I am one hundred per cent Faithful
I'm diving into the latest season of "The Traitors," savoring the chaos and my guilty pleasure
The Traitors is on TV again. If you’re a fan of the show and/or already understand the premise, then feel free to skip the next paragraph while I sum it up for everyone else:
A few dozen random people go and live in a remote Scottish castle for a few weeks and embark on mildly trivial “challenges” to add money to a prize pot. 3 of the 22 contestants are secretly “Traitors”: eg. they’re evil, and must choose a victim to “murder” each day. They, and the the rest of the players, must face a daily “round table” where they have to accuse one another of being traitors, eventually voting someone out (“banishing” them). The “faithful” players left at the end of the game can split the prize money, but if any traitors are left unbanished, they take the cash instead.
The third season has just started on BBC1 and it’s already receiving rave reviews. If you’ve ever played boardgames like Werewolf, Mafia or Avalon then you’ll already be familiar the basic mechanics of this kind of game… in which case, this TV show may not be for you.
Why not? Well, because most of the contestants are almost certainly not board gamer types, and much of the speculation about who’s a traitor or not is based on things like “gut feelings”, or the way a particular player looked or reacted during an event or conversation. Any time there’s an opportunity to do some game theory and make logical deductions based on someone’s observable, objective actions, most of the faithful contestants are happy to instead defer to judging their peers’ emotional responses instead.
I sound like a robot, don’t I. I love the show. Reality TV is not my genre of choice so this is firmly a guilty pleasure, and I must admit to taking a snobby interest in judging people’s meta-game, eg. being snooty about the lack of evidence when someone accuses someone else of being anything less than “a hundred percent a faithful”. But this is secretly because I know I’d be absolutely awful at the game.
For one thing, the best players—on either side of the game—are the ones who are naturally charismatic, popular and charming. I have my moments, but I don’t think any of these terms really describes me, particularly around strangers. Past seasons of the show have introduced successful traitors to the world showing off their conversational ease, vast scope for empathy and understanding, and roguish good looks. Again, I’m coming up at a loss here too.
When I’ve played board games like this (eg. where you’re secretly evil and have to persuade everyone otherwise), I immediately fall to pieces when I’m wrongly accused of being a bad guy. I can’t keep a straight face despite being innocent, all my logical explanations for my actions suddenly sound shifty and irrational, and any attempt to outline why it’s definitely another player just sounds like weak deflection. I get voted out, and then have the grim pleasure of revealing my card to the groans of my fellow players. This is almost certainly what would happen to me on the Traitors.
But it’s fun to watch and pretend otherwise. Some of the contestants have clearly been nudged by producers into spicing up their role—the Londoner in the current season who’s somehow decided to pretend to be Welsh; the secret couple in another season; the mother/son combo last time around—and it’s brilliant TV, if completely unhinged.
I watch and try to think what my “concept” could be if I was plucked from obscurity and suddenly on prime time TV with the chance to win £100k: maybe I’d suddenly become the vivacious, outgoing, charming (and conniving) man I’ve (never) dreamed of. But what happens if I win? Does that have to become my personality forever? Will everyone who sees me in the pub think I’m a backstabbing liar for the rest of my life?
Of course, it’ll never happen. So I console myself by watching the brave contestants on this year’s show as they make pointless deductions based on empty evidence, grinning in the smug knowledge that I already know who the traitors are. If only real life was as simple as this: play a role, have all the answers up front, and win fame and fortune thanks to my sheer charm and attractiveness. Maybe I’ll turn the TV off…
Mini-feels this week
Happy new year
It’s 2025 – I’m very excited.
I ended 2024 on a weird kind of high. I lost my job, but haven’t felt happier these past twelve months. I have irons in the fire, interviews lined up, and reasons to feel positive and proactive despite being officially [f]unemployed as of the 1st of January 2025.
I still don’t know for sure what this year will hold for me or what I’ll be doing by the spring – but hopefully, by the time of the Omloop (the opening European race in the road cycling calendar which aficionados consider the true start of the season) on 1st March, I’ll be approaching gainful employment once more. Watch this space…