Big Brother, July 15: The Great Unraveling

Nathan then tells us Scott asked him to call a HouseGuest meeting in the living room, so he did. Scott tells them that seeing Amanda has put him into overload because she’s been able to go on with her life but he hasn’t been able to go on with his. Jun’s eating a sandwich and not even paying attention. He says this has been the worst year and a half of his life, but he wants to stay and truly apologizes to each of them. Nathan tells him that a lot of them think this is absolutely the worst environment for him to be in right now, and some of them now feel uncomfortable and threatened by him. For his own well being, it might not be a healthy place for him right now, and he should think about that. I would say those are all valid points. Scott says he’s never raised a hand to anybody. Jun points out that the chair could have bounced off the wall and his somebody. Scott says it didn’t. “But what if,” she asks. He says it also could have hit him. “But there was a chance,” she keeps saying, as he gets more and more agitated and snaps that he’s apologized but he’s not going to stick his head up her ass. What Jun is saying is true on paper, but the thing that got me was that she wasn’t even looking at him or stopping eating while she was talking and it was clearly coming out of a place of self-righteousness and rubbing his nose in it rather than an attempt at discussion. Justin brings up the valid point that Scott keeps apologizing over and over, but it doesn’t stop him from doing the things he needs to apologize for. With that, the meeting ends.

Jun tells us that then Scott was called into the Diary Room and they were told he wasn’t coming back. Amanda, seeming extremely choked up, tells us he really is a good guy, but he really needs to take the time to focus on himself and find out who he is and what he wants and realize that some of the things he shuts down over aren’t the end of the world, and life does go on, and I think she’s right on the money with all of her points.

Dana, Alison, Jun, and Erika regroup in the Head of Household Room and talk about how things will be a lot less pressured from now on. Tomorrow, we’ll find out if Dana uses the Power of Veto and who will be the first regular eviction from the house.

OK. I actually have a lot of thoughts about what happened. First of all, there’s more to the story than the episode let on. When Scott told the others he couldn’t get on with his life, it was because he had genital warts. He didn’t have an outbreak now, he told them, so he wasn’t contagious, but he wasn’t able to bring himself to have sex knowing he had them. Alison flipped out and was convinced she was going to get them and it finally took Amanda, who had actually had intimate contact with Scott while he was contagious, and who certainly had her own issues to deal with what with her ex having fallen apart right before her very eyes, to calm her down and explain that she simply couldn’t get them. Plus, going by the live feed update boards, it may have been that some of the people who claimed to feel the most threatened didn’t feel quite as threatened as they would have us believe. I think that that’s the thing that kind of got to me about this episode: the people who were the most vocal about feeling threatened - Dana, Alison, Jun - were also the people who wanted him gone the most in the first place. So it’s not that there wasn’t any validity to what they were saying, but it did seem a little disingenuous at the same time.

Scott absolutely should have had to leave the house. Primarily, as Nathan said, for his own well-being. It simply was not a healthy environment for him. Which begs the question - how was he even greenlighted to be on the show in the first place? If he was that unstable that he could unravel almost completely within the first week, how could this not have been obvious? I swear, it’s only the first week and already we’ve had two people booted - one before the show even began! Boy, they really had a team of crackerjack experts doing the screening, didn’t they? Ones who got their licenses from CrackerJack boxes, perhaps…

The main thing with Scott is that he clearly needs some major therapy. This is beyond him just being annoying or an a**hole: he’s out of control. He’s not in a healthy frame of mind, his coping mechanisms are nonexistent or shot to hell, and he’s idealizing Amanda to an unhealthy degree. I think it was telling when he told Amanda in this episode that he felt overwhelmed, and the only way he knew how to deal with that was by being an a**hole. A good therapist can teach him other options. And while he may have been right in that he never directly tried to physically harm anybody, Jun was also right in that it could have happened accidentally, even if she was being a self-righteous harpy about it. And in his frame of mind, any promises that things wouldn’t happen again certainly couldn’t be very convincing because he didn’t seem to have any ability to control it. So clearly, for the sake of everyone, he needed to go.

But how the others reacted also spoke volumes about them. You had those who tried to help him and seemed concerned for his well-being: Jack, Erika, and Amanda herself, who would have had every reason in the world not to care. You had those who at least tried to see it from all angles, like Nathan. And you had those who only saw it in terms of how it affected them, like Dana, Alison, and Jun. My respect and rooting value for these people rose and plummeted accordingly. I was particularly impressed with Amanda, who unfortunately more than likely will be rewarded for her efforts with a one-way ticket home. Perhaps it’s just as well though: she really doesn’t seem very into playing the game.

In any event, I hope Scott gets the help he desperately needs, and we’ll see what repercussions this will have in the game.

Brian James is an actor/writer/singer in New York City and the Assistant Editor of RealityNewsOnline. An avid reality show, Passions, early Ryan’s Hope, retro music, and Internet discussion board junkie, he can be found holding up "Will Snark For Food" signs in subway stations as he continues to search for that elusive "day job." Brian would like to stress that his writings are based solely on what he sees in each episode of each show, and realizes that there may sometimes be more to the story and that people may behave quite differently under normal circumstances. Comments and cybertomatoes accepted at BrianJamesRNO@earthlink.net.

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