Week-to-Week: The Reality Era of The Traitors U.S. is Here to Stay

And we'll have to learn to accept the realities I gleaned from my conversation with producers

Photo: Peacock

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There’s no question that the choice to include reality celebrities in the first U.S. season of The Traitors was an intervention by Peacock. While the original Dutch version actually also focused on celebrities, the U.K. version went with an entirely civilian cast, and the choice to mix the two and to specifically highlight reality stars was—according to producer Stephen Lambert during the show’s panel at NBC Universal’s Press Tour day—something that Peacock discussed as a way to help a first season show get off the ground.

There’s therefore a very cynical read of the choice to shift entirely to reality stars for the second season, but through six episodes I’d argue that it’s absolutely the smarter choice for the franchise provided that an entirely civilian cast is off the table. The first season’s balance of the two never fully made sense, as you are telling two completely different types of stories that don’t necessarily mesh well and the ending was a reality star basically crushing the dreams of regular people, which was correct insofar as Cirie dominated them and yet still a bad vibe. While it’s one thing when “fans” play with “favorites” on a show like Survivor, the aura of celebrity plays differently without the equalizer of marooning them on an island, especially when you go beyond people famous for being on a reality competition series to people on reality shows like The Real Housewives who are famous for being rich and on television.

By comparison, the second season of The Traitors has been an even playing field, but in ways that have nonetheless still created diversity among the contestants. The division between the “Gamers”—people from competitive franchises like Survivor and Big Brother—and the “Housewives”—those who are on shows with no competition elements—has become the new version of “celebrities vs. civilians,” and as a fan of the genre it’s inherently fascinating. In a way, with Peacock platforming the international versions of the franchise that focus on civilians, the series is positioning America’s reality television culture as a distinct national export, diving deep into the nuances and politics therein. Watching the gamers underestimate someone like Phaedra Parks because she’s “just a housewife” has been a really satisfying narrative arc for the season, and recent weeks have seen the players breaking off into mixed alliances that have created a far more complex gameplay dynamic than anything we saw last season.

In talking with executive producer Sam Rees-Jones after their Press Tour panel and at a cocktail party later in the day, he told me that they didn’t really anticipate the “gamers” vs. “Housewives” narrative going into the season—it was something that emerged from the players themselves. He also acknowledged that as a Brit, he’s not necessarily coming to the casting process with the same level of intimate knowledge and history with American reality television as the audience is. But he and the other producers have clearly embraced the potentials of this story, and the combination of the expanded reality celebrity dynamic and shift to week-to-week releases has helped the show grow week-over-week on Peacock and capture the zeitgeist in a way the first season didn’t.

However, one discourse that emerged after last week’s episode was how the new dynamics of the game aren’t necessarily being reflected in the edit. In an Instagram post, Survivor alum Sandra Diaz-Twine posted a screenshot from a strategy session she held in episode six with a mix of different contestants, suggesting that the show’s producers had left out a key element of her discussion:

“​​I want to make something clear. During that strategy session 🎱 I also made it clear that hopefully the traitors were in our group so that they could murder each and everyone of the so-called most faithful of the faithful, therefore allowing the faithful in the leftovers to get to the end of the game.”

While I asked The Traitors producers a question about the decision to add Kate Chastain—who was on the panel—to the game late (more on that in the Strays), after the panel I had the chance to follow up with them about Sandra’s post and about the seeming tensions emerging between the game the players felt they were playing and the version of the game being presented to audiences. This is not an uncommon complaint among reality contestants, but it struck me as a distinct tension where it’s not so much that Sandra is unhappy with how her person is being represented—she’s rather suggesting that the narrative demands of the TV show mean they can’t have her reveal that she is actively ignoring the “engine” of eliminating traitors in favor of strategizing to remove other faithful.

When I asked Rees-Jones about this, he basically agreed. He acknowledged that there has been some clear divides between how players are playing the game and its proposed purpose, although he argued that this became a productive tension. He asked me who I thought was playing a better game: former Bachelor Peter or Sandra? I answered that I would never choose anyone other than Sandra when presented this question, but countered that while Peter is clearly playing the better game in line with the narrative of “eliminate the traitors,” he’s also applying a weird moral code to it that seems antithetical to the actual dynamics of the game. Rees-Jones and Lambert responded positively to this, which reinforced to me that they see the format as being about this kind of tension. As long as it makes good TV, they don’t seem at all stressed about the idea that the players are starting to move dramatically away from the narrative engine they’re relying on given that chaos is an engine in and of itself.

