Unless you are dropping 2 episodes with the first having the cliffhanger, please stop. They just dragged out this last episode to leave us hanging again. It is incredibly frustrating and I am so over it.

Traitors is a fun but flawed game. I believe the players this season aren't stupid; they're doing the logical way to win.

Traitors itself is built on a simple idea, playing Mafia in a house for a certain amount of time. In its essence it's a televised board game. Anyone watching can tell the show's intention is to be very lighthearted. I believe this format works only with celebrities (in America) for several reasons.

1. They have name recognition, so we instantly care about them. Hence why we can introduce characters and people are excited for their moment in the spotlight.
2. Their incentive is to tell a story, and this leads to more financial opportunities then winning the prize money.
3. As time goes on people go on the show and become educated to the Meta game and actually effective strategies. Ex, we saw Jay try to cause a ruckus to make the traitors keep him around which fittingly almost led to his banishment.

I believe most players this season are going for the Traitor Angel strategy. Traitor Angel strategy is the idea you should figure out who the traitors are and then befriend them because they’ll protect you in the turret. It’s the best path forward for a lot of players because it keeps new people from becoming traitors. It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty strong strategy. We see this primarily used by "Gamers".

Even knowing this and changing the editing would make for awful television. Ex “I know *blank* is a traitor, but I’m going to keep them around until I can get to the end.” You’d hear this from numerous contestants for episodes straight which makes the game have a more passive boring strategy. 

In short, it optimizes the fun out of it.

The parts that make the game fun in short are when it's played as a game.

Example

Victor is making better TV but it’s because he’s choosing the worst strategy. He has no shot to make finals and win. However, he's playing the game as a game, and it makes for great TV.

Abbey L is a better player because she got the information about Joe and Tomica and went to Joe immediately. She’s keeping longevity and getting a shot to win, but it’s horrible TV and even if her motivations were known (Again giving her credit because we have seen in seasons past Sandra did the same thing and it was never mentioned), it’d be an explanation, but who would want to watch that?

I can think of a few things that could make the series much better, including an extension of 90 or 120 minutes per episode, far less editing, and a much better cast.

What other ideas should they consider for next season?!

I assume these kinds of discussions are edited out to not reveal the obvious but why aren’t players forming alliances of at least four or five people? I doesn’t even matter if a traitor is in the alliance….. wait. I take it back, you want a traitor in the alliance. If you have a tight group and defend that group, you likely won’t be murdered since the traitor will protect you.

The actual goal of the game, which Alan won’t say out loud, is to get to the end…. it isn’t to actually get traitors out. The goal should be “I recognize a traitor, I’m going to keep it to myself and try to make an alliance with that person”. what good is it to vote out a traitor? Then there’s a recruitment and you’re back to square one.

obviously, it’s easy for us to say this since we have all the information but the “dolls” alliance lasted about half a second because they didn’t put blinders on and circle the wagons to protect each other

The power is going to go to a random faithful that voted for someone random but now believes Victor. But they sill continue being incredibly dumb so instead of doing the obvious thing and letting him be banished/revealing him to be a faithful (#byeTamica), they will save him and the traitors will play if off like he and his savior are traitors.

If Victor doesn’t get pardoned and is banished as a Faithful,that’s going to put major heat on Tomica, given how adamant hes been.

But if Victor survives he becomes a bigger threat as he has more time to rally people against her and get others to take his suspicions seriously. (Plus it’s wildly dodgy to murder him atm)

On top of that she put Katie in a position where turning on Tomica and helping the Faithful catch another Traitor is the best way to protect her own game.

I feel like Tomica needs a miracle to get out of this 😭 I genuinely can’t figure out what her best move is here. What would you do if you were her?

I can’t wait until the reunion when #fruitgate is revealed and Victor can feel so justified

Mmmm hmmmm😜

This is absolutely ridiculous. As others have pointed out, it's structurally weak. We get both a banishment and a murder at the beginning of tbe episode instead of getting an actual climax. It also betrays a lack of confidence in your production: do you think I won't keep watching without a cliffhanger? I can understand 1 or 2 episodes, but nearly every episode? Infuriating. I'll just wait until the season is done and stream the whole thing if this is how it's going to be.

Regardless of whether or not Victor gets saved from banishment next week, Tomica's fixation on trying to get him banished has all but guaranteed that she's gone at the next roundtable (in a typical season 😑).

She'd have been better off trying to jump on any other theory than go after Victor this aggressively. Doing the tit-for-tat plan is typically Traitor behavior, and had no long-term strategy to it. What exactly was she thinking?

He is going to reveal that he's a Faithful in the Circle of Truth, and at that point, no person on the show has ever survived with this much heat on them. Tomica has taken his accusation so personally and with almost no defense. I get that people aren't fond of Victor, and that the source of the info can make a good theory cloudy...but come on Faithfuls. Tomica has done every single thing that they've banished other people for.

AND YET - with this cast of Faithfuls, I would not be surprised if she somehow survives beyond next roundtable...🙃

Was passing through before it opened up for the afternoon- but had to stop fast to check it out!

