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.

I mean, you’re not wrong, Alan Cumming!

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?