“Barrett Is F—ed If He’s Up There” – Drew

10:36 AM — Barrett and Devens

The house got up late and nothing happened for two hours, so two of them started reading the furniture for clues about when they get to go home.

Devens: “You probably also think that there’s a double tomorrow night.”
Barrett: “I do.”
Devens: “These are the same things we’ve been thinking for weeks, Barrett.”
Barrett: “They’re building it right now.”

Devens has the decency to hear himself doing it.

Devens: “Wouldn’t it be crazy if there wasn’t a double tomorrow night? Like, that would actually be so much more shocking. And I know, again, we’ve said that, I think, for the last couple weeks.”
Barrett: “Having a double even just on, like, day 73 is crazy to me.”
Barrett: “It’s wild that Big Brother used to just be 75 days.”

Then the numerology starts. Every clock they can see reads 10-2, which Devens takes as a message about the finale date, until Barrett points out that some of the clocks say other things. Barrett counters with his own theory, which is that the decorations on the wall all add up to twenty-eight.

Devens: “We’re gonna be here till October 28th. They even called it BB28. How stupid are we?”

Then Barrett kills the whole thing in one line, and neither of them stops.

11:58 AM — Melody

Melody saying it out loud to nobody in particular. She has been on the block three times this season and she has not won a competition all summer.

Melody: “But I think this is the first time that if I don’t f—ing win, like, I’m f—ed.”
Melody: “I’m just nervous because obviously I haven’t been f—ing winning anything.”

Then she talks herself back up, which takes about fifteen seconds.

Melody: “So I’m really hoping that the universe was just like, look, you don’t need to win, and it was just saving up for tomorrow. And I’m still like not counting myself out. I’m just really nervous.”
Melody: “I still feel like I can win. I still feel like I’m capable of doing this. I feel like I can still win this whole thing. I just need to, like, win tomorrow first. I don’t want to leave. I’m sure nobody does.”

Six minutes later, in the middle of a conversation about toasters and English muffins, she comes back to it and lands somewhere harder.

It is the closest thing to a campaign she runs all day, and she runs it at a kitchen appliance.

1:00 PM — The house (Dining table)

The whole table gets stuck on one question for the better part of an hour: what food would you give up forever for a million dollars? Barrett answers immediately, and his reason is the saddest joke of the day.

Barrett: “I think chicken. Chicken would be tough. Because a lifetime without chicken…”
Barrett: “Yeah, I don’t think I can describe to you all how poor I am.”

Melody will not do it. Not for cheese, not for a million dollars, not for anybody at the table, and the more they press the more entrenched she gets.

Melody: “See, I’m poor too, but I’d rather be poor and happy.”
Melody: “I don’t think you guys realize how much cheese I eat.”
Melody: “I’m dead f—ing serious. You’re laughing. I’m serious.”

Devens offers her the obvious loophole — a million dollars buys a private chef who can cook around anything — and she is not interested. She was a vegan for four years. She has had the fake cheese. She knows exactly what she is turning down.

Devens has his own problem, which is that he has not eaten a banana since Survivor 38 and the table will not let it go.

Devens: “Bananas are so cool. They come with their own little wrapper that’s easy to take off. You don’t have to wash it or anything.”
Devens: “God, I wish I liked bananas.”
Devens: “It’s been a while since I’ve had a banana, but I think I would gag.”

Asked whether he would eat one for a million dollars, he has to genuinely think about it, and then negotiates the terms: without the peel, one bite, and does he have to swallow.

Devens: “Yeah. For a million dollars, I would eat a banana. I say that, but when you put it in front of me, I don’t know if I could.”
Devens: “What if my body has changed? I hated mashed potatoes when I was a kid. They’re my favorite now.”
Devens: “I used to hate beer and IPAs, and now I love them. Maybe the banana is the new IPA.”

