'The Traitors' Is a Broken Game — but Great TV
How do we fix it?
When Battle of the Network Reality Stars debuted in 2005 on Bravo, critics jumped at the opportunity to eviscerate its lawless premise. The New York Times called it a “boring goof,” “terrible” and even went so far as to advise viewers to “skip it.” Today, in a far less uppity TV landscape, this show might be a sensation. You had competitors from Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, The Apprentice, American Idol, The Bachelor and Project Runway all competing in schoolyard games like tug of war and relay races. The premise was strong, but the execution was a failure to launch, and thus, after one glorious season, the show was canned. Nearly two decades later, Season 2 of The Traitors (which has a not dissimilar set-up) won an Emmy Award.
I’m not trying to say the two shows are the same qualitatively, but they do have something else in common: poor game design. In the case of The Traitors, there exists a flaw so severe it could be perceived as fatal if not fixed sooner rather than later. The casts are consistently stacked (save for Season 1, which in retrospect felt like more a a beta test), the show endlessly entertaining, but all of that is in spite of an issue that might otherwise render the show unwatchable: The competition part of the reality-competition show simply lacks logic or strategy.
As one Drop Your Buffs listener wrote to me in an email:
“As a fan of reality TV competition shows and messy D-list celebrities, I love the show. As a producer myself, I can't understand how no one on their production or development team is fixing any of the issues with the show's format.”
Let’s get into it.