The flaw in the traitors

One thing I do wish Faithful would ask more, especially in the later stages of the game, is why people haven't been murdered

that annoyed me in the last series. Harry got a shield and made a song and dance the next day about how he would have been murdered otherwise. But no one asked him at the round table how come he wasn’t murdered when he didn’t have it

I think this will be my last year watching it,
it’s boring now

DH is obsessed by what we can see of the food, and keeps saying 'Those croissants look like shoe leather' and musing on where the nearest fresh croissant is available to a catering crew in a castle somewhere vaguely near Inverness.

I did imagine they had a more substantial breakfast first thing in the hotel, as they're clearly not hungry for the on set one and are just drinking juice and fiddling with the odd croissant. And obviously the whole thing would be rather less dramatic if everyone was horsing into their sausages and eggs and ignoring the door. 😀

I know lunch is an opportunity for people to chat and plot in small groups but I couldn't handle eating off my lap in an armchair while theorising about strategies and tells.

Yep, this is why they say they didn't sleep well - I was so confused in S1 because I thought well, if nobody has come to get you by 1am then surely you can go to bed. I read they get up, have breakfast in the airport hotel and then drive to the castle to pick at the fruit/croissants etc. while someone gets murdered.

The sequences are all heavily edited with multiple retakes and different shots . Logically nothing actually happens in the order we see it on t.v. Going into the round table seems to happen at night last thing but it does not always.

The whole thing is completely bollocks of course, but it's entertaining bollocks.

I mean, for about the first 15 days it literally makes no odds whether traitors get voted out, as they just get to recruit new ones anyway so all that happens is 1 person gets booted out each day in addition to whoever is murdered.

It would be a better game if that didn't happen, but that obviously would make for shit tv if they got rid of all 3 traitors to start with and no more could get recruited.

I would have been left on the floor of the editing suite, so!

I was reading an interview with one of the Series 1 competitors who talked a bit about behind the scenes stuff, including the fact that there was, according to her, one 'welfare person' for every two contestants, continually monitoring their welfare and checking if they needed snacks, as well as a psychologist you could go and chat to. Interesting to think of the sheer numbers of people on set who need to 'disappear' in post-production, quite apart from the camera and tech crew.

One other thing that interview told me that I'd always wondered about was when and how the murdered person was told they'd been murdered. Apparently that scene where they walk into the room and pick up their murder letter from the armchair is filmed in the morning when the rest of them go off to breakfast.

If they really had the time, they should do two versions of The Traitors so you can choose. One where you get to know who the Traitors are and one where you don't, with the Traitors also doing interviews as Faithfuls!

I'd love to watch it without knowing then going back and watching it again when I found out to look back at reactions, etc.

I must start watching the follow up programme as I can imagine it being fascinating hearing the stories from the banished about finding out.

They do indeed edit out production chat. The closest they leave in is that "they" must have chosen one of the sisters or "they" may have gone for strong women.

There was a contestant in Australia called Paul I think and he was almost completely edited out for talking about production constantly and making people swear on their kids/families at the round table.

Especially as Harry last year couldn't say it and could only say "Fateful"!

They recruit another traitor as it is an easy way to get rid of someone. They accept, they get chucked under a bus at banishment; they turn it down, they'll get murdered as traitors put a target straight on their backs!

I assume that outside the tight format of breaking down long days into a programme of less than an hour, the editors must deliberately omit lots of conversations between the contestants about production decisions, or changes in production decisions since previous series. Like asking the Rail Replacement late arrivers where they'd been holed up for three days.

I'm assuming someone, at some point has said, 'Look, the only difference between a traitor and a faithful is that a traitor got tapped on the shoulder at the first round table! They didn't cast a separate category of Natural Evil, Devious Personalities as traitors!'

