Pour one out for Kas. The 33-year-old doctor was finally banished from the Traitors castle a few nights ago, and what a crying shame that was.
Kas was far too precious for this world. He refused to lie and backstab because he wanted to set a good example for his daughter. He kept his head high even after practically half the contestants told him they were gunning for him.
But at the roundtable, it became clear just how bad things were. Kas told fellow players that he couldn’t even play the game properly. "Most people are avoiding me completely," he said.
"That means people are making this personal then, and that's not nice," Fozia – who’d literally just joined the game, and apparently sees this more clearly than many – chimed in.
How right she is. The Traitors has always been a gameshow that thrives on discord. That is, after all, the end result of putting people together in a room and telling them to guess who’s loyal and who’s secretly backstabbing them. But is it just me, or does this season feel more personal than others?
Kas definitely was ostracised toward the end of his time on the show: not ideal, for a format that relies on getting people to plot together in dark corners, and form groups based on their desire to survive.
Despite making it through three roundtables, his brushes with death seemed to mark him out as somebody the other players didn’t want to go near. And though many of them professed to trust him, they still stopped speaking when he entered the room – prompting him to back out, telling people “it’s fine, I’ll leave.”
It got worse at the roundtable. Joe (never my favourite) told Kas he resembled a politician for never saying anything with “substance” and criticised for not coming up with any of his own theories for who the Traitors might be – despite him saying he was busy defending himself. Kas was then singled out by Jake as a Traitor due to being a doctor – and therefore being skilled at “saving lives in the day and killing Faithfuls at night.”
See also: Meet The Traitors’ contestants
Look, I get that the Traitors needs drama. And that, once people have a name in their mind, nothing short of a nuclear explosion will get them to change it: the witch-hunt format is integral to the show’s operation.
It’s just all felt a bit mean; a bit high school. And while many of the contestants have stressed that it’s all just a game, and that they’ve had a lovely time really, there’s a difference between ganging up on people because the format demands it, and between doing it vindictively.
The treatment of Kas feels rather too much like bullying for my taste. In previous seasons, despite how heated the roundtables get, you can tell there’s genuine affection there between the contestants.
There feels like there’s less of that this time around. Multiple times already, contestants have been left in tears by overenthusiastic attacks: Anna seems to have been condemned purely because she can’t tie a rope properly and Freddie had a full-on breakdown after being ganged up on during the roundtable. So did Olivia, who was left despondent and furious when Tyler was suddenly voted out last night.
People seem reluctant to apologise for bad decisions, and instead double down harder when somebody criticises them. One ill-judged line from Freddie about there being a ‘clique’ among the contestants got him a thorough dressing-down from Leanne, who seemed furious about the very idea that she could be described as cliquey – and then from Olivia, who raged at the fact Freddie might consider her to be a Traitor.
The poor boy was left stammering and apologising for a pretty milquetoast comment, but it goes back further, too. When Jake was upset about being left in the lurch by fellow contestants during one task that saw everybody else receive immunity apart from himself and a few others, Dan shut him down. “It’s a selfish game that we’re playing,” he snapped. Well, kind of, but for the Faithfuls, it’s also a team game: after all, without friends, how will you make it through to the final?
Bad vibes seem to be rife this season. Who could blame Kas, then, for having a little fun after he was voted out. “Joe, who would have thought you’d caught me based on a twinkle in the eye?” he added, as Joe – his chief persecutor – sat up enthusiastically. “On the first round table, I was selected to be a... Faithful.”
As jaws dropped, he made his exit. And quite right too.
The Traitors is streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
