Warning: spoilers ahead for the first three episodes of The Traitors season three.
If you’re not a Housewives fan, you likely don’t understand the absolute Queenery that is Dorinda Medley (Real Housewives of New York) and Dolores Catania (Real Housewives of New Jersey) being on a show—any show—together, but especially the Olympics of reality TV, The Traitors. These women are juggernauts of their respective cities, legends of the genre, and plain fucking funny. However, putting Dorinda Medley, the mistress of Bluestone Manor, in a maximalist Scottish castle with a bunch of gaudily dressed strangers and tasking her with figuring out which one of them is lying to her is more than I’d ever think to ask for and that’s why I knew she would not last long. I didn’t think she’d be the very first to go, though.
Here’s what happened: we started episode one with four Housewives on the cast—Dorinda, Dolores, Robyn Dixon (Real Housewives of Potomac), and Chanel Ayan (Real Housewives of Dubai). That’s not a huge number of housewives, per se, but Traitors is not a safe place for Housewives. The rest of the cast, regardless of how their numbers break down, always assumes the Housewives are going to band together. At one point in the first three episodes of this season there are four Survivor people, for example, but no one’s skeptical of them forming an alliance against everyone else. For some reason, the Housewives don’t get taken seriously on this show.
Maybe that’s for good reason, though. Dorinda, like I knew she would, burned bright and fast. She can’t help but be herself, you see, so she was yelling at people and making enemies right away. It works on Housewives, when everyone’s yelling back, but not on Traitors, when you can’t blink without someone thinking it means you’re a Traitor.
That’s why Phaedra Parks was such a good Traitor last season: despite having multiple degrees, no one took her seriously, and therefore, no one saw her coming (for a little while, anyway). That’s why I hoped Alan Cumming would choose one of the Housewives for a Traitor this season, preferably Dolores, so at least one of them would be safe.
Alas, he didn’t. He saw fit to choose Danielle Reyes of Big Brother, Carolyn Wiger of Survivor, Bob the Drag Queen of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and, eventually Boston Rob of Survivor. (I will warn you right now that while I try to be at least conversant in any and all reality shows, Big Brother and The Challenge are my blind spots, so I have little to say about Danielle or her cohort.) Carolyn as a Traitor is the best-case scenario, however, at least for me. Carolyn’s like a Housewife in that she’s so kooky no one takes her seriously, and she’s such a big personality that viewers love her. Her problem, though, is that in a castle full of big personalities, she’s on the small side, and thus can’t seem to fit in anywhere. She doesn’t feel equal to her Survivor peers, and she’s confused by the rest. As a faithful, she would have blended into the background and probably been murdered early, but as a Traitor, we get to see her stretch her legs a little and actually play the game strategically, when Boston Rob and Bob the Drag Queen will let her, that is.
That’s the other thing: I was ecstatic when BTDQ was chosen because I love Bob, but it’s quickly becoming clear that what I love about him—his over-the-top-ed-ness and general HBIC attitude—does not make for a good Traitor. To put it briefly, he’s doing too much. I knew he’d be Miss Congeniality and have a loyal band of followers, but that would have been better if put to use as a Faithful, methinks. At the rate he’s going now, he can’t last, and I think Carolyn’s best move to earn the trust of the Faithfuls would be to turn on him. Bob’s also leading the charge on murdering the Housewives because he thinks it causes chaos and believes that chaos will mean they can’t be detected, so I would love for that to stop before he can murder Delores. If this season ends and I don’t get any good Dorinda or Dolo screen time, I might have to give Alan a piece of my mind.