We’re only a few days into this season of Big Brother, and already, we’ve got a lot to deal with. Lines have already been drawn. Facades have already been put up and then torn down. And we’ve got two new house guests to get to know. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for all of it. I’m ready for all the drama and backstabbing – it’s been too long since we’ve had it in our living rooms three times a week!

Tonight we start off with the international house guests coming into the house. The game is played much differently here than it is in Australia and the UK, so Tim knows that he needs to change his strategy. While the country might want to watch him annoy the hell out of the other house guests, his roommates probably won’t have the same reaction, so he’s got to lay low, play dumb, and fly under the radar a little bit. He seems to immediately get along with the rest of the house guests – for the most part, anyway. He calls out Christine for scowling, which just about everyone – except for Christine – finds hilarious. She’s really not doing herself any favours, whereas his comment could win him some points from the others in the house.

So while Tim seems to quickly get along with the other house guests, answering their questions about differences between the Canadian and Australian game, Nikki…has a bit of a nervous breakdown. She’s feeling overwhelmed, which leads her to tears. The other girls seem to take her under their wing, which is a good sign for her, but it really makes me question how long she’ll last in the house. Hopefully she’ll be able to pull herself together and make some connections in the house before everyone decides to evict her.

Now though, it’s time for the new HoH challenge! Apparently over the past few days, viewers have been sending in comments about the new house guests, and now some of the bad ones are going to be read to them. The first to ring in after each one is read gets to guess who the comment was about. If they’re right, they eliminate another player of their choice. If they’re wrong, they themselves are eliminated. Tim and Nikki don’t get to play this time around, so they sit off to the side with Loveita and Nick. It’s a quick game, and at first, it seems like Kelsey is going to win. She gets the first couple of questions right and immediately takes out Maddy and Sharry and then Ramsey a little later. Good news for her team, including Phil, who still wants her in because she’s a bigger target than him, but bad news for Loveita, who wants anyone but Kelsey or Jared to win.

Unfortunately for Kelsey, she offs herself a minute later, but fortunately for her, Jared ultimately wins the challenge and becomes the new HoH! This immediately makes Loveita, Maddy and Sharry quake in their boots. Maddy wonders if Kelsey knows that a few of them had a pact to get rid of her, and Sharry insists she does. She picked them off one-by-one after all. To me, Maddy seems like a bit of a drama queen. Loveita and Sharry were at the centre of the last nomination, yet Maddy insists that she’s in the most trouble this week, because Kelsey doesn’t like her. Maybe there are important facts that we’re not being shown, but I honestly don’t know what she has to worry about. Loveita and Sharry are the ones who really need to worry, and that only becomes more apparent when the two of them rope Kelsey into a conversation. They try to play nice with her, try to tell her that targeting her wasn’t personal, but Kelsey is having none of it. She’s as blunt to them as Loveita was to her last week: she doesn’t trust them, and they’re never going to be best friends.

I say good for Kelsey! I’m not a fan of the way Loveita tries to suck up to her after blatantly targeting her last week. Loveita was all tough and blunt when she thought she could get away with it without consequences. Now she’s screwed and scrambling and Kelsey can see right through her. The line has been drawn, and Loveita is on the losing side.

Upstairs in the HoH room, Tim plays dumb with the in crowd, trying to figure out how the Canadian game works, and his strategy is golden. He seems to be getting along with everyone, which is great, because I want him to stick around. I don’t think I want him to win, but I want him to make it far. Nikki, on the other hand, seems to mesh with Sharry and Loveita first. Hopefully she won’t completely hitch her wagon to those horses, or she’ll follow them right out the door. Thankfully for her, Phil seems to like her, so that may work to her advantage.

Next up we’ve got the Wheel of Meals challenge, the first Have Not challenge I’ve seen in a long time, since they don’t exist on the American show anymore. The house guests have been split up into three teams, and one person from each team goes up onto a spinning wheel. Two others from each team have 90 seconds to spin the person on the wheel as many times as they can. The number of revolutions will determine how many paint-filled balloons they’ll get. They’ll then throw said balloons at targets on the wheel around their teammate, each one listing a food item. For every target they hit, they’ll be allowed to eat that meal that week. But the team that hits the fewest targets will be Have-Nots for the week.

I love this challenge. Mitch, Maddy, and Loveita all go up on the wheel, and after the spin, the balloons start flying. The gold team is comprised of mainly dudes, so of course they do the best. The silver team and red team are neck and neck, though Tim wonders if Kelsey is legitimately missing the targets, or if she’s purposely missing, as she hits Maddy a LOT. My money is on option number two. She seems way too gleeful every time she misses a target to miss them accidentally. In the end, the gold team wins, and the silver team (Joel, Sharry, Loveita and Cassandra) are the Have-Nots. These four are obviously not thrilled about this development, and even less so when they see the Have Not room, the Honeymoon Suite, which looks like a gaudy little chapel, complete with tiny, hard wooden pews. I feel especially bad for Joel, who is so tall, he can barely fit on the pew all scrunched up.

Now that things have settled, it’s time for the girls to scramble. Sharry goes to Jared first and tries to tell him that she’s her own person and that she shouldn’t be punished because of something her partner did. Loveita reminds him that she’d kept her word when she won HoH and didn’t put him up. When that doesn’t work, she tries to offer him a deal: if he keeps her safe, she’ll promise to vote his way whenever possible, and to get her crew to also vote his way. It’s a tempting offer, but in the end, he doesn’t take it. I wouldn’t either. I wouldn’t be able to trust that she’d keep her word. Plus, he’s still upset about last week. He gave her the HoH on a platter, he says, and she stabbed him in the back. So in the end, he nominates the two that everyone expects: Loveita and Sharry.

Personally, I think these two are screwed. Unless they can do some serious scheming, one of them will be going home this week. Even if one of them can take themselves off the block, Maddy will probably go up in their place, and the other will go home. Personally, I hope Sharry pulls it off. Loveita made a mistake last week in targeting Kelsey so completely and then not backing herself up. She’d gotten a small group together to vote Kelsey out, but her math was off. She’d needed six votes against Kelsey and only rounded up four. Kelsey and Jared, on the other hand, have the numbers to back up their nomination. Not only will their crew vote out one of the girls, but they’ve got better odds to win the next HoH too.

I just hope that this group won’t get super cocky, the way most alliances do when they’ve been in power for a week or two. That’s always the downfall of powerful alliances. They become unbearable to the rest of the house, and then get voted out. If this group can stay strong and somewhat humble, they’ll be able to pick off Loveita, Sharry, Maddy and Ramsey with relative ease. I think Dallas will slip by, as he seems to sort of be playing both sides of the house.

What did you guys think of the episode? Will Tim and Nikki be able to stay in the game for long? And will team Jared/Kelsey be able to keep control over the next few weeks? Let me know what you think!

– This article and other Big Brother-related stuff by the estimable Rebecca Griffin