SOTF watches The Traitors

[Brackie]

So every Friday night US/UK time, Saturday morning AU time, for the past 5 months or so, a bunch of us in Discord have been watching a relatively recent reality worldwide reality show called "The Traitors"



the premise is this:

a number of people (usually varies depending on the number of episodes, but generally 18-20) arrive at a mansion or a castle or a generally swanky location, and play what's essentially a fairly simplified version of Mafia/Werewolf:

- 3-4 of them are chosen as "Traitors", who will be choosing someone to "murder" every night
- everyone else is "Faithful", and every episode at a special Roundtable segment, must try and figure out who the Traitors are and vote them out, or "banish" them.
- we follow both sides of the coin - we know who the Faithfuls are, and also the Traitors, and we get kept abreast of their thoughts and ideas and strategic machinations throughout
- if a Traitor is banished, a new person can be recruited as a Traitor to keep the game interesting (this is essentially balanced so that there will always be at least one Traitor in the finale, mostly for dramatic purposes ofc)
- The ending of the game usually varies, but from where we started, if the game ends and there are any Traitors left, they win all of the prize money, but if the Faithfuls get to the end and end the game without any Traitors amongst them, they split the money
- there's also challenges to win the money, but they're basically just little 10 minute time fills in between the social intrigue and don't really have a bearing on anything...except, when there's something on the line called the "Shield", which protects someone from being murdered at night (or in one season's case, also from being banished, but that's just a little OP and so only happened for one season)

So I pitched this idea, it had interest, and every Friday (except this latest one and one week I was sick) we've been getting through at least half or a third of a season a night - we've, for the most part, been thoroughly entertained! watching everyday people trying to figure out Mafia strategy has so far been fairly interesting to watch, and there's such a variety of characters to follow and root for/against

thus far, we've watched:

* The Traitors UK (Season 1)
* The Traitors US (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 1)
* The Traitors New Zealand (Season 1)
* 'De Verraders' (Netherlands) (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 2)
* Les Traîtres (France) (Season 1)

and from next week, we'll be beginning a watch of The Traitors Canada - but, there's a lot of versions of this show already across the world, which we've only scratched the surface of. these include, of those not mentioned before:

[+] list

De Verraders - Belgium Flanders
Les Traîtres - Belgium Wallonia
Les Traîtres - Québécois Canada
Forræder - Denmark
Petolliset - Finland
Die Verräter - Germany
Οι Προδότες/Oi Prodotes - Greece
Az Árulók - Hungary
הבוגדים/Hbugdim - Israel
Forræder - Norway
Os Traidores - Portugal
Traitors España - Spain
Förrädarna - Sweden

+ an unauthorized Russian knockoff called 'Наследники и самозванцы'/'Nasledniki i Samozvantsy', roughly translated to 'Heirs and Pretenders', which:

In an interview with main host for the Dutch franchise Tijl Beckand, it was confirmed that the Russian edition of the show was unlicensed. Program Director of RTL Nederland Peter van der Vorst had remarked that nothing could be done about this as "Russia was a rogue state"

now I know what you're thinking - Brackie, that sounds all well and good, but I don't speak French, or Portugese, or Swedish, or Canadian! well, this is where one of the only ethical uses of AI comes in, because some very good friends of mine have managed to use subtitles provided for the show to and translate them (kinda roughly, but still understandably) into English! This has been a massive breakthrough just in general, not just for universal watching of this show, and I was so excited that the group in Discord were essentially some of the first people to widely test this out - but, i digress!

While I wait with baited breath for the new season to start, every few days I'm going to post about one of the seasons we've seen, probably in order, just to sort of summarize the events that went on, and my personal thoughts on what went on if you've seen the season, and want your thoughts to be enshrined for all eternity, here's a good place to do so! if any of these seasons sound like something you'd like to watch (or you did watch some of the seasons at some point but fell out and would like to catch up), drop me a line in this thread or in DMs and I can provide a link to the episodes for your consumption! obviously, it would be preferable if you were to legally consume this show, but sometimes that just isn't an option for regional/monetary reasons, so here we are - keep in mind that I'll only be providing links for the seasons that I have streamed so far in the Discord, just so we can sort all be on the same page and avoid spoilers for those who have strickly been sticking with the streams

so yeah, I'll have a post up for the first season we watched (The Traitors UK, Season 1) soon!

[Brackie]

The Traitors UK - Series 1
aired November 29, 2022 - December 22, 2022



So, this was the one that started us off, and I personally think it's the perfect starting point if you're ever going to get started on this show - it has some trappings of reality shows that some people might not be into (fake elimination in the first ten minutes for dramatic purposes, for example, and some other things i might get into in a bit), but otherwise lays out the premise of the show fairly well, and lets us learn the strategy and the rules alongside the contestants - you're in a mansion in the Scottish countryside, looking at the gorgeous scenery, taking part in wacky challenges (which themselves are roughly 10 minutes per episode), but some of the people amongst you are murderers, and you must find out who! It does hold your hand a bit with this aspect, which might be a bit annoying if you already know how Mafia/Werewolf/this show works, but it's that aspect which makes it a fairly good starting point.

The cast is also a fairly diverse group of people, each with their own stories and characters and varying shades of development, and if you do like the show you're bound to find somebody you like (my personal favourites are Maddy, Receptionist/Actress; and Amanda, Welsh Grandma). Nobody really gets left out, at least nobody who makes it decently far into the show, so on that front you don't really feel like any balls were dropped.

The production itself is fairly top notch, a well-oiled machine with heavy use of dramatic irony abound, as well as making sure to produce some fun drama in the mix when possible (see: Episode 4, Episode 8), but even with that the cast themselves tended to cause most of it - these people aren't insane, but they are definitely not afraid to speak their minds to each other, for better or worse.

I'd say the one major downside with this particular Series is that while it's novel to watch people learn the rules of the game as they're introduced to them, this has the unintended side effect of seeing these people just blurt out the most nonsensical things every episode as they try to logic things out, so it doesn't so much feel like a game of cat & mouse between murderers and detectives, as it does the murderers being five steps ahead at every turn and not really slipping up until prompted (and without spoiling anything, there's some words to be said about the finale, in all of that). This is also just this author's own personal preference, but the emotions tend to lean more towards the saccharine than the sincere, with some heated exceptions, and I simply prefer the latter because it leads to some more interesting character work, but that's all down to personal preference at the end of the day.

So all in all? Great starting place with some flaws, but it's fun to learn the game alongside the people playing it so give it a go.