Big Brother 4: Why Alison Lost

Beyond that, she flat-out lied to people when she didn’t need to. When Robert asked her, in the first part of the final HOH competition, if they could strike a deal, she said she was 99% certain she would take him. Baloney. She was 100% certain that she would not take him and tried to hedge. She knew she could outlast him, so why not just tell him that they should let it play out and see how it goes?

Situations and lies like this pervaded her entire game. By always telling people she was on their side, somebody was always getting stabbed in the back – and they remembered.

Let’s look at the votes. We all knew that there was no way Dana would vote for Alison. Alison could have been up against Atilla the Hun and Dana would still not have voted for her. To some extent, that’s Alison’s fault for making it personal. She ignored the fact that she would need the jurors’ votes at the end, and only concentrated on what was good for her at that time (or what she thought was good for her at that time). It was also pretty obvious that Justin wouldn’t vote for Alison – not just because he is sleeping with Dana now, but also because she kissed up to him (literally, in some cases) and then stabbed him in the back.

It was fairly obvious that Jee would vote for Jun as well, because he still seems to have some feelings towards her and also because she kept instilling in him that she was protecting him in the game. Alison, of course, was just plain nasty and helped thwart him at almost every turn.

I’m honestly not sure why Jack voted for Jun. We didn’t see enough of his thought process, because the producers were intent on making us think he would be casting his vote for Alison, as we saw him defend her gameplay. I do think that if you go based solely on gameplay, Alison deserved a vote, but obviously Jack saw things differently. Certainly, Alison did nothing while he was in the house to indicate she was thinking about keeping his vote on her side at the end.

I’m similarly confused about Erika’s vote. Alison really did have no choice at the end but to evict her. Keeping her around would have likely led to a 7-0 vote and no chance to convince the jury otherwise. But, once again, Alison had flat-out promised Erika that she would be keeping her around. Then she broke that promise. It’s another case of Alison making too many promises to too many people when it wasn’t necessary.

And, as discussed earlier, the same is true of Rob.

To put it in terms of my regular article on what Survivor contestants should have learned, Alison simply plotted and schemed too much. That’s not the only rule she violated, of course. She also let her emotions become visible by not pretending to be nice. When you put these two together in a package like Alison, it spells doom.

The jury was not happy with the choice they had to make. Alison was the greater of two evils. She played in a manner that got her to the final two, but at the same time lost her the respect of the jury. They didn’t need to see her Diary Room sessions to know how nasty she had been (although they did get to see them after voting and it only served to magnify their feelings). Alison played for the final two – cutting down everybody who stood in her path and not being shy about it. She indeed did make it to the final two, but that’s as far as she got – second place. When you play for the final two without any regard for how the jury will see you, it’s unlikely that you will make it to #1. That is why Alison lost.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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