Alan Cumming's Traitors Is Off To A Messy Start, And Feminista Is A Fan

Also, Jane's Invitation For You Specifically

By Michelle B. Taylor

Before we get to today's review by my favorite reviewer, Feminista, a couple of quick things:

It's a continual thrill to check my email and see so many of your It Happened To Me submissions. It's also thrilling to look at the demographics of AJPT readers, now that we have been up for a few months, and see that you all are really different from one another. Hallelujah. But while a good 35% of you or so identify as male, exactly 100% of the It Happened To Me submissions we’ve gotten have been from females. A wise commenter (hi Brooke) suggested that that may be due to the fact that “women are encouraged to present our thoughts and writing as personal stories and men as critical essays.”

So I want to encourage writers who identify as female to submit to a new recurring AJPT column called “Unpopular Opinion” and males to submit “It Happened To Me” stories. Send them all to me at jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com and we will pay (joyfully) for all we accept.*

Now for probably the most important part: A huge percentage of you are already paid subscribers and the royal we thank you so so so much for that. But if you're not yet, consider taking out a paid subscription now. (*Full disclosure: this joyful paying is actually from your subscription fees.) That way, writers of every gender will be so happy to get paid. And you will be so happy never to see another paywall here and to get to access all the exclusive stuff that only paid subscribers do.

Thank you for reading this far into my notes. I appreciate it tremendously. Here is Feminista now to brighten up your Sunday. -Jane

One of the messiest, Emmy Award-winning television shows is BACK! Now in its third season, Traitors is a popular reality competition show about deception and lies, and since it’s only a few episodes in, you have plenty of time to catch up. With Alan Cumming as the Emmy-winning host, the premise is that there are a bunch of people (former reality show cast members and competition show contestants) who come together in one sprawling castle in Scotland to compete. Some are chosen by Cumming to be “Traitors,” or people whose job it is to sabotage the other players’ efforts to earn money so they can leave with a major bag. The others, called “Faithfuls,” are doing their best to try and figure out who the Traitors are as they vote to eliminate one person each week. If you eliminate a Traitor, you lower the chances of sabotage, but if you pick the wrong person, you’ve eliminated someone on your side helping you increase the winnings pot.

In the first episode, we see who the contestants are this season and, for the most part, people are cordial as they recognize some folks and maybe not others. One thing about shows like these is that they bring together people who have made being on reality television and competition shows their entire careers. It's no surprise then, to have people come to the show with prior friendships or issues with others they're going to be spending time with.

We soon learn that while some people are happy to see each other, cast members Danielle Reyes and Britney Haynes are not. They still have beef with each other from a previous show. The rest of the cast includes some of the usual suspects—the season is very heavy on The Real Housewives and Survivor casts, with four people from each series—but this time they’ve upped the ante with folks like Wes Bergmann of Real World: Austin and seemingly every version of The Challenge, and Boston Rob, one of the most famous Survivor contestants ever.

This season is already off to a messy start because after selecting the first three Traitors, Cumming threw them a curveball and added another one.