“I’m Gonna Win This Whole Thing. It Was Written in the Stars.”

12:58 AM — Drew and Melody (Backyard)

Taylor goes to bed — “good night, I’ll see you in the morning, Sunday Funday” — and the two of them stay out. What follows is nearly forty minutes of the same conversation they have been having all week, except this time neither of them is performing for anybody.

It opens on the double.

Drew: “I still hope Yash doesn’t win the double.”
Melody: “Same. I’m worried. We just need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Drew: “Because we’re fried. You and me and Barrett, for sure. Because you ain’t putting Taylor out.”
Drew: “And if Barrett’s sitting on that block, he’s cooked. And if it’s you and me — f—. I think I’m cooked. I think Barrett would vote me out first. Over you.”

Which he does not say bitterly. He says it as a compliment, and then goes looking for confirmation.

Drew: “It’s cool you have him, though. Did he give you a final two?”
Melody: “No, he didn’t give me a final two.”
Drew: “Then he could be. If I’m not here.”
Melody: “That’d be cool.”
Drew: “It’d be really cool.”
Melody: “Whatever, dude. Stop getting in your head. It hasn’t happened yet.”

She does not let the final-two thing go, though, and takes a shot at his season while she has it.

Melody: “You had a final two with, like, five other people, and I thought that you were my number one, so…”
Drew: “You believe me?”
Melody: “Not really.”
Drew: “It’s okay.”

From there it stops being game talk for a long stretch. She starts sounding like him, and he does not take it as flattery.

Drew: “Now you’re starting to sound like me. And that’s not good. Because we’re already too similar.”
Drew: “And I don’t like myself.”

They run through what she is, one word at a time, with Drew supplying the list: all right, smart, funny, mildly sweet, a pain in his ass. She tells him he is missing one. Best friend does not turn out to be the answer.

Then the nickname, which Drew invented and Melody has never once objected to out loud.

Drew: “Starts with a G. You like when I call you that?”
Drew: “I don’t even know why I started that.”
Melody: “Just a random nickname that you thought of, and it just happened to stick.”
Drew: “It was that or Odie, and Odie sounds ugly.”
Melody: “I f—ing hate it. But I can’t tell anybody that.”
Drew: “I’ll tell them.”

The one she actually minds is a different one.

Melody: “Barrett started calling me Mel. I don’t think on purpose. I think he just started doing it, and I caught him doing it today, and I was like — we really are friends.”
Drew: “I’ll never call you Mel. I’m sorry.”
Melody: “No, I’d prefer if you didn’t. It feels weird if you call me Mel. Because you’ve always called me Melody.”
Drew: “You’ll always be Melody to me.”

Her mother, it turns out, has been fighting this exact battle for twenty-four years.

Melody: “My mom doesn’t like Mel either. My stepdad always calls me Mel. She doesn’t actually get mad, but she’s always just like, it’s not your name. Melody’s such a pretty name.”

Drew has his own version. Somebody on his rugby team called him Andy once.

Drew: “I got called that once while I was playing rugby. I hated it. ‘Come on, get him, Andy.’ Pissed me off. Made me hit the kids harder, though.”
Drew: “Didn’t help. Maybe that’s why they did it.”
Drew: “Maybe because I was the youngest person on the team. I always find myself being the youngest person everywhere.”

Melody, who has spent this whole season being told she is the grown-up, is not enjoying the promotion.

Melody: “That’s how I always was. And then I turned 24, so… yikes. It’s gonna get real bad soon.”
Drew: “You are auntie.”
Melody: “I’m not auntie. If I’m auntie, then what the hell is Taylor? What the hell is Angela?”
Drew: “So Taylor’s grandma, but Angela’s mom.”
Melody: “Yeah. My grandma doesn’t get out of bed.”

She then critiques his walk, which he defends on the grounds that it is a documented part of his personality, and the defence goes somewhere neither of them expected.

Drew: “If you ever see a photo of me, my hands are like this. I just had, like, swagger.”
Melody: “Have you seen the way that you walk?”
Drew: “Yeah, I walk like you. You look dope. Dude, because I’m a rebel without a comb. I’m just Matt Dillon.”
Melody: “I have no idea. I’ve never seen it.”

Then Melody starts laughing at nothing, and when Drew asks what, she narrates her own edit back to him in the third person.

