Big Brother recap: Are you talking to Nick?

The Big Brother house now has no beefcake left. Admittedly, there wasn't much to begin with (and it took some time before Mike did enough to warrant some screen time) but the prime ogling is over for this season. By the end of last night's episode, however, we might not care so much.

CBS promised in the preview ads, "The most explosive Big Brother" and it was a very ugly episode. After this, I'll be struggling to miss Nick, even the sight of his muscular torso as he became far less appealing on several different levels during his exit. However, that doesn't mean we can't take one last look:

One of the Nick's first actions after getting nominated is to take a pair of clippers to his scalp and shave off most of his hair. I wonder if he considered that the last time the segment of the public which enjoyed someone buzzing off their hair out of stress, we were snickering at pictures of, well...

There was something about the new do, the really bad facial hair, and the constantly furious look in Nick's eyes that made people wait for him to snap into a chorus of, "Are you talkin' to me?"

It's the facial hair that really seals it.

Nick did a lot of snapping, though. When Zach stepped into the backyard as Nick was discussing strategy with Eric and Dick, Nick brusquely shooed him away — leaving Zach to mutter a dejected, "Thought I was close to you, dude." After Danielle fails to pick a fight with Jen he barks out, "Shut up and get out of here. Shut up! Shut up!" I guess we did get a "You talking to me?" moment from Nick after all.

Nick's snapishness resulted in one of the season's few interesting exit interviews thus far. When the America's Player twist was revealed to him, there's a second where you can see an expression of total fury on his face before he forces a good-natured smile. "That's nifty." he reacts in a way that makes "nifty" sound like a code word someone trains themselves to use when they really want to let out a torrent of profanities.

Dick and Danielle were also easy to set off. Dick, still angry over the veto competition, went on a tirade about how Jen "used" Jameka to get vetoed from eviction, comparing her to Saddam Hussein — and CBS toned him down from what actually happened. Even toned down, he seems ready to really blow.

Jen, once more, brushed off his abuse. Later she has one of best bits of snark when she tells Danielle, "I'm so sorry you had to deal with him your whole life... I'm sure you're a really strong person, too — because, wow." If there were still a question if Jen were just playing dumb, I got my answer in that moment. Not only did she get to take a stab at Dick, but she sums up how their two-year estrangement came about. Genius. No, wait, Jenius.

I don't know if it's a new thing but Danielle has really been sounding like a cross between a Heather and Tracey Ullman's Francesca of late. Her reaction to Jen's burn/consolation, "Jen's a very rude, mean person. She goes out of her way to try and take stabs at me and put me down and try to put me down and she doesn't know or care what I've been through." Makes her sound like a character from a bad teen drama.

She also turns out to have the same buttons as her father. When she tried to launch a tirade at Jen, she is just as easily worked up by her failure to get Jen to show any hurt feelings and, getting louder and louder. She doesn't come off any better when she says in the Diary Room that "Kail looks like she's going to kill herself" with a giggle at the end.

Can you guess how Amber reacted to Nick's nomination? Can ya? Just guess.

Exactly. (And did you realize that LiveJournal is the second-greatest source for reality-TV animated gifs?) I like UK edition of Big Brother since it tends come off as a little more playful than cruel. While Julie Chen usually reminds me of a Bond villain when she announces new twists to the game, UK host Davina McCall comes off as a prankster. If this were the UK edition, I'd expect that we'd have seen a challenge by now where Amber were forced to watch a two hour reel of the sappiest McDonald's commercials and not cry, or else put the whole house on slop for the week.

The show's having some schadenfreudillarous fun with the flashbacks now. (And, of course, all the best parts of Big Brother begin with schadenfreude.) Someone decided to cut from a scene of Amber suggesting nominating Nick to Dustin with her telling him that Dustin, "brought your name up, but I didn't think he was going to put you up there." The scene is capped with a weepy "I love you so much" that, by now, sounds completely insincere.

I'd say, though, that this episode was as much about hair as it was about short tempered people losing it. Dustin was sporting a closely-cropped 'do (which really looks good on him), he also helped Eric get a new faux-hawk and he helped Nick clean-up his new 'do, as well. Has Dustin become the house hairstylist? Now that's an interesting role — I know in the past houseguests have tried to use cooking and cleaning as strategy, hairdresser could have a similar role, considering how chatty some people get during a haircut.

Overall, there wasn't a lot of Dustin this week, which he'd probably say is a good thing. In his HoH interview, Julie Chen asks if he regrets going for the prizes in last week's veto competition. Sensibly, he says he was fine risking the big prize to definitely get the little one, but he hasn't faced very much backlash thanks to Dick's tirades which have gotten everybody to forget about Dustin's trip to Barbados.

Here's a little tidbit of something the houseguests saw last night as they were hanging upside down in the HoH competition. It'll be interesting to see how that affects Sunday's episode. (LNC = the "late night crew" otherwise known as the Waffle Alliance.)