After 81 days, Tommy finally broke his silence on the secret he's been keeping all game long. Tommy revealed that he knows Christie on Big Brother 21 — but he only told Michie and Holly. That decision could now make or break his game. After Christie's eviction last week, Tommy's been on his own in the game. He's up against two duos in Michie/Holly and Cliff/Nicole. So Tommy did what he thought he had to do. He offered up his final secret to the HoH.
"[Michie's] in power," Tommy said in the Diary Room on Wednesday's Sept. 11 episode. "How do I get [Michie] on my side? I have to convince him that I'm on his side." Tommy decided that the way to do that was to offer up the secret that he had known Christie from outside the Big Brother house. Viewers have known all season the the two were friends from before the show, because Christie dated one of Tommy's family members. But it was completely new information for Michie and Holly.
Tommy spun the news into something that had been really hard for him. He cried as he told Holly and Michie that he had no idea Christie would be on the show and he felt compelled to be loyal to her because of their previous family connection. Holly and Michie actually left the conversation feeling bad for Tommy that he'd been forced to keep that secret. Still, it wasn't lost on Michie that Tommy has an automatic vote in the Jury House now with Christie. Michie seemed more resolute than ever that Tommy needed to be sent home.
However, the decision of who goes home this week is solely in Nicole and Cliff's hands. Holly and Tommy are on the block, and Nicole and Cliff currently want to vote Holly out so as to split up the showmance. Holly seems to have realized that's a solid option for Cliff and Nicole, so, on the live feeds, she and Michie ended up spilling Tommy's secret to Nicole and Cliff. (He'd originally asked Michie and Holly to keep it between themselves.) Michie and Holly are using it to campaign against Tommy in hopes that Nicole and Cliff will send him to Jury.
It's true that Tommy does have one guaranteed Jury vote, and Nicole and Cliff may be worried enough about that to go back to voting him out. However, one vote may not matter in the grand scheme of things. As Nicole and Cliff have previously discussed, Holly and Michie will always choose each other to go to the Final 2. If Tommy wins that final HoH, there's still a chance he could pick Cliff or Nicole to sit next to him. Keeping a showmance this late in the game could spell just as much doom as keeping someone with a guaranteed Jury vote.
Nicole and Cliff have a big decision to make. Now that they have all the information about Tommy knowing Christie, it will be interesting to see if they change their minds or if they still vote out Holly. Whatever decision they make could be the difference between them winning $500,000 and losing everything.
