Monday night's show will go down in "Big Brother" history as the episode that, quietly and without fanfare, revealed the seemingly perfect Miss Jamie's fatal flaw: Vanity, same as everybody else. The thrill of being loved by strangers in return for nothing.

Faithful readers, we hear your protests. It is true she doesn't hop all over everyone like a tie-dyed, Brillo-haired monkey, or publicly wallow in the slop bucket of her marriage, or boast about her sex stats, or indulge in the harmless activity of flashing one's private parts every chance she gets.

Yet, in the end, you could take the girl out of the beauty pageant, but you couldn't take the beauty pageant out of the girl. Jamie is a beauty queen and wants, needs, to be worshipped like one: On a pedestal, from afar, tears painting black lines down her face as a rhinestone crown slides and shifts fetchingly on her big, fat, swollen head.

It's all about the attention.

The show starts out with Jamie and Curtis having a heart to heart. Jamie says she's disgusted at Karen's two-faced back-stabbing. Two-faced back-stabbing, of course, is usually considered a "turn-off" by pageant participants.

"It's so tough to see someone who's friends with people, and then have them totally go off on them," she tells Curtis, the indistinct lawyer. "It's just a shocking thing to witness -- it's on TV!"

Curtis and Jamie share a hearty laugh over this. They know a little something about image management and maintaining appearances -- Jamie because she trades on it and Curtis because surely he's read a book or attended a seminar.

Curtis: "You would think the camera would keep you more honest."

You would think it would keep them more quiet. But "Big Brother" has defied all expectations thus far.

The pair are talking about banishment -- on Wednesday each resident has to nominate two people to get evicted from the house. (The audience then spends the next week voting one of the two out for good.)

"It's really easy when I see such blatant ugliness," continues Jamie, talking about her upcoming nomination of Karen. "It just doesn't have a part here, even though it's to my disadvantage. When someone's so quick to judge and talk poorly about other people ..."

"You can get away with it for a little while," says Curtis, "but it catches up to you."

And he should know.

Meanwhile, somehow, Karen is concerned that she hasn't gotten any letters from her kids. Brittany, her electric-red hair ablaze, tries to allay her fears by applying intense pressure to her wrist.

"Why would they not, if that's what they said they were going to do?" Karen asks.

Hmm. Maybe it's that their father has transferred them to another state. Or that they've entered the public-humiliation protection program. Or that the unrelenting derision of their peers has forced them underground.

Or that they are too busy plotting to kill her.

"You know your kids love you," says Brittany.

"Oh, I do, I do," says Karen. Almost as if she means it.

But let us leave Pathetic Woman and her spunky sidekick Froot Loop aside for a moment and rejoin our heroine as she reveals more of herself than she ever did in any swimsuit competition.

"Eddie likes me," Jamie whispers to George -- in front of Eddie, of course -- "but he's mean to me."