Originally filed Saturday, February 2, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Normally, "Celebrity Big Brother" airs on Sundays but the Super Bowl is in the way. So the third eviction happened on Saturday instead and it was Joey Lawrence. Whoa!
Kandi Burruss was on the block a second time, but everyone eligible to vote went for Joey.
Kandi told her fellow players she has given the impression she hasn’t played the game, but her lack of strategic game play has made her more of a pawn, not a threat. Yet after she was saved, she seemed surprised.
UPDATE: In Monday’s episode, just three hours before eviction, Tamar felt like she was not as integral with the Lolo Jones/Natalie Eva Marie combo so she asked Natalie to vote for Joey, not Kandi, who Tamar believes was her closest ally. So Lolo, Natalie and Ricky switched to Joey.
Joey played the game harder than Kandi but aligned himself with the first two evicted: Jonathan Bennett and Ryan Lochte. He wasn’t able to endear himself enough with the others to avoid elimination.
Joey didn’t take the vote personally and knew it was coming. He admitted to Julie Chen Moonves that he was not that familiar with the game going in. “I didn’t know what I was signing up for,” he said.
He said being in physically good shape didn’t help him in the challenges, but he may have been perceived as a threat anyway.
Julie tried to tell him that he made a major mistake by cutting off an early alliance overture from Lolo Jones. He interrupted Julie by doing a bit about Lolo running so hot, that if you stare at her one second too long, she will get in your face.
Going into the vote,, there was a tenuous alliance on the show of Tom Green, Kato Kaelin, Lolo, Natalie Eva Marie and Ricky Williams.
Tom, as head of household, had placed Joey and Kandi on the block but felt (rightfully) paranoid about Ricky’s loyalties to the alliance. So he wanted to backdoor him.
Lolo and Natalie felt this was way too early. Plus, Lolo felt loyalty to Ricky for warning him about a previous back-door attempt on her. So when Natalie won Power of Veto, she kept Joey and Kandi on the block.
This really peeved Tom and Kato, who saw it as some sort of betrayal. Lolo and Natalie were just offended by Tom’s paranoia and power lust.
Both sides tried to keep up airs that they were still together, but neither side was buying it. The alliance by tonight was effectively over.
Kandi so far does not appear to be allied to anybody in particular. At this stage of the game, that is not necessarily a good thing. She really does need to start hustling if she wants to stick around much longer.
