I suppose doing anything else — like sticking a fork in my eyeball — would've been at least as pleasant as subjecting myself to the gaucherie of sitting somewhere stationary for an hour (without vomiting) and watching a television show where one has to choose between Maggie and Ivette for a half-a-million dollar prize. Well, come to think of it... it could have been, I guess, April and Beau. And then I could've stuck that fork in both my eyeballs.

By David W. Taylor (Email Me)
Reality Reel Media
09.22.05

But, of course, to be honest (honest like Maggie & Ivette...) I wasn't watching the Big Brother 6 finale to catch another snapshot of Maggie and Ivette sitting in those plush Big Brother armchairs — grinning like teletubbies — and feebly holding each other's hands and entwining each others wrists and forearms in a typical display of gross-out schwarmerei. No, I was just gathering further fertile evidence that these skunks and their allies, aptly branded with the label of Nerd Herd, are as irksome and repellant as they appear. And every week their stinking mess expands and inches upward. If that's humanly possible.

If one had to look at one footnote in the entire Big Brother 6 season that would ultimately define (and damn) this group of crazed Cappy cult figures it would have to be the Jury Deliberation segment broadcast during the finale hour. On the improvised deliberation set erected somewhere on an estate in Napa Valley, you had Janelle, Howie, Rachel and James sitting opposite Beau, April and Jennifer. It looked like a roundtable on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. And we were shown and we experienced two very different groups of people.

The four members of "The Sovereign Six" interacted within the group, and with each other, as one would expect from fully sentient, engaged adults. They asked questions, proposed hypothetical scenarios, laughed, argued; they were animated and humorous. James was even objective enough to criticize Ivette — whom, of all the Herd, he had cultivated a friendly relationship — and also support her when he felt it was warranted.

The three members of the Nerd Herd, on the other hand, were fairly docile. April spoke up the most, though often defensively. Beau made intermittent yelps, though usually these were smart-aleck retorts when Ivette's good name (and so then, we gather, his own) was besmirched. And Jennifer rarely opened her pie hole at all. Jennifer's main contributions to the proceedings was the infrequent smirk or twisted look of bewilderment which she seems to have mastered quite well while hosting archenemies Rachel and James in the sequester house. This is interesting... Jennifer is the one responsible for manipulating the Kaysar Promise; it was her Promise, after all. One would naturally think she — such a bold warlord! — would be among the most outgoing and opinionated of the bunch. Her silence and dumbness — punctuated merely by facial ticks — only speaks to her true subservience.