"The Traitors" and the lying liars who make it the reality treat of our time

Some reality shows take a season or two to become their best selves. Remember the first season of “Big Brother”? Unless you’re a superfan, probably not. How about this: Who won the very first “RuPaul’s Drag Race” pageant? Trick question – technically BeBe Zahara Benet is correct, but the answer we're looking for is the Vaseline-coated camera lens.

“The Traitors,” Peacock’s breakout reality hit, is the newest inductee to this late bloomers club, a Scotland-set murder mystery competition hosted by international delight Alan Cumming. You might have heard about its first season last year and shrugged it off, assuming that if you’ve seen one of these shows, this can’t be much different.  

Half of its contestants were normies, half reality show alumni, and somewhat predictably, a “Survivor” contestant won it all. For its second go-round, the producers took notes and leveled up. This cast is a murderer’s row of reality all-stars whose egos overrule good sense. Almost everybody has watched at least some of each other’s shows or has shared a season with someone.

Just as importantly, we know these characters or the environments that produced them. You don’t have to have seen “Survivor” in years to know the whole point is to outwit, outplay and outlast by any means necessary including betrayal. It was mainly reality competition alumni who made it the farthest in Season 1. Kate Chastain, the “Below Deck” life of the party, was the exception.

The first season featured but one of the “Real Housewives,” a franchise that thrives on fake friendships, backstabbing and alliances of convenience. Season 2 has four of them, including one, Larsa Pippen, who brought along her boyfriend Marcus, Michael Jordan’s son. There’s a “Bachelor” and two players from “Love Island,” popularity contests where potential dates sow doubt with their quarry, wondering aloud if rivals are there for the right reasons.

Reality TV runs on the reputation of the shows and the personalities populating them. But the central thrill is in watching how well these people can lie. The Scandoval season of “Vanderpump Rules” became a hit because a giant, life-altering deception came to light before the season aired and got messier as each new episode debuted, allowing audiences to see what shams two longstanding and supposedly close relationships turned out to be.

Bravo’s various windows into the lifestyles of the striving and ostentatious, “Big Brother” players and “Survivor” contenders, even Bachelors and Bachelorettes all have to lie convincingly whether they want to or not.

All that sauces the magnificence of “Traitors,” especially in Season 2. Extensive knowledge of reality TV isn’t a prerequisite, thank goodness, because the producers cast archetypes. You can discern “Survivor” and “Big Brother” contestants from Bravo’s flora and fauna based on the amount of makeup they’re wearing and the height of their heels. Another early standout is Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, a graduate of MTV University, the party school of the unscripted world.

Above all, you must appreciate the way it makes lying a virtue and belief or lack thereof a loyalty indicator, two concepts we all recognize and understand.

We live in a time when seditionaries are considered patriots by one of the top candidates for the presidency. Dishonesty is prevalent and powerful enough to make a frightening percentage of Americans believe absolute idiocy over common sense, and horse paste over hard science.

Alan Cumming on "The Traitors" (Euan Cherry/PEACOCK)One wonders if this show could have thrived before the pandemic, when one could not risk to breathe the same air as strangers, or before Donald Trump’s influence necrotized every corner of common discourse. We’ll never know that answer, only that “The Traitors” is tailored to this moment – and makes us feel better somehow, by adding an air of aristocratic elegance.

Cumming, a two-time Tony winner who also has a BAFTA, an Emmy, and a Laurence Olivier Award, delights in playing up that idea. He hosts PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery!,” making his “Traitors” role somewhat on brand. As the fictional laird of Ardross Castle, Cummings is a heightened version of himself, making daily entrances in an assortment of traffic-stopping bespoke getups, speaking in a high-and-mighty tone meant to remind everyone how powerless they are as he promises banishments and "murr-durr."

In a place that’s lousy with “Real Housewives” and cast members from “Shahs of Sunset” and “Bling Empire,” showing who’s boss is crucial. They’re joined by familiar faces from “The Challenge,” “Real World: Las Vegas,” a “Dancing with the Stars” coach and Peppermint, a "Drag Race" contestant.