Melody: “Just my f—ass storyline in this game, dude.”
Drew: “Hit me with it.”
Melody: “It’ll be funny in like ten years, it’s fine.”
Drew: “Hit me with it.”
Melody: “Can’t win s—. Hated on her two closest allies at the very beginning. Doesn’t f— with anyone, but can’t win anything, so can’t back anything up. Is, like, devastatedly pissed off at her number one ally, but has to go back — and somehow they’re still flirting.”
Drew: “They can try being trapped in this house. See what they would do.”

Which opens the door to the thing every houseguest thinks about at this stage and almost nobody says.

Drew: “I’m just curious to see how important we were at the beginning of this game.”
Melody: “Same. I mean, I was kind of on the block a lot — so that’ll help with my air time.”
Drew: “God, I can’t wait to see what people have been saying.” then, quieter: “But maybe I can. I’m definitely worried.”

He talks himself into an alibi. Melody does not have one available.

Drew: “It’ll all blow over. See, I have the best excuse. I’m 22 years old. I’m allowed to be a f—up. You have none.”
Melody: “I’m 24.”
Drew: “Jesus. A couple seconds ago that was old. Now you’re young again? Make up your mind.”
Melody: “It’s still young in the grand scheme of things. My brain’s not fully developed.”
Drew: “Luckily, mine is.”

She lands on the only defence she wants.

Melody: “All I did this entire game was try my best and be myself. If people hate on that, then that’s fine. Literally, what else was I supposed to do?”
Drew: “Hopefully that’s what most of us have been doing. Trying our best to be ourselves.”
Melody: “Well, a lot of some people’s selves are not good.”

The house has also started getting to her in a way she is only now naming. Construction noise from the yard sets her off — the same sound they heard before Zingbot arrived.

Melody: “No, I’m scared. Oof, dude. This place has f—ed me up. I genuinely get, like, impending doom.”
Drew: “When you hear stuff?”
Melody: “Yeah.”

Drew does an impression of somebody squinting, which becomes an impression of Melody without her contacts, which becomes the best line she has landed in two days.

Drew: “You take out your contacts and you look at me and you’re like — oh my god, she’s blind. She can’t see s—.”
Melody: “I can see. And I saw through all y’all’s bulls—. Y’all lucky I couldn’t win.”

They go back through the early game. Drew mentions that Haley had told him, at one point, that Yash was worth trusting.

Drew: “You know what Haley told me? She’s like, trust Yash. Not when she lost — at one point, when it was her and Kamu.”
Melody: “Don’t trust Yash.”
Drew: “There’s someone who didn’t have a pulse on this game. She had no idea what was going on.”

Melody has a grievance of her own from the week Mallory left, and she has clearly been saving it.

Melody: “That time you knew that Mallory was going to go home — you kept asking me those weird ass questions, and I knew you knew. I remember you sitting right there and you were like, how upset would you be if Mallory went this week? And I knew when you asked me that.”
Drew: “Listen, I try to let you know without telling you explicitly. I don’t want you to be like, Drew said this. She can come to a conclusion on her own.”
Drew: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
Melody: “Whatever, dude. That’s some bulls—ass Chuck method. Speaking in f—ing riddles, bro.”

Which reminds her of an early-game humiliation she has apparently never mentioned.

Melody: “Chuck always spoke in riddles. Because I really wanted to work with him at the beginning of the game. I was trying so hard. You don’t understand how hard I was trying. I was, like, practically begging him. And he wasn’t giving me anything. And then anytime he would give me something, I’d be like — oh my God.”
Drew: “Why would you want to work with Chuck?”

Drew’s day-one memory of her is less flattering and much funnier.

Drew: “Remember I actively wanted to be your friend the first day. But Kamu was there, so I kept trying to be friends with Kamu instead. Because you just were not down.”
Drew: “You were, like, legit — orange. I was like, I want to be friends with the Oompa Loompa.”
Melody: “Whatever, dude.”

His day-one memory of Barrett is a knee.

Drew: “The first day I cut my knee on the have-not thing, and I remember Barrett going, why is Drew’s knee bleeding? And I was like — I like Barrett.”

Then he asks for the thing he has been circling since the veto draw.

Drew: “Dude, I hope we could look past this. I think you have.”
Melody: “I told you I don’t have any other choice. If you would have done this to me in the real world…”
Melody: “But we’re trapped here.”
Drew: “We are. Together.”

She mentions, without any particular weight, the part of the season she misses.

