‘The Traitors’ Season Three Is Off to a Dramatic, Gay Start!

The Traitors, the world’s campiest, most dramatic show that is essentially a grown-up version of the children’s game Mafia is back for a third season! And thank goodness, or should I say thank Alan Cumming, since he’s the host of this unhinged, over-the-top show of deceit, tomfoolery, and occasionally, extremely gross, scary, physically taxing, mentally exhausting challenges!

Every season just gets campier and campier. Season three starts with an eerie rhyme that somehow incorporates the words, murder, secrets, and treachery. Is this necessary? No! Do I love it? Yes!

The season opens with our new cast of faithfuls and traitors (but we don’t know who is which yet) arriving at the mansion in Scotland. There are a lot of queer icons in this season, which feels 100% correct, because The Traitors is, at its very core, extremely queer! (No, I will not be justifying this, but if you’ve seen the show, come on, you know it’s true.) The queers on this season include: Bob the Drag Queen (who shows up in a stunning, monochromatic sapphire ensemble, of course), Carolyn Wiger (the emotionally unhinged, yet also strategic queen from Survivor), Chrishell Stause (princess of real estate’s Selling Sunset, now married to non-binary drummer G-Flip), and Gabby Windey (who, when asked how her time on the Bachelorette went said, “Well, I’m a lesbian now”). And they’re all arriving at the castle!!!

Alan Cumming enters riding on a horse, obviously, surrounded by cloaked figures standing in a perfectly aligned grid formation, for some reason. Alan instructs all of his followers (the cloaked figures) to leave, but… one stays! All the contestants are confused, scared, and a little excited! And I can’t blame them. Alan explains that the players have an opportunity to bring this last follower into the game. All it takes is one player to shake Alan’s hand, and then the cloaked figure will be put into the mix. BUT, if you shake Alan’s hand, you also have to immediately select someone to go home.

(Tony Vlachos from Survivor is in this game, so as soon as Alan mentioned this twist, I couldn’t help but think… someone shake his hand and get rid of Tony!! Survivor fans out there know, he’s one of the most notorious of them all.)

So who even is the cloaked figure, anyway? After Alan explains the new rule, the figure reveals himself to be… Boston Rob from Survivor! Yet another one of the most manipulative, polarizing players in the Survivor franchise, the only person that might make you want to keep Tony Vlachos around, if it means keeping Rob out.

Will anyone take the deal and bring Rob into the game? Carolyn Wiger seriously considers it, and in true Carolyn-fashion, visibly wiggles through her temptation to shake Alan’s hand. She reasons that she wants to get Tony out (she gets me), and this is the perfect opportunity! Ultimately, she passes, and so does everyone else. Boston Rob is out of the game — at least for now. I can’t help but feel like this isn’t the end for him. Nothing in The Traitors is that simple, right??

Inside the mansion, Tony tells his fellow Survivor players that he wants to be a faithful, and Carolyn immediately calls him out. Her acute ability to tell when someone’s lying is back in play, and I couldn’t be more thrilled! She’s right, obviously. Tony is exactly the kind of person who would desperately want to be a traitor; that’s basically his entire Survivor game.

We get to know a few of the other contestants a bit more, including Lord Ivar Mountbatten (love this show’s commitment to including a token British diplomat season after season) who is the queer second cousin of the King of England (I’m not making this up), whom Bob the Drag Queen dubs the FGR: First Gay Royal.

Next thing we know, it’s time to choose the traitors for this season! Everyone sits at the round table, and Alan chooses… Danielle Reyes from Big Brother, Carolyn, and Bob the Drag Queen. Immediately, I’m like oh my god this is gonna be an iconic group of traitors. I don’t know much about Danielle Reyes other than she has beef with one of the other contestants on the show from Big Brother, Brittany, and I love when people have outside beef. But furthermore, Carolyn, known for wearing her emotions on her sleeves, giving those sleeves to people, and then screaming about the sleeves, is going to be a TRAITOR?! And Bob the Drag Queen, who seems able to charm literally anyone into doing anything??

There’s a prolonged silence after the contestants take off their blindfolds, and in this moment, I find myself thinking that Carolyn’s generally unhinged aura could actually play quite well for her — she always seems a little weird, over-excited, and emotional, so that certainly won’t read as guilt for her. Notably, Tom Sandoval is already sweating and seeming generally like a bad vibe (Bravo people, feel free to sound off as I don’t know much about him!!).

This season’s contestants are quick to start throwing out suspicions, especially Tom who is pointing doubt towards Chrishell. She just seems so nice that maybe she’s fake! Any long-time stan of Chrishell (like myself) knows that Chrishell has run into this quandary before, but she really is that sweet and bubbly. And this era of Chrishell is more than just nice; she’s sure of herself, and she isn’t afraid to be mean anymore. So all I’m saying is Tom, don’t make her your enemy… Tony, in parallel, is also pointing the finger at Chrishell. Good luck, men!

And just like that, it’s time for the first mission! In this mission, the contestants have to row a comically large, Norse viking-vibe boat out to various pontoons, where they will retrieve money to add to the prize pot as well as fuel for the literal fire that they have to light at the end of the mission. Anyone who makes it to the end of the mission will be shielded from that night’s murder. Here we go!

After a very bad start, the team finally makes it to the first pontoon, where they learn of a twist — to keep going, they have to leave two people at the pontoon. That means these folks will not be shielded from the murder tonight. Robyn Dixon and Chanel Ayan, both from Housewives shows, choose to sacrifice themselves.

At the next pontoon, where the team is able to pick up $20k to add to the prize pot, they must sacrifice two more people in order to keep the money. Dorinda Medley and Dolores Catania, also from the Housewives franchise, offer themselves, only seeming to realize after sacrificing themselves that this means that they could be murdered tonight. Oy!

At the third pontoon, many people in the group are getting mad that only women have sacrificed themselves so far — and I agree! Bob the Drag Queen (there is another Bob on this season lol so I will refer to Bob the Drag Queen by her full name) is especially irate, so he sacrifices himself. He explains in a confessional that he really was mad about the sexism, but also, he’s a traitor, so it’s not like he’s gonna get murdered tonight. Danielle sacrifices herself, too, just so the group can keep going, since this whole thing is timed. So we have two traitors sitting on this pontoon, both pretending to be faithful, because neither of them knows about the other yet!

At the next pontoon, Sam Asghari (yes, Britney Spears’ ex) and Bob Harper (the other Bob) sacrifice themselves.

Unable to choose two final people to sacrifice themselves, the team chooses to forgo the final pontoon, with the remaining $20K to collect, and just row back to the ring of fire to complete the challenge. They make it back in time and light the ring. Everyone who made it back is shielded, so the only people up for murder are Robyn, Chanel, Dorinda, Dolores, Bob Harper and Sam (since Danielle and Bob are both traitors and therefore can’t be murdered).

This season is clearly trying to up the drama (and succeeding) because rather than bringing everyone home together, they leave the people on the rafts while the others go home. Yikes! By the time the people who sacrificed themselves for the good of the group get home, they are cold, exhausted, and hangry. And the other people have nearly finished dinner!

Watching the dynamics back at the house, I gotta say, this is looking like an extremely strong group of traitors — everyone loves Bob the Drag Queen, believes Danielle was truly frustrated into sacrificing herself, and can’t seem to even fathom that Carolyn could be a traitor. I can’t wait for these three to meet up and become (hopefully) even stronger!

And meet up they do. Up in the turret, where all the murderous decisions are made, first Bob the Drag Queen and Danielle meet each other. They are gagged, as they should be, especially because they really didn’t suspect each other that whole time they were on the raft together! Then Carolyn comes up and they are gagged once again! This is a REALLY FUCKING GOOD GROUP OF TRAITORS!!!!

At the tail end of the episode, Alan reveals that the choice to reject Boston Rob “changed the of the game forever,” but of course, doesn’t reveal how. What’s gonna happen with Rob!!!

Well, Alan explains, Boston Rob is going to enter the game tomorrow… as… a traitor. And he won’t be entering alone!!! We then see two additional cloaked figures marched into dilapidated cages that are then LIFTED INTO THE AIR FOR SOME REASON.

Who are in the cages?? How will they figure in this game?! And who on earth is responsible for the incredible and incredibly chaotic set design of this show???

Top 10 Gayest Moments of Selling Sunset Season Eight

This was honestly a strange season! It felt much heavier than the others, with several truly difficult and painful things explored, ranging from homophobia, to death and grief, to infidelity and the dissolution of a marriage. (But also Pioneertown. We can’t forget about Pioneertown.) I came here for the extremely extravagant houses, even more extravagant outfits, discussion of the veggie empanada empire, and vaguely homoerotic shenanigans, and instead I got an exploration into some really real life issues and lessons!

That being said, I soldiered on. In a season with scant gay moments compared to others, I still did what I set out to do: identify the top ten gayest moments of Selling Sunset season eight.

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Discussing the proper pronouns for a $38 million dollar closet

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Chrishell’s DUMP HIM pants

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Learning that Nicole Scherzinger was G’s gay awakening

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Chrishell drinking something called a “I Love Hot Moms” and agreeing

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Chrishell talking about the GLAAD nomination

(It is wild that Selling Sunset got a GLAAD nomination. Like, I did not see that coming back in 2019! This moment in the season opened up a conversation with more nuance than I had expected, exploring the line between hating on someone you dislike, vs. joining in with homophobes attacking that person’s very character and being. It was emotionally to watch Chrishell hold her ground and maybe, just maybe, get through to Nicole?!)

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Chrishell knowing just what to do after resolving a big, emotional argument!

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This framed photo in Chrishell’s house 🥹

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Just so many candles

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G and Chrishell are maybe gonna get a donor!!

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Emma, and I can’t stress this enough, “making Chelsea hot”

The Traitors Season Two Reunion Recap: Peppermint Underscores the Biases That Led to Her Elimination

The first thing I noticed about The Traitors Season Two reunion was that it was hosted by Andy Cohen, so you know they wanted it to be dramatic and gay. He is Bravo through and through;  this would not be a reunion where the Bravolebrities are considered in any way less than the “gamers” (nor should they be!).

The reunion opens with the cast minus the final four (Kate, MJ, Trishelle and CT) watching the finale from the Fire of Truth through to the end.

Rewatching, this sequence feels even meaner; Trishelle saying it was so hard to write CT’s name once that she couldn’t do it again was especially cringe to me — as though she didn’t play a part in creating the situation where any of their names had to be written down. At least CT owned his cruelty; to not do so feels insulting at worst and oblivious at best.

When the final four come in (Trishelle wearing some approximation of the throne in Game of Thrones, yikes), it’s clear that MJ is still mad at Trishelle and CT for turning on her in the last moment. I don’t blame her! Why shouldn’t she be mad? It’s not like Trishelle and CT “had” to eliminate someone; this elimination was entirely voluntarily. When you choose to take money and pride from someone, they may never want to be on good terms with you. Why should they?

Other people besides MJ are still salty, too. Johnny Bananas isn’t over being voted out first just because he’s won The Challenge more than a few times. Phaedra literally still thinks Dan is a “piece of shit” because he wanted to throw her under the bus so early on, for reasons that hardly seem strategic. (I don’t disagree with her! It’s not like his strategy even worked lol.)

Peppermint, meanwhile, thoughtfully expresses her legitimate and wholly felt disappointment in the way the season transpired for her.

A superfan of The Traitors, Peppermint explains that when no truth is available, people rely on the biases they bring with them. We knew this was exactly what happened with her early elimination, but it felt like the game kept moving so quickly that the contestants sort of just moved on, without deeply considering, at least publicly/on screen, why things went down the way they did.

Peppermint goes on to say, quite poignantly, “Yes, I’m a drag entertainer, but I’m also so much more than that. Most people don’t know a trans person, so they learn how to treat us from TV.”

Peppermint brings up an element that has not yet been broached in the reunion: representation. It’s sad to think about this treatment of Peppermint being someone’s first introduction to interacting with a trans person. To see Peppermint, the one contestant from RuPaul’s Drag Race, so swiftly and ruthlessly othered and then eliminated simply because folks did not give her the benefit of the doubt over other players is hard to stomach.

Peppermint uses this moment to call attention to that tension and educate. She’s challenging her fellow contestants to remember that outside of the insular world of this reality TV show exists a much larger world — one full of people watching, learning, and theorizing about how they should treat each other.

“It kind of eerily reminded me of a high school experience where I was the only out LGBTQ person at the time,” Peppermint says.

Peppermint, thank you for speaking so beautifully on your heartbreak over your exit, unconscious bias, and the necessity of representation 🏳️‍⚧️ #TheTraitorsUS pic.twitter.com/yvdthfrunK

— Mike Bloom (@AMikeBloomType) March 8, 2024

Some contestants on competition reality TV posit that there are, essentially, two worlds: the world in the game, and the world outside of the game. These players talk about how they’re soooo one way outside of the game (usually positive attributes), but in the game they are being soooo the other way (usually negative attributes). It makes me wonder about who seems to be allowed to embody this duality. Who is given permission to form multiple systems of ethics — one which functions inside the game and one outside? Who has to play by the rules and who gets to make the rules?

Peppermint, due to the lack of other trans women of color on the show, must serve as a paragon of representation. For her, there is only one world. How she is in the game is not only how she is seen in the world, but how others like her can be seen. The weight of that is heavy in the room at the reunion, as it should be.

The rest of the reunion is thought-provoking, though it feels less impactful than anything Peppermint brought up. Parvati credits Peppermint with helping her and Sandra move past their years-long beef, at least for long enough to play the game. Trishelle can’t seem to move on from how MJ is still mad at her. She seems to have expected to screw MJ over, though doing so was not necessary for her to win, and for MJ to then forgive her. Trishelle wants and seems to feel entitled to some kind of good vibes from MJ, which is…interesting!

Overall, it strikes me how some folks here — namely Phaedra, Peppermint, and MJ — are comfortable publicly owning their frustration and disappointment without seeking resolution. MJ wears her anger towards Trishelle, and to some extent CT, openly on her face. When Dan says he isn’t sure if Phaedra still thinks he’s a piece of shit, she tells him simply that she does. Peppermint outlines her disappointment without absolving Trishelle or any of the others. John, the British politician, for all his righteous indignation on Trishelle’s behalf, seems preoccupied with getting MJ to make nice with Trishelle. Why?

As a person who struggles in personal relationships to hold let alone verbalize anger or disappointment, I find MJ, Phaedra and Peppermint’s choices inspiring. Sometimes, you can just be hurt. You can just be sad. And you don’t have to come up with the solution. Sometimes the best solution is sitting in the murky waters, taking the time for you — and whoever is in those waters with you — to truly understand how you got there, individually and collectively. Then, and only then, can you decipher how to swim out.

The Traitors 211 Recap: Finale Ends With a Fizzle

The final episode of this season of The Traitors opens in the turret, where Kate is the final traitor, deciding who to murder. She’s considering Shereé. Murdering her, Kate reasons, would clear her own name, because people might think a Bravolebrity wouldn’t murder another Bravolebrity. She’s also considering Trishelle, because Trishelle seems more likely to be suspicious of Kate.

At breakfast the next morning, CT seems convinced that Kate is a traitor, largely because of how weirdly she acted when Phaedra went home. I can’t help but agree with her; we knew Kate calling Phaedra’s game “selfish”, as she was banished, would raise some eyebrows! Sandra agrees with CT. MJ, on the other hand, thinks Sandra is the traitor, because she’d be so good at it. Sandra would be such a good traitor, but as we know, she isn’t.

Finally, Trishelle walks into breakfast, meaning Sheree was murdered. A confessional with Sheree (before she was murdered) reveals that she was confident Kate was a traitor, so maybe this was great for Kate’s game! She can position this as further evidence that Sandra is a traitor. After all, the players saw Sandra turn on her closest ally — Phaedra — in the last episode. Who’s to say she couldn’t flip on her second closest?

For the final challenge, everyone gets into a helicopter and is dropped off on a cliff. From there, they will have to make it through the cliffside, completing detours for prize money as they go along, onto the ship in the middle of the ocean. To win, they all have to make it back onto the ship, in sixty minutes.

The challenge seems extremely grueling, and CT is really carrying everyone. The challenge ends with each player having to belay themselves down a huge cliff, which looks absolutely terrifying! Kate in particular is so scared, and it’s kind of inspiring to watch her do it anyway. CT, like always, is cheering for everyone.

It seems like they’re about to make their way to the ship, once and for all, but there’s one last detour! It involves going into a cave in water, which is personally, my biggest nightmare. CT goes (of course), accompanied by Sandra. It’s wild to watch Sandra doing this awful challenge when she’s known on Survivor for not really caring for physical challenges. But money is a big motivator!

Finally, on the ship, I have to hand it to MJ for really putting her all into it, alongside a competitor from, literally, The Challenge. The competitors successfully complete the challenge and earn $50k, bringing the total prize pot to $204k!

In the car, CT straight up asks Kate if she’s a traitor — it comes as a shock to me! Kate, to her credit, somehow manages to keep her cool and act justifiably offended. She is really not giving up, even when it seems like the majority of folks — Sandra, CT and Trishelle — are very convinced it’s her.

Back at the house, Sandra seems so confident Kate is a traitor. But then Kate tells Sandra that, actually, CT was gunning for Sandra. Obviously this isn’t true! And I can’t tell if Sandra believes her. I have to imagine that as a two-time Survivor winner, Sandra’s lie detector should be pretty strong. But Sandra seems swayed, so much so that she is telling Kate that they should work together, with MJ, to vote out CT. Perhaps Sandra wants to get CT out and then Kate, so that she splits the prize money with fewer people.

Finally, we’re at the very last roundtable of the game. Kate tries to defend how she called Phaedra’s game selfish at last night’s roundtable, and honestly, she’s selling it well. But is she selling it well enough?

Sandra is articulating the strategy that I’ve thought she was playing the whole time: She thought either Phaedra or Sheree was a traitor, so she wanted to stay close to them. She thought at least one of them was her “traitor angel”, and boy, was she right! The problem, however, is that Sandra and Phaedra were so close that folks now think Sandra must be a traitor, precisely because of that closeness.

Somehow, Sandra and CT, who seemed so aligned at the start of this episode, seem to be against each other. Trishelle, CT and Sandra’s plan falling apart is a great example of how in games like this, if you make a plan too early, there’s time for it to disintegrate. So there can be an advantage to waiting to make an actual plan, so that others (like Kate) don’t have time to break it apart. I have a feeling Trishelle is going to vote Sandra which would honestly be embarrassing.

When the votes come in, MJ, Kate, Trishelle and CT all vote for Sandra. And I have to admit, this hurts! If I’m being generous, maybe Trishelle and CT’s thinking is that they’re confident Kate is a traitor, and Sandra might be. So there’s really no reason to NOT vote Sandra out right now, because they can vote Kate out after and split the money with fewer people. At this point, they all must know Kate is the traitor, right? I have to hand it to Kate — apparently she has sewn enough chaos to last another day.

At this point in the episode, I have this weird sinking feeling that MJ, Trishelle, and CT are gonna vote Kate out. And then Trishelle and CT will be like well, why not vote out MJ too? Then we get more money. And poor MJ will complete her arc as the pawn that tried so hard to be more in this game.

At the Fire of Truth (lol), a.k.a. the final opportunity in the game to banish a traitor, each of the four people will choose whether to banish again or end the game. Kate honestly should vote banish again because all the others certainly will, because they literally know a traitor is still there. If she votes to end the game now, doesn’t that literally prove she’s a traitor?

Well, Kate does vote to end the game! Trishelle votes to banish again, as does CT, as does MJ. Kate votes Trishelle, and MJ, CT and Trishelle all vote Kate. Kate goes home. In the briefest of moments, CT winks at Trishelle and I just know it, they’re gonna get MJ out, too. They’re from The Challenge, after all, a show known for ruthlessness. In The Challenge, usually, the first two people to finish win. In The Traitors, the lowest number of people that could win is two. To win the most money, you want to be at the end with just one person. You want two. Not three. Two.

CT’s face keeps oscillating between sad and pleased with himself, and that’s how I know he’s getting rid of MJ. Trishelle chooses to banish again, and so does CT. Poor MJ looks like a little kid whose parents just left her on the side of the street in the middle of nowhere. MJ’s arc feels tragic because somehow, no one in this game gave her the loyalty she so freely granted them.

It’s painful to watch MJ torture herself over a vote that doesn’t matter. She whimpers, “I don’t know what I did,” and it feels bad.

CT votes for MJ. MJ votes for Trishelle. And somehow, Trishelle votes for CT. I’m sorry, I have no idea why she did that. What is the strategy there? Trishelle has been somewhat baffling to watch this whole time, and this feels no different.

So now they all have to vote again, but this time they plead their cases, which is just hard to watch.

I have to imagine Trishelle will now switch her vote to MJ. It seems so clear that this moment is about CT trying to convince Trishelle to side with him. Trishelle brings up the sacrifice where he picked John over her, and it’s clear she is still hurt from that. CT now has tears in his eyes and I just have a feeling that deep down, he knows MJ is a faithful. He just wants the most money.

CT votes for MJ again. MJ votes for Trishelle again. And Trishelle votes for MJ. The cynical side of me that remembers how quickly and ferociously Trishelle turned on Peppermint wonders if Trishelle only voted for CT, at first, because she wanted CT to prostrate himself on the floor for her. Perhaps Trishelle needed to tell herself she thought he was a traitor, to justify voting for him, but really, she just wanted him to reassure her one last time. Poor MJ was caught in the crosshairs. CT and Trishelle played strong, strategic games, but this win doesn’t feel good.

This was a very weird ending to the season, in my opinion! What did you think?

The Traitors 210 Recap: Phaedra Parks Is Exhausted

I have so much to say about last night’s episode of The Traitors!!! Let’s get into it!

The episode opens right where we left off — about to see who MJ voted for. At the end of the last episode, the votes at the roundtable were split right down the middle: four for Phaedra, and four for Peter, with just MJ’s vote left. So who did MJ vote for? Peter, just like I predicted last week!

Peter is looking so smug as he walks to the raised platform where they inexplicably have to stand when the moment comes to reveal whether you’re a faithful or a traitor. But I can’t be that mad at him because also, unfortunately, he’s right! Peter reveals that he is, of course, a faithful. With Peter banished, all that remains of Peter’s Pals is Trishelle and John. That’s it.

Peter’s innocence paints an even bigger target on Phaedra, and she already had a pretty big target. At the roundtable, after Peter’s left, it seems like everyone knows Phaedra is a traitor, so at that point I begin to wonder, is Kate — the other remaining traitor — going to win this game? The sheer possibility of that highlights how much of this game is left up to chance; Kate entered this game a few episodes in, was a faithful, and then was selected, pretty recently, to be a traitor.

In his confessional, CT wonders if Phaedra’s allies — Sandra, MJ, and Shereé — know she’s a traitor, and are just playing nice with her in the hopes that she’ll treat them well and bring them to the end with her. This is a fascinating potential strategy and one that highlights the nuances of this game; getting the traitors out as quickly as possible isn’t necessarily a winning tactic. (It’s sort of like in Survivor, when you choose to bring a “goat” (someone who hasn’t played well) to the end with you, in the hopes that you can argue your case better than they can at Final Tribal.)

Shereé, at least at this point in the episode, doesn’t think Phaedra is a traitor; she thinks she’s being targeted. It’s like every move Phaedra makes is being met with scrutiny by what remains of Peter’s Pals. Shereé feels bad for her friend of nearly 30 years, and I can’t blame her. Phaedra’s every move is being scrutinized. It is hard to watch. And I don’t even know Phaedra personally, let alone consider myself a close friend of hers for several decades. For a lot of this season, I’ve wondered if having the cast of all reality TV stars actually makes the show more one-dimensional (because they know how TV works), but in Shereé’s arc, that context makes the events of the show all the more emotionally loaded.

Anyway, up in the turret, Phaedra and Kate discuss who to murder. For Phaedra, at this point, it’s truly just a numbers game, and Kate is her sidekick. They’re aligned on continuing to kick out Peter’s Pals, even though only two remain: Trishelle and John. It almost doesn’t matter who they pick. I have to give CT some credit here for playing the middle very well; I’m not sure he intended to, but he’s managed to stay on Phaedra’s good side, while still voting against her. She’s hurt by his previous vote, but she still doesn’t consider him someone she needs to remove from the game.

At breakfast, we still don’t know who Phaedra and Kate have chosen to murder. CT almost seems sad that he’s so sure Phaedra is a traitor; he tries to give her a way out by asking her who she thinks is a traitor. And like she’s done before, Phaedra reflects. She doesn’t throw Kate under the bus; she doesn’t throw anyone else under the bus. There’s something noble about Phaedra’s refusal to sabotage someone else, even though it is clearly hurting her social game. She just won’t do it.

Perhaps due to this choice, and perhaps because of everything leading up to this moment, every one of Phaedra’s allies seems to be figuring out Phaedra is, for sure, a traitor. It seems to be dawning on Shereé, especially when she wonders, if it’s not Phaedra, who is it? She can’t find an answer. (It almost seems impossible that someone would guess Kate, as a latecomer to this show, so it doesn’t surprise me that Shereé isn’t considering her.) MJ, too, is figuring it out. And I can’t help but think that Sandra knows, too.

So, with all of Phaedra’s allies knowing or at least strongly suspecting that she is a traitor, the game takes on a new question: when you know who the “bad guy” is, do you try to get rid of him, or try to get on his good side?

By the end of breakfast, John doesn’t walk in. So everyone knows he has been murdered; further evidence of Phaedra’s traitoressness. There is a brief discussion of John and how old he may or may not be, which results in MJ delivering a truly perfect and hilarious line: “I don’t think he’s that old, I just think people in England don’t get Botox.” I love MJ!

Alan Cumming bids farewell to John by unceremoniously throwing his portrait on the floor, as he does for every murder victim, and in this moment, he’s downright threatening! CT is the only man left in the game at this point, which inspires him to do a playful little bit about how this is actually the bachelor, and whoever wins the challenge will get to have lunch with him. It’s heartwarming and everyone laughs, and again, I have to laud CT for playing the middle so well. It’s like he’s saying, I know the situation here, I know how little power I have, and I’m okay with it, I can even joke about it! People who play the middle know when to advocate for themselves and when to shrink their perceived power (Maryanne Oketch from Survivor being an exceptional example of this, in my opinion!).

This episode’s challenge centers on digging through mud to find gold bricks (worth corresponding amounts of prize money), carrying those bricks across a lake by jumping across a series of wobbly wooden docks, and then placing those bricks onto a scale at the other end. (Also there is one shield in the mud, should you choose to try to get that across and protect yourself.) If this challenge sounds hard, bordering on impossible, it’s because it is! MJ finds the shield and tries to take it across, which results in a montage of her wiping out, over and over and over, trying to make it across these docks. No one can do it!

Finally, Trishelle figures out the trick to making it across — you basically have to run fast enough that the forward momentum overpowers the wobbly-ness of the docks. Trishelle and CT — the two remaining players from The Challenge — are the only two that can get it right, and they go into game mode. It’s weirdly inspiring to watch, and makes me remember why I love The Challenge; it attracts people who simply cannot or will not give up, even when faced with physical adversity that would make most normal people say “no thank you!” They get across nearly all $30k of the potential prize money!

It is down to MJ, then, with her shield. And she is decidedly not from The Challenge. She’s a Bravolebrity. She’s wiped out so many times I’ve lost count. Alan Cumming has covered his face in an effort to hide that he has been laughing. But with one minute left in the challenge, MJ decides to try again. And somehow, by sheer dint of will, she is making it across. This time, Alan isn’t laughing; he’s on the verge of tears, because it is genuinely moving to watch someone not give up on herself, even when, statistically, she should. CT is cheering like crazy for her, even though MJ earning the shield would put him in greater danger. No one cares; they all want her to make it across.

And guess what? She does! MJ yells, “Wow!! I’m so proud of myself!” and reader, I cried a little. GOOD FOR HER!!!

Back at the castle, after the challenge, Shereé is distraught. She wants to talk to Phaedra one more time. It seems as though the cognitive dissonance of knowing that Pheadra is a traitor combined with Shereé’s desire to remain loyal to her very dear friend is almost too much for Shereé to bear. She sits with Phaedra, just the two of them, looks her straight in the eye, and simply asks Phaedra, are you a traitor? I can’t help but wonder how much the prize money — around $250k — means to these two individuals. Is there friendship worth more to them, literally? I genuinely wonder if Phaedra is just gonna tell her friend the truth, finally. It would be a relief, wouldn’t it?

But she doesn’t. Phaedra is still playing the game. It almost feels like it’s out of respect for Shereé. Telling her would be handing her the win, forfeiting; instead, she’s allowing her friend to earn it.

At the roundtable, I’m struck by what a fascinating group of people I’m listening to; they’re all main characters now. It makes me really wish Peppermint were still here, because I so would love to know what I’d get to learn about her through this process.

Anyone who’s been through a break-up knows that there is a moment when you know the relationship is over. It happens gradually at first, and then not gradually at all. There is a moment when everything changes, when you look at the person you loved and realize, you’re not who I thought you were, not now, not anymore. It’s a moment of no return; there’s no going back from it.

Everyone in the game has had their moment of no return with Phaedra. They all know, with certainty, that she is a traitor. You can see it in the sadness in CT’s eyes, the pain in Shereé’s whole body. Even Trishelle, who has been targeting Phaedra for so long, looks mournful. It feels very different from when Parvati and Dan were voted out, because it is. Phaedra has played this game so hard, so long, with such aggression and scrutiny coming her way.

After everyone has spoken their piece, and Phaedra has responded valiantly, Shereé throws her one last bone by asking if there’s anything else to say, or to give us. She’s giving Phaedra the opportunity to frame someone else, anyone else, to give any name that they could consider voting for over her. And Phaedra replies:

I’m — I’m very exhausted.

This line hit really hard. Phaedra is clearly an incredibly determined and relentlessly driven person — we’ve seen it throughout this whole show (and I’m sure fans of her Housewives career have known it for much longer). In The Traitors, she’s created webs of lies to defend herself, and managed to evade detection for so, so long. But at what cost? The game is fun until it’s not. It’s fun until it’s painful, exhausting, and tortuous. By this point, everyone in the game knows each other very well; you’re no longer lying to strangers. You’re lying to friends, either that you made here, or that you’ve known for decades. And that’s gotta hurt.

When the votes come in, everyone has voted for Phaedra. She throws a vote on CT, but we all know it doesn’t matter. Phaedra goes home, and honestly, she couldn’t seem happier.

Kate throws a little shade on Phaedra when she casts her vote, which I have a feeling will bite her in the butt in the next episode. But that’s for next week. For now, let’s raise a glass to one of my new favorite people on reality TV, the inimitable Phaedra Parks.

The Traitors 209 Recap: Phaedra Parks Is NOT On The Bachelor

The Traitors 209 picks up with Kate Chastain in the dungeon (yes, apparently this mansion also has a dungeon), awaiting her fate. A hooded figure enters the dungeon — we know it’s Phaedra — and reveals herself. Phaedra offers Kate an ultimatum; Kate can either become a traitor, with Phaedra, or be murdered, ending her time on the show.

Of course, Kate chooses to become a traitor. It’s not much of a choice, is it?

Up in the turret, Phaedra and Kate discuss who to murder. Phaedra asks Kate what their plan is and Kate is taking taken that she is being asked this question — shouldn’t Phaedra have the plan, Kate wonders? I, too, have noticed this about Phaedra’s strategy, at least in the turret; she seems to defer to the others in the room. Sometimes this can come off as passive, but I wonder if it’s actually very intentional. First of all, it allows the other traitors to feel like they’re in control, and second of all, it’s hard to trace a choice back to a person that truly didn’t make that choice. Phaedra has flown under the radar for a lot of this show (until recently), perhaps due to her much lighter touch as a traitor, compared to both Dan and Parvati.

Anyway, at breakfast the next morning, we’re still wondering who Phaedra and Kate decided to murder. Kate is acting a little off at breakfast, which MJ notices. I begin to wonder if Kate is going to be a terrible traitor, acting-wise. Kate is known for saying exactly what’s on her mind. Will she be able to lie with the ease and naturalness necessary to hide her traitor-ness? We’ll see.

The only person who hasn’t walked into breakfast is Kevin. So Phaedra and Kate murdered Kevin! I suppose the strategy here was to continue breaking down Peter’s Pals (now down to just Peter, Trishelle, and John), with the hope of continuing to frame Peter as the traitor. (Though it does cast some serious suspicion on Phaedra, since Kevin led the crusade against her last week.) It seems like it’ll be hard to convince people that Peter, if he were a traitor, would murder one of his own, but maybe they can pull it off!

But to that end, over the course of breakfast, it becomes clear that many folks have completely turned against Peter and are convinced he’s a traitor. CT, in particular, thinks Peter’s flip-flopping and domineering attitude mean he must be a traitor.

I have to be honest, some part of me reveled in watching everyone turn against Peter. All those times Peter literally shut the door in people’s faces have caught up to him. It’s a stark reminder how you execute your strategy is just as important — if not more so — as the strategy itself. In competition shows like The Traitors, Survivor, The Challenge, Big Brother, etc., you have to earn your right to stay — which often requires maintaining some degree of likability (or a freakish amount of control, a la Tony Vlachos). Peter’s used to doling out roses, not earning them. And it shows.

This episode’s challenge takes place in the church (yes, this estate includes a church too, who says you can’t have it all). People are immediately freaked out, which I love, because no one likes a creepy church. And it’s The Traitors, so you know it’s not just gonna be a challenge in a church. It’s going to be deranged, scary, disturbing, etc.

And sure enough, it is! Upon entering the church, the contestants are greeted by like, 20 people in robes wearing full-face gold masks, all facing in the same direction, silent and still. It’s at this point that I begin to wonder, am I watching Peacock or am I in a dingy basement on the Lower East Side, watching experimental theater because some friend of mine dragged me here?

When I accept that I am in fact still in my living room, watching TV, the challenge has begun. It involves shooting wooden arrows from a crossbow (sure), at stained glass panes, each of which say one contestant’s name. Whoever’s pane of glass is the last one standing (i.e. not shot at and destroyed by the crossbow), will earn the shield.

Now, I’ve never shot a crossbow, and I imagine it’s hard, but the contestants are exceptionally bad at this challenge. At first, they try to strategically target certain panes, based on who each person wants to not have a shield, but then, after so many misses, they try to just hit a pane, any pane. Even Alan Cumming finds it funny! Anyway, after losing a lot of money (you lose prize money for every shot that doesn’t crack a pane), there’s just one pane left: CT’s. So he earns the shield.

It’s worth noting that towards the end of the challenge, Phaedra made a risky move. The group was targeting panes in one area, and Phaedra decided to change course entirely to go for Trishelle’s pane. This suggested that Phaedra wasn’t trying to simply end the game; she was targeting Trishelle specifically. (This is, of course, true.) Trishelle clocked this and is sure this means Phaedra is a traitor, which she was already leaning toward in the previous episode. Unfortunately for Phaedra, CT clocked this too, and just that morning, he was ready to banish Peter. Now, he seems set on Phaedra.

After the usual scrambling in the house, we’re at the roundtable. John makes an impassioned, verbose speech about how sure he is that Phaedra is a traitor, which only prompts an even more iconic response from Phaedra. Not one to mince words, Phaedra reminds John that he’s not in parliament anymore, so he can go ahead and get to the point next time he gives a speech (lol!!!). She then goes on to paint Peter as a traitor, and delivers, yes, the line OF the season:

This is not the Bachelor. And I don’t have to kiss your ass for a rose.

I have really grown to love Phaedra over the course of this season! She wields language like Thor wields his hammer — in both cases, my advice to you would be to get out of the freaking way!!! Phaedra simply can’t be out-talked or pushed into a corner; she doesn’t allow it.

Has she done enough to pull it off? When the votes come in, they’re split down the middle: four for Peter, four for Phaedra. Somehow, the final, deciding vote falls on MJ, one of Phaedra’s allies, who also said earlier in the episode that if she had to turn on her fellow Bravo castmates, she would. But will she? Can she? The episode ends before we find out.

If I had to guess…no. MJ will vote Peter, and Phaedra will live to see another day. What do you think?!

The Traitors 208 Recap: Parvati Shallow, Duchess of Deception

At the start of the eighth episode of The Traitors season two, we’re in the same boat as the faithfuls: We have no idea who was murdered. As folks filter in for breakfast, I begin to wonder if this is Parvati’s last episode, because it seems like just about everyone is convinced she is a traitor, from CT, to Sandra, to Kevin. It’s not looking good for Parv!

The last two people to walk into breakfast are Parvati and Trishelle, meaning that the Traitors murdered Bergie. I have to be honest — I’m not sure I understand the strategy here. In a flashback back to the turret, Parvati and Phaedra reason that while they can’t murder Peter (because he earned protection at the Sacrifice Ritual) (lol this is a real sentence), Bergie is next best, as Peter’s right-hand man. I get that, but murdering Bergie also essentially clears Peter’s name, because he doesn’t come off as two-faced enough to murder his best friend. I don’t know how Parvati and Phaedra can frame someone else as the traitor, at this point.

Trishelle, unfortunately, is convinced that both Parvati and Phaedra are Traitors, and I hate to admit that she is 100% correct! But being 100% correct is not enough in a game of social manipulation. You also have to know how to play it. Trishelle thinks banishing Parvati would be a “safe” vote, because she basically has no allies at this point anyway, whereas voting Phaedra would be more strategic, because Phaedra has several ride-or-dies (Sheree, MJ, Sandra).

Trishelle pulls together what’s left of Peter’s Pals and explains her reasoning — and they seem convinced. So they’re going to try to convince Parvati that actually they don’t think she’s a traitor, to get her to also vote for Phaedra. Peter singles Parvati out in the bar, and they have an odd conversation wherein he tries to convince her that actually he doesn’t think she’s a Traitor, despite how hard he’s been gunning for her for like, ever. Parvati doesn’t buy it, but strategically, she reasons it helps her to align with him against Phaedra. It’s sad, but I don’t see any other option for Parvati at this point.

(This makes me think about a key difference between The Traitors and Survivor — there’s no jury. In Survivor, at the very end of the game, the final three contestants must convince a jury of people they voted out to give them the million dollar prize. In The Traitors, conversely, it’s purely a numbers game. So there is little to no incentive to be kind to folks you’re voting out — it doesn’t affect your chances at winning. This makes The Traitors feel a bit more straightforward, emotionally, than Survivor, where you have to eliminate people without alienating them.)

When Alan announces the challenge for this episode, everyone immediately knows it’s going to take place in… the cabin. For those unfamiliar, in the eighth episode of the last season, arguably the scariest challenge of all took place in the cabin — it was truly harrowing, bringing many folks’ actual nightmares to life. So I know we’re in for an absolute doozy of a challenge!

And we sure are. When the contestants arrive at the cabin, this guy dressed as an old-fashioned English newsie (truly no idea how else to describe it) is sitting in the rocking chair outside, and some of the contestants recognize him as Dr. Will, apparently one of the most devious Big Brother players of all time. Why is he there? Who knows! It’s The Traitors; strange and inexplicable things happen all the time!

After all the contestants go into the cabin, Dr. Will slams the door shut and LOCKS IT! It’s in that moment that I realize this is going to be some kind of escape-the-room challenge. But it’s more than that; the players have to escape the room and then go through a series of underground tunnels, covered in what may or may not be sewage, find gold along the way, and get out of the tunnels, all in 30 minutes.

This is the challenge that goes so hard it’s truly wild. In other shows, like Survivor or The Challenge, the difficulty and fear factor of the challenges are relatively consistent. In The Traitors, on the other hand, the challenges are extremely inconsistent, in terms of how scary and how hard they are, in a way that can only be construed as comical. I can’t really blame any of the folks who bow out, because this challenge involves buckets of bugs getting dumped on you from unseen trap doors, seemingly feral rats, weird-looking frogs, and lights that won’t stay on. YIKES!

By the end of the challenge, the group has earned $11,000, and Trishelle has found a shield and doesn’t plan on telling anyone (Peter and John saw though, so they know). Back at the house, Parvati is working overtime to convince folks that she’s innocent. She sits down with John — who many folks seem to regard as the pinnacle of truth and the ultimate faithful — and does a pretty convincing performance of her innocence. Like the best lies, it was full of truth. Will it be enough to save her?

At the roundtable, Parvati tries to assert her innocence, and it seems like maybe she has a tiny chance of getting out of this alive. Luckily for Parvati, Trishelle and Peter have decided to go full force on Phaedra, even implying (or explicitly stating?) that they no longer think Parvati is a traitor — that’s how sure they are of Phaedra. This is an odd tactic, because they do think Parvati is a traitor, and other people know they think that. So understandably, other contestants are like, why should I trust you at all if you’re literally lying right now? To me, it’s a reminder that in a show like The Traitors, how you sell it is as important — if not more important — as what you’re selling. This is the first crack in their case for Phaedra; the other is that Phaedra’s ride-or-dies — MJ, Sandra, and Sheree — were never gonna vote out their friend, at least not while there’s another extremely compelling option on the table.

When John makes his case for Parvati, I know it’s over for her. Because people trust John.

The votes come in — Parvati and Phaedra both voted for each other, which feels tragic and inevitable. In the end, Parvati gets just a few more votes than Phaedra, and she goes home. She gives a moving speech before revealing she is in fact a traitor, and everyone applauds her — as they should!!! I’m so sad to see our queen go. But she kept her dignity, and she left with a signature Parvati smirk.

The episode closes with Phaedra in the turret, where Alan makes her an offer — she can either choose someone to murder, or offer someone the choice to be a traitor. But this time, unlike last time, the offer is an ultimatum — if the person she offers to refuses to accept, they die. So it seems inevitable that whoever she chooses will accept, if they want to stay in the game.

I have to be honest — I’m starting to wonder if the banish-a-traitor-add-a-traitor isn’t a flaw in the structure of this game. Because it makes me wonder, what’s the incentive to keep identifying traitors, if new ones keep coming up? It’s sort of like whack-a-mole, which feels less strategic and more frenetic. Maybe this is just a fact of this game — it’s not just skill, it’s also luck. You’re at the mercy of the timeline.

Anyway, who does Phaedra want to bring in as her fellow traitor? Kate Chastain. Things are about to get MESSY!!!

The Traitors 207 Recap: Parvati Shallow Has a Predatory Headband

Episode 7 of The Traitors picks up right where we left off: on a cliff-hanger. Parvati and Phaedra have just invited Peter to be a traitor — an option he can choose to accept or refuse.

In a twist that felt both surprising and boring, Peter refuses their offer. He says he wants to be a faithful to the end of this game. All I could think was, I guess Peter doesn’t want to win the game that badly! That’s always a tension in these kinds of competition reality TV shows: do you want to sacrifice your integrity, and win, or maintain your integrity, and lose? (Though of course — it’s not that simple; you decide what defines your integrity, and whether or not you sacrificed it.)

Though Parvati is frustrated that Peter declined her offer, she is not giving up. On the contrary, she is like, “I’ve got my predatory headband on and I’m coming for that bachelor.” I love her.

At breakfast, once everyone has arrived, it’s clear that once again, no one was murdered. Led by Bergie, the contestants reason that any time a Traitor is banished, they’re given the chance to do a recruitment. And since no murder occurred, there must’ve been a recruitment last night. (My ears perked up here because this was a reminder that this is not the first season of the show; contestants know things that first season competitors didn’t know. We’re already seeing the game evolve!!!) Of course, the players are mostly right — there was an attempted recruitment, but it was thwarted. They don’t know that.

Parvati sees her in — Peter doesn’t want to reveal that he received the recruitment offer and declined it, and while she can’t make him, she can certainly steer the conversation in that direction. And that’s exactly what she does! Parvati turns the conversation towards the elephant in the room, even asking whoever received the letter to raise their hand.

It’s thrilling to see someone go on the attack like Parvati is. And even this early in the episode, it’s working. People are starting to look at Peter differently, like maybe he has something to hide. Maybe his aggression isn’t because he’s so committed to being a faithful. Maybe it’s exactly the opposite. Parvati doesn’t have to convict him; she only needs to implicate him. He’ll do the rest.

Host Alan Cumming feeds into the brewing paranoia by offering no information about what happened last night, no explanation for the lack of murder. I love how actively Alan is involved in the drama and plot points of this show!

After breakfast, Peter sequesters his allies — whom Phaedra’s now calling “Peter’s Pals” which I’m obsessed with — to tell them what really happened last night. He divulges that he received the traitors’ offer, but he refused, because he’s an all-American good-guy faithful through and through!!! (Okay, he didn’t really say that, but he may as well have.) Peter’s Pals all seem to believe him. But having a strong group of allies isn’t always enough in a game like this. First Phaedra, then MJ, try to go into the room Peter’s Pals are in. Peter, while trying to placate with a broad smile, asks them to, in so many words, not come in. He closed the door in Parvati’s face last episode, and Phaedra and MJ’s in this episode. Interesting strategy, to say the least!

Peter’s attempt to act like he’s being nice and polite about this exclusion makes it even more cringe. But I also find his repeated faux-pas exciting, because… the drama! In being so obvious about where his allyship starts and ends, he’s created more than just Peter’s Pals (Peter, Bergie, Trishelle, Kevin, and John); he’s also created Not Peter’s Pals (Parvati, Phaedra, CT, Shereé, MJ, Kate, and Sandra). Survivor legends know better than to alienate the people they’re not allying with — and Peter is playing with not one but two Survivor legends.

Perhaps the best part of this episode comes next when Survivor icon Sandra Diaz-Twine does an in-depth demonstration, using pool balls on the pool table, of why Not Peter’s Pals need to align against Peter’s Pals. She argues that it’s a numbers game, and what isn’t explicitly stated is that even if Peter isn’t a traitor, it’s still in the best interests of the Not Peter’s Pals to get him out. If they don’t, Peter’s Pals will continue to dominate the game and pick the others off one by one.

This moment made me think about how this show (at least the US version) is in many ways in its infancy; the game play is still somewhat rudimentary, because the players don’t have that much data on previous games to play with. The earlier seasons of Survivor were much more about the whole survival-in-the-wilderness elements than the social game play, whereas over 40 seasons later (!!!), contestants are not only players, but also students or fans with years and years of past performance to inform their movements. Early seasons of The Traitor seem primarily focused on identifying the traitors, but Sandra’s strategy suggests that maybe that isn’t really that important, at least not yet. After all, to win the game, you have to still be there at the end of the game, whether you send home traitors or faithfuls along the way. Sandra seems to want to find the traitor, but moreso, she wants to make it to the end.

So all this is to say, before this episode’s challenge has even started, lines have been drawn. Peter’s Pals want Parvati out. Not Peter’s Pals want Peter out. Let the games begin!

This challenge involves carrying bags of money through the forest in pairs, while answering trivia questions about the castle along the way. I actually forgot to take notes here because I was so engaged — not because of the running or the forest, but because of what happens should you answer a trivia question incorrectly. The traps are absolutely brutal and extremely surprising! One of them involves somehow a whole net coming up around the poor soul that answered incorrectly, trapping them in a net full of leaves and lifting them several feet off the ground. I actually screamed the first time this happened! Again, every aspect of the Traitors goes so hard!

Only two teams are even able to get through the forest with their bags of money — Sandra and Kevin, and Parvati and John. Sandra and Kevin completed the challenge the fastest, so they’ve earned shields for themselves.

Back in the house, Peter is flailing. CT told him that his name is on the chopping block, so Peter is desperate. He even tries to pull Parvati and Phaedra into a room and offer them an alliance. Too little too late, bud! He seems to be cracking under the pressure, one thing that neither Parvati or Phaedra do.

After Parvati and Phaedra shut Peter down (lol), Alan introduces another twist: there will be no roundtable tonight! There will be no banishment. Instead, contestants will choose, one by one, who they want to protect from being murdered, until only five contestants remain. The Traitors will then choose one of those five to murder. Kevin and Sandra, as they have the shields, are the first to choose someone to protect.

Before they even begin, some people choose to try to advocate for themselves — namely, Peter and Trishelle. I get that they’re trying to save themselves in a high-stakes moment, but it felt kind of embarrassing to me! Like, do you really think begging and guilt-tripping is gonna make someone prioritize you? It doesn’t.

Kevin and Sandra pick Shereé, who then picks Phaedra, who then picks CT (which Parvati doesn’t like, though I’d argue that maybe it would’ve roused suspicion if Phaedra had picked Parvati), who then picks John, who then picks… Peter. I’m pretty sure I literally said “UGH!” because it seemed so clear that it would have otherwise been Peter’s last night. So this leaves Kate, Parvati, Trishelle, MJ and Bergie unprotected — the Traitors will have to pick one of them to murder.

My bet is that they’ll pick MJ, so that it can look like Peter really is a Traitor, and that he murdered someone not in his little group. We’ll see!

The Traitors 206 Recap: “No One Trusts You, Darling”

At the start of The Traitors season two episode six, Alan Cumming reveals that the Traitors tried to murder Bergie, but because he has a shield, no murder has been committed. Parvati is nervous that Bergie had a shield, like she suspected, and Dan seems fully convinced that Bergie will be going home. Phaedra reveals she didn’t want to send home Bergie because she loves him (and he trusts her). So it’s clear this was Dan’s choice.

When Bergie walks into breakfast, it’s clear this choice fell right on its head. What a blunder! Dan tries to act happy to see Bergie, but I don’t know if anyone’s buying it — why should they? I still believe in Parvati’s ability to slither out of any bad situation she’s in, but I don’t believe Dan to do the same. And Phaedra, much to her credit, doesn’t even have anything to slither out of because still, NO ONE suspects her! What an icon.

It’s actually almost hard to watch how surprised Dan is by his failure — like, dude, this is literally exactly what Parvati told you she thought would happen. And you didn’t listen. So…?!?!? Peter tells the group about how he told three people that he had a shield: Dan, Parvati, and CJ. So, he reasons, because the Traitors tried to vote out Bergie, they must’ve believed him and made their move accordingly. It’s frustrating because, well, he’s right! And Parvati knew it but Dan did it anyway! Ugh.

Anyway, Parvati is obviously not giving up without a fight. Dan seems to want to do the same, and his only strategy is, again, withholding. It’s worked thus far in the game but it’s hard to see how doing that now will help. Good luck Dan!

Alan comes in, and I love his monochromatic, chrome blue matching top + beret + glasses, a combo I personally want in my closet as soon as possible. The group heads outside for the challenge, which is essentially launching a cannonball from a catapult BUT all the pieces to build the catapult are far apart and must be retrieved. Also, there are “shield ammo” boxes which you must retrieve if you want to have a shot at winning a shield.

Kate is not thrilled about how physical this challenge is, which makes for great television. I love watching Kate hate doing stuff — it’s really funny!

The challenge is indeed extremely physically demanding, a stark reminder of how quickly this show can oscillate from a basically funny, chill challenge to one that requires a lot of running, manual labor, and crossing freezing cold rivers with strong currents. Even the folks from The Challenge, Trishelle and CT, are struggling in this one, and they were on, you know, The Challenge!

The team successfully rebuilds the catapult and chooses John to be the one to launch the golden cannonball into the sky — the mood shifts drastically to euphoria. One of the things I love about The Traitors is not just how extreme the emotions are; it’s how quickly they are to transform and shift. Honestly, that feels pretty true to life for me! Life sucks until life rocks, until it sucks again. Shereé, Sandra, Parvati, Trishelle, and Peter all launch the shield ammo at the catapult’s target, and Shereé lands the closest, so she wins protection at tonight’s vote.

Back at the house, the tides are very clearly against Dan, and to a lesser extent, or maybe a greater extent, depending on who you ask, Parvati. I begin to wonder if Dan and Parvati’s best strategy might be trying to frame Peter, because maybe that’s all that’s left. But if I’m being honest, that move feels way too transparent and obvious — I’m hoping that Parvati can come up with something else, because honestly, I see no path forward for Dan.

Speaking of no hope for Dan, Peter has aligned with a group of faithfuls that he has decided are 100% faithful: himself, Bergie, Trishelle, John and Kevin. Peter may be right about who he is trusting, but it’s annoying to watch because he’s so self-righteous about it. No one hates it more than Parvati, especially because Peter is openly excluding her from conversations, literally closing the door in her face. Oh Peter, one thing you don’t wanna do is close a door in Parvati Shallow’s face! I wouldn’t advise it!

Dan’s strategy is, you guessed it, to withhold his opinion until the roundtable. It seems like this is his only move at this point — to imply he’s gonna have some big, amazing reveal that he just can’t say yet. Strategically, it would make the most sense for him to turn on Parvati, because they’re already suspicious of her. But like I said in my last recap, I don’t think he has it in him. If he turns on Phaedra instead, will anyone believe him?

At the roundtable, Dan comes out of the gate with his accusation, which he is trying (and I think succeeding) to make sound incredibly dramatic. I have to say, in my Werewolf experience, coming on so strong, first thing, doesn’t usually work unless you really are innocent! And even then, it sometimes doesn’t work!

Dan’s trying to position himself as the quiet, meticulous student who has been tallying the numbers, and has a rational, unemotional argument for who he thinks the traitor is. People look very nervous, so I have to believe Dan’s strategy is working, at least for the moment. He asks people to look at who hasn’t received a single vote — a group that includes both Parvati and Phaedra. He asks people to think about errant votes — it’s down to just Parvati and Phaedra.

And then, exactly as I predicted (!!!), Dan turns on Phaedra, identifying her reactions to the murders at breakfast as the linchpin to her guilt. It’s extremely hard to watch him not only throw her under the bus, but also try to run her over repeatedly. People are listening. Dan’s strategy seems to rest on the assumption that Phaedra won’t be able to think fast enough on her feet to defend herself.

And that’s when I remembered, Phaedra is not just a Housewife (already a role that requires nuance, strategy, and a lot of thinking on your feet). She’s also a top-notch lawyer.

Kate is the first to question Dan’s case. She opens the door for Phaedra to defend herself, and she does, so calmly and with such pathos that I almost forgot she really is a traitor. She says it clearly to Dan: “No one trusts you, darling.” GO OFF, PHAEDRA!!! GET HIM!!!

Meanwhile, Parvati doesn’t even have to say anything. She knows better than to try to make her case right now.

When the votes come in, Dan votes for Phaedra, Peter votes for Parvati to help people remember he’s also suspicious of her (okay), and the rest of the votes go to Dan. He’s outta here.

In his confessional, Dan remarks that in The Traitors you can’t make one mistake, and he did. I was very struck by this moment because, by my account, he made several mistakes: choosing Parvati as a Traitor, voting for Bergie when both of your fellow Traitors, for different reasons advised against it, and finally, trying to take down Queen Phaedra. I’d say that Dan, your biggest mistake was thinking you only made one mistake.

Back at the turret, things get really juicy. Alan Cumming gives Parvati and Phaedra the opportunity to either murder someone, or seduce a new traitor — and that person doesn’t have to accept. Parvati, agent of strategic chaos and friend of risk, wants to seduce Peter. He’s a bloodhound, she reasons, and that’s someone she wants on her team so that she can “watch him murder his friends.” I gasped!

The episode closes with Peter receiving the invitation to be a Traitor… will he take it?!

The Traitors 205 Recap: A Killer Move

The fifth episode of The Traitors season two picks up in the turret, where we last saw Phaedra getting really mad at Parvati for implicating the Housewives, broadly. After Parvati confirms she was only trying to get out Larsa (which she did!) and apologizes for implicating Phaedra in any way, Phaedra seems to forgive her. Dan, again, is there! (I’m starting to think this is his strategy, actually, to outwardly be so passive.)

Parvati offers the choice of murder to Phaedra, since she picked their last victim (Ekin-Su). Phaedra settles on Tamra Judge — a choice that suggests she really has buried the hatchet with Parvati, since Tamra is herself a Housewife. It also really protects Phaedra, because she has just shown her loyalty to the Housewives — if a Housewife is then murdered, the Traitor couldn’t be Phaedra!

The next morning, when everyone walks into breakfast except for Tamra, it causes chaos, as always. Alan Cumming gravely retorts, “A real Housewife lost her real house life,” which makes me remember just how great of a host he is. I love these odd, dramatic one-liners he delivers with such aplomb every dang time. Alan Cumming also reveals someone new will be joining today. Who will it be!!

At breakfast, CT is extremely suspicious of Dan, who has essentially refused to ever state a suspicion of a single person being a traitor. CT is pushing him really hard to make one single guess, and Dan, adhering to what I have to believe is his strategy, continues to refuse. He’s sort of a brick wall, revealing literally no information. (Sometimes when I play the game One Night Ultimate Werewolf, there are people whose strategy is to simply not talk. Sometimes it makes them look suspicious, but most of the time, you simply stop engaging with them, because if you can’t get any information from them, you worry you’re wasting your time. I think Dan is approximating this strategy.) It seems the tides are turning against Dan, and I don’t know if this is admirable or silly, but he seems to do anything but panic! For me, it’s a little infuriating. It’s like, dude, do something!

After breakfast, it’s clear the tides are turning against Dan, as many others are suspicious of him (Janelle, Trishelle, Bergie). Only Kevin is absolutely convinced that Janelle is a traitor.

This episode’s challenge involves the team splitting up, one competing outside (with access to winning the two shields in play) and one competing inside (with no access to the shields in play). After some back-and-forth about the teams, determined mostly by which players are insisting that they get a chance to win the shields, the challenge begins. It’s actually a very funny challenge involving all of them running around and imitating bird calls. Tonally, it feels very different from the funeral march last episode, and for me, it’s a welcome reprieve, if a bit boring.

Trishelle and Bergie win the shields, and Peter comes up with an actually interesting and strategic idea: If Trishelle and Bergie don’t reveal they won the shields, every person on the outdoors team can be protected. Peter reasons that if the Traitors don’t know who of their six has the shields, they won’t want to target any, because they won’t want to waste a vote. As far as I know, Peter is from The Bachelor, and I was impressed to see him ratchet up the game play by employing a pretty nuanced strategy. If he can pull it off, that is.

Back in the house, after the challenge, Peter intensifies his strategy by telling Dan, privately, that he and Janelle won the shields. Peter tells Parvati, also privately, the same thing, thinking that if either of them are the Traitors, (1) this might protect him and Janelle from getting murdered and (2) best case scenario, they believe him, and choose to murder Bergie/Janelle, who actually has the shield, effectively wasting a murder, and revealing themselves as Traitors. Sneaky sneaky, Peter! I love it.

Janelle is still really gunning for Dan. Once again, the best thing Dan seems to come up with is going to Parvati and getting her to handle it for him. Generously, maybe this is his strategy. Parvati reasons that if Janelle is coming for Dan this hard, they’ve got to get Janelle out, to protect Dan. This isn’t the first time I begin to wonder if Dan would protect Parvati like she is seemingly willing to protect him. Despite being labeled so often as a villain, I don’t think Parvati plays dirty; she decides who’s on her team and who isn’t and cleaves to those boundaries. It seems Parvati sees both Dan and Phaedra as her team, at least for now. Dan, on the other hand, seems to be a team of one, and I worry how this could affect both Parvati and Phaedra moving forward….

Inexplicably at this point, we learn who the new player is going to be, and it’s the iconic Kate Chastain, a fan favorite from season one of The Traitors and a whole lotta seasons of Below Deck!! I’m excited to see how she shakes things up; you can always count on Kate to say exactly what she’s thinking, and that’s always a rollercoaster to watch. Alan Cumming, wearing a shirt seemingly made only of feathers (love), brings another chair to the roundtable, and in walks Kate.

Kevin steels himself and delivers a formal accusation of Janelle, which really gets under Janelle’s skin. She, in turn, says she thinks — nay, is sure — the Traitors are Dan (right!), CT (wrong!), and Sandra (what??). Her choice to accuse beyond Dan baffles me, especially considering CT and Sandra are close allies (they will rally against you), from competitive reality TV shows built on kicking people out when they show you can’t trust them. I really wish Janelle had just stuck to Dan!

Dan’s defense, unsurprisingly, is to provide no defense. I actually think I see his strategy begin to work here. It’s like, how could someone react so calmly if they really were the Traitor?? Wouldn’t they be freaking out? But that reasoning actually holds no water, for me. Because he is a Traitor, he can stay calm, because of course he can prepare for this moment, because it is a reasonable accusation, since it’s based on truth. For Faithfuls, getting accused of being a traitor is an unreasonable accusation, because it’s not based on truth, so of course it sends people into a tailspin! Peter and Janelle push Dan to say a name, any name, and he says… Janelle, again, sidestepping making any choice for himself. He aligns with the majority every single time.

When the votes come in, they’re split between Janelle and Dan. But at the end of the day, Janelle gets the majority of the vote. I can’t help but remember literally earlier in the episode, when CT was absolutely gunning for Dan! But of course, saving his own life in the game became more important than eliminating Dan — Janelle was a much more immediate threat to his continued presence on the game. In all reality competition shows, emotion plays a bigger role than I think most contestants would like to admit — but maybe in The Traitors more than anything else, because getting accused of being something you’re not is just…really emotion-inducing!!

Janelle goes home, and some of the people at the table — namely Bergie — see this as confirmation Dan is in fact a traitor. It’s hard for me to see how Dan will clear his name at the next roundtable.

Back in the turret, the Traitors discuss their next target. Parvati reveals Peter told her, in confidence, that he won a shield. Dan reveals he did the exact same with her. Parvati, in true Parvati fashion, immediately knows Peter must be lying. I stood up and cheered!! Parvati’s biggest asset has always been her extremely sharp emotional IQ; that gal simply knows when people are lying! Poor Peter has no idea who he’s dealing with! Parvati reasons that because they don’t know who has the shield, they should murder someone who wasn’t on the outside team — also because then it’ll imply to Peter that Parvati and Dan are NOT the Traitors. Seems like a great plan to me!

Dan, on the other hand, thinks Peter couldn’t be savvy enough to strategically lie (??) and believes him. Dan reasons that because Phaedra got to decide the last murder (Tamra) and Parvati the one before (Ekin-Su) (which remember, was only because no one else could execute the poison murder), he should get to decide this one. This reasoning doesn’t sit well with me, because Dan is implying both Parvati and Phaedra asked for and wanted to decide the last murder victims, which neither of them did. Two women and a man, and only one seems to feel entitled to make decisions for the group…interesting!!!

Dan seems to think the best choice (for his life in the game) is to murder Bergie — a.k.a. to fall right into Peter’s trap. Which, as Parvati realized in about one second, is indeed a trap!!! But Dan seems to believe it’s worth the risk of wasting a murder, which I find unstrategic and shortsighted, to say the least.

I’m nervous that Parvati and Phaedra choosing to go along with Dan, even though they KNOW it risks wasting a murder, could be really bad for them, ultimately. Here’s what I’m afraid of happening: They murder Bergie, and he is saved because he has the shield. This, to Peter, confirms Dan and Parvati are both traitors. Dan, to save his own life, decides to go full-throttle on…Phaedra, which would make no strategic sense, since she has arguably been playing the best game of all three of them.

But I just don’t see Dan throwing Parvati under the bus. Maybe I’m wrong! What do you think will happen??

The Traitors 204 Recap: Who Did Parvati Shallow Poison?

Episode four of The Traitors season two picks up right at the cliffhanger where we left off: wondering to whom Parvati Shallow gave the POISON CHALICE. This tactic is new to season two, and I haven’t decided if I like it. Forcing the Traitors to murder in plain sight surely puts the Traitors more on edge than declaring who shall die from on high in their turret. It seems like it gives the Innocents a leg up, because surely one of them will be able to remember someone giving whoever ends up being murdered a weird glass, right? RIGHT?!

In the previous episode, Phaedra Parks decided she didn’t want to involve herself in giving out the chalice, so it was down to Dan Gheesling and Parvati. Dan was supposed to retrieve the chalice from the library, and then Parvati would be in charge of surreptitiously convincing someone to drink it. Despite his fervent desire to be a Traitor, Dan couldn’t pull off moving a glass out of a room (…), so Parvati handled that, too.

I thought Parvati might flirt her way into giving the chalice to a man, because, well, it seems like that might be the easiest route. Parvati identifies her target, places the chalice down, says cheers, and just like that — her target drinks.

But it wasn’t a man! It was dear, sweet, trusting and silly Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu! Parvati targeted someone whom she loves, who would never suspect her. It’s the kind of cutthroat ruthlessness we’ve come to expect from such a strong game player. (It’s giving Amanda Kimmel’s commitment to Parvati in Survivor’s Heroes vs. Villains.)

Dan, quite literally right next to Parvati and Ekin-Su, doesn’t seem to notice that Parvati has finished the job he was supposed to start. Sorry Dan, you’re being upstaged by the very person you decided to bring in! Why am I not surprised?

After an odd and unexplained mention that Deontay Wilder has left the game “after the day’s events” (?), we’re on to another lavish breakfast of scones and endless orange juice. Dan, Phaedra, and Parvati arrive at the table first, and this is when Parvati reveals who she murdered. She explains that her choice of murder victim wasn’t particularly strategic — it moreso came from a place of pragmatism; who could she subtly get to drink out of a “rusty old cup”? Phaedra is not pleased with the choice; she’s worried that because she voted for Ekin-Su at the last roundtable, people might now suspect her (I don’t quite follow the logic tbqh).

But much to everyone’s surprise, every single remaining contestant ultimately walks through the door to breakfast — including Ekin-Su! Alan Cumming reveals that the poisoned victim will die at some point later today. Yikes!!

Before the challenge, Dan tells Parvati that he’s wondering if they should throw Phaedra under the bus, essentially to give the Innocents something. This is disappointing because it feels both mean and not strategic in addition to being the second time a Black woman has been targeted for no discernible reason this season. It’s way too early in the game to justify giving the Innocents literally any clue, in my opinion! (If anything, I think Parvati and Phaedra should team up and get rid of Dan — people already suspect him!!!) Disappointingly, Parvati seems to agree with Dan, but I’m hoping she’s just saying that to his face to keep him thinking she’s working with him, so that she can stab him in the back and betray him later! A girl can dream.

The challenge for the day is an extremely theatrical, preemptive funeral march/trivia game for the yet-to-be-identified poison victim. I’m not gonna lie, this challenge got really creepy, and I actually began to question if this might do a little psychological damage! The combination of the eerie black carriage, drawn by eerie black horses, with all the contestants dressed in black, led by the commanding theatrical force of nature that is Alan Cumming made this feel, at least to me, like… a little too scary! I do think that’s the point — I guess the line between horror camp and actual horror is pretty thin.

By the end of the challenge, it comes down to three potential victims: Parvati, Mercedes “MJ” Javid, and of course, Ekin-Su. Everyone then votes for who they believe was murdered, and every single person votes for MJ, because strategically, she seems like a good target for the Traitors — she’s opinionated, outspoken, and not afraid to be a team of one. Alan Cumming reveals that Ekin-Su was in fact the actual victim and everyone — including Parvati, Phaedra and Dan — is like WHAT???!?!

Chaos ensues. No one can figure out why the Traitors would want to get rid of Ekin-Su. They seem to have forgotten that this wasn’t a typical murder — someone had to drink out of a weird chalice! Nobody seems to be asking, did anyone see someone give Ekin-Su a drink?? Such as, I don’t know, Parvati??

Back at the house, Larsa Pippen is rallying the housewives — including Phaedra — towards voting for either Chris “CT” Tamburello or Dan, because she is firmly convinced an “alpha male” is behind this. (Her belief that only a strong man could be making the choices to get rid of other strong men feels, well… somewhat outdated!). Parvati decides to take control of the narrative because that’s what she does; she plants the seeds that maybe Larsa is a Traitor. And her listeners fall in line, of course. Parvati makes it look easy.

It’s interesting to see how differently Phaedra and Parvati approach the role of Traitor. Phaedra seems to prioritize fitting in with her allies, keeping such a low profile that even I, a viewer who knows that she’s a Traitor, find myself thinking she’s innocent. Parvati, on the other hand, takes a more domineering approach, drawing focus away from herself by throwing it onto someone else (in this case, Larsa). I love when you get to see multiple strong players take completely different strategies! (As for Dan’s strategy… he seems to think he’s controlling the game when really all he did was engineer a situation where he could be close to Parvati. Give him a fedora and call him Russell Hantz!)

(I want to give a quick shout-out to Sandra Diaz-Twine, who seems to be playing this game like it’s a version of Survivor, and the roundtable is Tribal Council. She talks with everyone, feels out where the votes might go, and decides to rally people — before the roundtable even begins! — towards Larsa because she doesn’t want her ally CT to go home. Sandra doesn’t seem as concerned with identifying the Traitors as she is with remaining in the game, which could actually totally be a winning strategy.)

At the roundtable, Parvati again throws Larsa under the bus, saying that the Traitor is likely an actor, or…a housewife. Phaedra is noticeably perturbed by this, because it throws heat in her direction, as a fellow housewife herself.

After Larsa gets the most votes and goes home, the Traitors meet in the turret. Phaedra is extremely mad at Parvati (and Dan, because he’s there too) for implicating the housewives, and I see where Phaedra is coming from. She really lays into Parvati, saying no one likes her and everyone thinks she’s a Traitor! I wonder if this is true or if it’s coming from a place of anger. The editing hasn’t yet shown us people outwardly hating Parvati, but she’s certainly been unpopular in other reality TV shows she’s been on. She can be divisive!

I also could see how Parvati’s move to implicate the housewives could actually strengthen Phaedra’s game, because people would never guess that Parvati and Phaedra are working together. But that would require Parvati and Phaedra to trust each other wholly and completely, and unfortunately, at least right now, I don’t think they do.

This episode leaves us in an emotionally volatile moment: Will Phaedra and Parvati reconcile, or will each race toward cannibalizing the other first? We’ll see!!

The Traitors Is a Dramatic Game of Social Manipulation, What Does That Teach Us?

If you’re at my apartment on a Friday or Saturday night, and we’re wondering, what should we do, how should we spend the evening?, I can pretty much guarantee you one thing: I will suggest, with feigned casualness, trying to seem like I really don’t care that much, that we play One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I won’t bore you with the details, because who on god’s green earth wants to read board game instructions. All you need to know is someone is secretly deemed The Werewolf, and they don’t want to be discovered by the rest of the group as such. The group has five minutes to discuss, with the goal of identifying who really is The Werewolf. If the group successfully identifies The Werewolf, the group wins; if The Werewolf goes undetected, The Werewolf wins.

Reality competition series The Traitors is basically One Night Ultimate Werewolf, except all the people playing are from various other reality TV shows, and the villains are The Traitors, not The Werewolf. And instead of having five minutes to discuss, you have hours, or days, or weeks, broken up by episodic challenges. And the American version  all inexplicably takes place in a huge, ancient mansion in Scotland, hosted by Alan Cumming, who is dressed to the nines, narrating each turn of events in the thickest Scottish accent you’ve ever heard. So yeah, it’s amazing.

The Traitors Season Two opens with a bunch of reality TV stars from totally disparate worlds — from Rupaul’s Drag Race’s Peppermint, to Survivor’s Parvati Shallow and Sandra Diaz-Twine, to Bling Empire’s Kevin Kreider, to a professional boxer, to a random retired British politician — arriving at Alan Cumming’s mansion in rural Scotland. That would’ve been enough of an opening, but no, The Traitors goes hard where it simply could’ve not gone at all. The stars are greeted by Alan Cumming’s bearded, silent footman, then his dog Lala, and finally, a bunch of people dressed all in black vigorously playing these huge drums, for some reason. Everyone’s screaming, and so am I! This is theater, people!!! And I love theater!!

As with most competition reality TV shows, the pace feels slower in the first few episodes — but honestly, the completely unnecessary drama of literally every choice made by the producers of The Traitors makes it feel fast-paced and delicious from the very start. For anyone who watches a good amount of reality TV, it’s really dang fun to see folks from very different shows all socializing here. The bizarreness of someone from Big Brother teaching Kevin from Bling Empire about Johnny Bananas from The Challenge (now is when I confess… I also love The Challenge) is just — well, it’s just something I never thought I’d see borne out.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that arguably the biggest reality TV pairing of this season (at least for me) is two people from the same world — Parvati and Sandra from Survivor. Survivor fans out there know about the long-standing rivalry between these two absolute icons, and let me just say, The Traitors Season Two, at least in the first three episodes, does not disappoint when it comes to exploring their dynamic.

And this is where I’ll level with you — as soon as I saw Parvati and Sandra were gonna be in the second season of The Traitors, I was deeply hoping that one or both of them would be a traitor. Parvati in particular, because the role of Traitor is one Parvati Shallow was meant to play. The Traitor must have high emotional intelligence and be able to form connections with, if not everybody, then at least the right socially influential people. The Traitor must be calm under pressure, or else their identity will be discovered by the group. The Traitor must be agile and adjust their plans as social dynamics shift and evolve. Parvati Shallow — #1 flirter; master meditator; evolving, growing human being — would make a great Traitor, wouldn’t she?

But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Parvati, it’s that the best way to keep someone invested isn’t to give them what they want — it’s to withhold. So I’m not going to tell you if she got selected as a traitor or not. I’m not going to tell you if it happens in a conventional way or not, or if it happens at all. You’ll just have to watch to find out. If you want.

What I will tell you is that every single thing about The Traitors — from the setting, to the emotionality of the contestants, to the language Alan Cumming uses, to the very timbre of my recaps! — is over the top. Only Johnny Bananas (a fascinating human being to me; how on earth can you win a show with the physical and mental absurdity of The Challenge not once, not twice, but seven times?!) seems to realize how silly and extravagant this show’s whole deal is. Everyone else — including me, as a viewer — gets sucked into the lush, high-octane world of The Traitors and swallowed whole.

You might think, then, that The Traitors is escapism at its finest. Sure, on a surface level, it is. I could (and will) watch it for hours, completely dissociated from the world around me. But I don’t think it’s that simple. In fact, early in the show, The Challenge’s Trishelle Cannatella’s treatment of Peppermint shows us that the power dynamics at play in the game are anything but divorced from reality. Without really anything significant to go on — the game has truly just started — Trishelle decides, based on how Peppermint reacted to a joke, that she thinks Peppermint is a Traitor. It’s hard not to see racism, transphobia, and homophobia, as factors in how Trishelle effectively turns nearly the whole group against Peppermint, rather swiftly, which is especially easy for her to do since Peppermint didn’t come on with sibling cast members the way most other players did, which Peppermint spoke about in her exit interview with Out. Trishelle’s treatment of Peppermint and her subsequent elimination is hard to watch and stomach. Peppermint ends up, heartbreakingly, being the very first person sent home, despite, of course, not being a Traitor. I think the outcomes of the Trishelle’s and the group’s treatment of Peppermint will heavily impact the rest of the season, given how strongly some folks reacted when Peppermint was revealed to not be a Traitor, just after being the very first person the group sent home.

The Traitors is a show, much like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, about social manipulation. How groups of people define otherhood, rightly or wrongly, based in reality, assumption, fantasy, or some mix of all three. How someone slides into or resists a role thrust upon them by a group. How someone seizes, maintains, and loses power. How the collective subsumes the individual every time, except for when the individual subsumes the collective. How groupthink pulls focus from those deserving scrutiny to those completely innocent.

I’ll be watching The Traitors Season Two and recapping it every Friday. Join me?

The Big And

feature image by Tanja Ivanova via Getty Images

Home for the holidays last week, I sat on my bed, in the room where I lived from ages 12 to 18. The laundry machine sang its song, signaling the end of its cycle, and I, without thinking, sang along. I smiled at the familiarity, the sounds of childhood, the sounds of home.

And then I remembered, this wasn’t the laundry machine my parents had when I was growing up, when I lived in that room, when I was ages 12 to 18. They replaced the laundry machines sometime when I was in college, I think. I frowned and tried to remember the song of the laundry machine before this laundry machine, if it even had a song. Nothing came to mind.

***When I was growing up, my family went out to breakfast every Friday morning before school, which sounds more extravagant than it was. We woke up twenty minutes earlier than usual, drove to Javaholics a few blocks away, and got pastries and coffee. I would get a chocolate croissant, and my mom would get a cranberry scone, and we would usually go splitsy-splitsy, so I would eat half a croissant and half a scone, as would she, except for on the mornings when I exclusively wanted a chocolate croissant, in which case the deal was off.

Sometime in middle school, or high school, I’m not sure, someone drove their car into Javaholics. It closed.

We tried out a few places after that, and none of them felt as right as Javaholics. I went to college.

After a few years of cafe-hopping, my parents discovered this new place, called Arsicault. My brother went to college, too. I moved to New York; he moved to New York; my parents still go to Arsicault every Friday. I’m not home as much, but when I am, on a Friday, I eat a chocolate croissant, and it’s the best chocolate croissant I’ve ever had, every time.

***I have always loved new year’s resolutions, not because of how they ask me to look forward, but how they ask me to look back. The future is hazy and unknowable, but the past is a historical document, full of data and information.

So as 2023 drew to a close, I found myself wondering, what did I learn this year? What’s my biggest lesson? Over the summer, I started a newsletter called Questions I Have, in which I explore — you guessed it — questions I have. So you can imagine my surprise when I asked myself the question of what did 2023 teach me? and found, shockingly, that I thought I had an answer.

The answer is “and.”

In 2023, I felt worthless, and loved myself more than I ever have before.

In 2023, I admitted how badly someone hurt me, and I forgave them, and that process is over and ongoing, and it changed me privately, and it changed me publicly, and I stayed the same.

In 2023, I talked to myself for hours, and I gave myself permission to shut the fuck up.

In 2023, I read a lot and got high a lot and watched artistic movies and watched a lot of reality TV.

In 2023, I realized how well I know myself and how much more there is to learn.

In 2023, I gave up, and I strove for improvement.

In 2023, I was a kid and a grown-up.

In 2023, none of it mattered, and all of it mattered, and some of it mattered, and some of it didn’t.

It’d be so much easier if it was “or” instead of “and”, wouldn’t it? If every pain really could be traced to one specific catalyst, or another, and not to both. It’d be more clear-cut, and there would be a lot less hemming and hawing, at least from me. I spent a lot of 2023 trying to decipher what is right and what is wrong, who is right and who is wrong, who is to blame and who is innocent, who’s on my side and who is not, only to realize it’s all and. This realization makes me angry and relieved and excited and scared.

***On New Year’s Eve this year, I sat on the couch with my fiancé and my besties, reflecting on 2023. We’re all in our thirties, and it shows.

“I’ll never get medicated for the first time again,” one of us said.

“I’ll never get laid off for the first time again,” another of us said.

“My mom will never die again,” another of us said.

***In college, probably right around when my parents found Arsicault, I took a playwriting class with Sarah Ruhl. She taught us the six forms of plot in playwriting, something she learned from her teacher, Paula Vogel. The one that confused and inspired me the most is called “synthetic fragment,” also known as the continuous present. In this form, all time exists at once. The play takes place in the past and the present and the future.

If time is blurry, and I think it is, then so is everything else. A friendship that ended is a relief and a tragedy and a detail. A lover lost is a lesson and a mourning and a motivation. Death is awful and inevitable. Cats are loved ones and mysteries and apex predators.

I feel a distinct desire to narrativize life, to divide it into categories and sort it accordingly. I don’t think I’m the only one. But there is something compelling about the blurring. When the categories — of time, of emotion, of memory — obfuscate and intertwine, what is left?

Us. I find myself thinking, we’re all just little guys (gender neutral), living our little, big lives.

I am sitting on my bed, on the couch, eating a croissant, eating a scone, eating a different croissant, loving my family, mythologizing my family, creating family, loving myself, hating myself, learning, growing, shrinking, embarrassing myself, making myself proud.

Welcome to the new year. Embrace the and.

“Survivor” Winners Parvati Shallow and Erika Casupanan Are Gay and Parvati’s Bae is Mae

Parvati Shallow Comes Out as Queer, Hard Launches Mae Martin Relationship: “We’re here. We’re queer. Happy new year.”

Picture this. It’s your last night home for the holidays before you return to Brooklyn. Your fiancé told you she’s going to shower, so you go to get your laundry from your parents’ basement. Suddenly, you hear a yelp. It’s your fiancé! She’s yelling your name! You run to her, unsure whether you should be concerned or excited, because she’s still yelling, screaming really, either exuberant or panicked. You finally make it to her; she yells “LOOK!” and turns her phone around to show you THIS post in which Survivor winner Parvati Shallow comes out as gay and also being in a relationship with Mae Martin!

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No, reader, this isn’t fantasy. This is real life. Everything I just said is true. Yes, I was doing laundry. Yes, Parvati Shallow — already a gay icon, winner of Survivor Season 16 — is queer and dating non-binary comedian Mae Martin. Mae also posted about the relationship on their own Instagram this morning, which earned a supportive string of heart emojis from none other than Sophia Bush, as well as congrats from people like Alison Brie and Catherine Bohart.

Eagle-eyed members of the Parvati fan club may have seen this announcement coming — there have been rumors that Parvati and Mae have been dating swirling since November 2023. There have been little hints on social media about Parvati and Mae’s romance ever since, like:

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Mae’s fans have also been on high alert, as Mae has mentioned Parvati in recent live shows and on the Handsome Podcast they host with Tig Notaro and Fortune Feimster.

And all of this was after Parvati said “gay rights”, a video that it’s very normal for me to have known about for several years and to have watched, you know, a few times.

Even before Parvati — now officially the first ever queer woman to win Survivor! — came out, she was a gay icon, evidenced by Las Culturistas’ Matt Rogers saying so (and me agreeing) and also by the fact that she is my wi-fi password. I don’t know what makes a gay icon, exactly, but I do know why I love Parvati. She’s arguably one of the best social manipulators to ever grace the Survivor screen — the Black Widow Brigade pulled off maybe the best move of all time that I won’t spoil here for anyone who hasn’t watched her season.

According to her website, Parvati works as “a coach, author and speaker helping high performers transform their lives” “through bold, inspired action.”

Parvati Shallow Is Survivor’s First Queer Woman Winner, One of Survivor’s Most Compelling Players of All Time

In every season I’ve seen Parvati in (full disclosure that I have not watched Winners at War!), she dominates the social game. She can seemingly flirt with just about anyone, which has been used as an argument against her. But I think to be able to flirt is to be able to see people as they want to be seen, to tell them what they want to hear, to give them what they want to receive, all while making the power dynamic feel equitable. To do that with any one person takes social and emotional insight; to do that with many, in a game like Survivor where people are specifically trying not to be taken advantage of? That’s a freaking gift.

(The only person apparently immune to Parvati’s wiles is Sandra Diaz-Twine, a social manipulator queen in her own right. Both Sandra and Parvati draw from a well of emotional intelligence far deeper than the average player, which they employ with very different tactics, to very similar ends. And maybe that’s exactly why they don’t get along. And if you want to hear more about this, please watch Season Two of The Traitors with me because both Parvati and Sandra are on it!! Keep an eye out for those recaps here on Autostraddle.com!)

But Parvati is more than her ability to connect with and sway just about every person she encounters. She’s also a challenge beast — she can do things like stand on a pole for SIX HOURS and then, while up there, negotiate with the last remaining player so that they don’t have to play until they literally drop. She’s also an introspective, evolving human who shares openly about what it’s like to be labeled as a Survivor “villain”, and how that reshaped her life.

(I do love Parvati’s villain era though, in Survivor Season 20, aptly named Heroes vs. Villains. This season includes my personal favorite moment in Survivor TV history, nay ALL OF TV history, when a certain Fedora-wearing someone misuses an immunity idol, and Parvati hisses, “You wasted it.” She couldn’t be more right, and she couldn’t be less afraid to tell this man how stupid he’s been — how delicious. Please sound off in the comments if you also cherish this moment!!!)
All in all, I love Parvati because she embodies the human contradictions I try so hard to allow for in my own life: she’s so utterly confident in who she is, in embracing her own power, while also being so deeply open to change and new discovery. And you know what? That’s queer. Welcome home, Parv!!!

Survivor Season 41 Winner Erika Casupanan Is a Lesbian Becomes First Lesbian Winner

But reader, this isn’t all. Mere moments after the Parvati news came out, I did what any normal person would do — I pored over the comments on her post. And that’s when I saw a comment saying, “Two survivor winners coming out in one day!!!” and my HEART SKIPPED A BEAT! Who else came out today, I wondered and also said out loud to my fiancé. “Erika!” answered the other commenters on Parvati’s post, since we’re all in this together, aren’t we!!

So of course, then I had to go see what Erika Casupanan had to say for herself! And yes, readers, this too is true: Erika Casupanan is Survivor’s first lesbian winner!!!

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And who among us hasn’t sat underneath a table eating grapes in order to secure a boyfriend only to end up drinking wine and realizing we’re lesbians. Happens to the best of us!!

Erika, Survivor’s first Canadian winner and Survivor’s first Filipino winner, has extremely cool purple hair which should’ve been at least a LITTLE bit of a hint, is a keynote speaker and media correspondent. She hosts a podcast called “Happy to See Me,” where she interviews reality TV, social media and other pop culture personalities and appeared in the first season of The Traitors Canada.

Erika won Survivor Season 41 by playing the middle and not making a single enemy — a strategy that seems to have become more and more prevalent in the “new era” of Survivor. She and Parvati played very different games, but you know what they both have in common? THEY’RE BOTH QUEER!!!

Survivor Season 45’s Finale Shows Us That Sometimes Winners Win

The finale of Survivor Season 45 was better than I thought it would be, to be honest!

After Tribal Council, Austin Li Coon forgives Dee Balladares for leaving him out of the Drew Basile vote almost immediately. It’s surprising and intriguing that Dee seems closer than ever with Austin after essentially stabbing him in the back. Dee owns her choices 100%, in such a way that to be disappointed with her seems illogical and even more so, not even a viable option. Everyone seems to feel that way about Dee — Austin most of all.

Except Katurah Topps, who for a while now has been saying they’ve got to get Dee out. Katurah and Dee seem to see each other; they are playing very different games, but they’re both playing very hard. Where Dee asserts her dominance and justifies it with unwavering confidence, Katurah keeps a low profile, making sure people always want to pull her in for a vote. And Katurah, it seems, can make everyone smile — she’s just fun to be around. I think sometimes we don’t like to admit that likeability is actually a huge factor in a game like Survivor. (Imagine being starving, exhausted, AND forced to hang out with someone annoying!)

But Katurah’s simmering strategy and playful charisma aren’t even my favorite thing about her. My favorite thing about Katurah is that she never, ever, ever gives up on herself.

But anyway, back to the episode! Through a convoluted series of tasks, Jake O’Kane secures an advantage to the second to last immunity challenge of the season — needless to say, a very valuable asset at this key moment. However, in the immunity challenge, Jake fumbles not once but twice with truly hard-to-watch brainfarts, ultimately losing the challenge to Austin.

It’s an immunity and reward challenge, so Austin gets to pick someone to bring with him. I thought he’d bring Dee, because, well, I think he’s in love with her, but he brings Jake! At the reward, Jake tells Austin about his idol, and people, you know what I always say, never tell anyone about your idol! I feel for Jake in this moment — he seems desperate to do something important in this game, but an underlying freneticism keeps pushing him toward unstrategic moves.

Back on the beach, with Julie Alley, Dee and Katurah, Katurah is campaigning hard to get out Dee. But Julie doesn’t want to; she wants to go to the end with Dee and Katurah, so that she can show that she kept her most important alliance in tact the whole time. So the gals seem to align on voting out Jake, because, well, why not.

When Austin and Jake return to camp, Austin immediately tells his wife friend Dee about Jake’s idol. So now Dee wants to vote Katurah, because Jake will in theory play the idol on himself. Things get increasingly scrambled at this point, and by the time we get to Tribal Council, I’m truly not sure who is voting for whom.

In the end, the votes are all over the place. Jake does play his idol: In a misguided attempt to make a flashy move, he plays it on Katurah, who is understandably completely thrown by this, because why on earth would you not tell her you’re gonna do that?? Katurah, Dee, Jake, and Julie all get one vote, and we know that Katurah, who had been set on voting Dee, changed her mind at the last second. Katurah votes for Julie instead of Dee, sending Julie home. It’s hard not to wonder, right then and there, if this was Katurah’s million dollar mistake.

On Julie’s way out the door, in a particularly poignant moment, she tells Katurah to go to law school. For this whole season, neither Julie nor Katurah has revealed that they are lawyers. But Julie sees in Katurah what we all see in Katurah: her biting tongue, her big picture thinking, and most of all, her indefatigable spirit. Of course she’d make a great lawyer.

Back at camp, chaos ensues over such a messy vote. Next thing we know, it’s time for the final immunity challenge of the season. As Jeff explains it to the remaining four contestants, Dee grins ear-to-ear; it’s a wildly difficult agility and balance challenge and, simply put, she knows she’s gonna win. And she does. It’s not even close. Just like that, Dee is in final three, like we always knew she would be.

With the new era of Survivor, final three is determined by fire-making. The winner of immunity chooses one person to take with them to Final Three, and the remaining two battle it out in fire making. At first, I didn’t like this change — Survivor is a social game, and then all the sudden, at arguably the most crucial moment, it becomes about… making fire???

That said, this was the first time I actually really liked this set up, because it highlighted how making fire is as much a skill as it is a manifestation — a will to get it freaking DONE when you really need to. Though she oscillates, it seems pretty clear that Dee will bring Austin to the end with her (in her mind, the honorable choice at the end of an honorably played game). So Katurah and Jake will make fire.

At first Katurah is overwhelmed and scared — who wouldn’t be! Your whole fate rests on some twigs and flint. But, like she always does, she steels herself:

“But, I am Katurah. And I can usually do things that I don’t know how to do or that I find difficult.”

She prepares herself to fight as hard as possible for herself, like she’s done throughout this season and, so it seems, her whole dang life. She knows she has a low chance of winning. But goddammit if she isn’t gonna try her hardest anyway.

At Tribal, Dee does in fact choose Austin, and Jake and Katurah go to fire. Also, it’s worth noting that neither Austin nor Dee wanted to be next to Katurah at Final Three, because she’s such a good storyteller and played such a unique game, so Austin essentially tutored Jake on making fire. And apparently the fire lessons paid off, because Jake wins. It’s heartbreaking to watch Katurah go home so close to the end.

She gives a beautiful and heartbreaking monologue where she finally tells the whole jury that actually she is a lawyer, and in real life, she’s very planned and meticulous. But she wanted to try to play this game just as Katurah, leading with her heart. I teared up!! Good for you, Katurah!!

After one last night at camp, we’re at Final Tribal. It’s pretty clear that it’s between Austin and Dee, because unfortunately, Jake isn’t able to deliver, which sadly feels like his theme for the season. Kellie Nalbandian wants to “see Dee and Austin go at it,” and frankly Kellie, I agree!!!

And they really do. It’s a gorgeous, passionate, charged verbal show-down between two people that played great games, who also may want to marry each other one day. For a while, it almost looks like Austin is gonna win because to be honest, he’s a great talker! And Dee is shooting herself in the foot now and then, talking about luck when she should be talking about the fact that she had an iron-clad grip on every freaking vote in this season.

But financial analyst Emily Flippen makes sure we know who the winner is — she asks about the very vote that got her out. Austin confidently explains that even though he told Dee they were voting Julie (which everyone told him not to do), she never told Julie so it didn’t impact his game at all. And that’s when we see, in real-time, Dee reveal that actually she HAD told Julie. And Julie did exactly what Dee told her to do. I’m sorry Austin, you got played! What I love about this moment is Austin’s reaction — he smiles, almost coyly, almost like he’s proud of Dee. Because damn, that’s amazing.

When the votes come in, Austin gets three, and Dee gets the remaining five. Like I said so early on, this game was seemingly always Dee’s to win, and she won it. In some ways, it’s almost boring because it’s predictable. But when I really reflect on it, it’s anything but. Dee won with strength, strategy, and social finesse, all while cleaving to her morals and without making a single enemy. She fell into a showmance, and she managed to both keep that relationship in tact, AND not let it affect her strategy! She outfitted, outlasted, and outplayed every single person, and never even got a single finger (or toe) dirty. Well done.

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What did you think of the Survivor finale and this season overall? Let me know in the comments!

Queer Contestant Katurah Topps Will Be in the Finale of Survivor Season 45

I can’t tell if this season of Survivor is exciting or kind of boring, which is an odd problem to have. And now, with only one episode left in the season, I still can’t decide.

The previous episode’s Tribal Council was in some ways exciting and in some ways, exactly as to be expected. Many folks were targeting Julie, and Dee gave her not only a heads up, but also a plan — Dee Valladares, like all the others, would also vote for Julie Alley, and Julie would play her idol to protect herself and send financial analyst Emily Flippen home. And at Tribal, every single person voted for Julie — except Julie, who played her idol, and as Dee dictated, sent Emily home with just one vote.

A blindside this clean usually feels so epic, and in some ways, it did! But on the other hand, things went exactly as Dee wanted and planned for them to go — which really, could be said for so much of this season. For a while now, it’s felt like Dee’s game to lose, and I’m not sure why no one on the show seems to realize just how wildly dominant she is. She’s got the absolute control of Tony Vlachos, wrapped in the flirty, femme veneer of Parvati Shallow, all masking the quiet, unrelenting focus of Sandra Diaz-Twine. She’s got winner written all over her, and no one seems to know.

After Julie’s Tribal Council, somehow no one can tell that Dee told Julie the plan, even though they have been extremely close the whole game. Dee does what the best liars on this show (and other reality competition shows like The Traitors) — she commits quickly, casually, and wholeheartedly to the lie before you can even question it. So that’s how that goes! Everyone seems to think Julie just got nervous and played her idol.

The next morning, Katurah Topps wakes up early to go idol hunting — this late in the game, an idol can be even more impactful than usual. Unfortunately Katurah doesn’t find an idol, and instead Austin Li Coon, after realizing she’s missing, finds her. Whoops! In moments like this, it really strikes me how Katurah never outwardly seems too stressed by this game’s shenanigans, and I love it. No matter what she’s feeling inside, she projects an air of calmness, almost like this whole situation is funny — which, don’t get me wrong, it is! I think this has helped her keep a low profile this long.

(Speaking of low profiles, it’s interesting to me that Katurah has gotten no votes this season — something which would be more impressive if Austin hadn’t also received no votes. And Dee has only gotten one vote — from Sean, before he basically excused himself from the show. There seem to be few “errant votes” in this season — when people vote, they’re either clearly in the majority, or in the second pick, but there are few random votes thrown around.)

At the reward challenge, Austin wins (shocker) and picks Dee to join him on the reward (shocker!), and then picks… Katurah (actual shocker!). Strategically, perhaps Austin sees Katurah as a potential swing vote, or honestly, perhaps he just thought she’d be the most chill person to bring on what he clearly wants to be his date with Dee lol. Katurah, relaxed queen that she is, couldn’t care less about being the third wheel — she’s basically like kids, enjoy yourselves!

Dee and Austin seem pretty in love, and it’s honestly kind of crazy coming right after the season of Frannie Marin and Matt Blankinship. Is there something in the water?? I don’t know.

Back at camp, Jake O’Kane, Julie, and Drew Basile are understandably miserable, especially because Drew and Julie have no intention of working together so basically have nothing to say to each other. Jake decides it’s time for him to find an idol, and to his credit, he does just that. He has big plans to use the idol to beef up his relatively slim resume — we’ll see if he delivers.

The immunity challenge is new to Survivor, which I love. It’s my favorite kind of challenge: an endurance challenge (please reference Queen Parvati Shallow standing on a pole for like, six hours??? so then they had to change that challenge?!). Contestants must hold keep a balance beam level using only one foot. Remember earlier in the season when Dee was talking about how she has really strong toes? I do! The challenge becomes a showdown between Dee and Austin, which feels like both of their fantasies. Dee wins in the end, handily, seemingly able to continue doing this all day.

Back at camp, Drew and Austin are aligned on finishing what they started last Tribal Council, namely: voting out Julie. Dee, however, isn’t ready to get rid of her ally, and is considering turning on Drew instead. Mixed in with Drew being very confident in himself (I found it hard to watch; it seemed so clear that he was about to be so, so wrong), is Dee debating whether or not to tell Austin she plans to vote out his best boy.

In the end, at Tribal Council, there’s a brief moment of excitement, when Austin plays his amulet. But he uses it to protect himself, and then he goes on to receive zero votes. This move cemented Austin in my mind as, unfortunately, a pretty poor player when it comes to strategy; he gave away his first idol to Julie, who then saved herself, and then played his second on himself, when he didn’t need to. He could’ve used it to protect Drew and really shaken things up. It’s pretty anticlimactic to see someone with so many advantages go on to effectively not correctly use any of them. Womp womp!

So the votes come in, and once again, it’s exactly as Dee said it would be: two votes for Julie, and then four for Drew. It was an epic blindside, but again, how epic is something that can happen twice in a row?

The Katurah of it all remains interesting to me. I’m hoping she pulls off a big move going from final five to final four, or else I’m not sure what she can say is on her resume other than playing the middle extremely effectively. Personally, I think the biggest move would be getting out Dee. If Katurah can pull that off, she might have a shot at the million!

Survivor Season 45’s Queer Contestant Katurah Topps Has Won My Heart

Survivor 45’s queer contestant Katurah Topps has been a quietly strategic player throughout this season, but she’s gotten louder in the last couple episodes. And we’re all better for it.

At the start of this week’s episode, we see the tribe returning from the Tribal Council in which Bruce Perrault was sent home with an idol in his pocket (a brutal way to go tbh). Everyone — and I mean everyone — seems giddy at his departure, with such total ubiquity that I actually kinda felt bad. The only person still in the game who has been gunning for Bruce for ages is Katurah. Needless to say, she’s thrilled.

For this whole game, Katurah’s been positioning herself as non-threatening, namely by lying about her age (she’s 35, saying she’s 29) and her profession (she’s a civil rights attorney, saying she’s an office manager). Now, 20 days into a 26 game, after eliminating her personal nemesis, Katurah is feeling proud of herself and like she wants to tell her story. Sitting on the beach with Jake O’Kane and Julie Alley, she does just that.

Telling her story doesn’t mean revealing her true age or profession; in this moment, it means describing her childhood. Katurah reveals she was in a religious cult growing up and as such was taken out of school to be homeschooled when she was in 5th grade. Her parents did not continue homeschooling for long, and shortly after leaving school, Katurah was working three or four jobs to help support her family.

My jaw absolutely dropped when Katurah opened up about her past. The editors interlaced Katurah on the beach with a confessional, perhaps because her story is so severe it could almost seem fabricated, something someone would say on a game like Survivor to endear themself to a competitor. But no, this isn’t a lie or a cover-up; it’s Katurah’s life.

We got a sense of Katurah’s past in the previous episode, when she was a recipient of Letters From Home — perhaps the most sought after reward season after season, because there’s nothing as powerful as hearing from the people you love who you haven’t been able to communicate with for weeks. At the reward meal, Katurah shares that one of the letters has her particularly shaken up, because it was from her mom, whom she cut off communication with about a year ago. Katurah was confused and overwhelmed, understandably. How do you respond to hearing from someone you’ve cut off, on national television, through a reward meant to motivate you to play your hardest for the rest of an already extremely psychologically and physically demanding game?

Somehow, Katurah manages to explain her feelings to the other women on the reward. To open up then and there, to me, showed tremendous strength. She seemed to know this was simply too much to process alone, and despite how vulnerable sharing might make her, she did it. She was clear-headed and honest in a game that constantly urges people to abandon their humanity in the name of gameplay. She can obfuscate her age and her profession in order to advance her position in the game of Survivor, but this isn’t like that. The emotional intensity of this moment goes way the confines of the game, and that’s all because Katurah decided to let people in — the women on the reward with her, and more broadly, all of us watching at home.

Despite Katurah’s valiant attempt to process this turn of events, it was clear the letter got to her head (and who the heck can blame her!!!). In the following challenge, she seemed to narrowly evade a panic attack while trying to compete. You could see the fear building in her whole body. It was hard to watch, and I honestly felt relieved and proud of her when she took herself out of the challenge. Afterward, she couldn’t explain what came over her; it wasn’t a fear of water. My interpretation, and this really is just my opinion, is that she didn’t have enough time to process the emotional intensity of receiving communication from her mom, and it manifested in this near panic attack. That energy had to go somewhere, and this is where it went.

