The Tamesis
Dust off your cloak: traitor Britain is back, warming our dry January cockles. The civilian version follows Alan Carr, the worst traitor of all time, on screens after winning a celebrity death match in December and seeing numerous “Would you make a great In fact, “Traitor,” contestants race to find Claudia Winkleman’s designated traitor. traitor Holding a special place in our collective psyche, it’s both a delightful and heartwarming show about people stabbing their best friends in the back. why feel so OK So nervous to see so many innocent British citizens?
traitor Season 4 is off to a slow start because, well, it’s hard to get to know someone you don’t know well. The first non-celebrity eps were always a bit meet and greet, a bit corporate mixed: people talking about their jobs, giving their kids numbers, saying they were “bubbly.” This year, in the castle, we have a crime writing scarf enthusiast, a gay retired police detective, a poker-playing gardener, an open lawyer, and a secret lawyer. We no longer pretend the prize is the prize, because every contestant is there to win: for backbiting or deductions. I’m not sure what this means for society all Does this year’s contestant want to be a traitor? Knitting grandma whose butter won’t melt? traitor please. That idiot unscrewed the WKD bottle cap? Traitor, please. The former Army has three feet of muscle? Traitor, please. The bloodlust is palpable.
traitor This is the story of the gullible and the doubters working together to sift the frauds from the truth, a nightmare of country idiots locking themselves in stocks and throwing rotten fruit at each other. Sadly, we can still hear Winkleman’s 4X4 purring in the driveway, as distrust grew towards the least white contestants (this time Ross and Judy, Nico and Tameka). celebrity). It’s impossible to ignore a depressing fact: Most people are generally suspicious of people of color. Few brown people make it through the early eps without being judged by other contestants and ultimately banished by groupthink. Despite our apparent sobriety, we are clearly still asleep to the racial biases that direct our attention.
Claudia Winkleman, in a tartan skirt and no gloves, tossing portraits, presides over the cast with reverent ease. (Has she ever said a word without speaking in cheek?) We knew there would be zany funeral scenes, floating coffins and accusations of betrayal with zero evidence to support them. As viewers, we’re familiar with the plot’s twists and turns – the athletic mothers and their secret sons, the magician who stands by, the sacrificial train passengers – and now we have a new secret traitor; a masterminding god-level traitor; a Russian matryoshka doll within a Russian nest of dolls.
What I will say now is that I did not like the secret traitor subplot. The whole point of watching this show is that we sit at home and become the know-it-alls about how people screw up their own games. We know exactly who the traitor is, and one of the show’s great pleasures is observing wildly inaccurate Round Table accusations based on the tilt of a head or how someone crawls out of a coffin.
The secret traitors’ ploys weaken the real traitors; we don’t see their strategy, or its possible consequences, as their murders are drawn up. The existence of secret traitors means that we do not know whether the defendant is loyal and the accuser is a traitor. Most frustrating of all, Secret Traitor demeans us, the audience. Before, there was no scouting; we were all traitors, albeit passive, with a clear understanding of the breadth of the entire game. But Secret Traitors keeps us all stabbed faithfully in the dark, trying to sherlock their secret identities and figure out their actions without a confession tape.