1:19 PM — Taylor, Dee and Melody (Bathroom)

Dee is in the shower. Taylor is on the bathroom couch. The first real game conversation of the day happens through a shower curtain, and it is about logistics.

Taylor: “Us four need to talk today about what happens if it’s double eviction and how we’re going to set it up.”
Taylor: “Because it moves so fast. You don’t have days. Here, we have little 10-minute conversations.”
Dee: “You already know I’m down for whatever.”

The four are Yash, Taylor, Dee and Devens. Dee’s suggestion for where four people can talk without it looking like four people talking: whenever one of them goes up to the HOH room to listen to music.

Then Melody comes in and asks the question she has been carrying around since before lunch.

Taylor: “I think you’re fine.”
Melody: “Well, you never know. I was like, let me double check.”
Taylor: “Well, the two votes, if you think about it — the main two votes would be her and Devens. And they’re pissed at him.”

Her being Dee, who is standing right there, and who does not disagree. Melody’s response is to defend the man they have just agreed to evict — that Barrett is a superfan who understands it is all game, and that what he is actually worried about is whether the Icons will still want to be his friends afterwards. She told him they are gamers and they get it.

Then back to counting. Melody has a promise from Drew she has been sitting on since August.

Melody: “He told me, even like a month ago, he was like, if you’re ever next to Barrett, I would always vote to keep you.”
Melody: “And I believe him. Game-wise.”
Taylor: “I know when it comes to a tie, he’ll keep me.”

That last one is about Yash, and it is the only moment in the conversation where the two women on the block are quietly counting the same man twice. Taylor keeps going, and what she lays out is that the tie is never going to happen.

Taylor: “I think Yash is probably more down with what the house would probably do. And I think he’s under the impression that Barrett would leave.”
Taylor: “But he’s also under the impression that Drew would keep you too. So it’s kind of like — the numbers are already there.”
Melody: “So he doesn’t have to break the tie?”
Taylor: “No, I don’t think he would.”

And the reason,

Taylor: “Because Barrett is the bigger target — like, not the bigger target, the better competitor.”

2:00 PM — Drew goes fishing

Drew spends the two hours before the gym asking everybody the same question in slightly different words, and giving away nothing.

He gets Devens alone in the have-not room first. Devens says he has not talked to anybody yet and that he needs to have those conversations. Drew skips past the eviction entirely and asks about the double — what Devens’ plan is, whether it lines up with his own, and, directly, whether he is the target. Devens tells him he does not think so. They agree that with seven left everybody will play in the double’s veto.

Then he finds Barrett, and the pitch changes completely. To Barrett, Drew is half of an underdog pair against the Icons, and he wants Barrett to win the Blockbuster so the two of them can keep playing. Barrett’s read is that the double is their one shot at Yash, because the outgoing Head of Household cannot play in the next HOH competition — so Yash cannot win his way out of it. Barrett tells him that if he wins and gets a vote, he is not using it on Melody — if Yash has to break the tie, let him.

Drew tells Barrett he will vote to keep him, and says he wants the two Middlemen in the final two chairs rather than the season ending as the Icons’ or as Yash’s revenge. What he does not mention, here or anywhere else on Wednesday, is the deal he made with Yash in the dark at the end of the Pressure Cooker.

2:34 PM — Barrett and Drew (Gym)

Drew tells Barrett he will lose his mind if Barrett wins the Blockbuster. Barrett takes it as an instruction.

Barrett: “I’ll try to make you go nuts. Let’s f—ing go. I’ll try my f—ing best.”
Barrett: “I should have beaten Haley in the last Blockbuster. But I could not roll one more f—ing ball up there.”

He has already made his peace with the other outcome, which is Melody beating him, and he is annoyingly gracious about it — she has been waiting for the right one, he would give her credit, he would be very happy for her. Then a pause, and the other half of the sentence.

Barrett: “For what that means for me, I don’t know so much, but…”

What it means for him is a speech and an exit, and he has been planning both.

