Todrick or Miesha will probably be HOH, Todd has the capacity to win the Veto and keep himself safe. He has the means to win enough comps to get to the end and become a thorn in the sides of both Miesha and Todrick. Though it's a longer shot, if he can pull it off, we could see him beating either of them as he played a much cleaner and overall nicer game. Miesha could still get him based on overall season-long dominance.
Todrick Hall (36) has been sinking his own ship with the nastier side of his personality coming out. He's made these aggressive and great strategic moves that have helped keep him and Miesha in control of the game. He's had some masterful moves, like his hail Mary to flip Carson and Cynthia against Shanna. But he's been smug, arrogant, and pretty rude to almost everyone along the way, and we don't see this jury rewarding excellent gameplay at the expense of basic human decency. That said, it's happened before and so you can't rule him out completely. If he can defend himself well, too, he might stand a chance.
Lamar Odom (42) and Cynthia Bailey (54) have about equal chance of winning this game. "Expect the Unexpected" is very much a reality. If Miesha and/or Todrick decide to betray one last alliance, they could target one another. Then, they could decide to try and drag Lamar and Cynthia to the end because they think they'd be easy to beat. Honestly, we're not sure that strategy would work, as this jury is going to be extremely unpredictable (right now, they're already pretty bitter). If Todd were to bring one of the two of them, he'd probably beat both of them as they didn't do much all game, just riding other alliances and stronger players.
House Chatter
- “Mommy’s coming home soon, and I’m gonna bring home the ‘Big Brother’ belt.” --Miesha
- “We’ve broke bread together. We’ve eaten cupcakes together. He’s told me about his book. I watched him on ‘Roots.’ I’m like his friend, and he literally this morning had no clue who I was.” --Cynthia (about Todd forgetting her name on Day 2)
- “He’s, like, the most famous person in this house. He’s been on TV since he was a child.” --Cynthia (to Todrick about Todd)
- “Whenever he says ‘What’choo talkin’ ‘bout, WIllis?,’ he’s Willis?” --Todrick (about Todd)
- “Sometimes I don’t know what he’s talking about.” --Todrick (about Todd)
- “When I talk about Justin [Timberlake], it’s the weirdest thing on the planet because, it’s like, here’s this kid who fell into my lap who was gonna be huge anyways, and he’s in my group.” --Chris Kirkpatrick (on founding *NSYNC)
- “I wish that we could address the elephant in the room or just not talk.” --Todrick (to Chris Ki after he flipped the House)
- “I’d love to address the elephant in the room. What’s the elephant in the room” --Chris Ki
- “You started to hold things against me and I started to hold things against you. I still knew it was a game. I still care about you as a person. I still care about you after this House.” --Chris Ki (to Todrick)
- “Well then, man to man, don’t shake my hand if you can’t trust it. And in the end, you’re the one who turned on us.” --Todrick (to Chris Ki)
- “I feel like I’ve been playing this on a game level.” --Chris Ki
- “You did not do that.” --Todrick
- “I did.” --Chris Ki
- “Alright then, well give yourself that fake-ass Yelp! Review on your report card because that’s what you did.” --Todrick
- “I don’t want you to be angry.” --Chris Ki
- “I am, too late. I don’t like you, period. I hope I never see you again. What you did is not a noble act, it’s not loyalty. I don’t care how you to slice it and if you’re kid were to see that, they’d be like, ‘Daddy, you turned on your team.’” --Todrick
- “Don’t you dare use that.” --Chris Ki
- “I did. I said it.” --Todrick
- “I can’t believe I’m in the House with an NBA player.” --Todrick
- “I’m just not an NBA player, I’m a two-time champion.” --Lamar
- “On a scale of 1 to 10, how well did you know the game coming in here.” --Todrick
- “I’ve been here 24 days and I still haven’t got it down.” --Lamar
- “I appreciate your honesty, because if you didn’t say it, I was gonna say it.” --Todrick
- “Welcome to Big Brother Lamar, the game actually started a while ago.” --Cynthia
- “Somebody needs to read the rules to you, Lamar.” --Chris Ki
- “I just been going off of … sponta-nuity.” --Lamar
- “Who’s Julie?” --Lamar
- “Lamar didn’t know that the Diary Rooms are on the TV show.” --Todrick (to Todd)
- “He thought he was getting personal counseling sessions in there.” --Miesha
- “There’s no way losers should decide if I win or not. Does that make sense?” --Lamar (but it is how the game works)
- “You mean to tell me your people were with the Pharaohs.” --Lamar (to Todd about his ancestry)
- “Yeah.” --Todd
- “So they were connected with the aliens.” --Lamar
- “Why did the cut the noses of the Sphinx? Because it exposed the aliens.” --Lamar
- “Stop, dude. They fell off, homie. No one cut that off.” --Todd
- “When I heard the helicopter crashed, it was like, he a’ight, ‘cause--” --Lamar (about Kobe Bryant)
- “Nothing could break him.” --Todrick
- “I thought that was the case.” --Lamar
- When he’s your teammate and your brother, you feed off that. You want to try to achieve that, or at least be great at something.” --Lamar (on being inspired by Kobe)
- I never really thought about how much I looked up to him. But now that he’s not here, I realize it. That day, it’ll stick in my memory forever.” --Lamar (about Kobe)