Watching Parvati commit murder is one of my favorite half-minutes of television in recent memory. She at last chooses her victim, dispensing with any predetermined strategy and going rogue in the name of convenience: Ekin-Su. Sweet, sweet sacrificial lamb. Poison chalice in hand, she walks directly over to Ekin-Su, who, respectfully, may have been overserved, or perhaps this is just the Ekin-Su experience. “When I leave the show and I find out who the fuck was the traitor that betrayed me, I’m going to fuck them up hard,†Ekin-Su announces, slurring slightly. “Cheers,†says Parvati, a true master of timing, and hands her the cup. Ekin-Su takes a fateful sip. Then, without hesitation, she hugs Parvati. “I love you,†Ekin-Su says. “I would never think you are a traitor.â€Â Bravissima, I cry, throwing a bouquet of roses at my computer screen.
The next morning, the producers do Dan and Phaedra a favor by getting them into breakfast first so they can have at least a few minutes to debrief in private. They don’t have the slightest idea who got murdered — if anyone got murdered at all! Parvati and her bowtie cheerfully bound into the room next. She explains her Ekin-Su Hail Mary to Phaedra’s displeasure. For one thing, Phaedra reminds us, dramatically fanning herself with a napkin like she’s been suddenly overcome with the vapors, she was the only person to vote for Ekin-Su at the last round table.
The other players begin to file in — including Ekin-Su, who looks very not dead. Not undead, just … not dead. Parvati makes the exact same brow-furrowing expression that I make in the mirror when I’m trying to see if I need to re-up my Botox. Dan’s eyebrows flap like they’re trying to achieve liftoff.
Did the poison … not work? Or is Ekin-Su, as Phaedra puts it, “the second coming of Jesus Christ?†Soon enough, everyone is accounted for around the breakfast table, even MJ, who the civilians all agreed to be last night’s most likely victim. So what gives? No, no one died last night, Alan and his menagerie of sequins explain to the group — but one of them will perish before the end of today’s mission, thanks to a poison already administered by a traitor.
The traitors weren’t counting on this reveal. The players do their best to compare notes about who could’ve consumed anything suspicious the day before. Kevin — who Janelle aptly categorizes as a faithful, albeit a “really dumb faithful†— is worried about all the food he ate last night (including “cheese puffs†and the “shrimp thingâ€). Tamra, in a look I will generously describe as halfhearted Sherlock Holmes cosplay, is prepared to banish Kevin for, if not necessarily being a traitor per se, eating with his mouth open and otherwise being extremely fucking annoying.
Ironically, it’s Ekin-Su who seems to be garnering the most suspicion of anyone, with Janelle even ironically whispering that she’s a “Black Widow spider.†(Sounds familiar!) All her blathering about “fuck the traitors!†could be a tell. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in turret paradise. Dan privately asks Parvati if all this will draw more suspicion on Phaedra … and, I don’t know, just saying, go with me here, what if …. that … stay with it … hold … hold … were not … a bad thing? “I don’t want to be the first to shoot, but we’ve got to give them some blood,†he says. “You know what I mean?†She most certainly does.
Today’s mission? A funeral. Specifically, Ekin-Su’s funeral, though they don’t know that just yet. If the players can correctly identify who was poisoned before the soon-to-be deceased is buried, $20,000 will be added to the prize pot. A series of questions will narrow down those among them who weren’t the victim, and anyone ruled safe gets to ride in a horse-drawn funeral carriage. The rest proceed somberly on foot. “Next stop: death,†Alan stage-whispers to the camera. His velvet bow and lace fascinator predictably blow everyone else’s funeral attire out of the water (is that a crushed velvet bodysuit, Larsa? And is it … navy blue?).
I agree with Tamra, who is giving me real mixed messages after her recent freakout about even approaching a graveyard, that this is a dream funeral. (N.B. to anyone reading this who knows me in real life: This — this whole scenario, preferably in Scotland — is exactly what I want for my birthday.) I only wish we had more airtime reserved for actual mortician Phaedra Parks to critique the proceedings professionally. (Spinoff reality pitch for Peacock: Four Weddings, but it’s Four Funerals.)
The first question is presented within a floral wreath: Any player born in the same year as another player is safe. Kevin, a beautiful man with a beautiful hollow cavern inside his beautiful skull, says he was born in 1980, before remembering he was, in fact, born in 1983. He and (actual) birth-year buddy Dan are safe. So are Sandra and Larsa — although Sandra is surprised because Larsa looks “at least ten to twelve years older,†a comment that’s all the more brutal because I don’t think Sandra was even trying to be rude, just making an honest observation.
A black-clad, veil-wearing choir warbles the next question: Which two people did Johnny Bananas trust the most? Trishelle and CT step forward. Ekin-Su continues to attract side-eye through her apparent overacting, wailing about how “they poisoned me, innit?!†(big oy, mista! you me dad? energy here) and clutching her throat. Little do the others know, she is not overacting, but is simply — and, again, respectfully — a big weirdo.
