Why Is Everyone So Obses sed With ‘The Traitors’?

This Week

The Greatest Reality TV Show

What is it about the Peacock competition series The Traitorsthat has made the show so popular, outside of the fact that it is the greatest reality TV program that we have ever known or ever will know? After all, quality and popularity aren’t always circles that intersect on the pop culture Venn diagram. In fact, they often seem like magnets with the same charge, repelling each other in opposite decorations.

The viewership numbers for Season 2 of the series, a game of secret murder played in a Scottish castle overseen by Alan Cumming in a delectable array of befeathered fashion, speak to its increase in attention. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the season had the biggest debut of any reality TV series on Peacock, experienced a 75 percent jump in audience from Season 1, and, when Nielsen’s streaming rankings come out in the middle of the month, is expected to sit in the Top 10 alongside the platform’s other runaway hit, the TV version of Seth MacFarlane’s Ted.

Take that for what you will; these streaming numbers are always a little opaque and dubious. But I can attest to its popularity through my very scientific (not scientific at all) anecdotal research (group texts and the people I follow on Twitter) and say that every person I know is currently watching—and is absolutely obsessed with—this show. Phaedra Parks saying “Lord, not Ekin-Su,” a series of words that would have made no sense mere weeks ago, now appears on my phone more often than the previous hits of “hello,” “how have you been,” and “you owe me money.”

My gay friends watch the show. (Taste, obviously.) The people who are diligent about keeping up on whatever is hot at the moment watch it. The ones who are only ever watching one or two shows at a time (baffling behavior; don’t understand it) have added it to their roster. The reality TV enthusiasts are rabid about it. And even the normies, the ones who don’t venture outside of HGTV marathons and rewatching Grey’s Anatomy or Gilmore Girls on Netflix are filling up their Stanley tumblers and tuning in each week. (Truly on theme: Stanley tumblers, the real-life poison chalice!)

How did this reality show come to be the connective tissues between these groups?

I think it’s partly due to the impressive word-of-mouth campaign that accompanied Season 1 of the series, and knowing you could jump into Season 2 cold-turkey. That was my path to discovering the joys of Alan Cumming presiding over a motley crew of wacky reality TV alumni with all the dramatic grandiosity of a Shakespearean character contemplating patricide.

But I also think that, particularly with how the second season was cast, The Traitors hit on something that manages to be both familiar and singular at the same time. Whereas the first season featured a cast that was a mix of famous people and plebeians, Season 2’s roster is composed entirely of standout reality TV veterans, plus a handful of random public figures adjacent to the medium. (Whoever thought to add a former member of Parliament to the mix was really grasping at straws, yet ended up being an accidental genius.)

The Traitors game itself owes heavily to shows like Survivorand Big Brother. Cumming selects a small group of “Traitors” among the cast of “Faithfuls.” Only the Traitors know each other’s identity, and it’s the Faithfuls’ job to sniff out who they are and vote them out of the castle. Meanwhile, the Traitors get to murder one Faithful each night, observing like secret agents throughout the days’ challenges and the cast’s strategizing, eliminating anyone who might unveil them.

It’s understandably satisfying then, if you’re a fan of Survivor or Big Brother to see that strategizing happen, especially with Survivor alums Parvati Shallow and Sandra Diaz-Twine and Big Brother’s Dan Gheesling and Janelle Pierzina emerging as vocal presences from the start. They’re in their element here. Just as fun, though, is watching the stars who are very much out of their element, like, say, when you take a Real Housewife and plop her inside a Scottish castle to play a game of wits.

Real Housewives Larsa Pippen, Tamra Judge, Phaedra Parks, and Shereé Whitfield are all on this season, alongside fellow Bravolebs Kate Chastain (Below Deck) and Mercedes “MJ” Javid ( Shahs of Sunset).

First of all, seeing them interact with people from a wildly different type of serie,s like The Challenge veterans Johnny Bananas, CT Tamburello, and Trishelle Cannatella, is surreal, like if you were watching Downton Abbey and all of a sudden Bart and Homer Simpson show up. But there’s another element of worlds colliding in seeing them inject their penchant for throwing shade, reading enemies, and starting screaming matches as a defense mechanism into the arena of reality competition.

