Fun With Dick and Jen

I've come to realize there are two things that scare the bejesus out of these houseguests: Dick and God. Let us begin, my brothers and sisters, by addressing the mysterious influence of the big guy upstairs. Now, I'm a fairly spiritual gal myself; I (almost) regularly go to Mass, and I tithe like the good Catholic that I should be. But never have I ever thought that God preordained my life as a wiseacre TV writer who fritters away the summer watching Big Brother and eating Cheez-Its.

Jameka, however, would vociferously disagree. Somehow this woman has convinced herself that all of our lives have been predetermined, right down to superfluous minutiae like when a ping-pong ball comes out of a bag and who a person should fight for in a POV competition. Ridiculous, right? Not so, it seems, to her fellow members of the Late Night Crew, who inexplicably let her off the hook when she declared that she would save Jen for religious reasons. Even Dick backed down pretty easily (and don't convince yourselves for a minute that he interrogated Jameka in the same way he attacks Jen). Jameka was given a free pass to behave like the loon she's turning out to be — and I'm convinced it is because her teammates are God-fearing weenies. Come on, Dustin, Amber, Jessica, and Eric: No one's going to call you a bunch of lead-hearted atheists if you calmly and rationally tell Jameka that while you respect her spirituality, she's not going to trigger Armageddon if she goes back on her word. Besides, there's a pretty good chance that God has already turned his attention away from BB to check in on, say, those Sudanese refugees, so it's highly likely her lack of piety would go unnoticed. Perhaps a poster named Notluvin said it best on our message board: ''If Jameka is so faithful to God, why was she in the room judging Zach and saying he is a nothing and a nobody? 'Judge not.' Guess she forgot that part of the Bible. I believe it also says in the Bible to make friends of your enemies. Wonder when was the last time she read it? Everyone interprets the Bible differently, but you really can't pick and choose which parts to follow and which parts to ignore.''

That said, I was certainly glad that Jameka stuck to her guns, because it meant saving my now favorite player. I fully admit that my affection for Jen is based solely on the enormous sense of empathy I feel whenever Dick is in her face. But Jen is also the only remaining player gutsy (suicidal?) enough to face him, even if it means just standing there looking unfazed, if not a wee bit shell-shocked. I gotta hand it to her; even I would have pulled an Amber and cried me a river when Dick started getting really dirty with the name-calling, making disgusting references to Jen's body parts that are too vulgar to repeat here. For once, I have to accuse the producers of sugarcoating a potentially explosive situation; the fact that they don't air the full extent of Dick's verbal abuse in prime time doesn't mean it isn't happening almost round the clock. It really is, so much that I started wondering by Tuesday whether someone — anyone — over at CBS was going to stage an intervention and tell Dick to step off or risk immediate eviction. According to some of you crack posters, something did happen in the diary room earlier this week, but only after Dick poured tea on Jen when she and Daniele got into a spat that Daniele obviously started. So it takes a dousing of tea to finally get CBS to do something? It's not enough that he makes grotesque references to her performing oral sex on him? (CBS, by the way, would not confirm whether Dick actually got a reprimand in the diary room.)

All of this brings me back to the original point I was making — about the HGs' fear of Dick. As far as I'm concerned, those other houseguests (and that includes the great God-fearing Jameka) are just as complicit in the abuse because they sit by quietly and allow it to happen. I understand they dislike Jen, but their silent endorsement of Dick's behavior is almost as inhumane as his actions. Fear of Dick seems to dictate the LNC's every move these days; even Dustin admitted last night that the guy goes too far. And yet surprisingly, that didn't stop the floaters from forming an alliance with Dick — though I don't remember exactly when any of them approached him about actually teaming up. I'm more convinced they became an alliance because they were too afraid to ignore him and risk becoming his latest victim. I know, I know — our beloved BB wouldn't be our beloved BB if we didn't have a character to revile, and we certainly have that in Dick and Jen (and now it seems in Amber — but more on her waterworks later). But it's simply not fun anymore to watch Dick ''tell it like it is'' — last night's episode just had me on edge — so I have to agree with you posters who suggest making your objections known via the feedback section on CBS.com.

And now, Amber. Her tears have been worth a million laughs, but it has become obvious that, at least some of the time, she lets them roll for strategic reasons. Thanks to last night's flashback, we saw that she was totally behind the idea of backdooring Nick, so her little display of despair over seeing Nick nominated was a complete load of crap, but at least it led to this genius diary-room quote, which I'm sure to contribute to our Sound Bites section in next week's issue: ''Maybe I can get my emotions under control, because I think if I don't stop crying as much as I do that eventually it's going to bite me in the ass!'' And yet I'm nowhere near ready to turn my back on this single mom, because she's been the only true source of belly laughs this summer. So keep 'em coming, crybaby. I'm rooting for you for the final two!

And now, the HOH competition. (Warning: Spoiler ahead.) After Nick and his mohawk were unceremoniously booted, viewers were left with an endurance competition that wasn't resolved by 9 p.m. Like the rest of you, I'm sure, I went scouting for answers on ShoToo and the Net to find out what happened: It's Daniele! My first thought was that she would honor the house tradition by targeting Jen and Kail for eviction, though it seemed later that the nominations were still up for discussion. Most of the members of the LNC were totally regretting how they booted Nick, and Daniele was blaming Dustin in particular (though I personally don't fault him for taking the trip and the cash during that POV competition, nor do I think Jen threw it at the end to prevent anyone from winning in the final round). But I think cooler heads will prevail within the LNC, and the two ''bitches'' who Dick so pleasantly refers to will be up on the block on Sunday. (By the way, I counted five — five — uses of the word ''bitch'' last night. Classy!) This time, however, I think Jen is the bigger target, unless she saves herself — or Jameka grabs her ping-pong ball — in the POV competition.

I haven't really talked too much about my feelings concerning Eric, mostly because I have some misgivings about the whole America's Player angle, not to mention the way he raises his eyebrows. The dude's just plain goofy, man; even his faux-hawk was flippin' weak. I'll let a poster named BG give the final verdict on the new twist: ''I thought the whole idea of the show was to put these people in a fishbowl and cut them off from the world and see what happens. By having the viewers get so involved, it changes the whole show. Eric is so perky and annoying that I wish America would have him take himself out of the game. I think CBS will control the game to keep him in the house.''

So what do you think? Will Daniele target a member of her own alliance? Are Jen's days numbered? And is Amber the newest player you love to hate?

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