Big Brother 5: Why Holly Lost

The twists and turns just keep coming on Big Brother 5! When Drew, a member of the Four Horsemen, won HOH last week, who would have thought that he would nominate an ally, Holly, as the target and a member of the opposing alliance, Nokomis, as the decoy? Of course, we all know how well the decoy strategy usually works, so it looked like it might spell the end for Nokomis. But then she won the Veto and took herself off the block (she’s no Marcellas, after all!). So Drew put Adria, one of the people he’s closest to in the house, on the block in her place! It looked like Adria was a dead woman walking. But then, everything changed again and Holly was voted out almost unanimously. What happened to turn things around so much? Why did Holly lose?

As always, we will look at the series of events that led to Holly’s eviction through the lens of What Big Brother 5 Houseguests Should Have Learned. We will look at what Holly did right and what she did wrong throughout her stay, and how they affected her ability to stay in the game.

The first rule, of course, is to scheme and plot. It’s not easy to figure out exactly how much of this Holly actually did. There have been some who thought that Holly was playing a role the entire game – and playing Jase and Scott, for that matter. But in the end, I think it all turned out that she wasn’t playing at all – that was the real Holly, as hard as it might be to believe.

That Holly did get in good with Jase, who was a member of the alliance that seemed to control the house. But it never seemed to be a strategic matter with her and Jase. In addition, she was never formally part of Jase’s alliance, as can be seen by the face that Jase’s alliance-mate nominated her and all of Jase’s alliance other than Jase himself helped to vote her off! That kind of blows one of the main points of the first rule: “The most important attribute of an alliance is that the people in it won't nominate you or vote for you to leave.”

The second rule is to not scheme and plot too much, and to keep your scheming secret. Holly never had to worry about scheming too much, because as we just discussed, she never really schemed a whole lot to begin with. But it was obvious to one and all where her loyalties were. Holly never kept any secrets. If Lori told her something, she ran over to tell Jase, who then blabbed to everybody. If Scott said something, she ran over to tell Jase, who then blabbed to everybody. See a pattern? Nobody would trust her or even attempt to form a new alliance with her because they knew exactly where anything they said would end up. If you wanted to get information to Jase as fast as possible, you didn’t need a telegraph or a telephone, just tell-a-Holly.

This was a blatant violation of the part of the rule that talks about couples: “Let’s face it, open partnerships like these are just begging to be split up. In the past, the couples have been split by nominating both members. This time, it didn’t come down to that – possibly because nobody of the opposing alliance had gotten HOH yet. However, the fact that Jase and Holly were a couple affected both alliances. Three of the Four Horsemen thought that Holly was pulling a Yoko Ono and breaking up the group. The opposing alliance saw her as a dedicated vote on Jase’s side. It was bad news for Holly all around.

There is still a lot about Holly’s behavior that remains unexplained – and some of it goes to how well she did in abiding by the third rule. Specifically, did she do a decent job of pretending to be nice and acting like an adult? In short, no. She had the most bizarre stories, which nobody could believe. She repeated stories told by others as if they were from her own life. She was annoying as hell. There is a reason the vote was so strongly against her, and it wasn’t just strategy. People wanted Holly gone! They couldn’t stand living with her any longer.

The fourth rule says not to let emotions control you. Since we’ve already discussed Holly being in a couple with Jase, we’ve partially addressed that. But there were other emotional problems as well. It often seemed that Holly needed to be the center of attention (see the discussion about her stories). In at least some way, I’m sure she enjoyed the fact that Scott and Jase fought over her. Plus, when she got angry, she didn’t keep it inside – as we saw when she got mad at Diane for not giving her a pity hug. Is it any wonder that Diane said good riddance at Holly’s departure?

You might think that Holly at least did okay in the area of not being too much of a threat. If you did think that, though, you’d be wrong. Holly was a threat to the Four Horsemen because of her Yoko Ono-like behavior. Drew saw it first and eventually convinced the others (sans Jase). At some point, Jase may realize it too. After all, Will and Shannon were an item in Big Brother 2. Shannon was voted off and Will went on to win. Lisa and Eric were an item in Big Brother 3. Eric was voted off (and Lisa intelligently didn’t vote to bring him back) and Lisa went on to win. Once the distraction is eliminated, the other partner can concentrate on the game again. I expect that’s what we’ll see with Jase, and that’s what the Horsemen needed from him.

The sixth rule is to not be lazy or show your bad habits. Holly’s main bad habits have already been discussed, so we’ll move on. Seventh is to be flexible. I’m not sure Holly ever really had much of a strategy (she told Julie Chen it was to befriend the older people – oh, that’s a good one), so she didn’t have much to be flexible with. Again, not an issue here.

The final rule is to trust almost nobody. Holly, while being a blabber-mouth herself, trusted a number of other people. She told secrets to Diane – Diane! She told Jase stuff that he turned around and brought out in the open. She talked to Scott about Jase, and it went right back to him. And she trusted Jase to save her. None of these worked out.

At the beginning of this article, I said we’d look at what Holly did right and what she did wrong. As we can see, though, she didn’t do much right. Holly came in saying she’d play the role of the dumb blonde. I would suggest that she played it to perfection. Well, I would actually suggest she wasn’t playing at all. Her strategy was pretty much nonexistent. She focused on her relationship with Jase despite the fact that we know Big Brother couples are doomed from the start. She rubbed people the wrong way. She acted as a threat to the ruling alliance. All of these actions pointed towards one ending: Eviction. That is why Holly lost.

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

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! And take a look at the rest of the site. You can see all our BB5 articles at Big Brother 5 page and be sure to check out our Amazing Race 5 page as well; and don't miss The Reality TV Hall of Shame. You can even buy reality show stuff at our Reality TV Store!

For more news about reality TV, be sure to check out SirLinksALot and Reality TV Fever!