I always find it interesting when a house guest goes from the top of the pecking order to the bottom in the span of a week. How does this happen? How can a person go from being the most popular person in the house to the least popular? Well, in the case of Paulie, you could be called out for inappropriate flirting and then turn it around and lambaste your accuser for it. At some point before the double eviction, Natalie decided to tell Zakiyah and James about a couple of occasions in which Paulie made her feel uncomfortable with his flirting. First of all, he’d made some sort of remark about making out with her and Zakiyah and James being pissed about it. Then he’d made a comment about her ‘Venezuelan ass.’ Needless to say, neither of them is happy about this news and when they question him about it, he downplays his own culpability and plays up hers. He owns up to the flirting but insists it wasn’t anything worse than the way she flirts with everyone. Paulie calls her out on the fact that she’s being hypocritical and manipulative by complaining about what he’s doing.
This is something I have to agree with. When he accuses her of flirting just as much as he does, she counters by saying she’s just a flirty person. So my question is, what makes it okay for her to flirt with all the guys, but it’s not okay for him to flirt with the girls? It’s a legitimate question. She can flirt and it’s cute and sweet, but when he does it, he’s gaming Zakiyah? It’s a double standard I really don’t like and I don’t think it’s fair of her to accuse him of being a slime-bag when she’s pretty much doing the same thing.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I think that Paulie is innocent. The flirting doesn’t make him a slime-bag. What does kind of make him a slime-bag is the way he attacks Natalie for everything she’s said. Yes, she deserves to be called out for her comments, but the way he does it is way over the line, especially when he tells her she’s more fake than the things on her chest. As soon as people start to come down on him for his behaviour, he spirals out of control, becoming very belligerent and aggressive and arrogant. He verbally attacks Natalie and goes after James and gives Paul the third degree. Not the way to keep friends. All of this pretty much isolates him from the rest of the house. Yep, by this point, Paulie is pretty much screwed.
To make matters worse for him, Victor wins HoH by answering questions based on pictograms and he nominates Paulie and Corey for eviction. He makes it clear that Paulie is the target and Corey is just guilty by association. This throws Paulie into a bit of a fit of despair. While he didn’t seem to care about the idea of Zakiyah leaving, when he’s put up on the block against Corey, he breaks down in tears. Corey is the person he’s closest to in the house and being nominated against him is really hard for him to take. Things just seem to get worse for him when Paul and the others decide to rile Paulie up so that he’ll perform poorly in the Veto challenge. And it works. They all gang up on Paulie and all they’re missing are the pitch forks. It’s hard to watch. Paulie was wrong to treat Natalie the way he did, but he doesn’t deserve this lynch mob. I actually felt bad for him.
The only bright moment so far comes in the form of Zingbot. His zings aren’t really great this time around, but he does fire off a good one about Paul and his catchphrases and telling him to shut the hell up. Then they get around to the veto and Zingbot wants to be president. The players have to slingshot buttons onto different states with point values on them in order to get votes for him after he’s done something scandalous. The person with the lowest score each round is out and gets a prize. Also, once a state has been claimed, it’s out of the game, making it harder and harder as each round passes.
So after all is said and done, Victor wins the veto, James wins $5000 and Nicole wins a trip. The other three players aren’t so lucky. Corey has to wear a patriotard, which is probably one of the more ridiculous costumes this season. Paul becomes Secret Service and has to pat everyone down and secure checkpoints every time his alarm goes off. And Paulie has to bake an apple pie every time they hear Zingbot’s national anthem. He resists baking the pies for a good full day because he figures what’s the point if he’s going home anyway? Eventually, he caves though and I can’t help but feel a little bad for him. He sort of brought all of this on himself with the way he treated Natalie and with how arrogant he was, but I can’t help but feel for the guy when he’s crying.
And though he doesn’t want to campaign against Corey and had even thought about using the veto on Corey if he’d won, after that good cry, he begins to try to gather votes. He apologizes to Natalie and to me, it sounds pretty sincere. She’s not buying it though. As she tells us, she’ll forgive, but she won’t forget, which I find ridiculous, because she clearly hasn’t forgiven him. Somehow, I don’t think she knows what this phrase means, but it’s used all the time this week by her and Victor who also doesn’t understand the meaning. Drives me nuts. So anyway, she tells him he’s forgiven and he moves on to James. Now these two have had it out a few times over the past few days because of what Paulie had said to and about his woman, so this conversation goes pretty much the way you’d think it’d go, with James not making any promises. Paul on the other hand, has agreed to throw him a sympathy vote.
