When Richard E Grant scored what might be the most catastrophic own goal in history last week, he did the Faithful two very big favours.
First, obviously, was handing them a victory at the very first Round Table – though I’d argue that after his gaffe and the weakness of his subsequent defences, only a fool could have spared him – and we’ll get to those fools later.
Second, and much more valuable, was that in making their first decision so easy, he spared the celebrity Faithful from needing to get really uncomfortable. Now, with Richard banished and after the second Round Table’s wrongful banishment of the Faithful Myha’la, everything has changed.
Because unfortunately, in order to play , you have to gang up on people. The only way to win is to wield influence, and very prudently: it’s not enough to be a brilliant detective, to have accurate suspicions and a mind for strategy. You also have to convince other people of your way of thinking, and ideally do it with enough measure and reason that you don’t risk getting heat yourself.
By the same token, all the measure and reason in the world can’t change the fact that there is simply no way of moving forward with the game without the Faithful talking about people behind their backs, accusing them of lying, forming and breaking allegiances. They have to whisper in corners, and go silent when people walk in the room, and form little gangs, and indulge in all the other horrible, bitchy behaviours that are supposed to be rooted out of us in infant school. Which can make the job of the Faithful just as nasty as the scheming and deception of the Traitors.
It’s never nice to see the Round Table pile onto someone. Yes, the exercise demands that a person’s every move, every facial expression, every conversation comes under scrutiny, but amid that kind of character assassination it can be very hard to remember that “it’s just a game”.
So, even though I am thrilled that Hannah Fry was spared murder and was recruited instead – and I want the Traitors to have a bit of fun, meaning the Faithful must be sacrificed – it was hard to see Myha’la get emotional as the pressure turned up on her, as frustration and indignance grew into helplessness and then defeat.
Her grave error was that had she said Richard wasn’t a Traitor, and winked after voting for him, meaning everybody thought they had been in cahoots (as if anyone, except perhaps Richard himself, would have been so obvious). Then, she got a shield, with new Traitor Hannah the only one bearing witness to how she got it, free to twist the encounter any way she pleased.
Hannah did what the role required of her, but she did not enjoy it – she was squirming with pain, having to make someone else so upset and cut their game so short. Hannah’s intelligence and problem-solving made her an asset to the Faithful. That is exactly why the Traitors recruited her; to neutralise the threat. Lying and actual sabotage require very different skills, and will make even the most bloodthirsty Traitor a bit uneasy. And then, when that sabotage is successful, and an innocent player is banished, all the Faithfuls come away feeling just as guilty as the Traitors do.
The unpleasantness of is tougher for celebrities, I think, and it can take them by surprise. The influence they have as famous people, their existing relationships from the showbiz world, the perceptions they already have of each other from their public personas and the obvious fact that they are used to people liking them, all give the game greater and more complex dimension.
They might be lining up to take part because it all looks like such good fun, but they have built careers that depend, to some degree, on their likeability. So when they start having to make judgements and hound out the people they think are Traitors, they take a risk. Nobody wants to come across as a bully.
They didn’t have to worry about this with Richard, because he offered himself up on a platter – at that stage it really was all good clean fun. From now on, though, it’s going to get personal. People must be torn apart, and the people doing the tearing will expose the biases that led them there.
Was Myha’la an easy target because she defended Richard, or was it easy for everyone else to doubt her because she’s a bit of an outsider, an American, not really a household name? We don’t usually know what makes us instinctively trust another person, but will expose it, and not everybody will survive the popularity contest.