Drew wants to know what the one final thing is. Barrett will not say. Drew guesses “Don’t trust Chuk,” which Barrett likes enough to immediately rule out on logistical grounds, because you cannot deliver a line properly while sprinting.

And then the part that is not a joke. Barrett has spent seventy-two days without a phone and has worked out exactly what he thinks is waiting on the other side of the door.

Barrett: “And then y’all are just going to hear… boo. That’s how I feel when I’m going to walk out. I’m f—ing terrified.”

Drew says he feels the same, and that he does not want to see his phone at all. From there the two of them build the disaster out loud, taking turns, each new humiliation answered with a small flat “okay” — that his friends will look at him differently, that he ruined his life, that coming here was a bad decision, that he should have just stayed at his job. That nobody wants to talk to him. That he is not allowed at the after party, or in the jury house. That the jury is six people now and Julie breaks the tie. That there is no press this year. That Julie is not even out there when the door opens, and it is just cops.

Then Barrett brings it home.

3:56 PM — Drew and Taylor

Taylor asks Drew the question directly, who would he keep if Barrett and Melody were sitting next to each other?

Drew: “I don’t think Barrett has a vote to stand.”
Drew: “Yeah, I think they’re pissed off at him.”

So the month-old promise holds, and he volunteers the rest of it without being asked.

Drew: “I think Barrett’s f—ed if he’s up there.”
Drew: “I think you’re pretty much good no matter what.”
Taylor: “I hope so.”

4:07 PM — Drew and Yash

The two men who negotiated the end of the Pressure Cooker in private check that it still holds. Yash, who only votes if there is a tie, opens by pointing out that his vote is the one that does not matter and Drew’s is the one that does. Drew says that is what he assumed.

Then Yash tells him he hopes Barrett wins the Blockbuster, and the reason is Drew — he does not think Barrett is coming for Drew, and points at who Barrett put on the block last week as the evidence. He also warns Drew that if Barrett stays, the person going instead is Melody, and tells him to be ready for that.

Drew’s answer comes out in one long run, and the only clean part of it is the end.

4:11 PM — Devens, to the camera

And then, with nobody in the room to hear it, the vote gets stated out loud for the first time all day.

And then he keeps going, and works the whole night out on camera in a way he has not done with a single person all day.

If Barrett wins the Blockbuster, Devens votes Melody out instead. If he then wins the HOH in the double and Barrett is somehow still there, his nominations are Barrett and Drew — Barrett stays the priority as long as he is breathing. If Barrett is already gone, it is Drew and Yash, and of those two he wants Yash, because Yash wins competitions and Yash beats people at the end.

He is thinking in pairs now. Yash and Taylor on one side, himself and Dee on the other, and he likes his own pair better because both halves of it can win. That is also why he is content to leave Taylor and Melody in the house: he does not believe either of them wins a jury vote, which makes them the people everybody else will eventually want to sit beside — and that, to Devens, is what makes them worth removing last rather than first.

4:25 PM — Devens, still talking to the camera

Having worked out that he is voting Barrett out, he spends the next few minutes explaining to nobody why he is allowed to.

Devens: “The last thing I want to be, honestly, is a hypocrite. Like, I don’t want to screw over Kamu and then be upset personally that I’m screwed over by Bear.”

Devens

“Gameplay-wise, you burnt that bridge, Bear, and I’m coming for you. But personally, love you, Bear. Love you, man.”

Which is the same arrangement he was on the other end of a month ago, and he has not forgotten it.

Devens: “Just like Kamu was to me, which was so appreciated. Kamu, love you, dude.”
Devens: “Dude, I miss Kamu every day in this house. I really loved spending time with my guy, Kamu.”

---

Then he stops playing the game for a minute and reviews the whole experience like a man filling in a comment card.

Devens: “But I’m having fun. I hope you’re having fun watching. What a crazy group of people. It has been so wild in here and so fun.”
Devens: “And the Big Brother experience has surpassed my expectations.”

