Living in the Big Brother house is a stressful situation, so it's no surprise that houseguests frequently wind up at the end of their emotional ropes. What follows is a list of the most memorable meltdowns in Big Brother history -- not merely bad fights (everyone on the show fights once in a while), but occasions where someone appeared to truly take leave of their senses.

10. Monica, Season Two: Monica was the first example of what has become a Big Brother staple: the houseguest who is so nondescript that the others don't get around to evicting her until the very end of the season. She rarely had much to say or do, but that changed dramatically when she erupted in an mostly incomprehensible rant after her best friend in the house, Krista, was voted out -- the tirade that first introduced the expression "It's ON!" to the lingo of BB.

9. Joshuah, Season Nine: He seemed to harbor the ambition of following in the footsteps of Dick, down to his stated goal of haranguing women (and all his targets were women) to knock them off stride. His crowning achievement came when the producers ended up giving the targets of his attacks a restraining order against him, something even Dick had never managed. Most gay men on Big Brother slip easily into the role of confidant to the women in the house, but Joshuah's dislike of the female sex was pathological.

8. Jen, Season Eight: Jen bore weeks of verbal assaults from Dick with an astonishingly even temper, but push anyone hard enough and long enough and you'll see them crack. When she was finally nearing the end of her time on the show, she violated the food rules she had agreed to earlier, and then broke into Dick's cigarette stash and destroyed them. Many of her fans enjoyed this mild revenge, but it was nonetheless all emotion, no strategy.

7. Danielle, Season Seven: If Big Brother has ever had a scene that worked have worked beautifully as a silent movie, it came during the all-star season when a frazzled Danielle tried to gain entrance to the Head of Household room, and stood there ringing the doorbell continually for several minutes while Erika, Mike Boogie, and Will tried not to crack up on the other side.

6. Howie, Season Six: Once Howie's alliance was outnumbered for good (in part because of his own mistakes), the previously harmless perv decided to take out his frustrations on his most emotionally vulnerable opponent, April. His haranguing of her lasted for most of a week and while much of it qualified as both accurate and fun to watch, it had little to do with the game and everything to do with giving free rein to his rage.

5. Shannon, Season Two: After riding high in the saddle for the early part of her season, Shannon found herself nominated once the power slipped from the grasp of her alliance. Her response was to take the toothbrush belonging to Hardy, who had nominated her, and scrub the toilet with it. Fortunately for Hardy, Big Brother forced Shannon to make up a cover story to explain to him how his toothbrush had wound up out of commission.

4. Scott, Season Four: None of the houseguests who had ex-significant others in the house were happy to see them there, but Scott had more trouble adjusting than anyone else. Driven to distraction by the presence of former sweetie Amanda, he began throwing furniture around one night early in the season, and capped everything by confessing to his bewildered fellow houseguests that he had a venereal disease. Within a few hours, Scott had been pulled from the game by the powers that be, for his own good and the good of everyone else.

3. Nakomis, Season Five: On the verge of getting evicted, and near the end of a season that saw her introduced to "Cowboy," her Cro-Magnon half-brother, the previously calm waitress erupted in tears one drunken evening and began screaming out her grievances. It was an uncomfortable moment because unlike most such rants that are directed at enemies in the house, Nakomis's issues were with Big Brother itself.

2. George, Season One: The Chicken George meltdown was not one moment of explosion; it was closer to what we saw from Jack Nicholson in The Shining: a man slowly going nuts under isolation. As the weeks passed, he began referring to himself in the third person, and came up with the idea that the point of the game was for everyone to walk out of the house together, in order to prove that money was unimportant. By the time he was evicted while wearing a toga and after having bleached his hair, no one was surprised and everyone was relieved.

1. Dick, Season Eight: Many of Dick's tirades had a strategic purpose and did not represent a true loss of control, but the sheer pleasure he took in venom might represent a meltdown that began at birth. If I had to pick just one tantrum, it would be the early morning wake-up call that consisted of Dick banging on pots and screaming vicious insults at his enemies in the house. While there was an ostensible game reason for all this (he needed to win the veto and was trying to throw the others off balance), it was another example of someone not on speaking terms with mental health.

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