The best running reality show on TV, The Traitors, hath returned. To commemorate this momentous event—and keep tabs on this absurd cast of characters—each week, we will be evaluating the power dynamics of the Traitors castle, determining who’s running the show, who’s playing the best game, and who’s avoiding the ire of the murder-happy Traitors and, even more importantly, the paranoia-driven Faithfuls. We’ll also be holding ceremonies for the players we lose along the way. Here’s where everything in the castle stands after Episode 7.
In Memoriam
Yam Yam Arocho (Murdered in Plain Sight)
At the banquet that kicks off this episode, where the Traitors are set to murder in plain sight—a situation that all of the Faithfuls immediately sniff out—Dorinda Medley says, “Eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow will be another day.” Notably, this isn’t quite how the saying goes. Ask any Dave Matthews Band fan, and they’ll tell you that it’s actually the exact opposite of how it goes.
Yam Yam will tell you that too, because he ate and drank and did not get another day. This poor, sweet soul was taken out of the game when Lisa Rinna got him to touch her cursed amulet—and, to give just a little credit to Lisa, the trap she set by pretending like she was being poked by the broach’s pin was pretty masterful. Yam Yam committed the grave error of trying to help a Housewife.
He is yet another former winner of Survivor who never quite found his footing in the Traitors castle. We never really got to see him in action. Maybe not until he was being led out of the castle—when he began telling every other contestant that Lisa was the one who murdered him in plain sight. His reasoning was wrong—rather than the amulet thing, he thought it was because she actually kissed him instead of just air-kissing him—but either way: pretty baller move to drag someone else to hell as the fire engulfs you. Lisa murdered Yam Yam, but Yam Yam signed Lisa’s death warrant.
Lisa Rinna (Banished)
To be fair, things were already going pretty poorly for Lisa before Yam Yam started screaming her name. There was already a coalition building against her, and one member of that coalition was one of her fellow Traitors, Rob. She had just barely avoided banishment last episode. In a game where people primarily do two things—hold on to their priors for dear life and seize upon any incriminating information like it’s a smoking gun—the combination of her current standing and Yam Yam’s last words was impossible to overcome.
But let’s get one more shot of Lisa descending the staircase in the most ridiculous outfit you’ve ever seen, for old times’ sake.
Lisa, I love you. I think you’re a terrific girl. But you have clothes like a fucking dickhead.
The Traitors Power Rankings
Power, in this context, is a measure of who is controlling the house, who seems furthest away from being banished, and who has the best odds to prevail at the end of the road.
1. Rob Rausch (Traitor, Last Week: 1)
You wouldn’t think Egg Boy over here would know the term “plausible deniability,” but he does—and that’s what makes him so dangerous in this game. I gotta say, I loved the way Rob played this episode. After his vote for Lisa at the roundtable last week—a somewhat snaky yet ultimately reasonable move—she and Candiace confront him and scold him like he’s a little boy, telling him to get in line. Instead, he basically goes full Faithful, emerges from the shadows, and leads the charge to bring Lisa down. He’s telling anyone who will listen that Lisa is a Traitor, building a compelling case against her without leaving any hints that he literally knows the truth. When Lisa does get sent home and reveals that she is, in fact, a Traitor, Rob comes away looking like a Faithful hero. The obvious truth is that he likes a lot of the Faithfuls much more than Lisa or Candiace, and he’d rather play the game with them. But what better way to convince everyone you’re a Faithful than by simply playing like a Faithful?
Also, apparently Rob is actually a human lie detector?! During the challenge, when he’s given the chance to steal the dagger—which gives its owner two votes at a roundtable—by rooting out who’s lying to him about possessing it, he does all this big talk about how he knows when people are lying. And ultimately, his process comes down to asking people what their favorite color is and then hitting them with, “Ya got that dagger?” And while this does not seem like a solid method—and more like he just watched someone administer a polygraph test in a movie once—it friggin’ works! Now he has two votes to throw down at a roundtable, a tool that will hold increasing weight as more and more people go home.
This dude has a lucky rattlesnake shoved up his ass. Now that Lisa’s gone, Candiace seems determined to go toe-to-toe with him rather than work with him, but everything is coming up Egg Boy right now. She might wanna back down.
2. Mark Ballas (Faithful, LW: 6)
I’m as surprised as you are here. But there’s a point in this episode when people go out of their way to help Mark win the challenge because they trust him the most. As shocking and random as that seems, it is undeniable. What’s more, Mark seems to be sitting on the fence between the two factions that have coalesced within the castle. He’s entrenched with the Johnny Weir–Tara Lipinski crew but also with the Rob-Colton group. We officially must apologize to Not Kenny G for underestimating him.
3. Johnny Weir (Faithful, LW: 4)
4. Tara Lipinski (Faithful, LW: 7)
5. Kristen Kish (Faithful, LW: 5)
Don’t look now, but these three are very close to being able to just run the house—and as we discussed last week, Johnny Weir is more than willing to Survivor this shit to the finish line. Is that the smartest thing to do? No—especially because one of the people he trusts is Candiace, a literal Traitor. But there is strength in numbers, at least for now.
