Big Brother 3: Why Tonya Lost

Tonya was just supposed to be a pawn - a popular player to put up against Josh so he would easily be voted out. Or at least that's what she was led to believe. Marcellas, the Head of Household (HoH) who was so opposed to deceitful behavior, lied to Tonya. While he didn't want her out of the house as much as he wanted Josh out, he didn't exactly treasure the time he had spent with her. Still, Josh was supposed to go, so why did Tonya lose?

Despite being told she was safe, Tonya never had the full support of the alliance, nor even of the non-alliance members. Only Gerry, Chiara, and Lisa voted to evict Josh. For Gerry, the vote was obvious. But what about the others?

Chiara and Lisa felt closer to Tonya than to Josh. Also, since there had been some prior discussion about the Group of Six splitting into men vs. women after all the non-alliance members had been eliminated, it would make sense for Chiara and Lisa to want to keep Tonya. Without her, they are now outnumbered within their alliance (although past changes in the "six" show that it's a fluctuating alliance anyway). So if they had to lose an alliance member, they would rather lose Josh - both for personal and strategic reasons.

Similarly, Eric and Roddy would rather keep Josh. I'm not sure either of them feels particularly close to Josh, but their discussions of strategy show a bit of what they were thinking. One major point seems to be that they feel safer with Josh around. After all, they figure a non-alliance member would rather put up Josh for later nominations than one of them. They may be right. But the longer that continues, the greater the chance that Josh will squeak through and pull a Will.

It's not completely clear why Jason voted to keep Josh. In fact, to my mind, it's not clear at all. He doesn't seem to have been fooled by Josh, but maybe he thinks he has Josh fooled? I dunno.

It is, on the other hand, completely clear why Amy voted against Tonya. They had their little fight and, to compound that, she made a deal with Josh to try to get rid of Chiara. Amy thinks she has a friend in Josh. I think Amy is being stupid. We'll see who's right.

And so we get to Danielle. With Danielle, it's almost impossible to figure out what she's thinking, because she tells so many different stories. Indeed, this makes it that much more interesting as to why she is trying so hard to get rid of Gerry, about whom she claims pretty much this very thing. But that's not part of this particular article. Danielle seems to want Josh around. She tried to convince Marcellas to let her veto Josh, but he would have none of it. So she cast her vote against Tonya and helped to keep Josh around anyway. (Indeed, if she had voted for Josh, it would have come down to a tiebreaker and Marcellas would almost certainly have voted to boot Josh.) It seems she thinks she can control Josh somehow, or at least forge some sort of bond with him. Good luck there.

So looking at all the reasons people voted against Tonya, it seems that most of them were strategic in nature and were for keeping Josh around rather than against Tonya herself. Josh is seen as somebody who can take the pressure off of others, who can be the obnoxious front man who takes the hit while the quieter alliance members continue their work in the background. He may already be seen as somebody who is easy to beat at the end.

The Big Brother 3 houseguests have shown that they do not learn from history. Will any of them wake up and figure out that this is exactly how Will won Big Brother 2? I'm not counting on it. And that lack of understanding on their part is why Tonya lost.