Traitors: New Blood made us wait a week for that? A run-by fruiting and a fart?

I love The Traitors’ theatrics, from Alan Cumming’s outfits to the cloaked traitors roaming the grounds, never mind the swelling music and dramatic pauses. But waiting two weeks for about 10 minutes of content didn’t make The Traitors: New Blood’s return exciting. It made it annoying.

And the pacing of this episode was just bad, like it was a 75-minute episode condensed into 42 minutes, by a peacock walking on the edit station. There was a run-by fruiting and no resolution? What is this, Project Runway? Three weeks between murders?! Because we won’t know until next week whether Clyde, Mark, or Niyyah is out.

The episode started at the roundtable from two weeks ago, where doctor Jay and astrophysicist Abby L. were making accusations based on faulty evidence.

It was Abby L.’s accusation that ultimately sent snarky novelist Sherry out—plus Sherry’s shift from silent to quiet. But it’s Jay whose behavior was infuriating, starting with this condescending insistence upon calling all the women “Miss” and ma’am—and even voting for “Miss Sherry.”

And the other players were tired of it, though not enough to vote him out. Kriste said Jay’s body-language reading information was “about as informative and interesting as picking gnat crap out of pepper, and I have had enough.” Same!

Eventually, Jay said, “I have some objective stuff,” and when people kept telling him polite versions of shut the fuck up, he finally said “I’m losing a lot of people.” Hey, Jay, you finally read someone correctly!

Sherry told him, “you are a detriment to all of us playing this game,” and when revealing his vote, Shane said, “Jay, if you’re not a traitor, you’re just not helping us.”

When Sherry walked up to the Circle of Truth, I thought Jay held up two middle fingers, but he was actually crossing his fingers. That’s how his powers of observation are activated.

The other players’ annoyance continued after the vote, as Jay didn’t even vote for Katie despite pulling out a doll, sewing a Katie costume for it, and then sticking it with pins. And of course, he’s right that she’s a traitor, though not for the reasons he cites. “For you to sit here and accuse people and not have the guts to write it down is insane to me,” Niyyah said.

And then, for the remaining two-thirds of the episode, Jay disappeared. For the middle third, the focus shifted to the traitors’ murder in plain sight.

I generally like when The Traitors’ producers give the traitors a difficult task. But this one made it difficult to actually follow. Tomica, Joe, and Katie learned, in interview rooms, that they’d have to toss a poisoned apple to another player.

Cut to Joe grabbing the apple and deciding Mark would catch it. Did they confer? Why was he doing this alone? Is there one apple? Any apple?

After plenty of walking around the castle showing off the apple by throwing it in the air, juggling it, making apple sauce and selling it at a stand in the hallway, Joe finally said, “I gotta talk to my fellow traitors.”

He did that in the most-suspicious way possible, calling Katie away from talking with Victor and Michael, then grabbing her and doing a U-turn in the hall when they encountered someone else.

And to complete his Joe threw it at Morgan and she didn’t catch it, so he ate it. Conveniently, Jay was also eating an apple. “Nothing to see here: just two guys eating fruit,” Joe said.

Abby correctly assumed a murder in plain sight would take place, as did Victor—who noticed how weird Joe’s apple behavior was. “When have you seen him eat a fruit?” Victor said. “No shade.”

And then Tomika waved a Hi, I’m a traitor! flag by opening the fridge, getting out an apple, and asking Victor if he wanted it. “She just offered me an apple,” Victor said, and added this dramatic flourish: “I saw my life flash before my eyes!”

I realize we have more information than they do, but will the other players act on this behavior/information at the next Roundtable? Or persist in random theories based on people saying things like “traitors,” plural?

We don’t know what actually happened, or even the actual rules. Did they have unlimited apples to use? Why not just one? I want to know how much time they had. An hour? Three? The on-screen clock tolling midnight has nothing to do with the actual time.

It’s funny because, when they went outside, it was “the Highland twilight”—the sky was still a little blue. This season was filmed in May and June, so I looked at the times in Alness, Scotland, on June 1. Sunset there was about 10:04 p.m., with last light more than an hour later, at 11:10 p.m. Based on the darkness at the actual graves, it may have been filmed around midnight.

The graveside ceremony was where the episode lost me. My eyes glazed over after the third time someone expressed anxiety about being in a coffin. Creepy, I’m sure! And funny when Victor farted and Tomika said that’s the last time she’ll be in a coffin: “the next time, I’ll be talkin’ to Jesus.”

But 23 minutes of this? Cut that down by 75 percent and show me the murder-in-plain sight instead. Or just let us watch this scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, because that film knows pacing.

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