Wow, the crap has really hit the fan now. On Sunday’s episode, James won the HoH competition after Shelli “threw” him the challenge (come on, we all know that she was ready to drop and just tried to save herself by trying to make it look like she could hold on for longer. Everyone saw through your plan, dude), and then he put both Shelli and Clay up on the block, drawing a relatively clear line between the two sides of the house. James, Meg and Jackie are ecstatic about the outcome. Clay and Shelli? Not so much. Clay is angry, ready to go after James at the first chance he gets (Shelli has to talk him down from that), and Shelli is very upset. She doesn’t want to lose Clay so early in the game. The person evicted this week will not make it to the jury house, so if they’re separated this week, that’s it for them.

Clay is ready to fall on his sword for Shelli, but when he goes off on James for what he’d done, apparently partially to make himself a bigger target than her, she tells him to knock it off. She says she doesn’t want him to sacrifice himself for her, but I’m not sure how true that is. Every time she talks about life after this eviction, she never even mentions the idea of Clay remaining in the house. She wonders how she’ll make it in the house without him. As much as she likes Clay, I don’t think she’d ever throw herself down to save him the way he’d sacrifice himself to save her.

The two of them are really angry at everyone, it seems, even Vanessa. When she goes in for a hug after the nomination ceremony, they completely ignore her. While Vanessa hovers around them, waiting for a chance to talk to them, Shelli tells Clay that she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and he takes her out of there, completely leaving Vanessa behind. When Vanessa does get a chance to confront them, she’s upset because their dismissal hurt her, they don’t show any sympathy. They blame her, at least in part, for what happened. Clay tells her that her decision put them in jeopardy, and she looks about as shocked as I feel. “MY decision?” she asks, flabbergasted. It’s one thing to deny having any part of Jason’s eviction when they’re with the other side of the house, but when they’re alone? Vanessa isn’t having any of it. Her voice gets louder and louder as her emotions get the best of her, and instead of trying to reassure her that they don’t blame her as she tells them that she’s been loyal to them, Shelli just tells her to keep her voice down. Finally, fed up with the two of them, she walks out on them and goes outside to find the rest of the house.

Jackie and James immediately try to calm her down. She rants about how she’d taken responsibility for her part in the eviction, and now Shelli and Clay are trying to say that she’s putting the entire blame on them. James reassures her that they all know that Clelli had had a hand in the situation, and now they’re just trying to get out of it. They need to be held accountable, and now he’s making sure that will happen.

Shelli and Clay move out into the kitchen and watch everyone else outside. “Vanessa’s out there laughing with them. How cute,” Shelli says bitterly. I can just see her stirring her cauldron and declaring, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!” as her head monkey, Clay, flies off to capture their enemy. But instead, she goes outside pulls James inside to talk to him. Clay apologizes for going off on him earlier, but he was frustrated because they’ve had his back this entire game, and he betrayed them. James points out that they’d had a choice last week to stand up for Jason. If they’d told Vanessa not to put Jason up, she wouldn’t have done it because she wouldn’t have had the votes. But they made their decision, so they’re not innocent. And of course, instead of actually responding to James’s accusations, Shelli tries to sidestep and turns it back on him again, reminding him that he went back on his word, adding that they would never do that to him. Except….they did. Remember last week, guys? Remember agreeing to backdoor Jason and then voting him out? Yeah, you turned your back on that whole side of the house, guys. Everyone knows it. There’s no point in trying to deny it anymore. It’s just getting old now.

Shelli goes to Vanessa too and apologizes for how things went down. She doesn’t want James to come between them. She isn’t going to turn on the alliance, and she doesn’t want Vanessa to turn on her because she needs her. And then she starts to cry, which happens a LOT this episode. “Why this week?!” she laments. “Why now? Why not next week? This is the week that breaks us up!” And the whole rest of the “conversation” just crumbles into Shelli wailing and ranting about losing Clay, while Vanessa stands there, not knowing what to do, and Austin smiles with glee because this means that he and Liz will both make it to the jury.

It’s time to pick players for the veto meeting! James gets house guest’s choice and picks Jackie. Shelli picks Becky and Clay picks Vanessa. Vanessa clearly doesn’t want to play because it puts pressure on her. If she doesn’t win, then she could be a backdoor target, but if she does win and uses the veto, then the whole house will hate her. And Clay and Shelli know that it’s up to them to win. If anyone else wins and takes one of them down, another alliance member will go up in their place. They know it wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest to help them out this week, so they’re on their own.

My thought was that Becky could take one of them down if she won, since she told them about the nomination plans earlier, and a few minutes later, we hear that Becky is having these thoughts too. James, Jackie and Becky all talk in the HoH room, trying to figure out their odds for keeping the nominations the same. They assume Becky is on their side, but they’re not sure about Vanessa. They think it’ll be 4-2 in their favour though. James points out that it’s best for everyone’s game if one of them goes home, since they’re a couple and they’ll always choose each other first. They need to break them up. Becky, on the other hand, isn’t sure what she’ll do if she wins. I don’t understand why she feels such loyalty to them, since she was almost sent home last week because of them, but she’s considering helping one of them out if she wins. I don’t get it.