Melody: “I miss when you and Barrett would act out movies.”
Drew: “That was fun. There was like a moment of bliss in this game.”
Melody: “Yeah, there was. That was really fun.”
Drew: “But it’s not here anymore.”

Half an hour in, lying on the couches, Melody puts a word to the last few days.

Melody: “These last few days is like the most insane that I’ve felt in the house. Not in like — just, like, legitimately, psychologically insane.”
Drew: “Why is that though?”
Melody: “Less people, nothing to f—ing do. Nothing to distract you. It’s just thinking, and trying to figure out how you’re gonna win the game, and dealing with people — but also thinking about your life outside of this game.”
Melody: “Obviously I’d rather be bored in Big Brother than be at my job, or the jury house. It’s just, like, intense.”
Melody: “Do you feel insane?”
Drew: “Ever since I lost my hairbrush.”

He gets serious about four seconds later.

Drew: “This week’s made me feel insane so far. But I think it’s good. Because I do think if it went another way, I don’t know if you’d be here. Then I’d really go insane.”
Drew: “So I got to keep you for my sanity. I hope you know that. Loser.”
Melody: “Stop saying that. It’s a bad manifestation.”

And then the thing the whole week has been building to, said flatly, in the dark, with no negotiation attached.

Drew: “You’re my Mallory.”
Melody: “I wasn’t yours.”
Drew: “But you’re mine.”
Melody: “You could have been.”
Drew: “Can I still be?”
Melody: “Mm-hmm.”

He starts planning for a house without her in it. She refuses to let him.

Drew: “The second you’re gone — knock on wood — I don’t know what my game plan is going to be.”
Melody: “I’m not leaving. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I’m going to win.”
Melody: “I came here to do two things.”
Drew: “What’s the first one?”
Melody: “Have fun. And win Big Brother. And I’ve already had enough fun.”

Drew’s post-win plan, for the record, is to be kept like a dog, do no work, and learn to cook.

Where it stands: Almost none of this is strategy, and it might be the most useful forty minutes either of them has had. The one hard read is Drew’s — a Yash win in the double means him, Melody and Barrett are the board, because Yash is not touching Taylor. Everything after that is two people establishing, without saying the word, that they are each other’s number one: he will always call her Melody, she is his Mallory, and she has told him she is not leaving. Melody is also doing something worth watching — she has stopped defending her game and started writing the jury speech, and “all I did this entire game was try my best and be myself” is a lot closer to a closing argument than a vent. The comic reveal is still coming, and neither of them can wait to see it.

1:30 AM — Drew and Melody (Backyard)

Same two, same couches, still going. This stretch is mostly about the version of themselves the country has already been watching for two months — and then, near the end, it turns into the most concrete strategy either of them has said out loud in days.

It opens on their casting packages, which neither has seen.

Melody: “I’m excited to see my package.”
Drew: “Mine’s gonna suck. I lost my voice that day, so I couldn’t really speak. I was like — hey, I’m Drew.”
Melody: “How’d you lose your voice?”
Drew: “I think I got sick the day before. I thought I for sure f—ed it at that point. I was like, I’m not in the show. I got this far. But I was like — it’s always next year.”

Somebody remembers the rule about a beat too late — “you are not allowed to talk about production” — and Melody does his intro back at him anyway.

Melody: “Hey, my name is Drew. I’m 22 years old, and I’m from Temecula, California.”
Drew: “My voice was so destroyed that when I would say California, I was like — California. I’m from Temecula, California. And I was like, what the hell is going on?”

Then the first-thing-out-of-here list, which is the most animated Melody has been all night.

Melody: “I’m so excited to have a dirty martini. A dirty martini at Cornish. And I hope my favorite bartender is still there. They always play the best music.”
Drew: “What makes it dirty?”
Melody: “Olive juice.”
Drew: “You still want olives after all this?”
Melody: “Yeah. Extra dirty. Extra olives. Gin.”

Drew’s list is shorter and, in fairness, cheaper.

Drew: “Five Guys. That’s where you’ll find me. I actually really want an In-N-Out burger. That’s what I want.”
Melody: “In-N-Out does sound good. I want a Filiberto’s bean and cheese smothered burrito. Green sauce. And I wanna eat it all in one sitting and do absolutely f—ing nothing afterwards. Watch trashy reality TV.”
Melody: “Or watch myself on TV.”
Drew: “That’d be weird. But cool.”