So now we go into the eviction and surprise, surprise, Paulie is unanimously evicted. So much for Paul’s sympathy vote. I think that says a lot about him. He’s all about friendship, but as soon as he finds out that Paulie’s best friend in the house is someone other than him, he turns on the guy. Hey Paul, just because you weren’t number one doesn’t mean that Paulie didn’t trust you too, nor did it mean he was campaigning against you. So to treat him like the villain for that reason is just ridiculous. Treating him like the villain for what he’d said to and about Natalie? Ok, that area’s a bit greyer. He shouldn’t have said what he said to her or about her, since he was pretty scathing when he talked about her character. He should have defended himself rather than go on the offensive and attack her back after she’d attacked him. I think if he’d done that, he’d still be in the house right now.
The other thing I find interesting is the fact that up until this week, James was the stronger person in his relationship with Natalie. He made the decisions, and she blindly followed like a good little pawn. But this week, she’s risen up and taken charge and now James is the follower. I’m wondering if maybe she’s showing her true colours now that they’ve been in the house for so long. Maybe she’s not so sweet and cute. Maybe there is a bit of ruthlessness in her. I do believe her feelings for James are real. Or at the very least, she believes her feelings are real. But now that they’ve been together for a while, she’s starting to show her true self. If this week has been any indication, she’s a lot more assertive than she’d led everyone to believe. Manipulative too. Paulie was right about that, I think. She’s not the sweet, innocent girl she wants everyone to think she is,which is fine. She just needs to own up to it. It’ll be interesting though, to see if it changes her relationship with James.
Friday night’s special episode is mostly a waste of time. The house guests do compete in a few contests at the BB County Fair, but it’s mostly an episode filled with flashbacks. Victor wins a TV package. Michelle wins an advantage in the HoH competition. Ziggy Marley comes to perform for them and of course, they play it up. Other than that, this episode is mostly filler. Kind of a waste of time, actually. They started the next HoH challenge, but we’ll get into that next week, since barely anything happened.
So what did you think this week? Did Paulie deserve to go home? Or did he deserve a second chance? Let me know in the comments, and we’ll see you next week!
– This article and other Big Brother-related stuff by the estimable Rebecca Griffin
Categories: Television
The Telltale Mind 
OMG Did anyone watch the episode showing the girls talking about boob wrinkles??? Natalie was okay then showing Paulie and Frank her boob wrinkles, literally shoving them in their face. I’ve called it from the beginning…she fake as hell, she knows more about the game than she says and she’s TOTALLY there for the camera. James doesn’t have far to fall when she drops him directly following the show. Poor James he’s so whipped!
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Exactly! He’s a dude. If you shove them in his face, he’s going to notice. And he’ll probably make a comment about it. The fact that she’s allowed to flirt with all the dudes in the house, but they can’t flirt back is ridiculous. I feel bad for James. She’s bad for his game, and once they’re out of the house, he’ll be left with nothing.
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Yes and this week she’s becoming hard to take. She and James will deserve to get slimmed when “the jury player” comes back. And the way James is backstabbing Victor, it will serve them if Paulie comes back full force .. or Victor.
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Really it’s big brother everyone gets back stabbed duh! It’s a game everyone wants to win
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I find her hard to take sometimes too. I haven’t seen yet how James is backstabbing Victor, but it’s really not much of a surprise, since he’s nominated people after telling them he won’t, twice now. I like James, but he’s not the most trustworthy player. And with Natalie whispering in his ear, he’s even less trustworthy.
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Okay first, Nat did not “literally” shove anything into anyone’s face. I get the flirting comment, but she was a couple of feet away. As for James, of course he is untrustworthy – this is Big Brother! If you’re standing in James’ or any of their way to the win, don’t expect much trust to develop! I like Nat, that girl is there to PLAY and her willingness to make big moves is a nice balance to James’ more conservative game instincts.
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The author seems here to forget that we are not watching a Real-Worldesque observational reality show, but rather an artificial social competition for cash where the rules and expectations of real life are left behind, piled up and forgotten, at Julie’s front door. Sure, out here Natalie could legitimately be accused of hypocrisy. In there, the claims can be used as a weapon to help take down a rival – if said rival fails to counter the shot appropriately. Paulie failed spectacularly in his response and managed to even further alienate himself from his fellow HGs and a good portion of viewers alike. Score one for Nat. And one for us viewers, who can now enjoy at least a week of Paulieless BB18.
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Yes Nat has Jamseyyyyyyyy whipped. He should run.
