During Sunday night’s episode of Big Brother 18, viewers saw just how close it came to witnessing a Natalie Negrotti Head of Household reign. Live feeders were rooting on the cheerleader, praying that she would take the crown. Unfortunately, Natalie was not able to hold any longer on after hours of dueling it out with fellow housemate Victor Arroyo.
Natalie felt devastated by her loss, believing she’d never win a completion while in the house. After the competition took place, James was there to console her and pep talk her into how proud he was for her efforts. Many live feeders had wondered while watching the live HOH take place Thursday night, why James hadn’t been more vocal on cheering Natalie on. It turns out that James wanted to remain low key with how elated he was seeing Natalie fight it out with Victor over HOH.
The most exciting thing to happen between the showmance is that James and Natalie have discussed on flipping the vote for Thursday night. With both Zakiyah and Michelle on the block and James’ gifted America’s care package. James has considered using his power to make a huge statement in Thursday’s eviction. Even though Paulie had won the veto and chose not to use the veto, Paulie has made it clear that he wants Zakiyah to stay and Big Meech to hit the road.
Paulie has tried to persuade James to use his power to eliminate two votes on himself, so that he can get away scot free with not voting. Meanwhile, Paul wants Zakiyah to leave the house, in fear that she’ll come after him. So now James and Natalie are stuck in the middle trying to decide who is best to nullify their vote. James has said to Natalie that he does not want to nullify Paulie’s vote because he wants him to have to vote if he really wants to keep Zakiyah in the house.
It’s been a sad time for Zaulie fans. It seems almost obvious that the shippers for the couple have set sail away from the toxic relationship. With Paulie and Zakiyah, both guilty for using each other, many fans have grown disappointed with both players. Live feeders especially grew frustrated when even after Zakiyah felt betrayed by Paulie, she opted to choose him to play in the veto with her! Later, Zakiyah explained that she believed Paulie would use the veto on her if he won, which obviously, turned out to be a lie.
Fans and alums have expressed their displeasure in Zakiyah’s game on Twitter.
And finally, Nicole and Corey are starting to look like targets in the other housemates’ eyes. Michelle has talked about targeting them along with many others. Just last week, Victor expressed his concern for the couple to Paul in the storage room.
Victor: “I’m worried, man, they’re just so close.”
Paul: “Yeah, but we don’t have to worry about them yet.”
Both Nicole and Corey have played very different games. Nicole has definitely changed her game strategy and is arguably playing a better game her second time around. Meanwhile, Corey game has been more low key. Corey has always been a very quiet guy and seems to be observing a lot around him. But he still has some viewers scratching their head on exactly what kind of game he’s playing. If the two were to be put up on the block together, Nicole would easily go out long before Corey would just because of her gameplay.
UPDATE: Since the writing of this article, there was some big game talk last night and very early this morning! Natalie told James that Paulie was making passes at her, which made him very mad. Then Paulie tried to blame everything on Natalie and said she’s making it all up. (Honestly, there has been some flirting there on both sides.)
Although it seemed like James did believe Paulie about Natalie lying at first, we’re not sure if he changed his mind and now thinks it was Paulie lying, or if the whole thing just made him decide he’s over Paulie and his manipulations of the house. Either way, late last night James ended up conspiring with Natalie, Paul, Michelle, and Bridgette to flip the vote to get Zakiyah out this week instead of Michelle. James plans to use his America’s Care package to cancel out Paulie and Nicole’s votes and then the rest of them will vote 3 to 2 against Zakiyah to really mess with everyone and make it very confusing who voted for whom.
If everyone does indeed stick to the plan, then Zakiyah will be the one going to Jury on Thursday night (unless she has the Round Trip Ticket prize to come back in). It could very well be the end of Zaulie this season!
Plus, of course, we have a Double Eviction this week, which could very well mean another showmance couple could end up on the chopping block. So, what do you guys think? Will one or more showmancers go out in the double eviction Thursday night?
