And, ultimately, he came back only (Krista told the others later) to kiss her briefly goodbye, before he was whisked away.

This was all on the Internet feeds; CBS will presumably show some edited version of the events on the next edition of the show, to be broadcast Thursday night. (In another dubious innovation, CBS is charging $20 to watch the RealPlayer Internet feeds this year, though anyone who already subscribes to a RealPlayer Gold Pass can access them.)

Justin's friends Will, Shannon and Mike have complained about his being removed without a chance to say goodbye to them, and Krista -- who apparently has told no one in the house about the knife play, leaving them to speculate that it was public urination or the chess-piece smashing that got Justin the boot -- dismisses any threat to her person.

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"He's my bud," she said fondly. "I'm still going to visit him in Jersey."

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Justin's untimely back-door departure was not, however, the most pyrotechnic event of the night, nor the one that will have the longest impact on the remaining houseguests. Instead, it was a blowup involving shambly Mike, single mom Autumn and a salacious remark about a banana.

This crew is taking its cue more from "Survivor" than from the first "Big Brother," forming alliances, deliberately misleading each other and building enmities from the first day in the house. More and more, the divisions seem to be hardening among class lines.

The four most gym-toned younger people in the house -- 30-year-old L.A. bar owner Mike, 28-year-old doctor Will, 29-year-old boat captain/realtor Shannon and the departed Justin -- had formed a tight group resented by some of the people outside it. (Meanwhile, Dr. Will has been guaranteeing himself plenty of television screen time by both romancing Shannon, and telling the diary room that he is a manipulator and "puppet master.")

On the other side are a slightly more down-home working group, embodied by Autumn, Nicole and Kent.

The protagonists of the blowout were Mike, representing the gym-toned in-crowd, and Autumn, a pretty but not-gym-toned 28-year-old single mom and aspiring singer from Texas, who'd been heard (by everyone) to bemoan that there were no black men in the house who would find her (size 6, but, somehow, "thick") looks attractive.

Various people, including Justin, had told Autumn Tuesday morning that Mike planned to seduce her as part of a Machiavellian scheme to get her to vote with his alliance. Autumn, after a night of hot-tubbing and beer, decided it would be a good idea to put Mike to the test. (She believed, she insisted later to anyone who would listen, that she had no choice but to prove he would go so low as to try to seduce her for an alliance vote.) Autumn invited Mike back to his room, a salacious remark about bananas was made, she told him off and stormed out, and both parties spent the next several hours agitatedly making their case as the aggrieved one in the situation.

The next day, the two's relationship devolved down into a shouting match. A house meeting was called and, at least on the surface, things were calmed down. Since then, civility has held; the net result seems, though, to be a solidified, deepened resentment toward the "silver spoons" -- Mike, Will, and Shannon -- by at least some of the down-home folk, and by muscular account-exec Hardy and Kent. (Kent, the middle-aged Tennessee banker, is pitched as the house bigot on the commercials. Sorry, gang, he's getting along swimmingly with gay housemate Bunky.) Those two behave more protectively toward the women, whom they see as more vulnerable.

Or, as Kent charmingly calls them, "the needy bitches." But this language is utterly unremarkable in this cast of housemates, and the women he's talking about take no offense. His tone, at least, is sympathetic.

And there's little enough sympathy to go around in the new, improved, unintriguing and unpalatable "Big Brother 2."

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