To kick off this week’s double dose of The Traitors, we’re picking up right where we melodramatically left off: with a masked henchman wielding an axe and Ron Funches, Kristen Kish, Eric Nam, Caroline Stanbury, and decoy Lisa Rinna each tied to a maple tree suspensefully awaiting their fate. We, of course, don’t find out upon which of this truth-telling quintet the blade falls until castle breakfast the next morning, via flashbacks of Caroline’s horrified discovery of Lisa’s Bravo-on-Bravo betrayal: “Only a Housewife could look you straight in the eye and then stab you directly in the back,” Stanbury declares. (Speaking of, Lisa better be having someone print “Rinna, you bitch!” on T-shirts as I type this.)
Ron thinks he heard Maura Higgins’ birdlike footsteps during his tenure in the forest, while Eric is near-certain that his heightened musical ears clocked Tiffany Mitchell’s laugh. But Lisa manages to mostly get the sniffing dogs off her own trail with her detailed account of what went down in the woods the previous night. Colton Underwood is picking up what Eric’s putting down, though, and is open about his plans to “take a big swing” against Tiffany at the roundtable that evening, believing that her repeated proclamations of Ron, Michael Rapaport, and Yam Yam Arocho as the big three Traitors are nothing more than a power play.
Before those roundtable accusations can come to fruition, however, we’ve got a mission from host Alan Cumming, who is seemingly cosplaying as Weapons’ Aunt Gladys. Split into teams, the players must channel their “inner Celtic warriors” and search the woodlands for fire lances that will then ignite large, looming effigies. Each lance comes with a shield that protects that player. Burn the shield and a player’s chances at safety are torched with it, leaving them vulnerable.
Ten competitors are ultimately left unprotected by the mission’s end, including Yam Yam, who almost immediately bursts into tears, and Rapaport, who displays both refreshing self-awareness (“I’m always gonna be up for murder because I’m Michael Rapaport”) and asinine gameplay. (“Not a lot of thought went into why I picked Tara.” I know, bro.)
Later at the roundtable, Colton and Eric proceed with their Tiffany-fueled suspicions, and their defense ends up swaying the group: “You get what you deserve—and you all didn’t deserve me because I am a Faithful,” the Big Brother alum blusters in an excellent exit line. It’s a blow to the show morale, especially after the infectious triumph of taking out this season’s Secret Traitor, Donna Kelce, in the previous episode. The fourth episode feels like a wasted slowdown of the season’s momentum as a result.
The Traitors kick off episode five, at least, with a notable murder: Monét X Change has officially sashayed away from Scotland, with our trio of Rinna, Candiace Dillard Bassett, and Rob Rausch correctly opting to target him for his recent Lisa callout and keep around the red-marked Ron, Yam Yam, and Michael around for diversion’s sake. In the meantime, Monét’s murder casts some traitorly suspicions on Colton, whom Kristen Kish felt was threatened by the Drag Race star.
But those misgivings have to wait until after the challenge, in which Alan—now festooned like a Glaswegian gladiator—tasks the castle residents with retrieving eight missing statues to restore the ground’s water fountain. The straightforwardness of the mission comes with a caveat, naturally: There are shields at play, and if none of the players secretly elect to take one and selfishly save themselves, they can unanimously stop tonight’s murder. We won’t find out the results of that shield twist until next week’s ep—by the way, from here on out, episodes will roll out once per week—but the competitors complete the assignment and add $16,000 to the ever-growing prize pool.
During that evening’s banishment debate, Colton comes for Michael, a move the latter deeply (and, duh, loudly) gripes about in the wake of Underwood’s misguided targeting of Tiffany. “He’s a failed ringleader!” Rapaport cries, but any real strategy quickly devolves into a sputtering diatribe against the “colluding, commiserating Colton.” (Much ink has already been spilled about everyone’s thirst for Rob Rausch and his fetching overalls, but this writer has never found him hunkier than when he pulled the old “You keep using that word—I do not think it means what you think it means” against Michael.)
As viewers all know, Rapaport is—as he tirelessly and noisily reiterated these last five episodes—a tried-and-true Faithful and one who actually isn’t completely off base with his intuitions. “One of those three hunks is a Traitor,” he correctly surmises of Rob, Colton, and Stephen Colletti in episode four. “They’re too swaggered out; one of them has to be.” The problem is, well, every other thing that has come out of his gob thus far. He really sticks his foot in it when he seems to suggest that Colton’s handling of his own sexuality (The Bachelor alum publicly came out as gay at age 29 in April 2021) is proof of his duplicitous nature. It’s a low-blow implication that rubs the rest of the cast, and this viewer, the wrong way, and it’s not a surprise when the majority of votes swing in Rapaport’s direction.
“I don’t give a shit what you are,” Johnny Weir addresses Michael. “I just want you out of my castle.” Given the reaction to Rapaport’s reveal that he is, indeed, a Faithful, it seems a sentiment shared by many.
Now that The Boy Who Cried Traitor is officially out of the castle, the rest of the lot can refocus their efforts on taking those murderers down. And considering that both Colton and Dorinda Medley are wary of Lisa Rinna’s uncharacteristic quietness at the roundtables thus far, they might finally be on the right track.
Stray observations
- • There’s no question about who’s the star of the castle’s continental breakfast. That smoked salmon was raved about by Candiace, Stephen, and Dorinda.
- • Speaking of Dorinda, she gave horny approval of Rob’s signature slutty overalls this week, but we’re giving our own couture snaps to her heavily broached blazer as well as Alan Cumming’s incredible “Murrrder” sweater.
Christina Izzo is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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