After about a week of this show, we really start to find out which players we’re going to end up liking all season and which ones we immediately want out the door. First impressions are proven right or wrong, and we really start to get invested in the lives of the house guests. And if we feel like this just watching the show, I can’t imagine how the house guests themselves must feel, having to live with all these other people 24/7. Alliances that are made on day one or two can quickly crumble after a couple of weeks because agreements were made between people who really didn’t know each other. As they spend more time together, people who seemed really cool on day one may actually turn out to be completely crazy. Or that weirdo may turn out to be the most hilarious person in the house.

It’s interesting to watch these dynamics on this show. Jozea, Paul, Victor, and Zakiyah made a pact early in the game, but Zakiyah bailed as soon as she realized how crazy the boys were. Da’Vonne quickly aligned herself with Tiffany and is now realizing what a huge mistake that may have been. Bronte and Natalie are also realizing the error of their ways by hitching their trains to Jozea. Watching what happens when these people realize they’re stuck with someone they can’t stand is sometimes frustrating but oh so interesting to watch. It’s the double edged sword of alliances. They’re helpful when trying to get further in the game, but if you choose to align yourself with the wrong person, you’re screwed.

Victor, Paul, and Bronte all find themselves in this situation now. They aligned themselves with Jozea, and now they’re paying the price for it. During the HoH competition, Team Nicole was quickly eliminated for falling off the balance beams and Team Day was so slow, there was no chance of winning. Team James and Team Frank were neck and neck, but since the 8Pack had decided to target Victor this week, James expertly threw the challenge to make way for Team Frank. And since Paulie was on the block last week, they agreed to give HoH to him. So now, Paul, Victor, and Bronte are in a little trouble. Natalie has escaped the hot seat this week, but unless she changes her game, she’ll get her place on the block soon enough.

The target is definitely Victor this week, and Paulie uses this to his advantage by throwing Paul a bone and offering safety as long as he goes up on the block as a pawn. Paul really doesn’t have a choice in the matter. If he says no, he’ll probably go up on the block anyway, except not as a pawn. So he has to say yes. So Paulie nominates Paul and Bronte with a backdoor plan for Victor. Meanwhile, Paulie and Frank are playing nice with Victor, both trying to convince him he’s safe, and through he questions their loyalty at first, before long, they’ve got him eating out of the palm of their hands and so much so, that when Victor wins the Roadkill Challenge – which requires the house guests to use simple math to “return” six souvenirs and gain exactly $18 – he immediately tells both Frank and Paulie about it. Paul, who knows about the plan to get rid of Victor, tries to warn him, without actually saying the words that he shouldn’t trust the guys, but Victor just brushes him off and then goes to the guys and tells them what Paul had said. This guy reeks of recruitment.

Anyway, now Paul really does have to throw Victor under the bus, or he’ll be the one to go home for warning the idiot. Because there are now three nominees playing in the Veto Challenge (Victor nominated Tiffany), The HoH picks two names out of the bin, and if he or she draws their own name or the name of a nominee, that person gets to pick someone to play with them. Well this week, Paulie draws Day’s name and then Paul’s, which is Paul’s worst case scenario. If he doesn’t pick Victor to play with him, Victor will know that something is up, but if he does pick him to play, the power alliance will get rid of him for going against them. So he picks Zakiyah to play in the challenge. I actually felt kind of bad for him this week. No matter what he did, he couldn’t win.

The challenge is the same one they do at the beginning of every summer – the one where they have to collect letters and spell the word that’s worth the most points. Now, this week, a member of the 8Pack is up on the block, and because Victor nominated her, she needs to throw this challenge, because if she wins, then he’ll get to nominate someone else, and they won’t be able to backdoor him. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Victor himself isn’t playing, and no one that is playing would ever save him, so Tiffany is pretty much completely safe this week or she would be, if she wasn’t so much like her damn sister.

As soon as Victor tells Paulie and Frank that he won BB Roadkill, they tell the whole alliance, so everyone, including Tiffany, knows Victor was the one who put her up. That would be more than enough to make her want to go even harder after Victor, but Tiffany is a special sort. She immediately goes into a tailspin of paranoia, completely questioning everyone in her alliance, convinced that there’s some elaborate plot to backdoor her instead of Victor. Ridiculous. From the moment she’s nominated, she’s constantly in tears, freaking out about being put up on the block by THE DUDE WHO IS GOING TO GO HOME THIS WEEK! It’s not a big deal, dude!

She’s so freaked out and paranoid that she decides not to throw the Veto challenge, something that Day immediately picks up on. She catches Tiff counting her points so that she, herself, can make a better word. Thankfully, she doesn’t actually win the challenge. Paulie wins the medallion and ends up taking Paul down off the block and putting up Victor. But the damage is done. Her alliance members are appropriately concerned. If being nominated by the enemy of the alliance throws her into that much paranoia, how can they trust her to keep her cool throughout the rest of the summer? At least a few 8Pack members are now considering sending her out the door instead of Victor, and can we really blame them? Her behaviour is completely erratic, so there’s no telling what kind of havoc she could wreak if she became the next HoH.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the 8Pack. Everyone is distrustful of everyone else now, and it’s tearing the alliance apart. I’m not really sure what went down, but suddenly Tiffany doesn’t trust Frank, a feeling she shares with Bridgette and Natalie when they talk about girls alliances. Tiffany thinks she can trust her girls, but Bridgette spills the beans to Frank the next time they talk. So now Frank not only wants to get rid of Tiffany, but he basically wants to replace her with Paulie.

Things get even more out of hand when he tells Paulie about the alliance. This pisses off most of the alliance members, and it causes the group to fracture even more. Suddenly, Paulie wants to be in an alliance with Zakiyah, Nicole, Corey, and Day and soon Zakiyah and Nicole appear to be on board. This is not cool with fifth wheel Day, who tells the whole sordid story to James. Even in an alliances, you really can’t ever trust anyone fully, not when there’s half a million dollars on the line. They can take you further in the game, but in the end, everyone’s paranoia wins out, and then everyone is pissed off.

Going into the eviction vote, I honestly had no idea what was going to happen. I figured Tiffany and Victor would each get some votes, so I was a little surprised when everyone voted for Victor except for Paul, who voted for Bronte. Somehow, Tiffany comes out of this completely unscathed. This time. I’m sure this won’t be the last of her tears and ridiculousness.

The HoH competition involves the teams bouncing tennis balls off a trampoline onto a ramp with numbered slots at the bottom. The person who scores the lowest in each round is out until one person is left. It looks easy enough, but a good number of house guests end up with a zero score for bouncing their balls completely off the board. The last round is between Paul and Bridgette, with Bridgette pulling off the win. The way her face lights up when she realizes she’s the new HoH is adorable. She literally bounces with excitement.

I have to say, I’m a little nervous about who she’s going to nominate. Frank has been working on her, so he may be able to influence her nominations, but she and the other Spy Girls are really close, so who knows. I am glad that Paul didn’t make it, because that would’ve been disastrous for the 8Pack for sure. With Bridgette, it’s all about who gets into her ear the most. She may have an actual backbone and make her own move, but I highly doubt it. She seems way too easily influenced to be anything other than someone else’s puppet.

What did you guys think this week? Did you agree with the house’s decision to get rid of Victor? Or should they have gone for Tiffany instead? And what do you think about Bridgette being HoH? Let me know your thoughts! And I’ll see you next week!

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