He has one obvious point of comparison, and Big Brother wins on some of it.

Devens: “The comps are so much more fun. You dress in costumes, you do these things.”
Devens: “It feels like Survivor, everything’s live or die, and there is that vibe here, but it’s also just wacky.”
Devens: “The days are longer. The game is so much longer.”
Devens: “But even being a have-not, which I am right now, is just nothing compared to the suffering you’re doing on Survivor.”

---

Later, alone again, he marks the end of his punishment with the only luxury a have-not gets.

Devens: “Might be time for my last protein shake as a have-not. Hopefully of the season in terms of being a have-not — not in terms of a protein shake.”
Devens: “It’s one of the few pleasures have-nots can indulge in. Although we don’t even get flavored protein. We get non-flavored protein.”
Devens: “But it’s something in your stomach.”

And then, unprompted, the best three minutes anybody produces all day. It starts as a joke he used to make at his old job.

Devens: “Literally living the dream. That’s my response every day, like at work. When I worked at Middle Georgia State University, it was like a joke when people saw me. How’s your day going? I’d say, living the dream.”
Devens: “Or after a while they’d just be like, living the dream? And I’d be like, you know it. Every single day.”
Devens: “And it’s true, because I’m the luckiest guy in the world, and I loved that job. I love the people I worked with. And in my regular life — amazing wife, amazing kids, great friends. Living the dream.”

Then he turns it on where he is actually sitting, which is on a wooden bed, hungry, two days from an eviction he may not survive.

Devens: “But in the Big Brother house, playing Big Brother, final six — we think we’re down to two weeks in the game. We have no idea when it ends.”
Devens: “When I say I’m living the dream right now, I am literally living the dream.”

Devens

“Every step is perilous, because we all want each other out. I’m a have-not, so I sleep on hard wood. I have to take cold showers. I can’t eat anything. I’m living the dream. This is the best thing in the world.”

Devens: “So many people would kill to be here right now. Hopefully not kill. Would give up so much to be here right now. This is their dream also.”
Devens: “So you just got to keep in mind how good we have it, man. I’m living so many people’s dreams, including my own.”

He starts listing the people he is following into the house — and then remembers that one of the players he and his wife have watched for years turned up this summer to host a competition while he was standing in it.

Devens: “I’m walking in the footsteps of so many people I watched and enjoyed on Big Brother. Everyone who’s played. But, like, Dr. Will, Janelle, Danielle, Dan — oh, my gosh, man.”
Devens: “And she was here playing this game in this house. And then she came while we were playing. Like, what? Living the dream.”

He signs off the way a man does when he has decided in advance not to complain about Thursday.

Devens: “Try not to take any of that for granted when things get tough. It wouldn’t be what it is without adversity, right? Can’t do great things without adversity.”
Devens: “Bring on the adversity.”

Devens

“Everyone who watched Survivor 50 knows that I’m the luckiest, and nothing’s changed, man. I’m still the luckiest. Thank you, universe.”

6:33 PM — Taylor and Yash (HOH)

Before the four of them sit down together, the two of them work out what they are going to say when the Icons ask who goes up as the replacement in the double.

Yash: “For double eviction — if they both win, we’re going to say you’re the safer renom. But if you win, Devens would be the safest renom, right?”
Taylor: “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Taylor runs the version where an Icon is Head of Household and Drew comes off the block.

Taylor: “If Drew goes down and I go up, between you and the other Icon — Dee or Devens — you guys can vote out Melody, or whoever sits next to me.”
Taylor: “It really doesn’t matter who goes up, because there’s still two votes.”
Yash: “So I guess we could just say that. It doesn’t even matter.”

Then Yash says the part that has not been said out loud to anyone else this week.

Taylor: “I know. That’s what I’m saying.”

Which turns the renom conversation into a setup. If Devens ends up on the block next to Melody, they do not intend to vote the way they will have told everybody they are voting.

