In this year's cast of "Big Brother 2" houseguests, Eddie would look like a choirboy.

"Big Brother" -- for those who don't live in Europe, where all incarnations of the show have been smash hits -- is the reality show in which 10 or 12 strangers are put in a furnished house whose most important furnishings are the cameras and microphones that follow them everywhere, 24 hours a day. They are sealed off from the outside world entirely, save for intermittent contact from the producers and private on-camera briefings in the "diary room."

The results are edited down for three hourly weekly shows and also shown live, 24 hours a day, over the Internet (except when the producers cut the feed away). The results are meant to be a real-life soap opera.

	Print story E-mail story

"Big Brother" the first was not exactly a ratings flop, but it did become something of a punch line for televised boredom. Columnist after columnist said the show was dull, the contestants were boring, very little that happened was sexy and the audience voted out the only sexual provocateur in the second round. Everyone tried too hard to get along.

CBS and the show's producers took the criticisms of their summer reality filler to heart. So this year, we've been given a slate of 12 people apparently chosen for their willingness to fight, take their clothes off and get funky. (And in a key logistical change, the housemates themselves vote themselves off the show; the viewing public, the network discovered last year, targeted the houseguests who caused conflict and strife.)

And the new volatile mix has paid off in unanticipated ways: Less than a week into the series, the network has actually expelled a player for being a physical threat to the others.

The ejectee was Justin, a 26-year-old bartender from New Jersey who rarely covered his pectorals with a shirt and had treated the housemates to more than a week of disturbing comments and actions.

The players entered the house on Sunday, July 1, and the show began broadcasting that Thursday. The first shows are full of Justin's antics: He had laughingly expressed violent sexual fantasies about at least two of the women in the house: One, he told two of his new friends, he would trick into performing oral sex on him in the house, so he could ejaculate, and then spit, in her face and walk out. The other, he fancied raping after the show and throwing to the gators. At another point, he smashed the house's chess pieces; he denied another accusation, that he had smashed some candy on his chest and put it back in the dish, saying it was a joke, but it was widely believed.

And several of his roommates saw Justin pissing on one of the house's windows.

CBS settled for broadcasting an incident in which Justin angered 46-year-old mortgage banker Kent by taking Kent's pillow. When Kent loudly objected, Justin sneeringly took a couch pillow to use in his own bed instead. It wasn't much of a skirmish, but it did show the younger man's attitude.

Even the housemates who didn't find any of this funny told each other, afterwards, that he was just joking and doing a tough-guy act.

The producers moved on Justin after a scene shown on the Internet feed late Tuesday night, a night that had featured a lot of beer and even more disruption. Krista, a 28-year-old waitress and divorced mother from Louisiana, was bantering with the bartender in the kitchen, lying on a countertop as he complained about how she's been flirting with him but hadn't been putting out.

She laughed as he said, "You're leaving me hanging for ten days! Not for nothing." She kept laughing when, after they'd kissed, he asked if she'd get upset if he broke something over her head.

And she still was smiling when he pulled out a large kitchen knife and said, "Would you get upset if I killed you?" Holding the knife an inch from her throat, he said, "Would you get upset? Tell me. Would you get upset?"

"No. Go ahead. Do it," Krista said, grinning.

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics