Stuff You Should be Watching: The Traitors

When Sarah first told The Bitchery about the new US version of the British reality show The Traitors, I immediately thought it sounded too stressful for my taste.

The Traitors has twenty contestants competing in a murder mystery game where a few of them are secretly Traitors, trying to eliminate the rest of the contestants and keep the prize money for themselves. They’re all trapped in a sprawling Scottish estate where they spend their days completing challenges to raise money for the prize pot while growing increasingly paranoid as contestants disappear overnight, one by one, each selected for “murder” by the Traitors in their midst. I typically dislike reality shows that reward lying, and find we’re-trapped-in-a-house shows boring.

But The Traitors also possessed the one thing guaranteed to make me watch, my long-time crush, Alan Cumming.

Click for Alan in a kilt

I’m honor bound to try anything my bisexual BFF appears in, and it only took one episode to hook me on The Traitors. Unlike forced proximity shows like Big Brother where nothing happens, The Traitors merges the nail-biting tension of a competition show with the storytelling of a locked room mystery. It’s unapologetically theatrical and campy, and I loved (almost) every moment of it. I hope there’s a second season!

First of all, the Gothic house party aesthetic of the show is period drama catnip. The contestants dine at Downton Abbey-esque lavish tables, and gossip in drawing rooms between dramatic challenges on the estate’s atmospheric grounds. Alan plays an eccentric Scottish castle owner who gleefully forces his guests to complete increasingly strange tasks. He’s aided by his servant Fergus, a wide-eyed assistant with an unkempt beard and gnome-like wardrobe. Every episode features a new amazing Alan outfit, from tartans to man buns to a pink 3-piece suit. Steampunk accessories regularly appear. There is a beret sighting. Alan and Fergus are frequently amusing but never break character, and the way they alternately tease, support, and disconcert the participants is a big part of what makes the show work. The Traitors is never scary, but the mysterious ambiance of the show drew me in, and the non-Traitor contestants, or “Faithfuls” quickly seemed to fall into mystery sleuth mode.

The storytelling on The Traitors is top notch, and it’s driven by budding friendships and emotional betrayals. We know who the Traitors are from the beginning when Alan secretly assigns them their roles, and much of the fun of the show is rooting for contestants to try to find them. I spent much of the show laughing like a loon, screaming in surprise, and staring in shock. Half of The Traitors’ contestants are “regular people,” and the rest are reality stars from shows I don’t watch, like Survivor, Big Brother, Shahs of Sunset, and the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The only person I recognized was Arie from The Bachelor (thanks Elyse). The veterans know how to create quotable quips and drama, while the regular folks are earnest and frequently underestimated by the stars.

I loved the non-stereotypical, racially diverse casting and editing. There’s no angry Black woman, wise old White dude, or self-sacrificing grandmother. There are lots of people of color on the show, and they all were given space to be layered and human. Each day the group has an opportunity to vote one person off the show that they believe is a Traitor.

As the cast dwindles, people become increasingly paranoid, unsure if they can trust the people they’ve grown to care for, and uncertain about how many Traitors are among them. Women are the breakout stars of The Traitors, and I loved seeing the people’s sexism turned against them, as they find that distrusting women is often a failing strategy.

Meanwhile, Kate Chastain, a grumpy retired steward from Below Deck was one of my faves, with her self-described love for “lounge life,” disinterest in physically demanding tasks, and peevish frustration about her comrades voting off the wrong people. Cirie Fields is fun to watch: she’s a nurse who apparently lost Survivor four times and is determined not to fail this time. She was such a sweetheart and her assessments of the dudes on this show were just cutting, whew.

I also loved Andie Vanacore, a Nevadan Music Director who parlayed their emotional sensitivity into being the most trusted leader in the group. I found myself rooting for characters from among both the Traitors and Faithful, which made the ending painfully bittersweet, as there was no way that everyone I liked could win.

For a show about lying, The Traitors is remarkably wholesome. Each episode’s challenge is a cooperative game where they’re all working to earn money for the shared pot. The players take the challenges very seriously, and they usually require skill. At one point they’re asked to “break into” an art gallery with a laser security system, and the group throws themselves into the challenge like they’re in a heist movie.

The rest of the show can feel competitive, so I enjoyed the camaraderie. For example, in one challenge a few volunteers are buried alive in the forest and given walkie talkies to guide the others to them within a set time. It’s a tense challenge to watch, because it sucks to be buried in a coffin even if Alan Cumming gives you a flashlight. The contestants are ultimately more concerned about rescuing people who are getting scared than they are in meeting the arbitrary game deadline to win money. When the bell rings to end the challenge with someone still stuck, they frantically work just as hard to pull them to safety as they did before. It’s a lovely moment, and even though I knew I was being manipulated through an emotional rollercoaster, I enjoyed it anyway.

It’s that emotional hook that kept me watching the Traitors scheme in an isolated tower in the middle of the night, and the Faithful gasp in the morning when discovering their closest friend in the game had been eliminated without saying goodbye. Reality competition shows often reward terrible people, but somehow The Traitors kept making me believe that the good guys could win. Even though I wasn’t sure who I wanted to win. And like me, the players themselves were conflicted. The Faithful openly sympathize with the people who were forced to be traitors against their will, and some of the Traitors don’t like each other, which adds to the pressure among them.

The show offers high drama, but moderate stakes. Unlike Survivor, here everyone is living comfortably and well fed. Over the course of the show the players become a big messy backstabbing family, and there are plenty of tears, self-recriminations, and surprises. The maximum prize is $250,000 but because the contestants have to earn that over the course of the show, it’s not clear until the end how big the final prize will be, or how many people they may have to split it with. For example, six people splitting $100k before taxes is a fair amount of money, but most of the contestants have upper middle-class jobs or entertainment careers so it’s probably not a life-changing amount for them. This helped keep the show relatively stress-free for me as a viewer.

The Traitors isn’t a perfect show. The moral ambiguity meant I wasn’t completely emotionally satisfied in the ending. I was happy and heartbroken at the same time and wished someone had pulled a Katniss Everdeen.

Click for me watching the conclusion

I also wish the entertainment value of the challenges was more consistent. Some of the challenges are super-duper visually compelling, like when they enter a church with eerily still Eyes Wide Shut-esque extras that the contestants have to search among for a prize after reading clues hidden in a Latin book. This theater geek loved every second!

Many challenges were creative and required a specific skill, like reading music. But there were other challenges that seemed unnecessarily torturous, like pushing full whiskey barrels up a long hill. Near the end there’s a challenge that involves bugs. Lots and lots of them. I fast forwarded through that bullshit.

I can’t compare this season to the UK version because I haven’t seen it. But if you like angsty television that rewards strategy, showcases women being brilliant, and features many scenes where Americans wear their coats inside a drafty castle, The Traitors might be the show for you. I hate liars but I adored this show about lying. It was like a Mafia story, but with more crumpets and fewer straight dudes. I loved the thoughtful casting, compelling storytelling, and every time Alan Cumming was on screen.