Big Brother 5: Why Will Lost

For weeks, Will had been playing the game under the radar. He was always a core member of the “We Like Boys” alliance, but somehow never seemed to be a member of the opposing alliance while the Horsemen/Van Boys held power in the house. Once that alliance was decimated, though, suddenly he found himself not only high on the radar, but right out the door! What happened to cause such a sudden change in his fortunes? Why did Will lose?

As we always do, we will look back and answer this question by going through What Big Brother 5 Houseguests Should Have Learned to see what Will did right and what he did wrong. And also as we always do, we will start with the first and most important rule: Scheme and plot. Will did a fine job in this area through almost his entire stay in the Big Brother house. He made an alliance within the first few days with Karen. That alliance expanded to include all the women in the house except Holly. Within that alliance, Will often seemed to be the brains but managed to stay behind the scenes. When the Horsemen/Van Boys were picking targets, they kept aiming at other members of the opposing alliance – but never Will.

Will went even further, trying to make nice with Jase on various occasions in case Jase’s alliance stayed in power. As Will mentioned in his interview with me, his plan was to “attempt to play both sides.” He was doing a fine job of it.

That is, he was doing a fine job of it until one alliance completely disintegrated. Holly was gone, Scott was gone, Jase was gone, Drew was converted, Michael was left hanging. The opposing alliance was gone and the game had really barely begun. So what does it mean when there is essentially just one alliance left at this stage of Big Brother? It means that alliance will collapse in on itself – and that’s exactly what happened.

Some will say it didn’t have to happen immediately. The “We Like Boys” alliance could have picked off Marvin, Michael, and Drew first. But there were problems with that. Drew obviously aligned himself with Diane, and the two of them were secretly allies with Adria and Natalie. Nakomis told Adria that she wouldn’t nominate Michael – something that Nakomis later said meant she wouldn’t if she were HOH, but didn’t mean it was a vote not to, a hair-splitting statement that was apparently lost on Adria (and myself, for that matter). And besides, Michael ingratiated himself with Adria and Natalie.

So the alliance was breaking down – it had to. Will knew it as well, since he talked about how the twins would have to be targeted. But one of the twins got the jump on him. Strategically, Adria made the right move by nominating Will – though I think she should have nominated Karen alongside him (if you’re declaring war on another alliance, you might as well go all-out rather than taking a chance that the alliance will survive intact). But then Adria blinked. She was not prepared emotionally for the backlash she would receive due to her nominations, and she did not handle them well. This is about Will, not Adria, so I won’t go into detail here (I have a feeling I’ll be writing “Why Adria Lost” soon enough – like maybe a week), but Will was given a new opportunity, and he chose not to take it.

Rather than using Adria’s sign of weakness to go to her and say, “It’s okay. I understand. You needed somebody to put up against Marvin,” Will responded by turning nasty. What we saw of him in his last week was nothing like what we saw beforehand. And even if he only called Adria and Natalie names behind their backs, the attitude behind it was clearly evident. He missed out on a perfect opportunity to counter Adria’s move with some scheming of his own.

OK, we’ve talked about things related to the first rule for long enough – what about the second rule? Let’s look at the first part: Don’t scheme and plot too much. Had Will done so? It’s kind of a gray area. Will had an alliance with Karen and Nakomis. He had talked about targeting Adria and Natalie. He told Adria that Drew was on his hit list (obviously not knowing that Drew is part of their alliance). But if he hadn’t been making those plans, I likely would have criticized him for not having any backup strategies. So in the end, I would say no, he didn’t plot and scheme too much.

However, he did fail to keep his scheming secret. Although he apparently thought his sub-alliance with Karen and Nakomis was a big secret, it seems that everybody knew about it. And that was what made him a target. If Adria had not known there was a separate sub-alliance in the house, she wouldn’t have had any reason to go after the leader of that group. But she did.

Will was doing pretty well in the third rule, specifically pretending to be nice, until it mattered most. He was even nice to Jase’s face while hating him privately. But when Adria nominated him, that changed completely. As mentioned previously, his attitude was evident, and his comments got nasty. Quoting from the rule: “remember that the others are playing a game as well. This means you will almost certainly be nominated – deal with it. … Being nominated is not the end of the world, if you play your cards right.” But Will didn’t play his cards right – in fact, I can’t think of a possible way that he could have played them more wrong, short of using Adria’s toothbrush to clean the toilet. As I noted above, if he had gritted his teeth and pretended to still be nice, he could have taken advantage of Adria’s moments of weakness over the course of the week to convince her to vote out Marvin instead of himself. Instead, through his behavior he pretty much guaranteed that he would be the first jury member.