Heading in to the first Thursday eviction episode of Big Brother 28, Mallory Aurichio was able to put her week-long tears on pause long enough to win the Power of Veto, saving herself from the dream-crushing spot of becoming the first houseguest sent home. Left on the block were Dee Valladares’ other initial nominees, Taylor Brown and Yash Patel. At the Veto meeting, Dee replaced Mallory with Ashley Trail as the third nominee.

Before the 13 other houseguests cast their first live vote of the season, Taylor, Yash, and Ashley will compete to save themselves in the BB Block Buster competition. One of the two remaining nominees will be voted out and meet Julie Chen Moonves face to face.

Read on for our recap of Big Brother Season 28, Episode 5 to find out who is sent packing first. The players in the running to win the $750,000 grand prize are: Angela Murray, Ashley Trail, Barrett Pfeiffer, Chuk Anyanwu, Dee Valladares, Drew Campbell, Haley Thogmartin, Jason De Puy, Kamu Kirk, La Trice Verrett, Lyric Medeiros, Mallory Aurichio, Melody Morris, Rick Devens, Rome Seymour, Taylor Brown, and Yash Patel.

Paranoia Activity

Though they have the BB Block Buster as their best chance of surviving the vote, the three nominees spent the remainder of the week campaigning for support around the house. Yash was “a little nervous,” but Drew, Chuk and Kamu all assured him that it was in the interest of the guys to keep him because there is already more women in the house. Taylor felt the most confident after Jason and La Trice gave her their word that they’d vote either of the two out before her and because she saw the Have Nots as having “trauma bonded” this week. Melody and Lyric were concerned that the eviction would sway power in any possible direction and because they didn’t feel like Ashley would ever be a number for them, she was their ideal person to go home.

When Rome “called people upstairs” into the workout room, Angela’s paranoia peaked with the assumption that he was rallying people into a group that didn’t include her. With Rome hidden away in the gym with Jason and La Trice, and because of his showmance with Lyric and her closeness to Mallory and Melody, Angela assumed that they had formed a six-person alliance. In fact, Rome was only bringing Jason and La Trice together for a Mama’s Angels alliance. Even if Jason was ultimately targeting Angela and “Big Daddy” Devens, Rome’s target this week was Ashley.

Ashley to Ashley, Dust to Dust

Fully believing that Rome was working against her, Angela went straight to Kamu to warn him that “half the house” is coming together because of Rome. Kamu assured her that he “totally trusts” her, but his first move was to take the news to Dee so that they could strategize how to best take a shot at Rome this week. Dee argued that Ashley is “not a threat” and they could bring her in as a number while taking either Yash or Taylor away from Rome. When Ashley offered herself up to Dee, Drew and Angela as a number, they boosted her confidence that there was a group that actually wanted to keep her.

Once Haley also told Ashley that it looked like the numbers were on her side, Ashley decided to use that to her advantage by going to Melody to explain that “a whole group” told her she’s staying so in order to save face she should also vote to save her. Ashley named Dee, Barrett, Angela, Devens, Drew, Kamu, Chuk, and Haley as that group which Melody later took back to Barrett and Drew and they took back to Dee. Ashley’s loose lips was a warning sign to the alliance that they might be exposed if the vote becomes split and there had been a rumor that they were rallying a block of votes together.

For the first BB Block Buster of the summer, Taylor, Ashley and Yash competed in “Do Over,” a race to figure out which houseguest is featured the most in a series of hairstyle-themed video images displayed around the arena. Yash guessed Mallory while both Taylor and Ashley both guessed Devens. Because Mallory was in fact shown the most times, Yash earned his safety and came off the nomination block.

Upon the reveal to the rest of the house that Yash had won, Ashley and Taylor had a few moments to pitch a case to their fellow houseguests but neither did. Instead they made their individual pitches publicly from the nomination chairs. Ashley put the valley girl act on thick, mentioning snacks, inside jokes and all the fun she doesn’t want to miss out on. Taylor pleaded to be allowed to last longer so that she can set an example for her babies and asked that they please keep her around.

The Vote to Evict

In the diary room, the 14 vote-eligible houseguests cast their vote to evict: Jason, Melody, Rome, Lyric, Mallory, Angela, Devens, Yash, Kamu, Haley, Barrett, Drew, La Trice, and Chuk to evict Ashley and no one to evict Taylor.

Ashley was all smiles on her way out of the BB house despite the staggering unanimous numbers against her. In her exit interview with Julie, Ashley said that she did find people she liked in the house, but everyone was “so non-committal” to her when it came to working together. She did trust that there were people working on her behalf and isn’t sure why they switched to evict her instead.

Earlier in the episode, Julie confirmed that despite the time-turning theme of the season, the first evictee would not have an opportunity to return to the game. At the end of the episode, she returned to the screen inside the house to alert the remaining houseguests of the latest twist: the BB Time Capsule. Based on America’s vote in each of the next six weeks, one of them would be sent into the BB Time Capsule in order to win a power from a season past with the caveat that if they lose they’d receive a punishment. The winner of each week will be informed in secret and each of them can only compete once. How will these powers and punishments from the past change the game? Let’s expect the unexpected.