The Traitors

Knives at Dawn Season 2 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

The Traitors

Knives at Dawn Season 2 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

After a disappointingly banishment-free conclusion to last week’s episode, we’re overdue for some blood to spill. The last two players yet to arrive at breakfast are Bergie and Trishelle. CT, sick with guilt and nerves over not sparing his old Challenge friend last night, spills coffee all over Shereé. (By the way, Trishelle’s eyes in her portrait look so Ring Light–y that for a moment, I thought there were lenses hidden behind them and we were in for a hidden camera reveal. You never know!) It turns out CT didn’t need to worry after all.

Yes, our Bergalicious. For Parvati, murdering him was “the next best thing” to Peter, the Sherlock to her Moriarty. Sweet Bergie boy. He says he’s learned a lot about himself and became more comfortable with confrontation through this experience. I’m proud of him!

By now, Trishelle is sure that Phaedra — who was accused by Dan, who doesn’t ever talk game strategy and who is generally so fixated on the wonders of the breakfast spread she hardly notices anyone’s been murdered at all — is a Traitor. She even has a tell: Her eye twitches when she’s uncomfortable. And wouldn’t it serve them better to get Phaedra, who has much stronger alliances within the group than Parvati, out first? She huddles in the armory with Peter and Kevin and rallies them to join her campaign. Peter wonders: If Parvati isn’t banished, won’t she just kill them immediately? (Correct. I’m not convinced Parvati wouldn’t kill Peter in real life at this point for the capital offense of being annoying.) There is no world, in no universe, in which Parvati would buy that they’ve suddenly come around on her, even for a second. But Trishelle is right that Parvati will want to save herself however she can.

And so Peter and Parvati (no headband to report this week, but those boots are incredible) meet in the kitchen for a tête-à-tête. She pretends that she’s been faithful all along and foolishly put her trust in Dan and then shut down into “porcupine” mode when she felt targeted by the others. He pretends that he believes her and that he’s realizing he may have been wrong to peg her as a Traitor. She is obviously lying. He is obviously lying. They each must surely realize the other is obviously lying. And to make the scene more surreal, it’s disorientingly framed like a Bachelor one-on-one date, and Peter’s little performance of nodding and smiling and looking away and then making intense eye contact makes me briefly terrified he’s going to go in for a kiss, a more frightening prospect than any murder that could ever transpire on The Traitors. Instead, they hug and agree to a truce — and she’s receptive when he floats Phaedra’s name as a target for banishment.

For their mission, the players are whisked away to Alan’s cabin in the woods. I initially forgot this is where everyone got bugs dumped on them last season, so I wondered why everyone had unanimously decided to pull their sweatshirts’ hoods tightly around their heads like that sketch of the Unabomber.

Awaiting them there — in a deerstalker cap, pin-striped suit, and brooch-pinned cloak look I can best describe as sinister hunting formal — is Dr. Will, who I am told is the “most devious” Big Brother player in history, but then again, I continue to not necessarily accept that Big Brother is a real show that exists (this is my personal flat-Earth theory, sorry to Dan and Janelle). “I know you, Dr. Will!” Sandra cries out with joy, sounding not unlike a kid spotting Santa at the mall.

Dr. Will locks them inside their wood-paneled, very Evil Dead escape room and explains they have 30 minutes to collect up to $20,000 in gold. For every person who doesn’t escape — either because they didn’t make it out in time or chose to leave early, using the safe word “haggis” — $1,000 will be deducted from their winnings.

This does not feel like an episode of television so much as a weird dream I would have after overeating ice cream too late at night. CT rips a tablecloth off a table (not in the slick magician way, but in the normal-person, knock-everything-over way) to reveal a map. They have to travel through the back of a wardrobe down to a series of underground tunnels, which they’ll explore to find gold before escaping.

Kate volunteers to guide the contestants in the tunnels via walkie-talkie. “I’m very good at radios,” she says. Bugs, bugs, Kate. In a fun twist, the contestants must choose between having the lights on in the tunnel or upstairs in the cabin — one of the two spaces must always be dark. Kate initially volunteers to man the light switches, then sees a trapdoor overhead, correctly deduces some nasty bugs will inevitably fall through it, and seamlessly hands the job over to Kevin without warning him.

