Warning: spoilers for The Traitors ahead!
If most of us can’t sit still while *watching* The Traitors, wincing and gasping at regular intervals, it’s hard to imagine quite how intense it must be to play the game.
With season three in full swing and several contestants murdered, voted out and abandoned by the side of a railway already, tensions are running high. Two of the three traitors, Linda and Armani, are on thin ice. The faithful are yet to catch any of them. And all the players are slowly starting to turn on each other.
This, of course, is partly why it makes for such gripping TV. It’s also a reminder that you can’t ever know how you would react in their situation – when your new friends start hurling accusations at you at the round table, or you remember that you can’t trust anyone in the room, or you feel overcome with stress while facing the self-inflicted pressure of a fake Welsh accent at the same time. It can't be easy.
In episode two, we saw two of the faithful contestants tossed into the bear pit. Not because they slipped up or acted deviously, but because they got emotional.
For one such contestant (spoiler incoming), it led to her demise. Welsh faithful Elen found herself in the firing line when she was questioned at the round table and started crying while trying to defend herself. ‘I think a huge factor [as to why things get so intense] is that we don’t have our phones,’ Elen explained on Lorraine the day after the episode aired. ‘We spend so many hours with each other and everyone is so likeable. We don’t actually want to murder or get rid of anyone. You’re so immersed and it feels so real at the time.’
On The Traitors: Uncloaked, former contestant Maddy, who was in her fair share of emotional round table debates in season one, related to Elen's experience. 'You try to say in your heart of hearts that you're a faithful but that's all you can really say. You can say "I promise you" and all of that, but you can't really say anymore.'
Unfortunately for Elen, despite her best efforts, her fellow players voted her out and then kicked themselves when they realised she was telling the truth. By the looks of things, it won’t be long before the (fake) Welsh contestant Charlotte (who is actually from London, but is pretending to be Welsh because it’s perceived as the ‘most trustworthy’ accent) follows suit.
She appears to be finding the mind games tougher than she anticipated. She has twice broken down in tears in front of the group in fear of them not believing that she is faithful, which of course she is. However, in getting overwhelmed she has unwittingly drawn attention to herself and is likely to be one of the next people to go.
It seems to be an unavoidable truth in The Traitors that the more emotional players are first to suffer random bouts of suspicion. At this stage, none of them really know who might be a traitor or whether their logic makes any sense. Except perhaps Linda, who is doing a good job of trying to get caught.
Whether this is a something we are socially wired to think – that emotional people are not to be trusted – is a bigger question. What’s clear on the show, however, is that our collective suspicion of these characters usually backfires. Liverpudlian player Dan was right to jump to Elen’s defence and make the point that her getting upset is not indicative of a wider game plan. In fact, it’s something she can’t really control, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
‘You can be as nervous as you want on the inside and you can fake it til you make it on the outside,’ he said. Jake then jumped in to say, ‘the switching [of emotions] does make me suspicious’ and Dan responded again to say ‘everyone does that’. He's right.
Ideally, their emotions wouldn't really come into play and would just exist as any other reaction to the game. Someone getting upset shouldn’t be used against them, nor should it get them a free pass.
Saying all that, what's perhaps most impressive is the way they all manage to drop their armour as soon as they leave the game. As soon as Elen was voted out, she told the group how much she cared about them, declared her faithful status and walked away smiling.
No one, as of yet, has run down down to the breakfast buffet after being kicked out and tossed all the pastries on the floor in a fit of rage. It's clearly an intense environment where contestants form close bonds in a short space of time and are unable to have any contact with the outside world, of course some of them are going to slightly lose their minds at the round table (remember in season two when Brain said, 'Ok, who here thinks I am or am'nt?').
If any prospective season four players are reading this: try not to pick on the emotional ones, you're missing a trick.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).