Traitors (TV show)

General Chat
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Only managed to binge the first two episodes at the weekend, hopefully will watch the next two after I’ve posted this… but, thoughts so far!

Not far into episode one I thought that Aubrey was going to be this year’s John, the bitchy old gay man who causes massive amounts of drama. Boy, did I call that one wrong.
Liked Claudia’s “As if we’d do that again!” Good to see the show keeping things fresh so contestants can’t simply base their actions on “Well, when this happened last year…”
Shame the beacon wasn’t as physically impressive as last year’s, I thought.

Episode two and I’m already starting to hate Paul so much. Don’t know if it’s just me but I think it’s cringeworthily obvious how much they are ‘acting’ their reactions to situations, and I’m surprised no-one in the castle seems to have picked up on it.
I was also surprised at breakfast when Sonja accidentally landed a bomb on target and didn’t realise. Ash was clearly rattled and overplayed the “I didn’t hear you” card. I would’ve expected Sonja to double-down with an “Oh my god, you are a traitor!” angle response and let Ash completely unravel. It’s possible she thought that and decided to pocket the knowledge until later… don’t know why, as we all know how that worked out for people last year.
I wasn’t at all surprised when they were accused of stirring the pot, and figured they were done for from that point. Sadly, made a target of themselves too easily..

Biggest surprise of the banishment meeting was when they were all voting and there was at least one person I didn’t recognise at all. Not just in an “I barely remember you” way, but in an “I don’t think you’ve even featured in the programme so far!” way.

Final, random thought: was this series filmed in November? Far too many of the men have crazy novelty facial hair this year for my tastes.

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Just finished watching episode 3. I shouldn’t be surprised at the cliffhanger, but I’m still metaphorically screaming.

I think the funniest part about episode 3 was how the person I say in my last post didn’t have any screen time suddenly got a lot more, and then spectacularly blew up at the round table. I felt so sorry for the poor guy, stress and anxiety does weird things to people, so it was sad to see that he clearly was in need or a little support, but was also equally clearly spooking everyone the heck out and making himself look as suss as all get out. If he’d just kept quiet and perhaps tried to connect with/confide in people outside of the round table maybe it would’ve gone much better for him - and he almost certainly wouldn’t have found himself in a tie.

About to start watching Uncloaked now so I can read the rest of N26’s spoilers shortly :joy:

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Weird place to end the show tonight, I can’t decide if there’s a twist?

Scrap that she’s on the Uncloaked show now so it seems that it’s just a weird cliffhanger that’s not a cliffhanger.

Also I really really don’t like Paul. Like at all.

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I was thinking exactly the same.

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I cannot believe how the Traitors are SO BAD at playing the game this year. And don’t even realise it.

Traitors: We are geniuses. This plan is brilliant. We are playing 4D chess here and absolutely smashing it.

Everyone else: Accurately predicts the Traitors plan. Even if they don’t know who the Traitor is, they still manage to see right through the reasoning and motives.

I feel very safe in saying that Ash is quite comfortably the worst person to ever play as a Traitor. She has consistently made the wrong move every time and managed to both appear super suss to the faithfuls, and alienate herself from her fellow Traitors - who are less throwing her under a bus and now recognising that a bus is Final Destinationing its way towards her and there’s nothing they can do about it.

The ending was weird. It feels like it stopped where it did because formula dictated so. I can’t see how there could possibly be any twist from this point short of blatant rule-breaking occurring.

Smart money says that if the third series has a similar condemned task, none of the Traitors should include themselves now. It has been seen through both years. Just condemn 100% faithfuls and let the group decide which of them must be hidden Traitors. I’m just sad that the murder victim is inevitably going to be Meg, as I had high hopes from her before the show started.

In response to a couple of posts above, I’m glad to see other people joining me on the “Paul’s an irritating dickhead” train.

ETA: watched Uncloaked afterwards. I was so glad when Ed called out Ash on the “What was that? I can’t hear you” moment. Validation!

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It’s possible to hint, something like “just remember I wasn’t alone in that dungeon” or something like that.

I was hoping that she’d vote for Paul, and then say something like she was starting to see things in the right way and basically throw him under the bus.

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Episode 4:

The cut at the end of the episode makes me feel like either something is said or someone’s reaction gives the game away or puts someone in the firing line.

Meg has to be murdered now but it seems like the weirder choice of the two remaining options. Possibly the faithful will see through it. I would have loved to have seen Meg banished though. That would have made an incredible breakfast.

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I don’t think there’s any big twist around the cut. Having slept on it, it seems to be purely related to running time of the episodes, and keeping all post-reveal reaction together (at the table and evening discussion).

The mistake as such was cutting a couple of words too early, I think, to fit the cliffhanger formula. It makes for a weird emphasis. From watching Uncloaked there’s clearly not going to be a twist as she said she still wanted the Traitors to win. I also think after Kieran in year one, the production team have probably added “Do NOT do a Kieran” to the rules the Traitors get told. Probably for reasons along the lines of “We let it slide then and it was good telly, but it was technically against the rules and it would be game-breaking if we keep letting people get away with it.”

