Warning: This review may contain spoilers for Season 1 of The Traitors US.
The Traitors had a glorious dream to lock TV’s most insufferable reality stars in a posh Scottish castle and have them murder each other one by one. Who are we to stand in the way of such a refreshing concept — especially when executed with expert editing and deadly precision.
The Traitors is a cutthroat celebration of the social-based competition.
The Traitors vs. Faithfuls premise highlights the mind-game-based play of authentic Survivor and Big Brother core and the scathing, finger-pointing drama of the Bravo reality dynasties. It offers an incredibly unstable foundation for gameplay where the greatest strategists can easily succumb to mob mentality, and one wrong move can leave the game’s trajectory writhing in a new direction.
Some players become consumed by the hunger to gain any control over this ever-shifting blame game, and others succumb to the moral cost of lying to their teammates when they realize there are no lifeboats for the floaters.
Traitors is all about the do-or-die strategy, unlocking new layers to reality TV stars while condemning legends of competition for strategies that have no place in this demure bloodbath. It is horrendous, ugly, and whipsmart television, best consumed in a peanut gallery setting where viewers can dissect the fast-paced, devious gameplay with their most faithful friends.
Gather ’round reality competition junkies, for we have begged the heavens for something authentic and cutthroat to sink our teeth into that can replicate the delicious pre-influencer era of TV. Oh, how long we have craved a reality show with twisted humour and insatiable lore that champions only the best of the worst in humanity. The US adaptation of Traitors forces television’s great strategists, socialities, and saboteurs to play the game or risk banishment from their peers.
It is deliciously cut-throat!
The Host with the Most
Within the ranks of Traitors is the true master of deception and ostentatiousness — host Alan Cumming. Our murderous Castle Daddy and Scottish fashion icon guides this game with grace and gleeful delivery.
A beautiful interpretation of a Scottish Caesar Flickerman, his persona relishes in traitorous acts of murder under his own roof and smirks in the face of death with sinister puns. Cumming has created a character that celebrates the best parts of this wicked, knives-out premise with an entertaining energy that is incredibly infectious to watch.
When the host is the best part of the show, everything else becomes icing on the cake.
Traitors set itself up for victory before the game can even begin by letting Cumming embrace the posh Scottish snobbery of this idyllic historical setting.
The US version could easily have brushed away a need to embrace the Scotland of it all, forcing an American host and vocabulary into a space that clearly has a much more fascinating flourish for European dramatics. Forcing these American players into an atmosphere that is both a fantasy and unknown to them adds an additional layer of obstacles to the premise before the game even begins.
Great Casting Afoot
The first season suffers not from casting, with an exceptional mix of reality villain personalities and ordinary Joes. The choice to blend the cast as an experiment to see if Traitors US should follow its UK counterpart or fully embrace the reality of an all-star cage match is one we see play out in real time — which is quite fascinating.
Traitors’ first season will go down as the goat season thanks to Cirie Fields, the greatest Survivor player to never win. She exemplifies everything you want from a Traitor, playing the Faithfuls and her fellow Traitors without ever landing on anyone’s radar. She isolated Cody and Christian, convincing them to take out their own allies while she continued to recruit more Faithfuls to her side. And yet, despite playing a perfect game, Traitors leaves viewers with an engaging moral conflict over her victory as we watch her greedily trick two ordinary players so she can take the jackpot for herself. It is the perfect storm of excellent gameplay and conflicting moral obligations few shows can orchestrate so effectively.
Beyond Cirie, we see an impressive strategic side to Cody Calafiore that rarely reared its head when he played and even won Big Brother.
Below Deck’s Kate Chastain goes out of her way to brand herself the villain of the season, picking the prettiest of fights with Big Brother’s Rachel Reilly and actively sabotaging the competitions. However, as she is forced to stay in the game, the camaraderie of the other Faithfuls and their refusal to let her quit manages to soften her cold facade. The result is a premise that goes from cutthroat to genuine as the game nears its end and the players begin to forge lasting bonds.
Traitors will have formidable shoes to fill next season when hunting for new recruits. This ensemble is the precise blueprint for success with their ability to be human and entertaining without dragging this show too far into the melodrama of Peacock’s Bravo counterparts.
Cons of this Con
Alas, as fun as Traitors is, this latest reality competition entry is not safe from criticism.
There is a bone to pick with the prize money. I’m sorry, but if I — a Pooro — am not super motivated by $250,000, I struggle to understand why these TV personalities are willing to do half of what this show asks of them. Worse, they are not even guaranteed an entire quarter of a million dollars. This show asks a lot of them mentally and physically, and I don’t believe it holds enough monetary value. If the claims of how much money the cast makes per episode are to be believed, then this aspect of the game is far from undebatable.
Let us assume the cast enjoys reveling in the limelight and murdering their real-life frenemies. That is the most believable assumption.
Additionally, some of the competitions in this first season contradict the posh, gothic mind games inside the castle. The rats and maggots give off a tacky Silent Library/The Challenge aesthetic that feels out of place in the lush Scottish highlands. When more than one completion has to dump maggots on celebrities’ heads to be interesting, it’s time to put the insects away and pick up a pen. Not to mention the PETA violations the show invokes by forcing those cute rats into a room with screaming constants.
Ultimately, competitions that present one thing to the contestants only for their host to pull out the rug from under them and bury them in caskets feel equally cheap. This over-calculation taints the refined cheekiness of other competitions that embrace the purpose of the show without having to revert to lesser parlor tricks for a few shrill screams.
Famous Last Words
Traitors is a refreshing new addition to the reality landscape. It is able to go the distance, regardless of what form it takes or who is recruited to play the game.
Its insatiable cliffhangers and escalating gameplay make it a binge to reckon with. So beware, for once you start this show, you will want to watch little else. Few TV premises are as exciting and mischievous as this one. It creates a festering fair ground of reality TV lore, poking at old wounds and gifting us new combinations of our old advisories we never thought we would see play a social completion together.
Call me a Faithful because I am all in on Traitors. May this glorious bloodbath of insults carry us triumphantly into the cover of night and shower us in petty Housewives-themed puns for seasons to come.
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Seasons 1-3 of The Traitors US are streaming on Peacock and Crave.
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