The Brigade of Fools is running the Big Brother 12 house, which is great for them and bad for us. This week ran as predictably as clockwork. After Lane won the HoH, Ragan had to win the Power of Veto or he’d go home. He didn’t win, which means Ragan was forced to live for several days in the house without hope and those of us who follow along at home were forced to endure one of the dullest weeks ever.

The PoV competition is the standard Otev challenge where the HGs need to find a CD that answers a very simple riddle and then run back up a slope. It’s basically blind luck combined with physical strength, and as Ragan revealed on the live feeds but not on the episode, he knew this would be the competition and that he would have no chance at it. He also spent most of his time studying the faces for the morphing challenge, which he easily would’ve won.

He does surprisingly well, making the final round, but Enzo beats him and ruins any chance of real dramatic tension for the rest of the season. Even Lane putting up Hayden instead of Britney doesn’t matter because Ragan still needs two votes (Britney and Enzo, Britney and Lane or Enzo and Lane) to stay. And that’s not happening.

After losing Ragan does act a little bitchy and tosses his CD gently against the singing clam and it ricochets, hitting Enzo. Hayden takes the opportunity to call him a sore loser. He’s not wrong, but he’s also a total d-bag because Enzo didn’t need to win the Veto to survive and Ragan did. If Hayden were ever in a position where he was actually in danger of leaving, he might feel differently.

The Brigade is a lot like Jeremy Piven on Entourage. Everyone loved it early on because it was cool, but now the schtick is getting old and we’re so over it. Listening to Enzo speak like a mentally retarded Noel Coward makes me want to throw myself down the stairs like Britney during Rachel’s HoH.

Ragan goes into a catatonic state of hopelessness, which isn’t sour grapes, it’s just objective fact. I feel really bad for him because he realizes that he can’t use logic, reason or anything else to stay, he’s 100 percent gone and that’s it. Making it worse is the way Enzo gloats and rubs his win in everyone’s face. If Ragan is a sore loser, then he, and the rest of the Brigade, are sore winners.

Even idiotic punishments caused by Pandora’s Box like sock puppets and dancing can’t cure the depression of a dull week. The problem is that, if you only watch this episode, you might think it was interesting, but that’s just because there’s the possibility of Britney going up and being backdoored by Hayden and Enzo to separate her from Lane. But that doesn’t happen, because Lane is at least smart enough to know that his friends would get rid of Britney if she’s nominated, leaving him no shot, so Ragan is left against Hayden.

Ragan, like me, is a strongly rational and logical human being. He is able to see that if Hayden stays, he will win the $500,000 and that for Enzo, Lane and Britney, evicting Hayden and keeping Ragan is the statistically beneficial thing to do. To her credit, Britney also sees this and tells Lane that Hayden would beat him. While Lane seems receptive on TV, that’s just the editing, because he’s not at all.

The truth is that Lane, Enzo and Hayden are so idiotically obsessed with making the final 3 that none of them seems to care about actually winning (except Hayden, who is playing the Brigade like a fiddle). Reason cannot triumph against a bunch of dodos.

The sole redeeming part is that Lane would much rather be in the finale with Britney, which is hilarious because the Brigade was worried that Matt was tooo close to his side alliance with Ragan, yet Matt campaigned against Ragan and Lane won’t even nominate Britney. I guess Hayden and Enzo are the real dodos for not seeing that it wasn’t Matt they needed to worry about.

(Image courtesy of CBS)

John Kubicek

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire DiariesSupernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.