Traitors

Beyond some halfheartedly-watched cooking competitions ten years ago, I’ve never gotten into reality television competitions, but I had read about the Traitors, and when we walked past a billboard advertising the show while in Norwich, I asked everyone if we could try it the next night.

We were coming in mid-season, and I couldn’t connect with it. The people were overly enthusiastic about some pretty annoying tasks and overly dramatic in the face of non-danger. When we turned it off, I said that I didn’t need to give it a second chance.

But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it the next day, and when someone suggested we give it another try, we ended up watching another episode. And by that point, I was invested. I wanted to see who won.

When we got back to the US, we bought a year of Peacock so we could watch through past seasons while waiting for the current season to reach the US. Once again, I started out feeling pretty meh about the whole thing and then convinced Josh we should give up our afternoon plans and watch three episodes in a row. Plus a little of the next episode because we couldn’t end on the cliffhanger.

I’m unsure what appeals to me because I would never want to be on it myself. I wouldn’t want to be a faithful OR a traitor. Maybe it’s just interesting to watch truthful people have to convince people they are being truthful, sort of like the opposite of the Turing test, where humans would have to convince people of their humanness. Which, now that I think about it, is going on now as people are not using AI but are accused of using AI, and they have to prove a human wrote something.

We haven’t tried the US, Australian, or New Zealand versions yet, so we have many seasons to get through before we run out of Traitors episodes.