James pretty much holds his alliance back. It's a bit like with Jackie last season. She saw through Vanessa but she was held back by her alliance.
I'm kind of curious on what could've happened if Bronte (who is Nat's closest ally) stayed. Nat/Bronte/Bridgette actually had potential. Up until they decided to do Big Bachelor instead of Big Brother instead.
I am more curious what would've happened if Da'Vonne pulled her head out of her own ass and saw the value of working with Frank and Tiffany. The tipping point of this season, when Paulie really took control, was when Tiffany was evicted. If Da'Vonne were able to work with them, she could've formed a counter-alliance. Yet she had this weird fixation on Tiffany due to her sister and this fixation on Frank due to him making a joke one day. Da'Vonne is her own worst enemy. She cannot get past her own dislike of people in order to use them to get further. Yet she is oblivious to this, thinks no one sees what she is doing (even when they call her out), and is convinced everyone is wrapped around her finger.
I think it was Rob Cesternino, in his podcast, who described it well. Da'Vonne would be a good player if she stopped thinking that she is a great player. But she is convinced of her own infallibility and therefore gets these weird fixations on certain players who do nothing more than look at her the wrong way and she becomes set on seeing that player out. As such, she goes to extreme lengths to make it happen, often at the expense of her own game, by trying to use misinformation to create conflict between Player A and Player B to play them against each other with her in the middle.
Her plans seldom work (she had nothing to do with any evictions), simply because misinformation does not work on Big Brother. It is nearly impossible to get away with that in Big Brother. These people are trapped in close quarters 24-7, with an eviction only happening once every seven days, and none of them are particularly smart. Misinformation will almost always be exposed on Big Brother. It works on Survivor because of the shorter eviction period (3 days rather than 7), the fact that anyone can be evicted (without nomination or Veto) and the fact that there are other distractions (maintaining camp, hunger/finding food, exploring nature, challenges, searching for immunity idols, rewards, etc). As such, it always comes back on her. Yet she continues to do it. She got in trouble with Frank by stoking fires between him and Tiffany. Then she did it again with Nicole and Frank, telling lies to both and then getting exposed. Then she did again with James and the couples alliance. It really just shatters people's trust in her. She overplays her hand every time. As such, she may have tanked Frank and Tiffany's games, but in doing so, she also tanked her own. She is the perfect example of someone cutting off her nose to spite her face. And she is completely and totally oblivious to this.
A good Big Brother player does not employ direct misinformation because that won't work. Instead they realize that conflict evolves naturally in the house (as it would when you have 16 young people living together, 24/7 for 3 months with no access to the outside world) and then uses that natural conflict to his or her advantage (think Derrick). A good Big Brother game is much more passive than a good Survivor game. Da'Vonne does not appreciate that fact. It is much more about using circumstance to your advantage than creating the advantageous circumstance (which is a necessity in Survivor because it is a shorter game).
That isn't to say you should do nothing but float (the Andy Herrin strategy), but you have to be a bit more coy. You cannot create conflicts and put yourself at the center of said conflicts. That is what Da'Vonne does and why it fails.
The one exception, of course, is Will. But Will is like Richard Hatch. His strategy would not work in the modern game. It worked solely on the merit of him being the first to do it.
