"Big Brother": The passion of the Jen

By Eric Rezsnyak on August 24, 2007

Last night's "Big Brother" was rough to watch. Not just because the show is so unrelentingly shlocky, but also because it featured the complete mental breakdown of one of the houseguests, and then what is unquestionably physical assault upon her person by another. Things got ugly.

The episode picked up with Jen and Jameka on the block for eviction, since Awful Daniele used her veto power to remove Amber and backdoor Jen. (If this terminology doesn't make sense, that means you haven't been watching the show. And that also means you're a better person than I am.) Jen initially played it off as no big deal; she'd been previously put up three times in a row and not gotten the boot. But I think she knew this was it. Jen was completely alone in that house, and since she hadn't flown under the radar like the other house loner, Cro-Magnon Zach, she was a huge target. She was pretty much screwed, especially with the Dick/Daniele/Eric/Jess alliance in power.

So Jen - justifiably frustrated over the BS that is this show - basically just snapped. She packed up all her clothes and shoes and tried to hide them, and then proceeded to tack down her tormentor Dick's cartons of cigarettes and destroyed them. Four whole cartons. (She said she wanted to break them and then pour bleach on them, but I didn't see any bleach. Just lots of stomping. Good enough for me.) Dick immediately knew something was up, repeatedly called her offensive names, then found her clothes and locked them away.

Then things got really ugly. First, Jen decided to break her food restriction rules by basically binging on everything that wasn't slop (a mixture of oatmeal and other bland foods), which earned her a rebuke from Big Brother in the form of an automatic vote against her at elimination. Jen literally rolled her eyes; she's apparently the first person in the history of the show to break food restriction, and I say bully for her.

Then, while out on the patio, clearly just looking for a little human interaction (and totally not getting it because the chuds left in this game are complete, total assholes), Dick started to smoke and blew it directly in Jen's face. Jen has repeatedly asked Dick not to smoke in front of her (hence the defacing of the ciggies), and when she asked him again he proceeded to blow smoke directly in her face. Again.

Jen snapped, approached Dick and tried to rip the cigarette out of his mouth. Dick flailed his hands, pushed her back, and at first inadvertently burned her with the cigarette. When she screamed he told her that if she tried it again, he'd burn her on purpose. Jen tried to get the cigarette again, and the son of a bitch actually burned her on purpose.

At this point Jen was crying, and Jameka rushed her into the bathroom to clean up the burn. Dick cackled in delight. Everyone called Jen out on being a crazy bitch or whatever. And America just sat in silent judgment, wondering how a pack of human beings could be so hateful.

In the end Jen was unanimously voted out. She seriously was totally over it, and again, I can't blame her. I'm not saying her behavior was mature, but she's a 23-year-old girl. Dick is at least 108 and thus should know better. On her way out the door she made a comment to Daniele --- a totally justified comment about how she screwed Jen over --- and once again Daniele got all huffy that anyone would dare call her on her awful, awful behavior. The rest of the house made some more off-color comments about Jen and how "rude" her behavior was (whatever) and then Jen, my hero, basically wrote them off.

She said earlier in the episode that she might forfeit her vote in the end and bail on the sequester house she's now headed to. I hope that doesn't happen. She deserves to stick it to these assholes as hard as possible, and walking out of the game isn't going to help her do that. But then again, she's still stuck in the stupid, demoralizing situation. So you can't really blame her either way.