6. Maura Higgins (Faithful, LW: 9)
Maura’s protected by Rob. Genuinely, I think he wants to win the game with her and then marry her. And she may not go for the second thing, but that’s fine—this is a power ranking about the first thing.
7. Eric Nam (Faithful, LW: 10)
Eric Nam is certainly … still on this TV show.
8. Natalie Anderson (Faithful, LW: 1)
Since the first episode, it’s been pretty clear that Natalie has an unhealthy thirst for shields, or whatever other means of immunity Traitors presents. Alan Cumming will mention a shield, and she’ll turn into that bug-eyed cereal addict from those Honeycomb commercials. It’s pretty wild to witness someone who is otherwise so strategically sound and careful just completely abandon all awareness of how they’ll be perceived.
This whole immunity obsession hits a nadir during the banquet, when Alan tells the cast that one Faithful has been selected to be murdered—but that there’s an antidote which can be drunk by two players of the group’s choosing. Natalie immediately starts yammering about how Stephen Colletti served her some turkey and how this means she’s clearly cursed. As the rest of the cast is making arguments for why other people deserve the antidotes more—and as Mark yells, “EVERYONE ATE THE TURKEY!” into the void—Natalie, with tears in her eyes, just keeps saying, “I WOULD LIKE TO DRINK IT.” Then she stands up—before any decision is made—grabs the antidote, and makes such a fuss about it that everyone’s basically like, Jesus, dude, fine, take it. Look at Natalie and Tara Lipinski, looking like two toddlers holding on to a toy, waiting for their dad to come into the room and tell them which one gets to keep it:
Now, thinking logically, none of this legibly implicates Natalie as a Traitor. If she were a Traitor, (a) she wouldn’t be desperate for immunity because she’d already have it, and (b) she would actively want Tara to take the antidote, because Tara wasn’t the one who was cursed to die. But this is not a logical game; these are not logical people. Any semblance of odd behavior is incriminating—and as much as I’ve liked Natalie thus far, odd is probably the nicest thing you can say about how she behaved at the banquet.
She also had a slip of the tongue in this episode when, talking to Lisa and Tara, she used the phrasing “We murdered …” before correcting herself to “We banished …” Don’t forget—and I’m saying this because it seems like the entire cast of The Traitors has fucking forgotten—that this is the exact same thing that got Porsha Williams banished in the first episode. And after that evidence turned out to be misleading, everyone was like, “Oh well, I guess sometimes people just misspeak.” Then they all got their knives out to murder Ron Funches for merely reporting Porsha’s flub. This time, though, for some reason, multiple people are still like, “Hooooly shit, clearly this means Natalie is a Traitor.”
So yeah, Natalie almost got sent home. And people who almost get sent home usually end up actually getting sent home soon after. But she might be able to rebound, considering the person who was her loudest accuser was Lisa, a known Traitor. That fact might keep Natalie in the good graces of the Faithfuls—so long as she chills TF out about this immunity shit.
9. Stephen Colletti (Faithful, LW: 11)
Stephen continues to take a “do nothing” approach to playing this game. Colton “I Was a Football Player” Underwood is starting to say Stephen’s name, though, so we might finally see if he can really throw down.
10. Dorinda Medley (Faithful, LW: 13)
You voted for Maura? Thank you very much for your contributions, Dorinda.
11. Colton Underwood (Faithful, LW: 8)
Rob shows up to the banquet with a slutty little moustache. The next morning, Colton has a slutty little moustache. Unfortunately for Colton, by that point, Rob had already shaved his slutty little moustache.
12. Candiace Dillard Bassett (Traitor, LW: 2)
The amount that I love how Rob is playing the game—that’s how much I hate how Candiace is playing it. Candiace has a vision for whom she wants to win this game with—Housewives, mostly—rather than letting the game show her whom she needs to win with. Rob sensed the tide turning on Lisa and adapted accordingly. But Candiace is dead set on keeping an alliance with Lisa, so she instead turns herself into a soldier in the hunt against Natalie—and then, when the heat is turning up on Lisa at the roundtable, she takes it upon herself to play as Lisa’s attorney. This is incredibly stupid: Candiace knows Lisa is a Traitor! How does she not realize that when Lisa is banished—an outcome that seems inevitable—the very next thought on everyone’s brain will be how Candiace vociferously went to bat for a Traitor?
She does not see that this is not a game of Traitors versus Faithfuls—it is a game of you versus everyone else. Alliances are valuable until they’re not. A Traitor is a useful teammate until the suspicion mounts against them.
To cap it all off, Candiace doesn’t even vote for Natalie at the roundtable—she votes for Rob! This is not a gameplay move; it’s a “I’m mad at you” move. And it is a vote so far from consensus that there’s no way it wouldn’t raise eyebrows. Rather than work with Rob—a guy who, like him or not, very clearly has a ton of sway within the castle—Candiace has emotionally chosen to go to war with him. She’d better hope she can control the house more than he can, because there’s no way this doesn’t end in a “He said, she said” that leaves the Faithfuls to vote with the person they like best.
As it always goes on this show, this is what happens when you put a bunch of irrational humans into a room to play a game of rationality. We’ll have to wait and see whether Candiace can survive this civil war of her own unnecessary making.