The idea sits there for a second and turns.

Drew: “The stuff that you must be saying. My family must think I’m an idiot.”
Melody: “I don’t think so.”
Drew: “It’s definitely gonna be you and me — like, you say something and then me… Honestly, you just make me look like an idiot.”
Drew: “But I guess we’re even.”

And Melody, who spent the earlier part of the night listing everything that has gone wrong for her, says the opposite thing without noticing.

Melody: “I have had so much fun in this game though. Like even today. It was just fun hanging out with everybody in Barrett’s HOH room.”
Drew: “I wanted him to get it. I don’t really care about the people. I’m so happy for him. I know you like Yash, but…”

Then she does something she has not done in three conversations: says something kind about somebody on the other side.

Melody: “I do feel bad for Taylor, though. I know they’re still, like, a duo and everything. But she was telling me — she was like, I just kind of feel alone. Especially after Lala got evicted. And I was like, yeah. I get it. I’m sorry.”
Drew: “I do see Yash hanging out with her a little bit more though, which is good. I think Taylor’s really nice.”
Melody: “Same.”

Melody then tells a story about a college roommate, pepper, and Buffalo Wild Wings, which she prefaces with “just as a preface, I did not like this girl,” and which has no ending.

Drew: “Is that the whole story?”
Melody: “She was so mean.”
Drew: “Sometimes you say the most… I don’t want to say meaningless. But, like, dead-end stories.”
Melody: “It’s just something that I was thinking about. I should just go. Anyways — what’s next. One thing about me is, I am not getting on no f—ing carnival ride. That s— came out of a suitcase.”

Which turns out to be the fifth or eighteenth time she has said it, depending who is counting.

Drew: “You’re driving me crazy. You said it 18 times today.”
Melody: “That’s not true. I may have said it once today.”
Drew: “You said it like 10 times. You’ve said it like three or four times within that room.”
Melody: “There’s no way that’s true.”
Drew: “You’ve definitely said it more than once today. Because I rolled my eyes more than once today.”
Melody: “You roll your eyes at anything, bro. I literally come up to you and I’m like, hey. And you’re like…”
Drew: “Listen. I have no excuse.”

He lands on a self-assessment he has been circling for two days: “Dramatic. That’s me.” Then he works out why they get along at all.

Drew: “No wonder she wants to be friends with me — because she probably thought I was really immature. And she’s like, this guy’s on the same wavelength as I am.”
Melody: “I didn’t want to be friends with you, bro. That happened, like, by fate.”
Drew: “By fate?”
Melody: “Yeah.”

She wants the tape of the day they made it official, because she cannot remember how badly she undersold it.

Melody: “I really hope that conversation of us making our alliance together aired, because I need to relive what I said to you and what you said back. I don’t remember it all, and I don’t know if I was, like, dead ass — like, if I told you to your face, you are my only option.“
Drew: “I think you did.”
Melody: “That’s why I was like, okay. For sure I wasn’t gonna say no. It would have been so much worse if I said that and then you were like, okay — and then you were like, f— this b—-tch. And then I would have been like, f—, I’m screwed.”

What actually sold her was his whole deal, which she had earmarked for herself.

Melody: “But I liked your vibe. I was like — oh, he’s super 2000s. He gets it.”
Drew: “And now what do you think of me?”
Melody: “I thought I was going to come in this house and be, like, super 2000s. And then you showed up and I was like — f—ing stole my vibe.”
Drew: “Yeah, I know. You stole my vibe.”

Then she starts thinking about her mother watching all of this.

Melody: “My mom’s probably like, what the hell? After I said that, and then after I told Haley that I would put her up — my mom’s probably like, bro, literally, what? Do you want to leave?”
Drew: “God, that pissed me off. When I heard that you said that, I was like… why couldn’t I have been friends with Lyric?”

She concedes the delivery and nothing else.

Melody: “I definitely could have went about it a different way. But to be fair, I was so irritated. And it was 3:30 in the morning. And she was being her f—ing condescending self. And I was just like, I’m f—ing done with this bulls—.”

Then she makes the case she has clearly made to herself a hundred times — that the threat she was reacting to was never real, and was fed to Drew precisely because he would carry it.