I have more thoughts about the awful strategies people have used when playing the games in this episode, but I have to go to work now so those thoughts will have to wait for later.

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Nope - rules of the show is tonight there doesn’t have to be a murder and instead the remaining Traitors can attempt to recruit instead. So, it shouldn’t be too suspicious when Paul walks into Breakfast tomorrow (although the Traitors could still decide to murder Meg - but that would be very silly unless Miles and Harry deliberately are now trying to play Paul at his own game…)

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Where have they said that? Was that in Uncloaked?

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That’s been the rules since the very start.

When a traitor is unmasked and banished, the remaining traitors can decide if they want to recruit a replacement or not instead of murdering someone that night - that’s how Kieran became a traitor in Season 1 towards the end of the show.

The person they attempt to recruit doesn’t have to accept the offer though and the traitors don’t find out until the next night if they did or not (at least that’s what happened in Season 1 - when they also attempted to recruit a woman early on but she declined because her actual secret boyfriend had been banished, if I remember rightly, already).

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Episode 7 of Season 1 had all that drama although rewatching it, the traitors did find out straight away that Alex (the woman they offered the role to) rejected their offer.

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All I would say is, bear in mind that just because something happened a certain way before doesn’t mean that the same opportunity is going to be offered again.

Not least because IIRC in S1 they got to recruit when they went from three to two Traitors, while this time they started with four and three is still plenty. So my assumption is they will not be offer the opportunity to recruit and be forced to murder Meg.

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Don’t think that is a rule. It is just what happened last time. Nothing says there HAS to be four traitors.

That said, on Fridays episode last week, I’m sure in the preview of the next episode someone mentioned murdering in plain sight, and we didn’t see that. So perhaps there will be no murder tonight and there will be two tomorrow, perhaps one before the banishment to screw with the faithful.

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So, going back to the end of Episode 6 Claudia specifically says when she offered them the chance to recruit ‘As per the rules of the game that I said on Day One…’

That was season 1, I don’t think they would change that rule for season 2?

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Who is going to rewatch this year’s episode one right now so we can check what Claud said this time? :grin:

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I mean production companies notoriously do not publish the rules and keep any discussion about them in the show to a minimum specifically so that they can change them and create more drama. Obviously with a cash prize at stake there will be all sorts of compliance hurdles and restrictions on how far they can bend things, but ultimately just because something has happened before doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again.

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Lol - so the ‘official’ BBC page on it also caveats that rule as ‘The Traitors may be given the opportunity’ not ‘The Traitors will be given the opportunity…’

Well, we’ll find out tonight anyway.

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This seems to be the theme this year so far.

All else being equal, I would agree Paul would be the one to target - but, given that 90% of the faithful have expressed concerns about Ash already, the only sensible play was to target Ash. They couldn’t have backed themselves more perfectly into a corner of they’d tried.

This would have been glorious. With no-one dying, the faithful would more or less instantly recognise that two Traitors had been handed to them on a plate. And while they expected one, the other would have shocked them.

Honestly, the Traitors have been so dumb this year. I said this morning I had thoughts on strategy, so I’ll come back to those now.

It genuinely astonished me that the Traitors thought they were playing 4D Chess but clearly didn’t stop for one second to think about how a faithful might see things. They forgot what is perhaps the golden rule - if someone is teetering on the edge of banishment, any action to save them will look super suss. A Traitor would happily let a faithful get banished. So any action otherwise flags the person as a Traitor. That’s why everyone saw through Ash being in the dungeon straight away. It made no logical sense for Traitors to shortlist her for murder given her banishment would be a matter of when, not if. So her being there to make her look faithful? It only confirmed she was a Traitor..

The genuine 4D chess move to make would’ve been to realise that people would expect Traitors to put themselves in, so load the group with all faithfuls who either already had fallen under suspicion, or who one wanted people to start suspecting. I would’ve gone with Charlotte, Zack, Anthony, and one of Mollie or Ellie or Diane. Let people start suspecting them!

At the very least, Paul should have realised that two Traitors plus two faithful was far, far too risky. All it takes is one faithful being saved and the other being banished and the Traitors are - as stated above - screwed. The hubris is monumental.

But my criticism isn’t all about the Traitors. I’m also all about how people managed to fuck up the strategy so badly on the task also. Everyone laughed when one-legged army man kept throwing himself to the floor of each pad. But this was actually the sensible strategy! Balance was a huge factor in the task, and when it comes to balance, the lower the centre of gravity is, the better! Everyone who struggled should have been doing the same. More than once we saw Miles stood shock upright, wobbling, and falling in the water. If instead he had dropped like a sack of spuds and then stood up and moved on one the platform stabilised? Maybe his team would have won! Instead people failed at physics over and over.

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