Defying the odds, Josh is the new HoH on Big Brother 19. Given his love of banging pots and pans, circus music and balls of meat, it’s bound to be a wild week. And the most surprising new twist is that Christmas and Josh are starting to wake up and realize that they are just Paul’s puppets and maybe they shouldn’t do everything he says. Is this the beginning of the end for Paul?

The Meatball King

Jessica and Cody know they’re in trouble and they are so over the constant 10 vs. 2 mentality in the house. Mark and Elena are a little worried, but they think they’ve buried the hatchet with Josh. A few days ago Josh apologized to Mark and promised not to anyagonize him anymore.

Paul and his followers celebrate and Alex walks in to tell Josh that Mark and Elena were upset that he won. But Mark is in the room and hears it. Oops. Alex then flips it against Mark saying that he’s been talking to Cody and she basically just yells at him until he feels like he did something wrong.

Paul tells Josh to do whatever he says and Christmas is not happy that Paul is dictating everything. This is a big recurring theme this episode, Christmas and Josh talking about how Paul is controlling everything and they don’t like it.

Josh asks Elena why she and Mark voted to evict him over Ramses. She correctly explains that the entire house told her he was being evicted and it sucked either way. But Josh is an idiot who is just blindly angry about the vote.

Josh, Paul and Christmas chat in the HoH room and Josh says he wants Elena out before Cody or Jessica because he doesn’t trust Elena. Paul has been working with Elena, so he desperately tries to steer Josh away from that idea.

But later Josh confides in Christmas that he absolutely wants Elena evicted this week and they need to keep Paul out of this because he’s trying too hard to protect Elena. Josh and Christmas are definitely starting to wake up.

The Temptation Competition

On Paul’s orders, everyone except Josh and Christmas choose to play to lessen Jessica and Cody’s odds of winning. The competition is a haunted house theme where, one at a time, the HGs run through the house in total darkness to find clues with circled letters that they must unscramble to find one item, a heart, and place it in a box. There are a bunch of people in scary masks jumping out at them.

Jessica is very scared and runs away when she sees a monster. Her plan was to throw it anyway so she’d be the third nominee and couldn’t get backdoored, and she’s happy to do it. Cody, however, is not afraid of the dark and nothing rattles him. He runs through the house and is totally unaffected by the monsters.

Mark: 7:06
Kevin: 3:11
Elena: 12:31
Jason: 12:07
Jessica: 15:00
Raven: 9:00
Cody: 3:00
Matt: 3:42
Alex: 3:06
Paul: 3:34

Cody wins immunity and Jessica is the third nominee.

Wow, that was close with Cody only beat Alex and Kevin by a small margin. It’s interesting that those four plus Paul and Matt all did very well while Elena, Jason and Raven joined Jessica as the worst.

With Cody safe and Jessica already on the block, two other people need to go on the block. Mark and Elena are both worried that it will be them.

The Nominations

Paul once again tries to convince Josh that Jessica needs to go before Elena, but Josh doesn’t want that. Paul tells Josh to tell Mark and Elena that they are both pawns and he even says he’s going to tell them he offered to be a pawn himself to prove that he’s a team player. Paul is literally micromanaging every detail and putting words in Josh’s mouth.

Paul goes to Elena and feeds her this fake story about how he “thinks” she and Mark will be pawns and that he volunteered. Elena runs upstairs to confront Josh about this. Josh says it’s because Elena is a strong competitor. She knows that’s a lie because Alex and Paul are better competitors and she says that.

Josh thinks that she’s spazzing out and calls up Paul. Josh asks Elena if she suggested that Alex and Paul go on the block. He keeps talking and making Elena look like the crazy person. This is a small matter of semantics because technically Elena is right, she didn’t suggest they go on the block, she simply pointed out the flaw in his logic that they are stronger competitors. Just like Mark with Alex, Elena is being railroaded and made to look like the bad guy.

Josh nominates Mark and Elena. He calls Mark a meatball and says Elena is a strong competitor. Then he takes a swing at Jessica, calling her out as his target. Then he explains in the diary room that he was lying and Elena is his real target.

Who Won the Power of Veto?>>>

Big Brother 19 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c, Thursdays at 9/8c and Sundays at 8/7c onCBS.

(Image courtesy of CBS)

John Kubicek

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire DiariesSupernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.