The only genuinely unpleasant behaviour seen so far this season was the thoroughly unpleasant ostracism of Kas, who was left wandering around like a lost soul trying to find somewhere to eat his lunch without tight groups of the others giving him side-eye. And the vast majority of those involved in that were faithful.

(I do also wish they'd found a better term for those who aren't traitors -- using 'faithful' as a noun is so clumsy...)

It’s basically a guessing game, but it’s very entertaining watching them thinking how clever they all are.

The Mole used to be a round of one series of The Adventure Game - it was always Lesley Judd.

In s1 they did this. In s2 they started mixing it up and Traitors were in the last few.

I keep seeing people talking about this "flaw" and it's driving me bananas!

Yes I really like The Mole! I think it also makes more sense as the mole is secretly trying to sabotage the missions. I think it would be much better if they had to do the same in the Traitors.

Sorry meant to quote Adelstrop!

I don't think it's as good as The Traitors but there's a show on Netflix called The Mole which is a similar concept but the viewers don't know who the mole is until the final episode. I'm never able to work it out!

I think it's all down to clever editing. The three "potentials" always come in together, but they're not necessarily the last ones to enter the room. It's just edited to look that way.

Someone will say "who's left" or "who's missing" but you're not necessarily seeing that comment in the context of who's actually walking through the door.

It really would be a massive flaw otherwise.

Watching it, knowing who is who, I find myself wanting to shout at the screen 'don't be so stupid, Freddie wouldn't be able to carry off being a traitor' etc etc. I do wonder though, if we as viewers didn't know who was who, whether we would be any better at spotting the villains. What we see is so carefully edited, and we are all in the know. It's fascinating to see how in the dark we all are about other people and their motivation. I fear for Fozia - too clearly intelligent!

I don't get why the Faithful are bothered about unmasking Traitors at all in the first half of the show. If traitors get depleted they will just recruit, and the remaining Faithful are then back to square one, with a tougher job trying to identify newbie traitors. Better to keep suspected traitors in longer and be more sure about who they are later in the game.

If it were realistically possible for them to find all the traitors before the denouement then it would be different, but it all seems to be made up on the fly to keep the numbers balanced as prescribed by the format.

We still watch it though!

I think it's easy to underestimate how hard it is to be "on" that much, all the time. Imagine when you had to go to a wedding or work event and you had to be "on" and presenting only a certain side the whole time. Now imagine doing that every day for several weeks, with a bunch of strangers, for TV with no idea how they'll edit it, carrying out very physical and mental tasks designed to fuck with your head every day, while also knowing there are Traitors in there looking to murder and manipulate and really not having a clue who they are. You're not seeing an hour of edited footage a day, you're with this big group from early morning to late evening, all the hustle and bustle and conversations everywhere among everyone.

In those circumstances, I don't think many of us would get the right person too quickly and stick with it. And if we did, it would probably be more luck than anything else, and maybe a stubborn personality.

Yeah I suppose it's easy to say sat at home watching, I imagine the stress of expecting to go home everyday at some point whilst also trying to watch everyone's every move would be really hard

they keep gunning for Anna and Freddie when it's so obvious it's Linda

It's obvious to us because we already know and are getting the edits and camera talks that show it. In reality, with 18 people or however many are left, with tasks and conversations etc all day, it's not obvious. If it were, they'd have got her!

It's really frustrating to me how they keep gunning for Anna and Freddie when it's so obvious it's Linda, Minah is playing a blinder, and I genuinely think unless Linda throws her under the bus she will make it to the end. No one suspects her at all!

Anna- didn't tie the knot of the boat up correctly, that's really her only crime.

abd Freddie- said he hopes they don't get it, which is actually quite a faithful thing to say really because if they don't get it they're all up for murder and it gives him a higher chance of surviving the night. If they did get it, he'd had had a 1 in 5 chance of being murdered. If they didn't he'd sleep a lot better. Yes it wasn't a very team player comment. But it makes total sense to hope they rest don't get immunity

Wilf helped it along...