I didn't think Jerry would be able to top himself in the buffoon department. I was wrong. His fetish for damning Dan seemed to vibrate with a morbid intensity as when he celebrated Michelle's HOH victory — walking toward Dan with that oafish gait, finger jabbing the air, croaking, "You're going home!" With all the obnoxious noisy bravado of a schoolyard bully.

By David W. Taylor (Email The Author)
Reality Reel Media
08.19.08

Jerry was showing the others, I suppose, that he was some sort of loyal soldier on the frontline but instead he continued to raise eyebrows. He wasn't endearing himself to anyone. People winced.

Dan seemed to become the itch Jerry couldn't scratch; Dan was unnerving Jerry with his boyish unresponsiveness. Jerry relished someone yelling back at him. Be a Marine! Dan was his personal beef — it seemed to go beyond a simple competitiveness and stretched into one type of man having no respect for another type of man.

So Jerry descended into child-like antics: he stormed towards Dan's room and gave his room two "fingers" as several housemates looked on. He rattled off numerous disparaging comments: "I wanted Dan on the block because he broke his word to me...I want Dan bad...I'm going to do this...burn in hell!" Even Dan told others that Jerry's rage must be personal. Julie Chen herself couldn't get Jerry to let go.

Later Jerry led a campaign to start calling his nemesis "Judas." He was going to call Dan "Judas" every minute of the day. On and on. Jerry's face lit up and his eyes danced. "We gotta get Dan," Jerry gasped excitedly, "...call him Judas..." Judas! Judas! Judas! Jerry was on a freaking high.

Jerry told Michelle that he thought that Dan was "America's Player" and that they must all start thinking of getting rid of him. This was sound reasoning but when sprinkled with Jerry's personal venom no one wanted to listen. There were bigger fish to fry and Dan was handling it so nicely anyway. And also managing to chip away at Jerry's rants was the fact that some felt that Dan was getting savaged by a certified loon. How could he have handled Korea when he can't handle Dan?

Yet at the Veto Ceremony the Power Of Veto winner, Jerry, relented to House pressure and left Michelle's nominations stay as they were. He was at least smart enough to not let his personal issues to completely destroy his last shred of credibility within the Big Brother House. Yet...

During the ceremony Jerry gave yet another Dan-infatuated speech: "I treated you like a grandson...I was betrayed..." Eyes rolled. "You will always be Judas in my eyes, " Jerry warned. "Dan, today is your lucky day..."

Jerry was again forgetting the obvious: that his "grandson" was actually a stranger participating in a game show with a huge cash prize. Jerry was allowing Dan to survive, lo, otherwise he was a dead man. With this last broadside Jerry soon became insignificant. He opened his big yap one too many times.

With the nominations set, Libra was destined to become a Juror. She was just too volatile. You get the movers out first. Interesting, though, was Libra corralling Ollie alone to let him know that she was disenchanted with him. Ollie had called her a "Scalawag" and a "'Ho."

Libra said she did not expect this type of invective from him. One can only gather that Libra is saying this because Ollie is black — that there should have been some unspoken entanglement between them, flowing like a undercurrent, because of their common ethnicity. Ollie wasn't so receptive to this plea, realizing — to his credit — that the game and its twists and turns was the overriding leveler.

But Libra was reaching out emotionally to a perceived ally; and in her moments of doubt and confusion this was where she naturally sought refuge. So her gesture was understandable.

Stilted though was the girls fight club which erupted after glasses of wine were lifted and poured down throats. Libra, Keesha, April, Renny and Michelle were full of the "liquid courage" — as Memphis titled it — and put on a series of cat-like confrontations that were more theatrical than resentful. Keesha seemed almost giggly during most of her disses. It looked like a floor show for the cameras. Heck, why not?

And actually this Big Brother Season is becoming somewhat predictable. Melissa gets HOH and nominates her two enemies. Renny gets HOH and nominates Jerry because he nominated her — that isn't incredible. Renny nominates April because "you are the most tough cookie women..." Jeepers.

Seeing Renny wail and yelp uncontrollably at seeing vintage photos of her mother and father in her newly unveiled HOH room should not have been the most dramatic moment of the hour. But it was.

The characters are set and no one is extremely mesmerizing. Many of them are holding back, moving about in the shadows, knowing that making a fuss creates a target. The days roll on and we can almost see where this is all ending up. One longs for an Evel Dick or a Nerd Herd or someone with unquenchable passion to break away and break things up. One can only hope. I'm hoping Dan will soon go boom.