It's been a bizarre couple of days...here is the lowdown on the strategy that has taken place (there was a lot of it so I'm expecting the CBS version to be much more simplified). Spoilers on the replacement nominee.
I'll start by saying that the CBS episodes have really not been showing enough of Shelly and her strategy. She is solidly aligned with Jeff and Jordan, and by default Rachel, though none of them can really stand her emotional outbursts. Adam is also connected loosely to that alliance. However, Shelly has had the other side of the house believing that she is with them for some time now. She is awesome at getting to know people inside and out, and then using their weaknesses to get her way. She tailors her conversation to whoever she is talking to, telling Rachel and Brendon how they were awesome competitors, Jeff and Jordan how honorable and sweet they are, Kalia how she is a strong independent woman who everyone in the house loves, etc. Exactly what they want to hear so that they all trust her.
Anyway, so yesterday she went to work on Kalia. Shelly wants Porsche gone because she is the only one that Shelly can't get a read on or gain any trust with. So even though the plan has very clearly been to get Rachel out, Kalia and Shelly have this long discussion where Shelly convinces her that she has an awesome plan that involves putting up Porsche and voting her out and making a deal with Rachel, which would appease Jeff, Jordan, Adam, etc. so that everyone would be friends with Kalia again. Kalia is like, "wow, that is an awesome plan!!" and completely buys the whole thing. Porsche is in Kalia's alliance now, so Shelly basically just convinced Kalia to nominate and have voted out her own alliance member. It was masterful. She played on Kalia's desire to be liked by everyone, and to show that she can make big game moves on her own and Dani is not running her HOH.
She runs the plan by Dani, who obviously hates it. Dani eventually talks her out of voting Porsche out, but reluctantly agrees to having Porsche be the replacement nominee, as a pawn. Kalia thinks she has Shelly and Adam's votes, which she doesn't. So if Porsche goes up, she would be voted out over Rachel to Kalia and Dani's surprise. Then, out of the blue, Lawon offers to go up as the pawn. They all talk about the twist this week and because of what Shelly has been planting in Kalia's mind, she is suddenly convinced that whoever leaves this week will definitely be coming back, and with some special power (when in the beginning of the week they felt sure that no one was coming back). So then Lawon offers to even be voted out so that he can immediately come back in with a special power that can help their alliance....yeah. You read that right. He volunteered to be evicted.
However, Kalia, Dani, Porsche, and Lawon want everyone to think that Lawon is just a pawn, so they are continuing to tell Adam and Shelly to vote out Rachel. At the last minute, they are planning to try and convince Adam and Shelly to get rid of Lawon instead, and are trying to think up ways to convince them. Unknown to them, Adam and Shelly (as well as Jeff and Jordan) are voting out Lawon anyway.
Lawon has decided to put on this performance as if he is extremely angry and blindsided by Kalia putting him up. However, Shelly knows that he volunteered to be a pawn, and she was even in the room when Lawon talked about it, but now Lawon is acting in front of her and pretending he didn't know. It is very strange. Shelly of course told everyone else that it was just an act, and now Lawon is mad because everyone knows he volunteered. But, he seems to have forgotten that Shelly knew the plan, and is now blaming Adam for figuring it out and telling everyone.
Makes sense, right? Yeah, I didn't think so either.
So as of right now, it looks like Lawon will be evicted, regardless of what Kalia and Dani want (they still aren't sure if they want Rachel or Lawon to come back in the house). If they decide to get rid of Rachel, they will be shocked when Lawon is voted out. If they want Lawon to be evicted, it will be a unanimous vote. Either way, based on what we've seen, Lawon isn't likely to win whatever this competition is to come back in the house...
The big question on everyone's mind is why the hell he would volunteer to be nominated at all.
