SourK

I respect Carolyn for not being two-faced and just telling Danielle they're not allies anymore. It might not be good for her game, but I like that she's not afraid for things to feel uncomfortable. Rob can cover his face and be aghast if he wants to, but maybe the lesson is not, "My teammates are terrible," so much as "I should have gotten the lay of the land more, before I made a big move." Normally I think players should focus on voting for people they actually think are Traitors but, this early in the game, I fully support voting someone off just because they're making the show feel unpleasant. You don't have to deal with that every day for the rest of the game. In the last Traitors Canada season, there was literally one person who voted for someone and said, "I don't want you to be on the show," which was hilariously honest. And I feel like that is the sentiment here. I feel like they had the same reaction to Carolyn, and I wonder about what that will mean for Carolyn's game. Because, she's not in a position where she can do a Boston Rob and come to the table and convince everybody to vote with her, but she is in a position where she sort of looks more Faithful, because, when people listen to her, they're not saying, "Here's a Traitor trying to shank another Traitor," they're saying, "Here's Carolyn going off about some person who hurt her feelings -- let's focus on something else." I agree with this. I think, on Survivor, your motivation for doing whatever you're doing is assumed -- it's because you want to stay in the game as long as possible. But on The Traitors, your motivation is the whole thing that people are supposed to be questioning. Almost against my will, I'm kind of interested to see how Rob plays this. But I don't think there's any way he can retaliate against Danielle for voting for him right now. I have never understood the people who lose a game show and then get up and say, "What you don't realize is that I should have won this game show, because I'm superior to you." WTF.

I never saw Carolyn's season of Survivor, but I think I love her? And the more the other contestants talk about how incapable she is, the more I hope she goes far. I think, also, people bring a bunch of baggage in with them that we don't know. Based on what she said during the discussion and then when she left, it seemed like she felt like they were rejecting her for being different -- and not, like, feeling and emoting the exact way they wanted her to -- and, depending on what your other life experiences have been, and I can see how that might make you shut down and not want to say anything. That's a good point. In most hidden role games, it's literally random, but, in this game, people get picked by the producers, so you could speculate about who the producers would pick and why -- especially if you're used to being on television, which these people are. But I feel like reality shows don't want to show the contestants talking about production for some reason. Not sure why.

Episode 11.

Same. I know that's his stage name, and they have to differentiate him from the other Bob when they talk about him, but it made me laugh because it sounded like they thought they had to specify, in every context, that he was a drag queen. IMO, he's not insanely great, but he is unusually cool-headed in his game play. He's the rare person who doesn't go out of his way to be mean and dramatic but would also backstab his best friend if he thought that was the right move, mechanically. There are usually a lot of social politics in these kinds of games where people are like, "Hold my hand and stare into my eyes and say we're allies forever," and that doesn't work on him, so that might be why people think he's intimidating. But, no, it's not because he wins.

This could be true of any version of the show, but I will say it here: IDK whether those bad, weird pop songs on the soundtrack are made just for this show, but I wish they were tailored even more to the show, and literally describing the events. Like, "Ooooo, Rob's gonna turn against Bob; now Danielle's crying; awkward meeting later in the turret." I watched this immediately after the latest episode of the UK version, where they do a different version of the statue challenge. In the UK one, they have a group discussion about who should get the shield, and work together to assemble the statues, and end up doing a vote to make the final decision. And, as I watched that, I was like, "If they do this on the US one, they'll all run up the hill with their own heads." LMAO. Anyway. Rob did a very good job of taking out Bob, and it was the first time he looked like he was having fun all season -- doing what he loves & backstabbing people at a vote.

I just caught up on season two, and I really enjoyed it. One of my fave Traitors seasons for sure. I liked most of the contestants, almost everyone was respectful and a good sport, and a lot of really funny things happened. My favourite subplot was Lauren and Kevin both being Faithfuls, convinced the other person was a Traitor, trying to make a Traitor-Faithful alliance with each other. I loved how, every episode, Tranna was giving these powerful, eloquent speeches about things that were totally wrong. She was a really good communicator in the bridge challenge, though -- she and Lauren both. I do think Kyra's mistake was trying to get rid of Michael John because he annoyed her -- and then gunning for it so hard. But it was also funny that she was trying to throw him under the bus for so long and the Faithfuls were too busy pointing fingers at each other to notice. Neda played a good game, but I thought she had lost right at the end with the Kyra vote. I was pleasantly surprised to see her pull it off, but honestly would have been happy with a win for Tranna and Lauren, too. Had mixed feelings about Nick. He seems like he's genuinely a very nice person who loves his sister, but I'm not sure how I feel about someone coming into the game and trying to help the opposing team. I wonder if she would have recruited him, if she'd managed to get rid of Neda. Anyway, it was a really fun season. I wish they got to play for more money.

I'm enjoying this season, too. The funniest thing to me is the things they zero in on and decide to pick at: Do you honestly expect us to believe you've gone your whole life without learning how to tie a boat off properly?? When we asked you what happened in the card game, why did you try to summarize the card game instead of telling us which card everyone played each turn?? And just, like, the looks of disbelief and disgust, and how weird and sus they think those things are.