Kate is exactly right. Maggots, mealworms, and other creepy-crawlies are repeatedly dumped on unsuspecting players in the dark, and some kind of stinky fluid (… Pee? Is it supposed to be pee?) is intermittently sprayed in through the cabin windows. Rustic! (I am sorry to be this person, but it bums me out when animals are at all endangered in the name of stunts like this. Bugs may be bugs, but they’re still, like, alive, dude.)

Trishelle, who won Fear Factor (is there a reality show this woman has not been on?), is crushing it. She and CT come across a shield together, and he tells her to take it, a moment that goes a long way toward repairing their relationship. The bug population of the main cabin is steadily climbing. MJ, though she self-identifies as a “strong, brave, extraordinary woman,” is the first to call haggis and peace out. Phaedra and Kate soon follow. But the absolute MVP of the episode — strictly in terms of my personal entertainment value, not in terms of anything even remotely to do with the game — is Shereé. The night-vision footage of her screaming and flailing inside the cabin is wild enough (it reminds me of when haunted attractions post customer reaction footage), but it gets even better when she removes herself from the game and runs into the woods, wailing about being covered in bugs that are not, in fact, on her. Shereé may never be the same, but I am so grateful for her service.

Kevin is our final girl. By this point, he’s a one-man band, running the lights and trying to communicate with the players in the tunnel while he’s all alone in the cabin. I give him a ton of credit for stoically standing in place as a load after load of bugs crashes down onto his head, just silently brushing his shoulders and looking a little annoyed. They wind up with $15,000, minus $4,000 for the haggis defectors. Alan confirms that somebody won a shield, but Trishelle wisely elects not to reveal herself.

Back at the castle, Parvati summons her most convincing porcupine tears and tells John how much she regrets aligning herself with Dan and how her “icy” coping mechanisms echo the emotional challenges she’s suffered in real life, hoping to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. She leans into this line of argument even harder at the roundtable, with even more metaphors at her disposal. She’s been a “brick wall,” you see. A “clam!”

Trishelle does a better job of making a case against Phaedra than Dan did, though that isn’t saying much. Phaedra brushes off her suggestion that she’s never been nervous in the game. Of course she has. It’s just that she’s “not frantic like you,” Trishelle. If I’m not mistaken, when Kevin brings up Phaedra’s eye’s telltale twitching, her eye … twitches. Also, before I forget, Phaedra’s beret plus tie-and-coat combo would be perfect for an inexplicably relocated-to-Scotland Troop Beverly Hills sequel.

John’s suspicions are elsewhere. “Parvati could well be” — hold, hold, keep holding, this is a man who understands how to milk a dramatic pause — “a duchess of deception and a mistress of murder.” This is also a man who understands the power of alliteration. Why is she always so “serene” about the prospect of being murdered? Why didn’t she plead her case at the sacrifice ritual? For her part, Kate dismisses the suggestion that there is any meaning to be read into Dan’s accusing Phaedra; he just “sucked” at this, she says. Even though she is factually wrong, she is nevertheless, I feel, spiritually correct.

Parvati, Peter, Trishelle, and Kevin vote for Phaedra, but the majority band together to banish Parvati.

After Parvati steps into the Circle of Truth and finally admits she’s a Traitor, the others clap — I get the feeling that the applause is not just a self-congratulatory celebration of their choosing right, but also props to her for a game well played. I only wish we could have seen Parvati off in a less anticlimactic fashion. Maybe we could bring back Ekin-Su just to have Parvati poison her again, for old time’s sake? I can almost certainly guarantee she won’t see it coming.

The road ahead for Phaedra looks rough, but Peter’s game isn’t in good shape either. By this point, his behavior and allegiances — and apparent willingness to work with the dark side, as Phaedra is happy to report of their aborted three-way conversation in the armory — seem so erratic that even Kevin doubts him. The weirdly moral quality with which Peter has imbued his gameplay is now coming back to bite him. That he would knowingly lie to the other faithful about Parvati not being a Traitor, when he knows full well that she is, is a bad look.

Alan informs Phaedra that she’ll have the opportunity to recruit another Traitor, but this time, it’ll take the form of an ultimatum: Join or die. Phaedra, to my delight, immediately names Kate. The episode ends there, but cliffhanger schmiffhanger — obviously she is going to accept, and we will all benefit for it. Kate was born to be a Traitor. If you offered her an ultimatum between death and staying a Faithful, I’m not positive which way she’d go.

The Traitors Recap: Duchess of Deception