We’re seemingly days away from the forged being introduced for The Traitors Season 4, and to say I’m excited can be an understatement. The brand new-ish actuality present has shot up my checklist of non-public favorites over the previous few years, and I can not wait to see how the sport continues to evolve.
If that felt like a little bit of a backhanded praise, it was. There’s rather a lot that’s completely improbable about The Traitors, particularly its capacity to deliver enjoyable personalities from varied actuality universes collectively, however the primary sport and format of the present itself nonetheless want some tweaking. The recipe isn’t fairly proper, and there’s no scarcity of editorials from varied folks (together with me) with proposed rule adjustments and new doable wrinkles that would assist sort things.
I’m not going to get that deep on this article although. I’m certain they’ll proceed making an attempt new issues till the principles work a bit higher. That’s not my focus right here although. As an alternative, I’m going to suggest one suggestion that’s far simpler to implement. I’m going to counsel The Traitors take a web page from the Survivor playbook and let contestants be trustworthy and direct in regards to the precise sport they’re enjoying of their confessionals.
Let’s again up actual fast to the start of Survivor. The present was initially designed as a social experiment, and the belief was that individuals can be voted off in the event that they have been, you understand, dangerous at surviving or lazy. That stuff nonetheless does matter a bit bit, however principally, folks make selections primarily based on which different gamers they need to work with to try to get themselves to the tip of the sport. Richard Hatch didn’t win as a result of he was one of the best literal Survivor, though he was good at fishing, he gained as a result of he outthought the opposite folks.
Survivor, to its credit score, has principally embraced this chaos. As an alternative of pushing contestants to play the sport as they initially designed it, producers simply let the gamers do what they have been going to do after which pushed them to speak about it of their interviews. That’s meant we’ve overtly received confessionals about eliminating folks for all of the unsuitable causes or throwing challenges or holding dangerous gamers within the sport on function.
The Traitors must lean into that. Through the second season, Survivor legend Sandra overtly talked to the opposite gamers about how The Traitors is definitely a sport of numbers and they need to be leaning into alliances. She additionally talked about how irritating it’s when a traitor is voted out as a result of then it’s a must to begin over and discover a new traitor. In her exit interview with EW, she talked about how her plan was to deliberately get near traitors and preserve them round in order that they wouldn’t homicide her.
The present gave us bits and items of her speaking about technique and gameplay, however it didn’t present a variety of the dialog and by no means absolutely leaned in and let her simply say that in a confessional. We by no means received her talking to the digital camera and saying right here’s what I’m making an attempt to do and why.
In her personal exit interviews, Large Brother favourite Britney who made a deep run throughout Season 3 has talked about being shocked by how messy and chaotic Danielle was contained in the fortress. Followers are satisfied she knew Danielle was a traitor fairly early within the present, however by no means stated it throughout a confessional, doubtlessly as a result of the present doesn’t need contestants to speak about deliberately holding traitors round.
The Traitors appears to need to current itself in a sure gentle. It pretends contestants try actually arduous through the challenges after they’re fairly clearly not. It desires to faux that one of the best factor for the faithfuls in any given second is to banish a traitor on the roundtable. It desires to faux that everybody is enjoying the sport by the fundamental guidelines of the present, however that’s fairly clearly not what’s taking place.
Smarter contestants like Sandra are scheming and conspiring to get themselves to the tip, and as a substitute of downplaying that, The Traitors ought to be leaning into that. It could make for a greater present, and it will permit the producers to evolve the sport in higher and extra attention-grabbing methods.