I have never heard of Wes before, but my favourite part was when Alan asked why no one was helping Wes out of his cage, and Wes leaned through the bars and yelled, "Because they're stupid." I liked it because he completely answered the question -- just not in the way he thought.

At a certain point, I googled "How many shows has Boston Rob won?" and Google said it was just that one season of Survivor where he played against the noobs. The weird thing is that I kind of understand why they admire him -- they're all professional reality show stars, and he is very good at being on reality shows. I'm just not sure that's going to translate into him winning.

I'm watching this simultaneously with the UK version, and one thing I find really funny is how bitterly the contestants on this version argue about who has to sacrifice for everything. I legitimately am worried every time that no one will do it and they'll just stand there until the challenge is over. I also enjoyed how they completely failed the circus challenge after even that. The editing was great -- just a string of wrong doors, followed by everyone standing around looking sad, followed by someone going, "That wasn't fun," while they all walked away. I came into this rooting for Bob the DQ, and I think it's interesting to have someone play a loud Traitor, but I think he's too focused on getting to play mind games and not focused enough on trying to stick around. In this game, people also vote you out because they don't like you. On the other hand, I liked Jeremy this episode, because at least he's trying to play normally and find a traitor instead of just trying to play a numbers game.

Eh. I still like this show, but I would have found it more interesting if Marshall had been a talented writer who had legitimate grievances with Hollywood instead of a pretender full of sour grapes. Also, I felt like it was kind of cheap to have Jan just shoot him from the window. I really liked the Amy Ryan performance in the first season, but that's a character who doesn't serve a purpose anymore. And having Jan kill Marshall doesn't symbolize anything or advance the themes of the story -- it's just, like, a way to get out of that scene. I'm also kind of weirded out that they drew attention to the plot holes from season one and acted like this season would retcon them into the mystery and then... didn't do that at all? Like, I had forgotten all that stuff about notes and poisonings, and I was briefly impressed that they were going to make it relevant somehow, and then I was like, "Why even bring it up?"

I just watched this, super late as usual -- and it was my favourite series I've seen in a long time. I probably wouldn't classify it was a comedy, primarily, but I did find it very funny at times -- in a super dark way. I also just really, really dug how uncomfortable it was. One thing that I found weird about the series is that I think it started off by focusing the negative impact Asher was having on other people and ended by hyper-focusing on Asher -- to the point that other people are an afterthought and almost the whole last episode is about empathizing with him while he get sucked into the sky. It kind of shifted my understanding of the show -- like, "Is this story about class stratification, or is it about Asher?" And I was left with a nagging feeling that the series might have always been about Asher -- and about maybe revealing that, despite initial appearances, Asher is not the worst person in this marriage.

I'm only at the start of season two, but, from what I can gather, according to The Bear, being loud and energetic = hero, whether or not any of the things you loudly, energetically do make any sense. I thought the worst moment was episode 1.7, where Carmy saw that they had to fill hundreds of orders in 10 minutes -- like, orders they literally could not fill, because they did not have enough food -- and then he... seriously attempted to do that, and got all pissed off when it didn't work. But then I came back for the first episode of season two, where Carmy promises to pay his uncle back in 18 months -- a number of months he comes up with, that nobody else suggested -- and then he has a meeting where he apparently learns for the first time what the timeline will be to open his restaurant and make a profit. And then he's like, "Oh, no. That's really intense time pressure, given that I just set an arbitrary timeline of 18 months! Let's just accept that as the situation and start scrambling again." I cannot.

This was frustrating to watch -- for me, it was just a repetitive argument between people who are all kind of wrong. YMMV. I thought Peppermint spoke well when she was talking about how she felt hurt and disappointed and, for her, it was about more than the show and had to do with past experiences she'd had and her fears about the current political situation, etc. I think it's understandable that MJ is also hurt and disappointed, maybe for reasons that go beyond what happened in the show -- like, she had mentioned knowing what it was like to feel left out of a group, for example. I get why she would be upset to get to the end of the game and think, "We're all on the same team, we all like each other, everything's cool," and then have the other two people vote her out, basically just because they like each other more. I think the issue she had at the reunion is just that she didn't know how to express any of that in the same way that Peppermint did, so she did the passive-aggressive thing where she was like, "I'm mad at you; I'm interrupting to show I'm still mad at you; I'm mad at you; acknowledge me; show me that you care about how I feel." And then the response she got was the least helpful response, which is people saying, "Well, U shouldn't B mad." I've said it in other Traitor's threads, and I'll say it again: this show is basically designed to hurt people's feelings and make them feel bad, and that's one aspect of it that maybe isn't awesome. I think it's fair to share that, if that's what your experience was -- I just don't think she knew how. As far as Dan/Phaedra, I actually believe he thought he could throw Phaedra under the bus to save himself. It was a move that didn't work, and it was a move that tanked her game unnecessarily because it didn't work, but I don't think he did it out of spite. I think he was just bad at being a Traitor.

This season kind of sucked, but the last ten minutes were shocking and hilarious. Like, suddenly it turned into this weird, misguided Hallmark movie about how Trishelle and CT healed their toxic friendship by throwing MJ under the bus.