It’s never a good idea to let drummers cut an album. This one was so humiliated that he had to give up music and become a shady TV lawyer. I actually dread putting this on.
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Unfortunately, I caved and binged the current season of The Traitors - which is apparently the most-watched show ever in the history of ever (but in that fake streaming way, like how every show on Netflix is somehow simultaneously the most-watched show on the platform).
The show is just a televised version of Mafia/Among Us but with some murder mystery party aesthetics. It’s set in a castle in Scotland and hosted by a scenery-chewing Alan Cumming, who is undoubtedly the highlight of the show
I’ve been a big Survivor fan and I’ve dabbled in some of these other reality competition shows, but I have not enjoyed my time with this one. The first season was decent, though it had a few kinks (the edit ignored like 50% of the players, the physical competitions they do each episode had no stakes). The second season should have been a lot better but ultimately watching a bunch of people play a game that you probably played at summer camp in middle school just feels a little hollow. The second season also brought in the most annoying fanbase of Bravoholics + Bachelor Nation refugees who have a very tenuous grasp of the game. Season 2 also had a supremely unsatisfying ending, with a woman who I can only describe as ignorant (lots of microaggressions throughout the season) winning in the end.
I was planning to ignore this season entirely but I heard too much buzz about it and curiosity got me. The same problems still exist with the show. The game just isn’t all that interesting. The faithful have no information to go off of so 40 minutes of every episode is filled with:
“You’re a traitor”
“No I’m not”
“Do you swear you’re not a traitor?”
“I swear I’m not a traitor”
Over and over again! It’s mind numbing and leaves me feeling like watching the show is a waste of time
The highlight of this season is that the traitors all hate each other and are actively trying to get each other out. That’s something different. Every big personality got voted out immediately and so the final 7 is very much an island of misfit toys. Danielle, the one traitor remaining, has gotten so much hate and so many death threats online for… ??? Voting out some fan favorites I guess? After binging I really don’t get it. She’s playing very sloppy but I don’t understand how that translates to so much hate.
The worst case scenario IMO (and the one that a lot of fans want to see) is Dylan Efron (Zac Efron’s younger brother who somehow got cast on this show) winning. The dude’s a dope. Sweet boy, but a complete dope. He’s been very babied by the veteran reality contestants and the entire season he’s had the vibe of little-brother-with-an-unplugged-controller-who-thinks-he’s-winning-at-mario-kart.
Honestly though with two episodes left it’s hard to see a satisfying ending for the show. The traitors have played so atrociously bad this season that it doesn’t seem like they should win. The faithful who are left over are mostly just furniture. At the end of the last episode Danielle was allowed to recruit her friend Britney to be a traitor with her. A Britney solo win is the only ending I’d be happy with, so I hope for that 
Please don’t allow me to watch this show next season
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Thanks for taking the hit and watching this show. I was somewhat curious (I like a good game of mafia), but mafia seems like a game that is better played than watched. That’s even more so if a 30-60 minute game is stretched into 12 40 minute episodes.
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do they seriously not even do the bare minimum among us style twist where innocent people do real tasks while traitors need to pretend to do tasks and take people out? i feel like this sets itself up for hijinks! what were they thinking!
