Big Brother 6: Why Ashlea Lost

It’s that time again – the summer has officially begun, because the first Big Brother houseguest has hit the pavement. For a change, there were no big plots, no “decoys,” and none of the usual nonsense that accompanies the first eviction. But the vote was nine to two, and one of those two was her secret partner, so it was a clear vote against Ashlea. What caused the house to side so strongly against her? Why did Ashlea lose?

As we have done for the past few years, we will answer that question by looking back at the blueprint for staying in the Big Brother house, What Big Brother 6 Houseguests Should Have Learned. By going through it step by step, we can find out just where Ashlea went wrong.

The first, and most important, rule is to scheme and plot. At the beginning stages of the game, it is especially important to get yourself into a safe position until you can plan your moves. As the rule notes, “From the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships. It can be difficult to know whom you can trust afer just a couple days … but if you don’t start fast, you’ll be watching from the comfort of your own living room like the rest of us.” So what happened? Kaysar, the other nominee, immediately went about trying to make alliances. Indeed, he was almost a bit too pushy about it, but he calmed down and pulled something together to at least get him past the first vote. Ashlea… didn’t. In fact, in her exit interview with Julie Chen, Ashlea said that she didn’t want to play too hard because then it might have backfired. Indeed, it might have (see Rule #2) – but she didn’t play nearly hard enough to have to worry about that!

Let’s start by looking at the reason Ashlea was nominated. HOH Rachel nominated the two people she said she didn’t really get to know. Now we could make the argument that Rachel has feet and could have walked up to Ashlea and Kaysar to get to know them. But like it or not, Rachel was the HOH, and people needed to make the effort to get on her good side. As the rule also notes, “The one thing you definitely do not want to do is isolate yourself somehow.” By not making the effort to get to know the HOH before nominations, they both essentially isolated themselves.

I also want to point out that the rule held true in another case: “The alliance based on an original grouping has been a starting point in almost every series.” It was again here as well, with the winning surfboard team creating a temporary alliance. Kaysar and Ashlea couldn’t do anything about being on the losing team, but they needed to try a bit harder to avoid being targeted. Once they were targeted, though, Kaysar made a specific guys’ alliance, while we really didn’t see much of Ashlea trying to make alliances in order to stick around past the first eviction.

This is a key point when we realize that Kaysar did a couple things to annoy people and make them think he was not trustworthy. If Ashlea could have formed her own alliance, if she could have schemed a little bit, if she would have given people a reason to vote for her, she might have had a shot. But she didn’t.

Obviously, then, Ashlea did okay on the second rule, right? Wrong. She didn’t scheme and plot too much, but she did make her “secret” partnership with Janelle known. The rule notes, “the key is to never let it be known who your partner is.” That didn’t last long with Ashlea and Janelle – they were one of the first partnerships to be “outed.” Then, when they pretty much gave up on saving Ashlea – a mistake in and of itself – they stopped even bothering to try to hide their familiarity with each other. If there had ever been any hope of Ashlea sticking around, she made sure that hope was eliminated.

The third rule says to pretend to be nice. This is where Ashlea had another major problem. When the houseguests were talking about Ashlea before voting, some of the things we heard were that she was obnoxious, she had to top everything others said, she thought she was prettier than anyone else, she was egocentric, she was high-maintenance, and she was high on herself. In live feed action, we heard many of the same things, such as Ivette saying that Ashlea was her worst nightmare, or April complaining that Ashlea just laid around in bed all day.

Also, it seems Ashlea created a bit too much drama in the house. For example, she shared a bed with Howie one night and then was complaining the next morning that he was grabbing her breast all night. Other houseguests tried to explain that he might have been asleep, but she had none of it and just cried and complained. Mind you, she didn’t actually get out of bed that night or say anything to Howie – she apparently would rather whine to others.

Another good indicator of how Ashlea behaved was seen in Janelle’s goodbye video. Janelle said Ashlea was evicted because she looked good in a bikini. Maybe she was kidding, but I actually don’t think so. These two seemed to feed each other’s delusions of grandeur, but the problem is that their attitude was obvious to the other houseguests as well.

The fourth rule says not to let your emotions control you. This didn’t seem to be too much of a problem with Ashlea, except that once she determined she was going to lose, she just decided to hang out with Janelle and to heck with the game. That was an emotional, not rational, decision, and as already discussed, it meant she really had no chance to fight back.

Fifth is to not be too much of a threat. Do I really need to note that this wasn’t an issue?

The sixth rule is to be flexible. Ashlea was definitely not. She was there with her pal Janelle, and they seemed to be acting just like they would in a normal situation. If that meant not socializing with people they didn’t consider their friends, well, that’s just the way it was. The problem is that Big Brother is a social game. Ashlea’s lack of social skills caused her to get nominated, then they played a further role in her eviction.

Seventh is to trust nobody. This wasn’t really an issue here because Ashlea never had much of a bond to be broken, except with Janelle. So we’ll move to the eighth rule, which says not to be lazy or show bad habits. Several people complained that Ashlea was not carrying her own load of the work, and we already mentioned April’s comment about her not getting out of bed. It wasn’t the deciding factor, but behavior like that can certainly play a role in the decision-making process.

In her goodbye video to Ashlea, Janelle said that it was not at all Ashlea’s fault that she was evicted. As we have seen here, that isn’t at all the case. In fact, Ashlea was not cut out for Big Brother. She didn’t scheme or plot, she didn’t socialize as much as was necessary, and she annoyed people. All of these are surefire ways to be shown the door – and fast. The houseguests could wait to rid themselves of Ashlea, and she had absolutely no plan to help her stick around. That is why Ashlea lost.

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

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