How do you make a reality competition more exciting? Bring a wordsmith like Phaedra Parks into the mix to deliver her arias of creative insults and hilarious commentary.

The whole “this is like seeing a polar bear while on African safari” element to the show is consistently surprising. The assumption is that former dating show cast members like Love Island’s Carsten “Bergie” Bergenson and The Bachelor’s Peter Weber would be out of their league, but Weber especially has stunned as one of the shrewdest players in the Traitors game. On the flipside, Dancing With the Stars’ Maksim Chmerkovskiy comes off as completely clueless and at a loss, as if he had choreographed an intricate paso doble, but when he arrived on the dance floor, waltz music started playing.

The tone of the series is also fascinating, and a departure from what we’re used to. There’s a grave seriousness to the proceedings that double back and become actually quite cheeky. That’s certainly true of Cumming’s narrating, oration that’s as fabulous and dripping with flair as his wardrobe. When he arrives to greet the cast each morning, they instinctively applaud his latest look; at home, I’m unconsciously doing the same thing. It’s what the ensembles deserve.

There are hilarious interstitials that are clearly posed, like Bling Empire’s Kevin Kreider contemplating game strategy while sexily gazing off into the distance from the tub where he’s soaking naked, or Larsa Pippen taking notes while a framed photo of her boyfriend, Marcus Jordan, sits next to her. There’s so much confidence in the juiciness that the game provides that The Traitors then gets to have some goofy fun with these elements.

The most gratifying thing that comes from The Traitors, and the reason I think it’s hooked everyone who’s sampled it, is its gifting to viewers of their pastime: judging people.

The audience is given all of the information every episode: Who is a Traitor, who is a Faithful, what everyone knows, and what their strategies are. So we get to scream at the TV at bozos making bad moves, gasp giddily when someone is surprisingly on the right track, and generally project that we are smarter than everyone else. Would I be a good Traitor? Dear God, no. But the beauty of this series is that I get to lie to myself and act like I am. Greatest show on television.

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Grab Your Kleenex

There’s no dismissing the entertainment value of the Real Housewives franchises, whether it’s delighting in the cast’s feuds, Pulitzer-worthy line reads, drunken shenanigans, or spending an entire season lying about their identity until a co-star has the “ Receipts! Proof! Timelines! Screenshots! Everything!” that proves they are, in fact, Instagram account owner Reality Von Tease.

The significance and importance of the shows present themselves in more subtle ways, which reality TV critics often ignore. Sometimes, though, the series unfurl moments that are impossible to dismiss and which really underline the profundity of Real Housewives. (Yes, I am saying that with a straight face!)

On this week’s The Real Housewives of Miami—I beg of all reality TV fans to stop sleeping on this franchise entry—the cast traveled to Mexico City. One of the excursions that Alexia Nepola planned for the group was a visit to a church to see the Virgin of Guadalupe, a bit of a swerve from the usual Housewives vacation plans of wine tasting, yacht riding, and shamelessly flirting with wait staff.

Guadalupe is the saint that Alexis prayed to when her son, Frankie, got in a serious car accident years ago. Not only was it important for her to visit the church, but she’s noticed how much pain so many of her co-stars have been in and felt that it would be a worthy trip for them, too.

There’s a shocking lack of cattiness from the other women about the plan. Once there, every single one of them breaks down in tears, almost immediately commenting on how unexpectedly heavy and intense the experience is.

Lisa Hochstein is emotionally spiraling after her husband left her for another woman; Julia Lemigova hadn’t been in a church since her son’s funeral, but went to support her friends; and Guerdy Abraira was about to start chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer. As she starts sobbing while praying at the altar, Larsa Pippen, who she had just been fighting with, wraps her in a tight, supportive embrace. It’s a beautiful moment.

Kudos to Bravo for not only letting that sequence happen, but letting it breathe. There is a stunning shot that ends the segment of all the women standing arm and arm, tears streaking their cheeks, and looking at the altar together. It was gorgeously cinematic, meeting the moment at the level it deserved.