Yash: “If Devens is just sitting up there next to Melody, we flip it on his ass.”
Taylor: “You’re more likely to get Drew to flip the vote on Dee than to flip the vote on Devens. I still think he’ll keep Devens over Melody.”

So Taylor designs a con, and the mark is Drew. The idea is to ask him for a sympathy vote for Melody on the grounds that she is leaving anyway — and then send Devens home with it.

Taylor: “You going to tell Drew to give Melody a sympathy vote?”
Yash: “Who, me? Yeah, I would.”
Taylor: “You and Dee are about to vote her out. And then you flip it.”
Taylor: “But you can’t tell Drew that, because Drew would purposely—”
Yash: “Yeah, I know. In my head, all this s—, it makes sense.”
Taylor: “Or just lie.”
Yash: “I’ll figure it out.”

She then does the whole thing as a performance, her own pitch first.

Taylor: “I would personally go to Drew and say, oh, he’s about to go. Can you please give her a sympathy vote? Let me do that. Give her a sympathy vote, please.”

Then Drew’s side of the argument afterwards, and her answer to it, both in his face.

Taylor: “And even if you don’t do it, and it’s two to one, just f—ing lie. I’m going to say, bro, come on now. Who the f— believes that right now?”
Taylor: “So why did you tell me to give Melody a sympathy vote? Because Melody’s going f—ing home, as you can see, you dumbass. You really just doing the f—ing most.”

Yash wants to park all of it until after the group conversation. Taylor points out that there is no after.

Yash: “Right now we only got to focus on this conversation. We don’t actually have to focus on what we do.”
Taylor: “Yes, we do. It’s tomorrow. And it happens so fast. It all happens in an hour.”
Taylor: “HOH, veto, eviction happens in an hour.”
Yash: “Our homework right now is to have this conversation with them. We got to do that, bang it out. Then we study for the test.”

Seventy days in, the small talk is not small any more.

Taylor: “I want to just leave this house, and I don’t want to leave you guys — even though half of the people here, I’m just like, I don’t really like you that much most of the time.”
Yash: “Oh, yeah, I’m over that s—. I am not like, I f— with everybody, anymore. Everyone’s f—ing driving me crazy.”

Yash: “Some of it’s just unreasonably making me mad now. Like, even people just being happy. This week I’m just like, why the f— are you happy? Why the f— are you so thrilled?”
Taylor: “Yeah, every time I’m on the block, I’m just like, nothing is funny.”

Taylor: “As Mallory would say — I f—ing hate being on the f—ing block.”
Yash: “Big f—ing brother. Big f—ing brother, f—ing 28.”

They are also both already bracing for the edit. Yash reckons seventy days has produced a lot of material he would rather not see back, mostly on a cringe level. Taylor has one specific regret.

Taylor: “As soon as I said 75 presidents, I knew it was wrong.”

Back to the renom, and now they are arguing about which of them volunteers. Taylor’s position is that offering Yash up is pointless because the Icons will do what they want regardless.

Taylor: “We can say, yeah, you can put me up as a renom, but it ain’t going to stop them from flipping it. It ain’t going to stop them from putting your ass up tomorrow.”
Taylor: “They really want to flip that hoe.”
Yash: “Yeah, they really wanted to. Agreed.”

Yash will not offer himself. He thinks naming himself as the replacement is the same as handing them the eviction.

Yash: “That’s still better than us giving them the okay to put me up. Because if the plan is for them to put me up as a renom, then it gives them the chance.”
Taylor: “If we let them know, just put me up, whatever — and they ass put you up, just know your ass about to go home.”
Yash: “Yep.”

Which leaves them where every one of these conversations has left them this week.

Yash: “That’s why you got to win this HOH.”
Taylor: “You gotta win the veto.”
Yash: “Oh, you know I’m gonna.”
Taylor: “Regardless. You gotta win every veto.”
Yash: “And I’m gonna.”