So sad Paul lost because of the jealous backstabbing “jersey girl”. Sorry to the nice jersey girls, my neices included. Lol
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Totally deserved it. He had a point on the flirting but the way he handlers it was rediculous. Total disrespect tor Z..throwing her under the bus openly about shaving sex…totally unnecessary. Lieing to get on, not making pies, negative responses to BB throughout, Arrogant, spoiled, entitled, total disrespect for women…No one asked him why girl friend dumped him..cheater?? Total disrespect for women. No compassion…others on the Block..Just a game. He’s on the Block…explosion…..he had a chance at half mil..thought he was entitled like brother…knew it all…he lost boo hoo!
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I completely agree that he was arrogant and disrespectful, and attacking Natalie that way was completely uncalled for. But it is a double standard that she’s able to flirt and he’s not. As for Zakiyah, I don’t watch the feeds, so maybe there are things that happened that they didn’t show on the show, but I don’t think he ever lied about the fact that he’s in this for the game. It was clear to me all along that he’s not about to settle down with anyone, and her expecting him to throw everything aside for her is also a little ridiculous. That night when he wanted to sleep in the HoH room so he could get a good night’s sleep for the the veto challenge is a perfect example of her irrationality. She got so upset because he didn’t want to spend the night with her when HE was on the block and needed to compete the next day. She made everything about her, and that was ridiculous. As for why his girlfriend dumped him, unless he admitted that she did it because he cheated, then we can’t just assume that that was the issue. That’s hardly fair.
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Can’t stand Paulie, but now that Nat is evicting Victor. She deserves Paulie or Victor back. Come on Bb
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I don’t watch the live feeds, so I had no idea about any of this. Guess I know how tonight’s episode is going to go now.
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Great recap. I don’t want to generalize too much but as a Puerto Rican I think the phrase “I forgive but I don’t forget” to some Hispanics is different. In different Spanish dialects it pretty much means “Fine i’ll forgive you… but it’s going to be cordial… and i’m watching you!” In other words there will be NO Airports, babysitting, money loaning, moving, flats fixed, tow given etc. Civility at its finest.
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In Victor’s case, I think that makes sense, since he worked with Paulie until everyone turned on him. In Natalie’s case though, she clearly didn’t forgive him. She only told him she did and then relished in his eviction.
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Understand, that’s Italian too.
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Paul was smug, arrogant, obnoxious and just not a good person. If you don’t watch the feeds you missed who he really is/was in the game. Flirtgate was really low on the list of reasons he got evicted. BB showed more of his nastiness than I expected but not even close to what really went on. Twitter isn’t throwing #Paulieevictionpartys because he wasn’t nice to Natalie, it’s because he was a jackass. He tried to play Derriks game but D was a good guy, Paulie not even close.
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This doesn’t surprise me. They often give some people great edits. Look at Frankie. If he’s really that terrible a person, I stand corrected. I can only comment on what I’ve seen on the show.
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“Things just seem to get worse for him when Paul and the others decide to rile Paulie up so that he’ll perform poorly in the Veto challenge. And it works. They all gang up on Paulie and all they’re missing are the pitch forks. It’s hard to watch”. Really u feel bad for him? this has been HIS strategy all summer to get people flustered before a big comp. they just turned his own gross game on him and I thought it was great to be honest!
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Yes, I realize that this has been this strategy all summer, and I felt bad for the people he did it to as well. He’s not the first person to manipulate others, and he won’t be the last. Nor will he be the last person to be upset when it happens to him.
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“As she tells us, she’ll forgive, but she won’t forget, which I find ridiculous, because she clearly hasn’t forgiven him. Somehow, I don’t think she knows what this phrase means, but it’s used all the time this week by her and Victor who also doesn’t understand the meaning. Drives me nuts”. This is another one of Paulies things he has said in the past just turned back around on him like whats good for the goose is good for the gander. A dumbass wrote this article btw!
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First of all, I was talking about the phrase itself driving me nuts, not about what Paulie did to either of them. Secondly, there’s no need to directly attack someone just because their opinion might be different from yours. Everyone here is just having a discussion. Some degree of maturity would be appreciated.
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It seems ridiculous to me that they all get mad at each other for lying. LOL They all know when they get on the show that they are going to lie, each and every one of them. They accuse each other of the very same wrongs that they have done themselves. Oh well it is just a game right? All of them use whatever “charms”, personalities, or special talents they may possess to advance their way to the end.
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I completely agree. This happens every year. Everyone lies and cheats, and everyone gets pissed off when someone does it to them. Ridiculous.
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Clearly you are only watching the edited-down-for-family-hour-television version, and not the real game as it unfolds on the live feeds!
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Sorry, I meant this post as a response to the article, not to the post above. New here, not quite sure how the comment system works yet.
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