The Veto Competition, Game of Throws, has a medieval theme, so Austin wishes he was playing because he studied medieval romance or whatever. Who cares? That’s about as interesting as the fact that Clay plays football. Knowledge about medieval romance wouldn’t help in this game anyway. This game is played in rounds, and in each round, the players have to launch a dart from a catapult onto a map, which is divided up into provinces which are worth varying amounts of points. The person to get the lowest score in each round is out and gets to choose a prize, which can then be stolen by someone else.

Jackie is out the first round and picks up the veto crown, which is stolen by Shelli when she’s the next person out. She gives her prize, Knight in Shining Armour, to Jackie. Third out is Vanessa, who picks up an Ireland Castle vacation, which is stolen by Clay during the next round. Vanessa gets his prize, Night in Shining Armour (more on that later). The last two left are Becky and James, and when Becky fails to score higher than him, James wins! Becky takes $5000 as a prize, and James takes the veto from Shelli, giving her Castle Guard.

Shelli and Clay are obviously upset. He feels bad that he couldn’t protect her, and she doesn’t want to spend the next two months without him. But, weird thing, when she gets called to the DR, Clay and Meg hug it out. It’s very obvious that these two have something going on between them too, as John discovers when he sees them together. He says it’s obvious that they’re trying to stay away from each other, but they physically can’t. Anyway, things between them seem very intimate, even when he tells her to vote him out over Shelli. She starts crying, because she can’t make that promise to him. She wants him to stay over Shelli. They’ve had a bond ever since the beginning, she says to him, and he doesn’t deny it. He just tells her not to say anything about it to anyone. Sketchy. Which reminds me, after the veto competition, Meg hugged Shelli and told her that Shelli had Clay, and she was really jealous. I didn’t understand why she would say something like that to Shelli, but now I think I do. I have not noticed any connection between her and Clay, because he’s been glued to Shelli’s side, but maybe they just haven’t shown anything about it in the past. I need to get to the bottom of this.

Anyway, more about the punishments. Jackie has to dress up in knight’s armour, and Vanessa, her squire has to spend the next 24 hours following Jackie everywhere she goes and polish Jackie’s armour. Hilarious. Shelli, the Castle Guard, has to do swordsman training, similar to the soccer punishment Brittany had to do last year. Shelli has to use a sword to hit a punching bag, stab a target and hit a bar 2400 times. All three actions equals one training session. Every 100 times, she has to go inside and ring a bell to let the kingdom know they’re safe. It doesn’t take long before Shelli is sore and pissed off at James for making her do this punishment, as if he owes her for something. Her sense of entitlement is really driving me nuts, so I really hope she’ll be the one to be evicted tomorrow night.

After she finishes her training, she and Clay take James up to the HoH room to try to save themselves. And who are they going to throw under the bus this time? Austin, of course. Clay declares that they’re by themselves and would never want to hurt someone else’s game to further themselves, but they’ve got to do it. Then Shelli tells James about Judas, and how if Austin makes a promise, Judas won’t keep it. James basically asks if she’s high. Obviously this isn’t enough to get him to change his mind. She says that Austin isn’t trustworthy and that she’s upset that a beautiful, deserving person like Jason had to go home so that Austin could stay, once again, fully refusing to take any responsibility in that decision.

James is a smart guy. He sees right through her and Clay, so while he tells them that he’ll think about what they’d said, it’s pretty clear that he’s already got his mind made up. He gives them a last chance at the veto meeting to save themselves, and they blow it. Clay doesn’t even talk to the rest of the house. He just tells Shelli that she’s his number one. Shelli quickly returns the sentiment, but then turns to James and says that they’ve been good to their word and that they don’t deserve to be up on the block. I’m surprised no one else burst out laughing. Shelli’s really laying it on thick with the poor me attitude, and I can’t imagine anyone sees through it. James sure doesn’t. He says he feels like they turned their back on him by evicting Jason, so he doesn’t use the veto. Either Shelli or Clay will go home tomorrow!

Personally, I want Shelli out. She’s better at competitions than he is, and really, she’s just extremely annoying to me. They’ve both got massive superiority complexes, but I think hers is worse than his. Plus, I don’t think I can handle watching her in the house without him. She’ll either spend the whole time crying over him the way Gina Marie did with whatshisface from a couple years ago, or she’ll snap and go crazy on everyone. Also, I’m kind of interested in seeing more of this thing with Clay and Meg. I highly doubt that she’ll vote for him. I have no idea how the others will vote. After the eviction, if Shelli stays, she may cling to Vanessa, but the line seems to be drawn between her and Austin’s corner of the house. If Clay stays, I could see him cozying up to Meg and trying to get in with her and James and Jackie. I have no idea where Vanessa will stand after that. It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.

One final thing. People are talking about how apparently Clay looks identical to Shelli’s twin brother Lance, and it’s true. The resemblance is crazy and it makes her and Clay’s relationship super weird to me. Why would anyone date someone who looks exactly like their sibling? Weird. Check out the picture and let me know what you think!

– Rebecca