The third question eliminates all those who wore red in the scarecrow mission. That leaves just Ekin-Su, Parvati, and MJ, a perfectly curated final three: The actual victim who everyone suspects is a killer, the actual killer who no one suspects, and the random bystander everyone falsely believes to have been the victim.
The remaining contestants are instructed to climb inside three open coffins. The safe players must each take a black rose and throw it into the coffin of (slash, pretty much onto the face of) the person they believe to have been poisoned — that’ll amount to a group vote for their collective final answer. (“Black roses have brought me right back to The Bachelor, but this time I’m taking a black rose and giving it to a girl in a coffin,†Peter observes. “It’s weird.†If we can have The Golden Bachelor, surely we deserve The Goth Bachelor, too.)
The traitors are all too savvy to risk exposing themselves in the name of increasing the prize pot, so they vote for poor, hyperventilating MJ (I don’t blame her — chilling in your own coffin, even for ridiculous television purposes, has got to be a little disorienting) along with everyone else. But then Alan calls Ekin-Su’s name, abruptly slamming the lid on her coffin.
The players’ reactions are wild. Hands are thrown over mouths. Peter shouts that MJ’s a traitor. Someone — a man? — straight-up wails like a professional mourner. “Wow. Bro,†a stunned MJ mutters. As Fergus begins to bury the coffin, I wonder how long — contractually, legally, morally, logistically — they were actually able to compel Ekin-Su to stay in there.
It’s baffling that anyone would choose to target Ekin-Su, given that she’s — I will once again defer without comment to Janelle’s considerable powers of description here — â€so useless.†Dan is pleased that the murder has caused so much confusion. Back at the castle, to his credit, he proves he’s taken the “too quiet†feedback to heart and actually says words out loud to other human beings.
Larsa, effectively running the Housewives faction of the cast (if only as a result of her relative volume), remains fixated on her theory that an alpha male traitor must be responsible for murdering all these alpha male faithfuls. Tonight, she’s gunning for CT. Though she’s been calculatedly orbiting the Housewives as an ostensible Friend Of, Sandra wastes no time in running this intel back to CT and the rest of the “gamers†clique, where her true loyalty lies.
At the round table, Janelle reminds everyone of the toast Larsa made to Marcus at breakfast — could that have been a cover for a poisoning? It was “weird,†Janelle says. Larsa, who has the debate skills of an overstimulated second grader, snaps back: “I think you’re weird! I think how selfish you are is weird!†She goes on to be apparently genuinely offended by the suggestion that she would murder her own boyfriend, despite the fact that (1) that would actually be brilliant gameplay, (2) she and Marcus both said on camera that they’d off each other if necessary and (3) these are not real murders and this is all make-believe. The Real Housewives of Miami has long been a shameful Bravo blindspot for me, but Larsa is so annoying in this episode that I’m inclined to let it stay that way. She has a clinical inability to not have the last word, which I could probably tolerate more easily if her comebacks were remotely clever or interesting.
Bergie’s board is so cloudy with chalk it’s like he wrote, then erased, every single player’s name before finally settling on Larsa — although he barely fit her name in with an ambitiously giant L-A-R followed by a tiny s-a. “No worries,†Larsa says, pausing for dramatic effect, “… when you get murdered next week.â€
In general, the voting chalkboards make for some great prop comedy tonight. MJ wrote Kevin’s name so small on the board — each letter the height of her pinky nail — that it’s like she was hoping no one would notice. Kevin reveals his board (“Larsâ€) upside down. And do my eyes deceive me or did Phaedra write Kelvin instead of Kevin?
Parvati submits that the Housewives are, essentially, thick as thieves — and that like actors, their job is performance, too. Phaedra cocks her head. “Don’t come for the Housewives, honey,†she says, sharp and ice-cold. I am so happy they invented electricity so that they could invent TV so that we could all watch The Traitors together.
Larsa is banished. All the Housewives (or, as CT calls them in his very Bahstan accent, the Houzewives) are pissed at Parvati now — including, and especially, her fellow traitor.
Parvati may have thought she could get this one past Phaedra, but she truly has no idea what she’s in for. Up in the turret, Phaedra slips off her hood and stares at her before unleashing the kind of gamma-ray burst usually unheard of outside of collapsing stars and the most contentious of middle-school sleepovers. “No one likes you, Parvati. Everyone says you’re a fucking traitor. We can be in this game together, but you’re going to play fair. And if you don’t, you’re going to have more problems than the faithful.†She turns to Dan, in case he thought even for a moment he was safe. “Both of you.â€
Lock your doors. Bolt your windows. Turn off the lights. Phaedra has been activated.