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They do “tasks” in that the entire cast does a challenge each episode to try to earn money for the prize pool at the end. It adds very little to the show. Both the faithful and the traitors are motivated to do well in the challenge because it’s the same prize pool
The challenges only have two real impacts on the game:
- Sometimes challenges will have “shields” that prevent the players who find them from getting banished that night. Usually going for a shield requires going off the beaten path and probably earning less money for the pot
- The traitors are somewhat incentivized to keep people who are good at the challenges around to help earn more money. They are somewhat incentivized to murder/banish selfish players who don’t contribute to the prize pot
- Every player has to thread the needle between playing selfish (getting shields to guarantee they stay around) and playing selfless (not destroying their social capital by not being a team player) as selfish players get seen as expendable whether they are faithful or traitor
However, one of the things that completely undermines the challenges is that in the final challenge of each season they have the opportunity to earn all of the money they missed back
The few times the challenges have been interesting have been completely circumstantial. The most recent episode is maybe the best the challenge has ever been. The traitors filled out a questionnaire of superlatives about the cast e.g. “who’s sliding under the radar?”, “who is the biggest threat to the traitors?” and then the entire cast got asked the same questions and had to guess what the traitors said. One of the traitors completely exposed herself by talking too much and knowing too many of the answers. She got banished that night
The closest the show has ever gotten to Among Us is that last season there was one night that the traitors had to commit a murder in plain sight by getting another player to drink from a “poison” chalice. Parvati (traitor) went up to Ekin-Su (faithful) with a simple “does my wine taste funny to you?” and got it done very swiftly without any suspicion. I think the show took away the wrong lesson (that the twist was bad and didn’t create drama) instead of what actually happened (Parvati was very smooth)
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this sounds like a total mixed bag trainwreck in a way thats sorta intriguing unfortunately!
not sure if I’m preaching to the choir but The Genius is a sorta similar korean game show although there are less traitors and more every person for themself so there are varying degrees of team play and selfish play that is sorta interesting but a bit complicated.
Otherwise I’ve heard really great things about every regional variant of The Mole (unsure if it is related)
also I think making regular every day people play for money is just? boring? people are kinda boring and not very good at making a plan for complicated game rules on the fly and resort to name calling and tribalism oddly quickly (yes I did watch Beast Games and yes it is as bad and uninteresting as you can imagine)
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I’ve seen one season of The Mole years back (it was the one Kathy Griffin won) and I remember liking it. I am kinda surprised that The Traitors doesn’t ape more from that show because I think the tug of war with the mole being incentivized to sabotage the challenges is more interesting. There’s more evidence for the players to go off of (esp in the early rounds). I haven’t seen The Genius but I remember hearing good things a while back. I don’t dip into non-Survivor competition reality that often so I kinda forgot about it, but not I’m not opposed to giving it a shot sometime
yea. i think there’s a lot of ways it can come off poorly. I can’t watch Big Brother or The Challenge because the contestants are just… well let’s just say I don’t think any of them were Hooked on Phonics as kids…
BB and its better Canadian version were worth it once upon a time, but they stopped casting normal people like 15 years ago. Maybe one or two sneaks their way onto a season but it’s almost all influencer-types now with pre-rehearsed catchphrases. The game somehow has expanded from 60 days to 100 days long now so, yea, I don’t think many working people can give up a third of a year of work
And then on the other side of things coming off poorly - there was that Squid Game IRL competition show that just feels… gross, with the context of the scripted show. And similarly apparently the UK version of The Traitors is mostly poor normies and the confessionals are like “I need to win because I owe so much money to my oncologist 
” which, oof, feels very voyeuristic and bad as a viewer
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The Genius, Running Man, and Schlag den Star are all great by having ridiculous and varied games played by celebrities and entertainers with incredibly low stakes !
I mean the Genius has a cash prize but it’s kinda small relatively speaking and it’s less celebrities, and people that are outstanding in their field and feasibily might be The Genius. But they’re not strapped for cash so it’s mostly for bragging rights as far as I can tell.
Running Man is basically the celebrity hosts (and guests!) competing for like, an air fryer, with the alternative being publicly humiliated, or punished in a funny slapstick way. Although most episodes lately have mid episode rewards/punishments in that only some contestants get to have an exorbitant (filmed) meal at a local restaurant and the losers have to watch and eat a meager meal in comparison.
I haven’t watched Schlag Den Star much but there are some funny games like this one
(I also watched the Squid Game show and while it was horrifying in relation to its source material and had horrible problems with its production and pacing, it is leagues above compared to the horrifying and miserably dull Beast Games)
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My partner hasn’t seen Downton Abbey but I watched it when it first arrived in the states. I’m very focused on the background and coveting all their fine things. Last night I spotted one of my favorite forms in westerns painting. Geriatric babies.i can’t afford a true geriatric baby but I do have one kinda. Vigo the Carpathian will have to be good enough.