Melody: “Here’s the thing — I don’t believe her. She was telling you that because she knew that if you said something, you were gonna run and come tell me.”
Melody: “It was gonna be definitely Lala, Taylor and probably me. Who the f— else would she have put up? Mallory? Lyric? Yash? I don’t think so. None of those people were going to go up.”
Drew: “She told me before.”
Melody: “Yeah, I know. I know the f—ing story. That makes zero sense. The way that she acted and the way that she talked about me.”

She gets to keep one thing out of it.

Melody: “Whatever, dude. At least I got to tell her to her face that I put her up. And then lived.”
Drew: “Now she’s gone. You’re so cool.”
Drew: “It was really funny, though. What a f—ing joke, that week. F—ass week.”

Melody brings up the Tool Shed, and it turns out Barrett had gone through the whole season with Drew earlier in the day.

Drew: “Yeah, Barrett told me about that today.”
Melody: “Did you ask him about it? What did he tell you?”
Drew: “We were just talking for a while about different s— that was happening in the game. We basically just told each other what we’ve just been doing this whole time.”
Melody: “What have you been doing this whole time?”
Drew: “Hanging out with you.”

Melody counts hers up, and the count is the point.

Melody: “I’ve literally had four alliances this entire game. Four Seasons, the Court Jesters, Mosh Pit, and FAP.”
Drew: “I didn’t realize that we were so many together.”
Melody: “And you were in every single one. Because I thought you were my number one. So I wanted to include you in all of my alliances — but the feeling wasn’t mutual.”
Drew: “Dude, you are my number one.”

Drew has to be reminded what one of them even was — “I forgot what the Court Jesters is” — so she walks him back to week two, when it blew up on them.

Melody: “Four Seasons just got blown up. Jason comes in the gym. It’s me and you. Devens is HOH. I’m on the block. He’s like — look, I did just tell Devens about Court Jesters.”
Drew: “I do remember that. We’re like, bro.”
Melody: “At that point, dude, I was like, I’m cooked. My whole game just got f—ing blown up.”

And then, after twenty minutes of what has mostly been a hangout, Drew names the actual problem with the three of them.

Drew: “That’s what worries me. I’m not worried about Barrett, but I’m worried that he thinks that we’ll choose each other over him. Like, he’s the trio.”
Melody: “Yeah, but where is he supposed to go? He’s not gonna go to Yash.”

She then reports something Barrett told her earlier — hedging that she cannot remember it exactly — and Drew confirms he got the same thing: that Barrett would rather go out seventh on this double having taken his swing than sit around and make it further without one.

Drew: “Yeah, he told me that, too. Because he’s like — if you and me went all the way down to five with them, and we were fifth and fourth, I’d have been like, what the f—?”
Drew: “Which was very plausible.”
Melody: “It just wouldn’t have been, like, a respectable game. I mean, cool, you got fourth and fifth, but…”
Melody: “I mean, you can boohoo about it and your extra money, but—”
Drew: “Oh, you get extra money?”
Melody: “Starting at fifth place.”

Which is when Drew does the count.

Drew: “We’re two away.”
Melody: “I know. Remember what I told you at the beginning of this game?”
Drew: “What?”
Melody: “I don’t want to repeat it because I don’t want to jinx it. I was just wondering if you remember.”

He does not remember. She gives him a hint — “it was the last thing we just talked about, the very last thing” — and he guesses the Court Jesters, which were forty seconds and several minutes ago respectively.

Melody: “Bro, what? Like, 30 f—ing seconds ago.”
Drew: “Or a double?”
Melody: “Bro. You’re helpless.”
Drew: “Can you just tell me?”
Melody: “If the newbies can do the ceasefire correctly, it’ll be the top five.”

And the last thing said on the couches is the one line in the whole stretch that is worth money.

Drew: “I don’t think Taylor and Yash trust that I’ll do that.”
Melody: “They don’t. But I’ve been vouching for you.”
Drew: “You’re so good. Do they believe it?”

Where it stands: Two things came out of this that matter. The first is Melody’s prediction — an all-newbie final five, conditional on a ceasefire holding — which is the closest anyone has come to naming the shape of the endgame, and which requires Drew to leave the Icons alone. The second is that Taylor and Yash do not believe he will, and Melody has been quietly working on them without telling him until now. That is a real asset and she just handed it to him. Underneath it, the same trade the whole night has been running: Melody built four alliances around a man who was never building them around her, said so out loud, and got told she is his number one about ninety seconds later. And Barrett, according to both of them independently, has already made peace with going out seventh.