Essentially, from their perspective, there are no bad problems on The Traitors provided it’s creating juicy drama—later, Rees-Jones emphasized that in his eyes this is a murder mystery drama, not a reality competition series, and the game is designed accordingly. The problem is that for those of us who follow a game like Survivor and often criticize the show for designing challenges or twists in ways that destroy the integrity of the game, we’re now watching some of our favorite players from that game being at the whims of interventionist producers. Last week’s twist was a perfect example of a gameplay element that absolutely generated lots of murder mystery drama, but also broke the momentum of the “Peter vs. Parvati” showdown that the show had been building through the episode, and which felt like the natural trajectory of the narrative.

Rees-Jones acknowledged and basically agreed with this criticism, noting that the absence of a round table and banishment robbed the show of its best dramatic elements. But in the end, after talking with him for 10-15 minutes or so, my takeaway was how much the show’s philosophy is to find and explore dramatic potential without being at all precious about the game and its elements. So much of reality competition series is built on structure and “format,” but Rees-Jones believes that no murder mystery should ever be the same, and so there is a pathological need to shake things up built into the format that I’ve concluded is just something that we need to get used to. The Traitors doesn’t care if its game doesn’t make sense, and it’s not going to abandon its core storytelling engine of “find the traitors, murder the faithful” even if Sandra is actively fighting against it. It’s just going to edit out the parts that don’t fit, and focus its attention on the drama that its former reality contestants are more than willing to push forward.

My investment in the format and the narratives within was pretty distinct within the room: after the panel, as I pushed Rees-Jones and Lambert on the game’s design, two celebrity reporters came onstage to try to get a word in edgewise, and when I finally remembered proper etiquette and let them take over, all they wanted to do was try to get more scoop on what other reality stars might show up in the third season. When I talked with Rees-Jones again later, I did ask him if the meta-narrative about reality TV would push them away from casting other genres of celebrities (since it was clear he would not be discussing explicit casting), and while he intimated that we probably won’t see another member of British Parliament, he seemed to largely leave the door open for athletes and the like in the future. In much the same way that they didn’t go into season two knowing that the “gamer” and “Housewife” archetypes would play out the way they did, it seems like they’re embracing the chaos of the format and seeing how the promotionally valuable cast they generate ends up manifesting gameplay wise.

From a producer’s perspective, the way the U.S. version of The Traitors has become about reality stars has largely been a gift: Rees-Jones emphasized how useful it was to have built-in feuds to kickstart the story early on, but also feels like those dynamics are simple enough that some basic exposition could get non-reality viewers up to speed (which he noted will be tested when this season makes it to the U.K.). And for U.S. fans who aren’t interested in the meta-narratives and turned off by the turn toward reality stars, Peacock still has your back: The Traitors U.K. season two will arrive on the service on March 8, while the second season of The Traitors Australia and the first season of The Traitors New Zealand arrive on March 28. And so while the era of American civilians playing The Traitors is likely over, audiences will have a chance to see regular folk turn on each other if they so desire.

But in the meantime, the great reality meta-narrative has become the show’s new calling card.

Episodic Observations

• I didn’t ask this directly, but I’d argue that there’s really no good argument for Peacock to create The Traitors: Regular People and alternate it with the celebrity version—they have the international versions for that, and if they decide to really double down I think they’d honestly just double up on celebrity seasons to maximize the outreach into different fanbases.

• One question I had (that Rees-Jones had no real insight on either): if they do pick up the Canadian version, which followed Peacock’s lead in casting a mix of regular people and reality stars, does Canada have enough of an established reality star system to also pivot exclusively to celebrity contestants? They notably pulled from Survivor’s recent pool of Canadians with Season 41 winner Erika, so maybe that’s a potential pathway, but it will be interesting if CTV chooses to order an additional season (which likely won’t be decided until the French-language version they produced airs this year).

• During the panel, someone asked about making a version more like The Mole where players don’t know who the traitors are, but this would limit the stories they’re telling and wouldn’t actually make the competitions any more interesting, since there’s still no incentive for the traitors to not make money for the team. Our omniscience within the game is critical to its design on too many levels.

• For the record, regarding bringing Kate into the game halfway, Rees-Jones suggested that Kate had “unfinished business” and they brought her in part-way as a destabilizing force per the previously outlined pathological interventionist approach. I still contend it was messy, but she didn’t go home immediately, so she wasn’t too upset about it.

• A last TCA update unrelated to this will probably come sometime over the weekend, so thanks for following along. I’ll also make sure to get an Episodic Discussion out to discuss what we might have been watching while I’ve been busy in Pasadena.