'The Traitors', 'The Trust' and the Dawn of a New Reality Competition Heyday
There’s something in the water when it comes to networks/executives getting privy to the applicability of the “no new friends” sentiment on reality TV.
In Season 2, Episode 1 of The White Lotus, minutes after meeting the new cast of characters, we learn that Harper has trouble sleeping (“work stuff but also… everything that’s going on in the world”), Cameron doesn’t follow the news (“they’re just trying to freak everybody out”) and Harper loves a binge. It was one of those immediately meme-able moments in which you can just envision the quote tweets with the caption “ME AF!” affixed to it. But in truth, I was never a binge consumer myself. I like a breather, I like reading and listening to recaps, discussions and post-mortems and being able to digest the meal a bit. Then, during the pandemic, I discovered — and proceeded to mainline — 40 seasons of Survivor. So, in that sense, I guess I can relate to Harper.
So what changed? I discovered reality competition. Outside of America’s Next Top Model, Season 2 of Project Runway (Daniel Vosovic hive for life) and Celebrity Mole, I was never a reality comp kid. I was, instead, watching The Osbournes, The Anna Nicole Show, Pretty Wild and The Surreal Life. I think what the current season of Peacock’s The Traitors has taught us is that there’s something of an unspoken split between, as they call it, Bravo v. Competition Reality. The Bravo folks argue that they are the stars, not a game where the competitors are often chess pieces. The Competition Reality folks argue that they are more akin to athletes, with a skillset that their fans come to regard and even envy. They argue that the Bravo folks are performers (often bad ones). The Bravo folks argue that the Competition Reality folks are boring without the guardrails of a game to play.
As such, something of a reality TV war kicked off a few weeks ago when the Traitors cast seemed to split into two factions of the house. ”Don’t come for the Housewives, honey,” Phaedra Parks (Real Housewives of Atlanta) cooed after her fellow Traitor, Parvati Shallow (Survivor), attempted to draw a line in the sand at the roundtable.
“Phaedra and Parvati triggering a reality TV civil war in stan twitter is crazy,” read one tweet.
“Our children and grandchildren will hear about this for generations to come.” It didn’t last long (unfortunately), but it did highlight the different factions of viewers.
I always favored unscripted reality (in instances, even over scripted TV). That was BS: Before Survivor. Having now polished off 661 episodes of Survivor (that’s not including my binge of Australian Survivor), I’m firmly a reality competition girlie.
As such, I think we need to talk about a gravitational shift that’s been happening.