This Miami scene comes just weeks after The Real Housewives of Potomac aired its own emotionally charged segment that brought together its splintered, feuding cast in a rare moment of unity. Grand Dame Karen Huger is an ambassador for the rape victim advocacy organization PAVE, and hosted an event to collect donations and raise awareness. Each cast member that attended shelved their respective dramas and not only supported the event, but was admirably candid about their own experiences with sexual assault. Again, credit to the editors and the network for skirting the trap of a trauma dump and instead putting forth a segment that was cathartic, inspirational, and a call to arms.

I always remember to grab my wine when I sit down for Real Housewives. I’m going to have to start remembering a box of Kleenex too.

Hi, Gracious Barbie!

Time today is such that hours passed seem like years. So it’s surprising to learn that it was just one week ago, not several months, that when the Oscar nominations were announced, Barbie’s Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie did not receive directing and acting nods, and everyone’s brains short-circuited and exploded in response—as if someone added pop rocks to a bottle of coke, but with our collective brain fluid.

This week, Robbie made her first comment about the so-called snub. “There’s no way to feel sad when you know you’re this blessed,” she said at a SAG-AFTRA discussion of the film. “Obviously, I think Greta should be nominated as a director. What she did is a once-in-a-career, once-in-a-lifetime thing. What she pulled off, it really is. But it’s been an incredible year for all the films.

She said that she is “beyond ecstatic” about the film’s eight nods, and added, “We set out to do something that would shift culture, affect culture, just make some sort of impact. And it’s already done that and some, way more than we ever dreamed it would. And that is truly the biggest reward that could come out of all of this.”

Robbie’s comments are so gracious and reasonable, it’s almost shocking that they could have come from a Hollywood star. (Those adjectives are rarer than carbs in Tinseltown.) She did not engage in any pity, paid tribute to Gerwig and her directing work rather than her own situation, and brought the entire snub conversation back down to earth with the context of all that the film accomplished and meant. My level of Margot Robbie fandom just skyrocketed.

Chita Rivera Was All That Jazz

There are few redeeming qualities left when it comes to social media, but one that I value most is the flood of historical videos showcasing a performer’s talent that are posted following the sad news that the person has died. It’s a beautiful opportunity to escape and reminisce about the person’s accomplishments and contributions at a time that is, obviously, otherwise quite sad.

Here are two of my favorite videos that surfaced this week following the news that Broadway icon Chita Rivera passed away.

In this one, Rivera and Liza Minnelli are rehearsing the “Hot Honey Rag” number in Chicago, to prepare for Minnelli’s stint as a replacement Roxie Hart. (Rivera originated the role of Velma Kelly.) Watch it here.

And in this one, Rivera, Carol Channing, and Angela Lansbury are rehearsing their bit of “The Best of Times Are Now” for the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to composer and lyricist Jerry Herman. Her support and encouragement of Channing, who was 89 at the time, is incredibly touching. Watch it here.

What a Choice

There is, supposedly, a valid reason that Demi Lovato chose to perform her song “Heart Attack” at an event for women with cardiovascular issues. Sure. I will read more about it after I stop cackling in disbelief that Demi Lovato chose to perform her song “Heart Attack” at an event for women with cardiovascular issues.

Watch it here.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

The cast of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans tell us all about making TV’s juiciest new series. Read more.

Sorry to Nicole Kidman, but the true star of Expats is this dog. Read more.

Steven Moyer stars in Sexy Beast (that tracks) and breaks down the series’ most disturbing scene for us. Read more.

Tokyo Vice : The most underrated show on TV. And there are so many underrated shows on TV! (Now on Max)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: The new series will make you say, “Brangelina, who?!” (Sorry, Angelina, I didn’t really mean that.) (Now on Prime Video)

Curb Your Enthusiasm: It’s more of the same, which sounds pritt-ay, pritt-ay good to me. (Sun. on HBO)

Argyle : I found out this movie was two hours and 20 minutes long and wanted to file a police report. (Now in theaters)

Vanderpump Rules: Is this show going to flatline without the Scandoval? (Now on Bravo)

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