Only an episode later, we learn more about Katurah’s relationship with her mom, not because Katurah is forced, or caught, or compelled to tell us, but because she chooses to. And her story goes beyond being taken out of school and working several jobs; Katurah goes on to explain that when she turned 13, the cult’s religious leader decided Katurah would be his next wife (I know, it’s wild). This seemed to wake Katurah’s mom up. They packed their belongings into two trash bags and ran away from the cult in the middle of the night.

After leaving the cult, Katurah was 14 and returned to school. The school placed her in high school, because of her age, despite the fact she hadn’t been educated for the last several years. Katurah then worked extremely hard to catch up with her classmates. I honestly cannot even fathom how the heck a person can do that. She hadn’t been in school for several crucial years, and she didn’t let that stop her. Instead, she excelled: She graduated high school, college, and law school, and then became a freaking CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER!!! I’m not gonna lie, at this point in Katurah’s story I was fully crying.

Perhaps the most emotional part of Katurah’s narrative came when she shared what she realized once she reentered school, at 14:

I realized I was Black, and I was poor, and I was a woman, and I was gay. And that is when I said, at like 14, I’m gonna become a lawyer who advocates for Black people.

After surviving a literal cult, Katurah reckoned with her complex, multi-faceted identity. To me, what’s so powerful in how Katurah tells her story is its wholeness: Katurah neither shies away from the difficult and scary parts of her story, nor justifies them as necessary for character growth. She seems to resist narrativizing what could easily be framed as a I-became-great-because-of-great-difficulty story. Katurah seems to, simply but also not simply at all, just tell it like it is. It seems that she strives neither for martyrdom nor victimhood. No, she strives for something much more elusive: selfhood.

Katurah is who she is because of and also not because of her past. She is who she is because she chooses to be herself. And I think that’s the strongest choice of all: to claim your selfhood in all its contradictions, all its messiness, all its beauty and all its terror. Not as a rebellion, not as a victory or as a defeat, but just as a state of being. Katurah shows us that a person’s life might have narrative elements, but a person is not a story; a person is a person.

The rest of the episode almost passed me by, because I was still thinking about everything Katurah just shared, so openly and generously. Throughout the season, Katurah seems relatively unfazed by the game’s twists and turns. She was annoyed by Bruce, but she always seemed entertained rather than scared. Similarly, she’s been in the minority — one of the last members of an ever-decreasing Belo tribe up against a seemingly always united Reba core four — for so much of the game, but never seems too pressed. Now, in the fourth quarter of the game, she’s turning up the heat. She’s socializing with everyone, without ever painting herself as the target, rallying folks to vote out Julie (a brilliantly strategic move until a spectacularly not brilliant judgment call made by Austin Li Coon, sound off in the comments plz).

I worry for Katurah in the next episode, as folks seem to have decided to keep Jake around longer than her. That said, if there’s anything I’ve learned about Katurah so far, it’s that whatever life throws at her, she handles. And she handles it all while being her full, strategic, compassionate self, and sharing that self with others around her.

How Chrishell Stause Queered Selling Sunset

I started watching Selling Sunset in 2019 because my coworkers were talking about it, and I wanted to be friends with them. My boss at the time was a culturista before I’d even heard the word culturista. He always knew the best restaurant to eat at, the best gay parties I was too shy to go to, what movies were actually worth watching. And he was raving about this new show, Selling Sunset, that was so utterly ridiculous it simply could not be ignored. So I started watching.

I never really watched reality TV before that, not seriously. I’d seen a few episodes of Fear Factor growing up (tbt) and watched obligatory episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians in group settings, but I’d never really been hooked. I hadn’t understood the appeal, to be honest.

This was different. I was immediately invested. What drew me in was the way these people — I always want to say characters, but they are people — embodied womanhood and femininity, in ways that I found compellingly contradictory. On one hand, they embody the stereotype of the LA bimbo — she’s white, thin, rich, cis, she’s wearing full-face 24/7, and her biggest goal is to make buckets and buckets of money.

But on the other hand, these women seemed to understand gender performance without even realizing it. They didn’t quote Judith Butler; they openly joked about and discussed their plastic surgery. They didn’t discuss the artificiality of “beauty”; they gave out Botox injections at their real estate open houses. They wear some of the most outlandish, impractical outfits I’ve ever seen, and they know it! The body looks ornamental when covered in the pieces they wear!

These women were rejecting any perceived “naturalness” of femininity, while still very much functioning (nay, thriving) in mainstream heterosexual culture. That was (and still is) wild and compelling to me!

So then, what happened when one of the titular characters — I mean, people! — of Selling Sunset falls in love with a nonbinary person and fully steps into her queerness?

Well, simply put, the show gets better.

Four years (and somehow seven seasons??) after I first started watching Selling Sunset, I almost feel like I’m watching a different show. The main conceit of the show remains unchanged: It’s about a group of women who want to make a lot of money by selling luxury real estate in Los Angeles. But watching the reunion, I was struck by the wide array of womanhood and femininity at play. All in one show, we have:

• A queer woman married to and very much head-over-heels in love with a nonbinary musician (this is Chrishell Stause, of course)
• A single mother of two, who grew up in what sounds like a dysfunctional family (Amanza Smith)
• A woman who had her first child at 15, raised him, then 26 years later decided to try for kids again, and then experienced a miscarriage (Mary Fitzgerald)
• A daughter of immigrants who has made gobs of money literally before she turned 30 (Chelsea Lakzhani)
• A mother of an infant in an extremely unconventional relationship (Bre Tiesi, whose child’s father is Nick Cannon)
• A woman who won’t reveal if she’s seeing someone or not, which I can only interpret as she’s dating a woman (okay I’m filling in some gaps here myself, but this is of course Emma Hernan)
• And then there’s Nicole Young who’s just Nicole lol

So it begs the question: What exactly is the heterosexual mainstream anyway? Don’t get me wrong. I know what I’m watching. It’s a straight show. It is, right? RIGHT???

And yet. In a twist in the reunion I won’t reveal, Chrishell discusses whether or not she and Emma have hooked up. Emma discusses whether or not she’s in love with Chrishell (reader, I… you just have to watch). All’s to say, this reunion places queer people and queerness firmly in the mainstream zeitgeist (and look at the choice of host! Tan France!).

The reunion centered mostly on fan-favorite Chrishell, her relationship with G Flip, and the various beefs she had with other ladies throughout this season. Perhaps the most charged part of the reunion comes when host Tan France brings up the homophobic comment Nicole Young made on Instagram, which she… doesn’t see as homophobic! It’s wild to watch a group of people — including the straights! — explain to Nicole why her actions are hurtful. I mean this is wild! This is the show unpacking homophobia?! How the hell did we get here (in a good way!)?

When Selling Sunset started, Chrishell (now married to G Flip) was married to actor Justin Hartley. It seems like a lifetime ago, perhaps because in so many ways, it was. Their marriage ended very publicly and painfully in season one of Selling Sunset, which was wild and brutal to watch.

But it’s not just Chrishell’s sexuality that has expanded. It’s her whole personhood, which she and the other women of Selling Sunset discuss in the reunion. She’s changed — she knows it, and she’s proud of herself. It’s very easy to see she loves his iteration of herself. And frankly? So do I.

Chrishell is still the same optimistic, big-hearted romantic she was back in 2019, but now, also, she has an edge. She has boundaries. She says them out loud. She says them repeatedly, without a hint of hesitation in her voice. She won’t let anyone speak for her, and she won’t let anyone insult her partner. She is a far cry from the demure real estate agent we met four years ago.

Selling Sunset is a chronicle of the women it portrays; Chrishell’s queerness has queered Selling Sunset. I know that’s a crazy sentence! I know! And yet! In Chrishell, the show explores just how happy a woman who has embraced her queerness can be, even if she never fucking saw it coming. In Emma, the show explores what it can be like to be best friends with a queer woman (and I’ll leave it at that!). In Amanza, Chelsea, Bre, and Mary, the show explores a wide range of motherhood, from a two-parent household, to a single mother, to something in between, to a teen mom who is now all grown up and considering beginning again.

Discovering my queerness blew my world wide open, upended my expectations and left me with a clean slate to fill in as I pleased, holding on to the parts I wanted to keep, and discarding the ones I didn’t.

And somehow, against all odds, I think that’s exactly what’s happened with Selling Sunset.

Survivor Season 45’s Kellie Nalbandian Could’ve Been a Contender

This week’s episode of Survivor was a great episode of television; there’s no doubt about it. And that’s what made it so devastating.

At the beginning of the episode, it seems that Jake O’Kane is at the bottom. He was clearly voting with Kaleb Gebrewold, who was just voted out. Furthermore, everyone knows Jake is aligned with Bruce Perreault, and the tide has gradually been turning against Bruce for the last couple of episodes. So Jake is an easy, agreeable target, right? Right…

The biggest event of this episode was the Survivor Auction, which returned after over 15 seasons of omission. But as with everything in the “modern” era of Survivor, there’s a twist — or several twists, actually. The first twist is that players have to fight for the spending money; they find tubes of money (lol) scattered around the beach before the Auction begins. The second twist is that there are no advantages in this Auction, meaning there’s no incentive to save your money (which is arguably what made the Auctions unexciting before). And actually, there is incentive to spend your money, because whoever ends the Auction with the most money loses their vote at the following Tribal Council. Oh and one more thing: Only the first five Auction items are guaranteed. After that, the Auction could end at any moment.

At the Auction, most people successfully get to eat normal meals, except for poor Katurah Topps who takes a gamble on a concealed item which ends up being… fish eyes. Yikes! It’s terrible! I actually had to leave the room, because that was body horror to me!

Bruce ends up losing the Auction, which is unsurprising since he made very little effort to find money back at the beach, so he ultimately had very little spending power. So Bruce has no vote. Most of the tribe seems to be annoyed or mildly annoyed with Bruce at this point, so he sure seems like an easy target. But the episode is far from over.

The immunity challenge is an endurance one. Each person must hold heavier and heavier weights, using only one arm. Additionally, four people chose to sit out in order to earn the team a much-needed bag of rice. There’s only one person who desperately needs to win the immunity challenge, and he knows it: Bruce. And guess freaking what. He does. Even though I don’t love Bruce, it always is amazing to see someone beat the odds and win in the exact moment when they really need to. And Bruce did just that!

So in a weird and unprecedented twist, one contestant has no vote but also has immunity. In other words, he’ll basically be a spectator at Tribal Council, which Kellie Nalbandian points out — he’s safe, and he has no way of impacting the votes. This throws a wrench in Kellie’s plan. She had finally decided she would try to discard Bruce once and for all, but now she can’t.

Around the beach, most people seem to want to vote Jake, just like at the start of the episode. Julie Alley wants him out because he voted for her last episode. Dee Valladares wants him out because Julie is her ally. Drew Basile and Austin Li Coon want him out because he’s a former Belo tribe member (like Bruce, Kellie, Kendra McQuarrie and Katurah), and they want to get rid of all of Belo. Briefly, Drew considers: What if they switch the vote to Kellie instead? They’ll still be getting out a Belo tribe member, and Bruce’s proclaimed #1 ally at that. But everyone likes Kellie. It seems unlikely that they will rally against her.

At Tribal Council, I have to hand it to Jake. I thought his “accidentally” spilling that he has an idol (which he doesn’t) seemed SO obviously false, but the terrified looks on his tribemates’ faces suggested they fully bought it. (They also know he’s allies with Bruce, and that Bruce really does have an idol, so perhaps they reasoned Bruce might’ve given him his idol for this Tribal.)

When Jeff tallies the votes, it’s a Survivor classic, one I and I imagine many viewers love to see: it’s a total blindside. As soon as she hears her name, Kellie’s face drops. And so does mine. Kellie seemed so stable, so utterly capable, that it barely crossed my mind that folks would vote her out this (relatively) early in the game. But all of the original Reba tribe — Drew, Austin, Dee, Julie — and Emily (who has very firmly aligned herself with them) vote for Kellie. And the original Belo tribe only has three votes — Bruce doesn’t have a vote, and Jake decides to play his Shot in the Dark, forfeiting his vote. So Belo’s three votes for Jake — from Kellie, Kendra, and Katurah — don’t matter. Kellie — one of the season’s queer women — goes home.

In this season of Survivor, some of the strongest players have already been eliminated: Sabiyah went home before even making it to merge; Kaleb went home after successfully using his shot in the dark; and now Kellie has gone home because… Bruce won immunity. It’s a weird season!

Looking ahead, Austin has more advantages than I can even remember, and Dee is just an all-around legend. I think it’s hers to lose.

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What do you think is to come in this season? How do you feel about Kellie’s departure? Let me know in the comments!

Top 15 Gayest Moments in Selling Sunset Season Seven

One thing I’ve learned about life is anything can become extremely gay.

I’m humbled and thrilled to share that Selling Sunset, a show started back in 2019 when we were all different people, is one of those things that started out straight and is now extremely gay. I originally intended for this list to only have the top ten gayest moments, but there were truly SO MANY GAY MOMENTS that I struggled to limit the list even to 15 moments.

Some people might claim this is a show about luxury real estate in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, but we know better, don’t we?

Without further ado, I present to you the top ten gayest moments of Selling Sunset season seven.

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15. When Bre and Emma are trying out these interesting exercise machines

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14. When Amanza asks Bre who’s in charge of her these days and Bre says, “No one! Take care of me!”

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13. When Chelsea and Emma make dil-doughs (sorry I had to)

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12. When Emma puts a dog leash on Chrishell and they both love it

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11. When Emma randomly has pliers in her bag and fixes Mary’s shoe

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10. When Amanza asks Emma if she’d go on a date with a female and Emma reacts totally normally and calmly

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9. “I love hard nipples”

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8. Nikki Glazer showing up and telling Chrishell, “You’re switching me over!”

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7. Emma describing her ideal partner as someone that’s “my best friend, but also I’m in love with”

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6. Chrishell correcting Marie-Lou when she misgenders G Flip

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5. Emma’s letter to Chrishell

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4. This entire conversation purportedly about “tacos” that takes place while Chrishell is wearing a dress literally made of rainbow sequins

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3. All of G Flip’s cameos

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2. Chrishell’s extremely adorable use of this term that I will immediately incorporate into my vocabulary*

*This also includes all of the discussion of Chrishell and G Flip getting married in Vegas.

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1. Chrishell and G kissing, followed by G screaming, “THIS IS MY WIFE!”