Big Brother: All-Stars – Why Alison Lost

When Big Brother: All-Stars began, I never would have guessed that Alison would be the first person evicted. That’s mostly because the reality TV gods tend to punish me by keeping around some of my least favorites, but also because she played well her first time around – indeed, well enough to almost win! Did that contribute to her eviction, or was there more to it? Why did Alison lose?

Any Big Brother player should certainly know some things about the game by now. “All-Star” players should know even more. What should they know? Funny you should ask, because each year I pull together exactly that information and then we use it throughout the rest of the season to evaluate how each evicted player does. So let’s look at Big Brother: What All-Star Houseguests Should Have Learned to see where Alison went wrong.

The first, and always most important, rule is to scheme and plot. Alison did this pretty much right from the get-go. She wasn’t the one who realized that if Jase refused to agree with Janelle, they would both be nominated and Janelle could be a target – but as soon as Danielle pointed it out to her, it became Alison’s mission to try to make it happen. We’ll discuss why this actually was a bad move in a couple paragraphs.

After she was nominated, Alison tried to pull together a large enough squad to keep her around. But she was caught in several lies along the way, which didn’t exactly help her case. She had the right idea, but poor execution.

And, indeed, her right idea went too far, thus violating parts of the second rule by scheming and plotting too much. Her problems began when, as noted above, she made it her mission to try to get Jase and Janelle to disagree on nominees. She pushed it, and pushed, and pushed – to the point that it annoyed Jase so much, he and Janelle nominated her!

This was not terribly bright for a few reasons. First, she kept going with it. No matter what idea you might have, you can’t keep harping on it so blatantly. Second, it was just a bad idea. She was suggesting to a person who had immunity that he give it up and put himself in position to get voted off. What’s more, she suggested he do it to a guy who would be facing off against the largest alliance in the house! And she was essentially saying he should make himself a decoy, which would in and of itself violate the first rule.

Then, after Alison was nominated with Danielle, Danielle realized her mistake and calmed down. But not Alison. As Mike DeGeorge described in his recap of Thursday night’s episode, “the words, ‘Chicken with her head cut off’ comes to mind when considering Alison’s strategy.” She wanted to get the votes to make sure she stayed in the house, and she pushed and pushed for ‘em. In the end, she pushed too hard and may have actually forced people away from her.

While neither Danielle nor Alison was nominated as a decoy, it seemed clear at the time that Danielle was the real target and Alison was secondary. However, by the time voting came, the focus had clearly shifted because Alison continued her overscheming while Danielle toned it down and was more calm about solidifying her place in the game.

The third rule tells houseguests to pretend to be nice and act like an adult. Surprisingly, Alison acted rather more like an adult this time around than her first stint in the house… or her time on The Amazing Race, for that matter. And she even pretended to be nice. Mind you, she was only there a bit more than a week, but still.

With that said, she did say some things that certainly got around the house, such as some of her comments about Janelle. If nothing else, it definitely became obvious that she would be going after Janelle and the BB6 alliance with a vengeance. Several houseguests cited that as a good reason to keep Alison around, but certainly the group aligned with the BB6ers would feel quite the opposite!

Building on that point, the fourth rule advises contestants not to let their emotions control them. Certainly, Alison did say several things in the heat of the moment that she later told Julie Chen she regretted. That’s somewhat to be expected in this situation, though it should still be avoided as much as possible. In this case, though, I don’t think emotion was what really got out of control for Alison – overthinking and overplaying, as described earlier, were the culprits there.