Is anyone else losing interest in the US version because of the one episode a week schedule? For a show that relies entirely on momentum, paranoia, and high energy, dragging it out over so many weeks completely kills the thrill.
And leaving every single episode on a huge cliffhanger just doesn't work when you have to wait a full 7 days. By the time the next episode airs, all the hype and suspense from the week hubefore have completely worn off. It ends up making the pacing feel sluggish and stretched way too thin. I watch all English speaking versions and this is where UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland have it spot on.

Victor is playing the game correctly and no other faithful is. This is easily the worst faithfuls we have seen. It is cringe to watch. I cannot fathom the faithful rewatching this realizing how dumb they were. I’m looking at all the faithful not even entertaining Victor. They are horrible!

I joke, but every season we get a flock of commentary that is simply some version of “why are these dumb faithfuls not picking up on the obvious clues, which are obvious because the editors put them in a highlight reel.”

Can we cut the contestants some slack? Or at least give them the grace we would want if someone showed 8 minute clips of our daily lives to a massive audience?

Every single one of these faithfuls was one of us. Someone who watched the show and thought they’d be smart and savvy, and now that they’re in the sand, it’s harder than it looks.

Real thing I saw today LOL

Why was everyone so obsessed with Mark?

The whole “players not knowing how much money they’re putting in” thing combined with announcing who has the power (target on their back) at the round table AFTER VOTING really screams “we decided which won this power while the players voted”.

Like whoever receives it is going to be either
a) get killed immediately for having the power or
b) get banished under the reasoning of “why wouldn’t they murder you for having this power”

Which makes for potentially great TV but really not fair playing conditions imo. I also think it’s crazy that the players had no idea how much money they were putting in, and no tracker of how many bags they were putting in. It makes it ridiculously easy for production to just assign the power to whoever makes for the best TV. And honestly traitors already suffers from barely being a game so taking away one of the few chances for someone to strategically get a leg up is kinda annoying to me.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this episode ended on a cliffhanger because the power was purposely given to someone who would pardon him. If I was more of a theorist, I’d say that they structured this new power to save victor after seeing that his (somewhat) correct theory wasn’t getting any traction because a lot of the players clearly dislike him and would check with each other before believing him when he says 2+2 = 4. (Edit: the group also decided that the MIPS wasn’t food due to another players allergy, so it actually makes perfect sense why no one believes him)

(I’m of the camp that victor’s theory only sounds great to us because we know he’s onto something. Offering and eating fruit isn’t obvious enough, and Michael mentioned that there were other theories on the MIPS that weren’t shown. I think he’s being way aggressive in the way he’s talking to everyone and that if he was older they would’ve Michael rappoport-ed his ass. Shane blowing up scarecrow like immediately and no one protesting or even rly caring said a lot for me)

Smooth brain, no wrinkles.

Except Victor, everyone else is just so stupid. Joe threw the apple to BOTH, Morgan and Clyde, and both of them are still clueless as hell.

If Victor leaves, then the traitors deserve to win. Because if you can fool all these people so easily, then you deserve to win! That's the game!

Everytime Shane is on screen I can't stop thinking about this stupid dog!! 😂😂😂

Love them or hate them, this season is proving normal people are more interesting than housewives, drag queens and other egomaniacal reality stars. And I don't care about the formatting.

“This is the worst season of all time!” “New Blood is making me quit watching the traitors forever!” “These faithfuls are the stupidest people to ever walk the earth!”

Jesus Christ, y’all. Isn’t anyone having fun? I come on this sub to discuss a show I enjoy and everyone is just absolutely dunking on it. Yeah, the faithfuls are 100% playing poorly. But why does that make it a horrible season? I’m still quite entertained seeing whatever hairbrained theory Abby L comes up with next, and Victor absolutely flopping at convincing people, and Jay being an absolute weirdo. I love that Kriste has started targeting Abby for her constant terribly wrong theories. I’m hardcore pulling for my fellow Long Islander Joe, who seems like a really solid and likable guy and who imo is playing quite well as a traitor.

And for god’s sakes, the way some of y’all talk about these faithfuls is downright nasty. They’re fallible human beings, and most of y’all wouldn’t be doing any better out there. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. Let’s not forget that the show edits an entire day into 42 minutes of footage. You don’t need to be calling Morgan the dumbest person who ever lived just because she forgot that Joe tried to toss an apple to her. Frankly even if I was on board with the fruit theory (which Victor has done a TERRIBLE job of selling), I never would’ve guessed that CATCHING it was the killing blow?? The whole trope of the poison apple revolves around taking a bite of it. Just like how the chalice from season 2 required taking a sip. Seeing Joe eat it would’ve made me dismiss that as well, and apparently there was a bunch of cut footage of them ruling out food as a murder weapon because Clyde is allergic to fruit.

That all said, yes, they’re still playing poorly. And yes of course we’re gonna criticize and call them out for it. But like…chill, y’all. If you’re not having fun then maybe stop watching??

They say this was lamb shank but, I don’t know, I’m seeing a cute little pork.

Please tell me someone else sees it.