The Traitors: New Blood finds new ways to increase its tedium

• 

I don’t know if it’s just me, or a long, weird day (Patrick Stewart!), but watching Traitors: New Blood episode 8 tonight felt like a chore. I usually can’t wait for a new episode of The Traitors! But this season is just not working.

A big part of that was resolving a cliffhanger that ended up just erasing the events of last week’s episode. Then we went right back to the roundtable with all the same people! A murder but no mission. $15,000 added to the pot for no reason.

Another part is that I’m not really invested in any of the players’ success. Morgan and other Abbie think Victor is wrong about the fruit task and yet voted with him anyway.

Tomica and Joe might as well be wearing shirts that have arrows pointing at each other and say I’m with Traitor.

I did laugh and love Kriste schooling Victor on menopause (“read an article!”) and thought using brain fog to explain Tomica’s mixed-up names was interesting—and then she voted for Tomica anyway, menopause be damned!

However impressed I am that Victor figured things out, I just cannot stand his obnoxious theatrics. The way he stalked Tomica through the castle: uncomfy.

Also, watching Victor smack on Skinny Pop with his mouth open and that shit-eating—or shitty popcorn eating?—grin was bad enough. And then the next commercial has Jennifer Aniston eating Skinny Pop and sharing it with Patience from Ghosts?

All of this began with the Power of the Pardon, which went to Shane. Alan Cumming revealed that after a 25-minute pause in his sentence for dramatic music. I love the lavish production of The Traitors, but it just feels like wasting time during these 42-minute episodes.

I expected we’d see a flashback to Shane’s performance in the challenge—the amount of gold he won compared to others—since the producers withheld that last episode, presumably to preserve suspense.

But nope. While that is sketchy, choosing Shane—who voted for Victor—doesn’t seem like obvious manipulation. Heck, say Victor won the challenge. (What if he had?!)

Yet moments after voting for Victor, Shane pardoned him. What? “I can tell when somebody’s lying to my face, and he convinced me,” he said in an interview. Convinced you, what, while jumping around in the Circle of Truth? I was thinking he’d say something like: I just went with the group and I regretted it.

Then the traitors convened for their next elimination: They picked Abby L. over Shane and Victor. To her credit, Abby stayed consistent in her wrongness even after her exit: “I knew it. It’s Wyatt,” she said.

I don’t need to say that keeping Victor was probably a fatal mistake, because Tomica said it: “Victor staying around sowed too many seeds.” If there’s a giant loudspeaker blaring all your secrets and you choose not to turn it off, of course it’s going to keep blaring.

Then again, I’m not sure his murder would have switched suspicion from Tomica and Joe, considering how badly they fumbled. But since everyone was ready to be rid of him the night before, the other players probably would have been relieved. I sure would have.

I’m expecting Joe and Katie will recruit Victor, who will skate to a win because everyone’s now convinced he’s a faithful so he’ll be able to effortlessly hurl Joe and Katie under the apple cart.

Love this? get my newsletter • send a tip

All of reality blurred’s content is independently selected, including links to products or services. However, if you buy something after clicking an affiliate link, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

• Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher whose reporting and criticism has appeared on NPR and in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Vulture, The Atlantic, Salon, Playboy, The Daily Beast, and other publications. Andy’s work on reality blurred has won an Excellence in Journalism award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists (2023) and an L.A. Press Club National A&E Journalism Award (2021), and was honored with Florida Society for Professional Journalists awards (2015, 2021, 2023). He’s president of the Television Critics Association, and a member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and The Authors Guild. He holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing and literature from Bennington College, and his memoir-in-progress, I’m Here to Make Friends, was longlisted for the 2022 First Pages Prize.

  recent articles

  view all stories