My "woke" opinions - Celebrity Traitors S2 (Spoilers)

Hello whoever might be out there, 

Celebrity Traitors, the second series. I finally felt peer pressured enough to give it a go this year. I saw that a couple people I liked were going to be on it and succumbed to it. I knew a bit before I started it. I'd played a version of the game with my youth group and understood the general premise, admittedly from the 2020 Among Us days.

Traitors has got a good vibe going for it, and to be honest I am scraping the barrel for compliments here. I just like the aesthetic of it and... yeah.

Which thing should I nitpick at first? Warning: They will sound chronically online if you are a die hard fan of the show.

Let's start with this whole "charity" ordeal. The money and prize pot was such a low stakes, throwaway thing to warrant making celebrities sit in graves and jump out of helicopters. I actually flipped out at the end when Claudia said "remind me of your charity", remind? That would imply we knew in the first place!

They obviously couldn't associate the celebrities with the charities from the start, else that would be a PR nightmare if the traitors killed off the person who picked the children's hospital, but why even make it a charity thing? Especially with all the banishing at the end, it was clear they were just playing this game for the joy of it, which I can't blame them for, but it's just such virtue signalling to still include the charity stuff.

Also, let's talk about banishing, because this made me the most infuriated out of everything. They play this long winded game across several days, just for it to get to the final and they can just keep kicking people off until they say so or there's only two left? Literally what is the point! I would love for someone to tell me because I simply cannot understand it. Especially linking in to the charity thing, they aren't playing for any real stakes so there is absolutely no benefit to the celebrities to have more than two people left at the end, so no matter how well you have played the entire game, all it takes is for a majority in a room of 5 people to pick you and that's that. They become frantic and giddy at the end, which I think raises an important sociological conversation.

I think it is absolutely crucial that Maya was picked as a traitor. Despite not having watched the show before, I have heard and read discussions about unconscious biases within the show and how the format opens up that discussion. Obviously whenever anyone mentions it, you get the people who whine and complain about it being "not that deep" and it "just being a TV show", but part of my interest in sociology stems from examining the things most people would miss, or what we accept as normal. Reality TV is a really interesting way to look at unconscious bias, both from the perspective of participants and the people producing the show. Brushing it off as being "not that deep" is exactly why the cycle continues, it isn't to place blame on an individual, but instead consider a wider societal context.

This is why Maya being a traitor was so important. I have seen discussion about racial biases before, which is definitely something important, but after watching the series, I have more questions surrounding gender. There was always a woman who was labelled as suspicious, even when us as the viewers know the only woman, for the majority of the game, to be suspicious of was Maya. But while the men were steadfast in their suspicions, the women were more open to discussion and exploration of different theories, and that made them appear weak. A man leading the round table was in control and was a detective, a woman leading the round table was suspicious and deflecting. But simultaneously, a woman being quiet was also suspicious as they were "coasting". I am glad Leigh-Anne lasted as long as she did, because "makeup gate" as Bash has coined it was utterly insane! Call me suspicious because I am going to put forward a theory I strongly believe here, if Leigh-Anne was a man, she wouldn't have been accused of so many different things and she would've made it to the very end. She was simply outspoken at the final round tables. 

I'm going to link it back to Maya again, because she was a traitor it meant the outspoken people were killed. Amol was assumed to be outspoken before the game even began due to being a journalist and was killed (which I was disappointed by to be honest), while Ross was killed in plain sight, I do believe he would've been next regardless because he commanded the table, and Michael at the end was the final nail in the coffin, pun intended. This all fell in Maya's favour, as there were less men to accuse the women for breathing funny. And I think the thing that proves my "outspoken man" theory the most was James Blunt shooting himself in the foot at the end. And while not a woman, I think Kenny also definitely fell victim to this right at the end, there was absolutely no reasoning beyond "better to be safe than sorry" which was boring. I loved Maya though, but I would've loved to see what would've happened if she were a faithful.

The issue with the celebrity version is that everyone knows everyone, and that sucked for Amol and Hannah. Hannah already had a target above her head from the start, charged with one count of "intelligent", I still don't know why they recruited her considering she was never going to last long regardless of whether she was a faithful or traitor. The format worked against her; if you want Hannah to do it, you need 21 Hannah-esque people. I personally would love to see a comedian Traitors, I think that would be hilarious (well duh) but far more entertaining. You need however many people who are all on the same wavelength for the format to really thrive, which basically isn't ever going to be possible, yes I am going to talk about James Acaster.

I want to premise this by saying I am a fan of James Acaster; not to the extent of people on TikTok who made those slideshows about being a famous comedian and dating him, but I find him funny and enjoyable to watch and listen to. I am not mad about what James Acaster did in episode 9, in fact I couldn't care less because I have both human empathy and the understanding that, at the end of the day, it is just a TV show! Neurodivergence is real, and I completely understand why he did what he did, and I hope that he is doing okay. But it does raise the discussion about the format of Traitors and reality TV in general catering to a neurotypical experience. It is exactly why I could never go on a reality TV show, and why I struggle to watch them. There is never any nuance or understanding, especially in the way they are cut and edited and shown to the audience. I am glad that episode 9 was edited in the way that it was. To hear people talking about how James never should've gone on the show and making fun of how he struggled after The Great Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off is just insane to me; it reeks of people being unable to understand that the stuff they are blindly consuming and watching on TV involves real people who have real lives. 

Don't run around calling me a "celebrity sympathiser" after reading this, I prefer just to be referred to as a person.

So other than all of the stuff I just mentioned, I thought it simply sucked. Not to yuck anyone else's yum, but I was promised high drama and intense standoffs and all of that stuff, but I just genuinely didn't care, even when it was the people I liked involved, I didn't care. It was so repetitive and pointless. It insists upon itself.

I could list a million things I would do in order to make this a more palatable TV show, but it would be a waste of my time and energy.

The beauty of reality TV is that none of this genuinely matters. They can churn out illogical and flawed TV shows, but as long as it gets viewers and makes them a quick buck, nothing else matters.

None of this will matter in an hour.

Yours faithfully,

MD