Pro boxer Deontay Wilder and Jordan are about as average as the Joes in this cast get, although more American viewers may know their names than the ones who would pick John Bercow out of a line-up. He’s the Former speaker of the U.K.’s House of Commons.

You may see this as a more even mixture between competitive contestants and, people who are just being themselves or, in Bercow’s case, a living “Monty Python” character.  

“Traitors” ostensibly places them on a level playing field with a premise similar to the rules of Mafia, Werewolf or Among Us, a popular virtual escape during pandemic lockdowns. Out of the 22 people summoned this season, most are innocents, dubbed Faithfuls. But in the first episode, Cumming selects two to be secret Traitors, who privately meet each night to plot who they’ll murder and, in the first episode, recruit another to join them.

Every morning the cast wakes up to one fewer person and a roomful of shocked faces and “so sad!” gasps. Then the paranoia sets in. Players spend their days working together to win challenges, increasing their prize pot. Some can score shields, blocking them from attempted homicides. Every evening they sit down to a round table and accuse their fellow players of being treacherous, backstabbing bastards.

Then the vote to banish someone who, on their way out, reveals whether they are a Traitor or a Faithful. If they root out all Traitors, the remaining Faithfuls split the winnings. But if even one Traitor remains, that person takes it all. And . . . this crew is abysmal at discerning friend from foe. The stakes have intensified as the Faithfuls have dwindled, mainly due to their impressive talent for misreading the smallest twitch or Freudian slip as evidence of deceit. One player can't take it and bows out, leaving room for Chastain's return to enliven the party.

Watching the survivors revert to their familiar personas has been the real treat, though. In recent episodes, Bercow’s oratorial prowess came into full flower, as he belched forth merciless diatribes that made several bystanders go cross-eyed.

Chris 'C.T.' Tamburello and Phaedra Parks on "The Traitors" (Euan Cherry/PEACOCK)Meanwhile Phaedra Parks, the shrewdly entrepreneurial dominatrix of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Married to Medicine,” has stealthily run circles around her housemates.

Cumming tapped her to be a Traitor from the get-go, a choice the producers engineered with the full knowledge of her capabilities. Parks is a charming, colorful bird of paradise who seems trustworthy and diplomatic and raves about the breakfast spread, especially after a hard night of cackling through a delectable homicide. While others are faux weeping over “slain” housemates, her main concern is whether smoked salmon is available.

Somehow she's made it through nine episodes, even surviving a direct assault from a fellow Traitor who tried to offer her up in his place. Parks responded with her version of three-dimensional strategy famously ascribed to Trump's mentor in trickery Roy Cohn: she did not surrender. She both counterattacked and counter-accused. And she refused to admit defeat. The turncoat was not only defeated but humiliated. It was a terrifying beauty to behold.

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Her nemesis, “Bachelor” Peter Weber, has become the crusader, banding together with the house’s “underdogs” to root out Parks’ other partners in crime by setting traps. Furthering the theory of “The Traitors” as a societal microcosm, the remaining players have gone partisan, inspiring Cumming to drop a Frankie Goes to Hollywood lyric in keeping with the show’s gleeful marriage of highbrow and lowbrow.

On one side is Bravo folks, along with remaining “Survivor” and two-time victor Sandra Diaz-Twine; “Housewives” and the “Shahs of Sunset” love a winner. On the other are the remainders – the gamers, the “Real World” guy and that “Bachelor,” who devised a strategy that led to them rooting out two Traitors. The more effective Weber is, the more his teammates suspect he’s a liar. Typical politics!

This week’s cliffhanger leaves us in suspense as to who is banished. Without naming names, the pertinent qualities of each candidate are these: one makes a living as a commercial airline pilot, an occupation requiring them to be unerring and trustworthy enough to take dozens of lives in their hands every day.

The other is a lawyer.

Remember what season we’re in and place your wagers accordingly.

New episodes of "The Traitors" stream Thursdays at 6 p.m. PT/ 9 p.m. ET on Peacock.