'The Traitors' Season 3's latest banishment has me fuming
It's been a long time since an episode of TV has made me as flat-out angry as The Traitors Season 3, episode 4, "I Will Bury You Under the Sand."
The episode starts out like a standard enough installment of The Traitors. We witness a murder (RIP to Survivor's Jeremy Collins), the Faithfuls do their best to strategize for that night's round table banishment, and everyone completes a physically strenuous challenge. But things take an extra traitorous turn when Survivor legend Rob Mariano, aka Boston Rob, sells out fellow Traitor and RuPaul's Drag Race Season 8 winner Bob the Drag Queen. (Big Brother's Dan Gheesling attempted a similar, unsuccessful move against The Real Housewives of Atlanta's Phaedra Parks in Season 2.) The result? Bob the Drag Queen becomes the first Traitor to be banished, while Boston Rob becomes a hero among the Faithful.
On the surface, Rob's move is an impressive piece of gameplay and reality TV storytelling. Following the episode's challenge, Bob had insinuated that any of the the three late arrivals to the competition — including Boston Rob, The Challenge's Wes Bergmann, and Big Brother's Derrick Levasseur — could be Traitors, putting a target on Rob's back. Bob had also made some questionable moves throughout the series so far, becoming the target of suspicion himself, with Dylan Efron, of Down to Earth with Zac Efron, leading the charge against him. In championing Bob the Drag Queen's exit, Boston Rob cements Dylan's trust, along with the trust of everyone who believes Dylan. Sure, it's a "legendary" move, as fellow contestants describe it. Personally, though, I found the whole thing sickening (and not in a good way).
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Why does Bob the Drag Queen's Traitors exit suck so much?
In a campy fun reality TV show that's all about betrayal and murder, it feels silly to get up in arms about a fake banishment — especially when Bob himself says, "That was just gameplay, baby," in his exit interview. (Host Alan Cumming even reminds everyone that this is all just a game following the banishment.)
Yet following Season 2, which saw RuPaul's Drag Race Season 9 runner-up Peppermint get banished first (she was a Faithful), it's hard not to notice the beginnings of a pattern in terms of how drag queens get treated on the show. Coming at the series as a Drag Race fan first, and a Traitors fan second — as well as a novice when it comes to other reality shows, like The Challenge and Big Brother — I'll admit that I'm biased towards Bob in the first place. When Cumming tapped him on the shoulder, that was my Super Bowl moment. It felt like The Traitors acknowledging Bob as a threat, and investing in him as someone who would go far in the story. That was a relief after the ousting of Peppermint, a Black trans woman and a drag performer whose elimination certainly felt like the product of implicit biases.
Unlike Peppermint, though, Bob was actually a Traitor — and in doing so created some damn fine TV in the process. His gleeful exclamation of "We are eating!" before taking out Jeremy was pure Traitors goodness. (Although now it feels more like a bit of pride coming before the fall.) Also unlike Peppermint, Bob got more time to establish himself within the castle, earning fierce allies to the point that some contestants refused to vote for him. During the roundtable, everyone kept reiterating just how much everyone in the castle liked him — so why did his elimination feel so ugly?
It comes down to the Traitor-on-Traitor betrayal. The Traitors has set up a rivalry between Bob and Rob since one of their first interactions, when Bob told Rob his backwards cap and blazer combo was a fashion crime. (He's right; I don't care if it's Rob's signature.) As Bob advocated for chaos in the turret, the rift between them only grew. But that doesn't make the expression on Bob's face when Rob singles him out any less brutal. That's only compounded further by Bob's futile attempts to dig himself out of the hole.
To be fair, Rob has never shied away from playing a villain (he was notably a villain on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains). Yet there's one moment from his whisper campaign that I can't get out of my mind, and that's when he tells Dylan, "We're going to take out the drag queen tonight." The lack of a name brought me back to Peppermint's elimination in Season 2. Gameplay errors put both her and Bob on the banishing block, but it's hard to shake the feeling that bias didn't play a role in their Traitors exits.
Season 3 of The Traitors certainly has more queer representation than Season 2, including The Bachelorette's Gabby Windey, Selling Sunset's Chrishell Stause, and The Biggest Loser's Bob Harper. But for now, it still feels like Drag Race contestants are sitting ducks on The Traitors. If they are to make it farther in future competitions, it might help to cast multiple Drag Race alumni in order to build more room for the kinds of built-in alliances and storylines that come with having multiples members of the Housewives or Survivor franchises.
So, what's next for The Traitors following Boston Rob's big move?
Now that I no longer have Bob to root for, at least I have someone to root against in Rob.
Thankfully, it seems like people are already on his trail. Traitors Danielle Reyes (of Big Brother) and Carolyn Wiger (of Survivor) have realized that Rob is only out for himself, which means they'll either have to take him out or risk their own necks. (Or they could have gone against him at the roundtable. I might always be bitter.)
Meanwhile, Wes has deduced that Rob's certainty about Bob being a Traitor could implicate him. After all, how can you be 100% sure that someone is a Traitor? Only if you're a Traitor yourself. But can Wes, Carolyn, and Danielle turn Rob's new fan club against him? I pray to Alan Cumming they do, because it will make for seriously fabulous TV. I just wish it didn't have to come at Bob's expense.
The Traitors Season 3 is now streaming on Peacock, with a new episode every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.
Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Television Critics Association, as well as a Tomatometer-approved critic.
