Celebrity Big Brother recap: Yelling, crying, and TWO stars go home

It’s double eviction night on Celebrity Big Brother, which means two stars are going home in a hyper-speed version of the usual game. For any major Big Brother fan it’s basically Christmas and your birthday rolled into one.

Wednesday’s episode ended with Brandi and Ariadna on the block and Head of Household, Mark, — as well as “Lady O” (a.k.a Omarosa) — hoping that Brandi goes home. After the nomination ceremony, Ariadna’s main concern is that her alliance member Ross knew about Mark’s nomination plan and didn’t tell them. Brandi’s main concern is that James is the one pulling the strings and gunning for them.

Everything comes to a head in the backyard when Mark and James are trying to have some bromance time under blankets when Brandi decides to get into it. “I like you half the time,” Brandi tells James, adding that she can’t stand him when he’s “super cocky.” James calls out Brandi for her “constant rudeness.” The boys head inside to the bathroom and vent to Marissa. The venting is overheard by Brandi who lashes out at Marissa for agreeing with the boys when they complained.

Marissa says her plan originally was to win the Veto and take Ariadna off the block in hopes that Mark would nominate Omarosa and they could send home Lady O. But now she and Ariadna agree that Brandi may be more of a liability than a benefit. Ross, for once, stays out of the drama.

All the houseguests other than Ross compete in the Veto competition. The rest of the house compete in a face mashup challenge that is familiar to regular Big Brother viewers. In this version, there are “action figures” with faces that have facial features combined from three different houseguests. Lemme tell you, these action figures don’t look like anything I would ever buy my kids.

After her run, Omarosa uses her time alone with Ross in the HoH room to try and convince him to leave his alliances behind and go to the end with her. “Won’t you beat me?…Who do you wanna sit next to?” Ross says it’s an interesting idea but in the diary room admits he’s still very wary of trusting her.

Ariadna gets off to a better start: She figures out the first action figure in just five minutes. And, actually, she rocks the rest of the competition compared to Omarosa. Her final time: 9:10:56.

James improves on Ariadna’s run, figuring out the first figure in less than three minutes. But he falls behind as things go on and before he gets to the fourth figure, he fails to beat Ariadna’s time and the buzzer sounds.

Marissa heads out and barely gets through the first figure before the buzzer sounds. Mark does even worse, not even figuring out the first figure.

Brandi knows her life in the house is on the line and quickly figures out two of the three answers for the first figure, but the third answer trips her up and she begins to freak out and ultimately doesn’t complete the first figure either.

So, Ariadna wins the Power of Veto. This means she’ll take herself off the block and Brandi says she’s “90 percent sure” she’s going home. The only hope she has, in her mind, is if Omarosa ends up on the block next to her. Mark, on the other hand, decides he needs to figure out a replacement nominee who would guarantee Brandi walks out the door.

After the commercial break, Mark tells James that he plans on putting up Marissa because he thinks everyone would save her over Brandi. James agrees that it’s the right decision, thinking that Ross would continue to go after Omarosa before either of them. Though, they both fear Ross and Marissa will turn against them. “This is Big Brother not Big Homie,” says Mark.

At the Veto Ceremony, Ariadna unsurprisingly decides to take herself off the block and Mark stays true to his plan and puts Marissa up next to Brandi. It seems like things could be locked for Brandi to go home, but “I know that Brandi could say anything that comes to her mind, so i just need to stay out of her line of fire,” says Marissa. “I have a secret weapon, and that’s my mouth. It gets things happening, for sure,” Brandi says in the diary room.

Before the live vote, both the nominated houseguests give their campaign speeches. Marissa says she won’t campaign against Brandi and gives a shoutout to her son and gets tearful talking about how she’s a cancer survivor. Brandi says she made some “amazing friendships” and that she loves a lot but “not all” of the houseguests. She also says she’s gotten along with Omarosa and hopes that people have gotten to see the former White House staffer’s “softer side.”

Ariadna votes to evict Marissa but the rest of the house votes to evict Brandi and in a vote of 3 to 1, the Real Housewife is evicted.

