Posted by I.A.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the female coterie on BB10, as I will freely admit that is the gender of particular interest for me. On the face of it, there's not as much eye candy as some past seasons, but with exceptions like last season's Jen, the eye candy doesn't always bring it gamewise.

It's irresistible to try to draw conclusions about cast members based on preseason biographies and the little bits of interviews that get released, though my conclusions haven't amounted to much lately. Last year I dismissed Dick on the basis of his dorky promo photo and his age, and let's face it, none of us saw Adam coming. But I have to say something, and I'll start with the guys since they're on a three-season BB winning streak.

I am amused by the note in Brian's CBS biography that "he has worked as an investment banker, an international military recruiter and a snowboarder." That's a segue not often seen in life. And I can see why he did not make a career of the Air Force, which has slowly been phasing out its snowboarding unit since the end of the Cold War (rimshot). And I don't know exactly what to make of a man who says his ideal political job would be vice president. No one has ever felt that way, least of all our vice presidents. Let me guess: his favorite Big Brother houseguests have been Ivette, Cowboy, and Nicole? On the face of it, he seems to be a rare example of a young and good looking male houseguest who isn't putting forth a pose of ridiculous cockiness. I'm sure there's something horrible I'm missing here.

One thing I'm not really looking forward to this season is the potential for fights on the various Big Brother sites relating to politics, given that people tend to feel strongly on such subjects and given that some of the houseguests seem to have been cast at least in part based on a hope that they might throw off some partisan sparks. This brings me to Dan, the self-described conservative Catholic schoolteacher who had his bags packed to leave America had Hillary Clinton won the White House. Hillary's loss is BB's gain...maybe. This guy's voice reminds me a little bit of Christopher Walken's, which could be amusing over the long haul. We'll see if Dan is savvy enough to know that too much unsolicited offering up of your opinions is rarely a good thing on Big Brother, unless you're Dick with 2 votes eternally in your hip pocket. Major concerns are his ability to get along with women, and whether the need to uphold a certain image as a teacher will make him too inhibited at key moments. Someone who is 24 can't afford to be damaging a decent career. This isn't Gerry of BB3 we're talking about here.

Speaking of which, Gerry was one of the original Grand Old Men of BB, a venerable post held by the likes of Chicken George, Kent, Jack, George again doing the Grover Cleveland thing, and of course Dick. It would be a stretch to say Gerry was ever a fan favorite, though his early morning puttering about the pool was probably my favorite long term display of existential feeds angst ever. Jerry, on the other hand, is almost certainly going to be a big hit unless he turns out to be Grandpa Simpson. He says he has watched all the feeds, but since he's also an ex-Marine I suspect he didn't learn many new words, even from Dick. He is talking up a strategy called "the X Factor," involving the two first Heads of Household and himself. If Jerry has really watched the show, he ought to know that more often than not, the first two HoHs tend to be rivals rather than allies. But my guess is that even if Jerry isn't all that savvy in the ways of BB, he is going to last a while on the show (Kent, Jack, and George all got at least to mid-game)--but not too far because he would be an enormously sympathetic figure before the jury. He seems like an all-around decent sort, someone who might be interesting to feedwatchers because he'll simply have different frames of reference than anyone who has ever appeared on BB before. Tentative props to casting for this choice.

Jessie: now here's another one who wants to be the damn vice president. Do they have some kind of funeral fetish? There have been some workout warriors in the house before, Hardy of BB2 coming to mind first, but Jessie seems to be the most serious bodybuilder they have ever had, and I will leave it to the female contingent to judge whether or not he's doing it for them. He's still a kid, though, and not too far removed from Iowa, and I can see him letting the situation go to his head, especially if he has multiple women competing for him in a closed environment. I wonder how he's going to do if he ever has to go on slop, or whatever the gag diet is this season. I'm not getting much of a sense that he's going to do well; he's too young to be a leader and might get easily played by a woman with serious game.

I'm predisposed to have some issues with Memphis, beginning with the fact that he calls himself "Memphis" rather than going by his given name of Robert. Also, he refers to himself as a "mixologist," which is a pretentious twit bartender would call himself (I'm a pretentious twit and an ex-bartender, and even I don't use that term). He brags about being a hustler, but I'm not sure a true hustler would need to brag about it. Memphis at least has the self-awareness to realize he could have some problems with women, and I would tend to agree he seems like the ex-boyfriend everyone has had at some point. I suppose it's possible he's a good enough con man to be able to put himself at the center of things, but he's in an environment where trust is in short supply. I tend to think he's not a major contender.

Ollie is a preacher's kid in the Big Brother house, which is the ultimate in "could go either way." He apparently doesn't drink, smoke, or curse, but his interview segments reveal that he's been making up for lost time with the ladies. Lucky them. He seems like sort of an old-young guy--comes across as older than 27. It must be that goofball cap. Ollie (whose name is Bryan--they presumably asked him to use the last name since it would be better than calling Brian "Hart") seems like a basic guy's guy, whose main interests and sports and women and who knows better than to try to push religious views on the others (I certainly don't want another "Team God" this year). He seems OK--decent competitor and not any more obnoxious than the norm. That's all we can ask.

It's already a cliche to use "gay cowboy" to describe Steven, but when someone seems happy with billing himself as a cliche, what more can we do? (I really want this guy to not be wearing the damn hat everywhere in there.) He's a bit older than most of the gay BBers in the past, which could be a positive. He admits off the bat he can have a problem with social anxiety, an unusual thing for someone to admit going into the house. Anoher cultural cliche is the gay man who feels at home in groups of women (and vice versa), and it's true that in the past, gay men on BB have tended to wind up in women-led alliances, or at least outside the major male alliance. While Steven isn't old at 35, he's the oldest man in the house other than Jerry; that plus his sexuality could leave him outside the Alpha male power structure that we often see develop early on. Otherwise I can't really get a decent fix on what sort of player he might be, although there don't seem to be any issues with arrogance. Yet.

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