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Caught a random episode of The Traitors UK and binged the whole 3rd season. Love Alan Cumming but I cannot watch a minute of US reality TV, much prefer the british ones. This 3rd season is so close and tense it almost seems scripted, grade A television imho.
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white lotus kinda boring so far ngl
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first or second season?
it takes a while for everything to fall into place but when things start layering it gets kinda absurd (neutral)
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The new season! It wasn’t my fav show before or anything but I at least found it more enjoyable than this
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didn’t see that there was a new season! im curious to see it now…
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I liked the premiere episode, though I was a little thrown by the fact that there’s like 90 characters on this season. I thought the episode felt pretty fast-paced because they needed so many scenes to establish all of the characters. Then I see people online saying that the episode was slow, so idk. This past episode felt really slow to me by comparison. It might be a symptom of the seasons expanding from 6 to 7 and now 8 episodes in length
Interestingly, I did not like the premiere of season 2 that much (felt really slow to me) and it took a couple episodes to grow on me. I really enjoyed it by the end but I did prefer the Hawaii season overall. Everything I just said seems to be an unpopular opinion online though 
A large part of the fun has been that with the end of Succession (and Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies before it), The White Lotus is now the only show that every single one of my friends watch. I have so many fond memories talking about how ugly Portia’s clothes are and how we know so many softboys exactly like Albie
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I re-watched Cabaret (1972) last week and it made me want to wallow in Weimar Germany for a little longer, so I started watching Babylon Berlin (2017) the other night. Not quite the subject matter I was hoping for but the vibes are alright and the main guy reminds me of Rami Malek, specifically as he appeared in Mr. Robot (2015)—because they’re both morphine addicts, maybe. Has anyone here seen it? It’s been on for years and still going but flew right under my radar.
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I finished the second season of invasion on Apple TV. I give it a high compliment. It is better than feeling my own feelings. The best a streaming service can do.
It’s kind of a light horror, science fiction about an alien invasion with a mystery box like structure. Every time you see what these things are, it’s more perplexing. So far it’s avoided the Abrams fault where everything they reveal is increasingly idiotic.
In a surprise to probably no one, I am coming forward as a Gossip Girl stan. That first season… incredible. They just threw every plot point possible at the wall and somehow it all stuck. Statement fashion moments, explosive needle drops, and an overall icy tone created an incredibly intriguing yet hostile world
Each season after is diminishing returns (except maybe the final season, which is abbreviated and punchier than the three that came before it). Each time i’ve had the urge to go back I keep cutting the tolerable portions of the show thinner and thinner. It started so soapy (compliment) but by the end it got so soapy (derogatory). Season Five is the absolute nadir of the experience (secret-cousin-doppelganger-hired-escort-to-secure-inheritance plotline undone by the appearance of an actual secret cousin; then it devolves into trying to find a secret roaming brothel)
This is all preamble to mourn Michelle Trachtenberg, who played the recurring villain Georgina Sparks. Georgina was such a standout as the Big Bad of season 1 that she eventually became a pseudo-main character off of what I’m sure was supposed to only be a 3 episode stint. She’s around for the 100th episode celebration and for every season finale. She even gets her own ending
She’s one of the most fascinating television characters from a meta perspective. It becomes increasingly clear as the show’s quality declined that the writers saw her as a nuke, a reset button, a get out of jail free card, whatever. Whenever things were getting dull, they’d throw Georgina in the mix for a few episodes, and weirdly, it always worked. She’s consistently a highlight on a show that deserved her less and less.
Michelle is a huge part of the character’s success, and in the latter seasons she comes off as if she’s the only one in the room who knows what show they’re on or what the tone should be. Even the better actors on the show (Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley) get bogged down with some awful material, so it was always fun to see Michelle show up and blow it all up.
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I’ve meant for years to check out Gossip Girl, I like “rich people being awful” media and it seems like the first run was an early modern era stab at that?
Michelle Trachtenburg always felt very underrated as a performer to me, so it does make me happy to see that people really seemed to appreciate her in GG.
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