Talking to host Julie Chen outside the house, Brandi says she’s surprised Ross would “betray me and stab me in the back. We had a final two from, like, the second day so when it was between me and Marissa I assumed he would choose me. But he likes her a little bit more.”

She says she wants Ariadna to win but wouldn’t have taken her to the final two because she couldn’t have beaten her. She says she and Ross will remain friends and admits, “He bribed me with free alcohol for the rest of our friendship.”

In the live HoH competition, the houseguests are asked true-or-false questions about pieces of “art” they were told to examine earlier in the day. The houseguest with the most answers correct after seven questions will be the new HoH.

First question: Only Ariadna gets it wrong.

Second question: Only Ariadna gets it wrong.

Third question: Marissa and Omarosa gets it wrong. (Ariadna gets one right!)

Fourth question: Marissa, Ariadna, Ross and James get it wrong.

Fifth question: Ross gets it wrong, leaving Omarosa and James tied in first place.

Sixth question: They all get it right.

Seventh question: Marissa gets it wrong, leaving Omarosa and James still tied.

It goes to a tiebreaker and Omarosa and James have to guess how many seconds Shannon held on to her award during the first challenge — and they can’t go over. James overshoots the answer with a guess of 5,400 (I think? It was hard to read his handwriting.) and Omarosa, with a guess of 1,200, is crowned the HoH.

After the commercial break, Omarosa unceremoniously puts Ross and Marissa on the block. “That was easy,” Ross says sarcastically in response to Omarosa’s one-sentence nomination speech, which gave no reasoning behind her decision.

All six houseguests get to compete in the live Power of Veto competition. They are asked to examine pieces of art set up in front of the memory wall and find matching pieces of art hung up throughout the house. The goal is to figure out which of the pieces of art throughout the house is not an exact match to the similar piece hung up by the memory wall. There’s a mad scramble at the beginning but Ross quickly locks in the correct answer and is declared the winner. He hugs his most constant alliance member, Marissa, who knows this pretty much seals her fate as going home. “Someone saves me,” she yells out to no one — and everyone.

“Things change quickly,” Mark is heard saying as the cameras come back from commercial. It’s unclear what that means until Ross takes himself off the block and Omarosa quickly nominates James as the replacement. There are “ooh”s of shock from both the houseguests and the live audience outside. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” James says.

In his campaign speech, James does all he can to campaign against Marissa, saying that she would win against a lot of the remaining houseguests. Marissa points out that while she may or may not win against the voting houseguests, at least they could beat her in competitions and therefore giving them a better chance of making it to the end.

Ariadna votes to evict James. Mark votes to evict Marissa. Ross votes to evict James. With a vote of 2-1, James is evicted. He tries to find a jacket to wear so he’s not just in his leggings, short shorts and t-shirt.

“I couldn’t take a chance not taking out the biggest target in the house. I did what no one else did and I don’t mind,” Omarosa tells the houseguests after he leaves. “I got James out, now we all can compete.”

James tells Julie that he knew Omarosa was eager to get Marissa out so had assumed she would have put up Ariadna instead of him but that he understands why she did what she did. He says his biggest mistake was not embracing working with Omarosa more. He also says Brandi told Ariadna lies about him that may have turned her against him. Julie asks him about his tension with Brandi and he says he thinks she had a crush on him — but would never date her.

“At this point it’s anybody’s game but Ross has probably done the best so far,” James says when Julie asks who he thinks will win. ” Guys, at least I beat Brandi!”

Back in the house, Julie reveals that the Final 5 will make it to finale night. All of them but Omarosa will compete in an HoH competition, all five of them will compete in a veto competition and then the house will vote live at the beginning of finale night on Sunday. Then, the remaining four houseguests will compete in the final HoH competition and the winner will immediately evict TWO housguests, picking who they will sit next to when the jury votes.

But first, a Saturday episode that sounds like it will be partially a recap episode of previously unseen moments — and unheard White House tidbits from Omarosa.

Celebrity Big Brother continues Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.