We have an epidemic on our hands. As Dolores Catania wisely said back in episode three, “It’s Housewife Hunters, it’s no more Traitors.” That assessment has unfortunately continued to be true, with our third Housewife, Robyn, meeting her end this week. That makes three out of the four murders thus far against Housewives. To add salt to the wound, all three women have also been banished from their respective Bravo shows. Why does this cruel world insist upon stopping these women from appearing on my television screen? I’m starting to think the Traitors must have some kind of grudge against me and want to see me suffer. In any case, at least we still have Dolores, our last Housewife standing, who understandably has her sights set on getting a shield in case this pattern continues.
But the Traitors’s decision to kill Robyn didn’t come easily. In fact, our Traitors are in complete disarray following the cannibalistic expulsion of Bob the Drag Queen. Carolyn continues to be reluctant about knocking out more Housewives but eventually (once again) gets strong-armed into the decision by Rob and Danielle. Meanwhile, Danielle is still fuming from Rob’s move and, as a result, is determined to get him out of the game so she can be in the driver’s seat. But to get Rob out, she needs the support of another Traitor she can trust, so she says she has to get Carolyn out first — a boldly bizarre slash-and-burn approach.
I simply cannot get over how bad Danielle is at playing this game. She wants full control and it seems like she’s not used to, or equipped for, group projects. And for better or worse, that’s what being a Traitor is — a group project. You have to confer and negotiate with conflicting personalities to make decisions as (ideally) a united front. As we saw with Rob, sometimes that doesn’t always happen, but her response to Rob going rogue is essentially to burn the whole turret to the ground. She wants to banish all her fellow Traitors in the hopes of being assigned new ones that better align with whatever she wants to do. She wants yes men. It seems ill-advised for her to be putting all of her energy into self-destruction rather than targeting Faithfuls, but who knows? Sometimes ill-advised chaos can work in one’s favor.
On a more positive note, Chrishell arrives at breakfast wearing a phenomenal little hat. And while she’s dressed as real estate Madeline, Sandoval arrives looking like Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin, and, most shockingly, Boston Rob’s in a blazer. But nobody’s outfit, per usual, compares to Alan’s, who greets them at the mission dressed as the Statue of Liberty — or rather dressed as Sandra Bullock during the “One in a Million” scene from Miss Congeniality. How am I supposed to pay attention to the rules of the challenge at a time like this? Luckily, it’s basically just a bunch of riddles.
This is great news for Sandoval, who claims to be pretty good at riddles because he’s “read a few Dan Brown books.” I’ll go out on a limb here — I don’t think he has. He also says he’s well versed in Harry Potter, in some odd attempt to make a Tom Riddle pun, I think? Any Vanderpump Rules fan will remember Ariana Maddix calling his mistress a dementor, so this reference feels particularly apt.
If they successfully solve the riddle, not only do they win some gold, but they also get to basically nominate someone for one of the two shields available. That’s where things get weird because when Danielle has the chance to do so, she idiotically puts Dolores up instead of herself. She thinks it’ll make her look like a Faithful, presumably because it feels like Dolores is at risk, but everybody else in the room is perplexed. As Boston Rob points out, this makes her look very suspicious, since the implication is that she feels safe enough to forgo a shield. What would make her feel so safe? Being a Traitor.
But it gets worse. When she solves a second riddle, she opts to put Derrick’s portrait back up on the wall to give him a shield along with Dolores. Passing on a shield once is suspicious, but twice is crazy. It’s so weird, in fact, that even Dolores is confused and asks, “Don’t you feel like you’re gonna get murdered too?” Immediately, Danielle (finally) realizes the grave mistake she made and sees how thrown off everybody is by her decisions, so she does a 180. She changes her tune and says she regrets it because she does think she might get killed — a sweaty overcorrection. Isn’t she supposed to be one of the show’s big game players?
For the final riddle, which locks in who the shields are ultimately going to, the answer is “heart” — so fittingly our resident nurse, Ciara, nails it and decides that the two shields will be going to herself and Dolores. This is a massive and much-needed win for Bravolebrities everywhere.
But if you thought Danielle was fumbling this game during the mission, things got even crazier in the car on the way back to the castle. It’s there that she begins her plan to target literally all of her fellow Traitors, beginning with Carolyn. She tells her whole car that she thinks Carolyn is a Traitor, and Dylan immediately disagrees. So she then tries to plant the seed with Brittany, who also immediately disagrees. Nobody at all can fathom that Carolyn is a Traitor, which demonstrates that Carolyn is the Traitor who’s playing this game the best. Yes, Rob had a big, flashy move, but that’s now drawn attention to him — particularly from Wes, who’s starting to tell people that the only way he could have been so confident was if he himself was a Traitor too. Carolyn hasn’t made a big move like that yet, but it’s because she hasn’t needed to.
So it’s almost annoying to watch Danielle squander Carolyn’s untainted reputation in favor of helping her own game, which is painfully bad. Not only that, it feels like she’s just plagiarizing the exact same thing Rob did last week. The difference is that the seeds she’s trying to plant aren’t growing. At least she realizes nobody’s biting and doesn’t rush to bring Carolyn’s name to the roundtable just yet.
When it is time to deliberate, Lord Ivar kicks things off at the roundtable, as Lords are wont to do. He lays out the three names that have been thrown around: Nikki and Ciara (still under suspicion from their time in the coffins), and Rob. When the aforementioned point about him being overly confident comes up, Rob does a good job of calmly countering it and nipping it in the bud. This may be because of how these roundtables are edited, but they often seem like a game of hot potato, and it’s all about getting the conversation off of you as quickly as possible. If you give an accusation too much oxygen, even if you’re trying to dispel it, it gives people a lot of time to think about it.
For example, when the attention turns to Ciara and Nikki, the pair start going after each other in an endless back and forth — long enough to cement the attention on them. My favorite piece of evidence from this entire exchange was when Ciara said that Nikki has been too even-keeled throughout the game and asks her: “Have you even laughed with your gut?” I think that’s one of the most beautiful questions ever posed, perhaps in the history of television. And quite frankly, it will stay with me. Have I laughed with my gut today? I sure hope so.
But the nail in Nikki’s coffin comes from her fellow Bambi alliance member, Chrishell. Earlier in the episode she mentioned being thrown by Nikki’s reaction to Rob telling her that Bob mentioned her name. On top of that, she tells the table that even though she loves Nikki, she felt her energy shift after Bob was banished — which makes her think something could be off.
The entire room (well, not the entire room, but you know what I mean) is shocked and devastated when Nikki is banished and reveals that she was, in fact, a Faithful, no one more than Chrishell, who feels responsible …because she is responsible. Since this is our last moment with Nikki, I feel like I must bring up one of the most iconic moments she has ever been a part of, when John Cena (who she was dating at the time) admitted to buying 55 suits on her reality show. Now, that makes me laugh with my gut. But I digress…
After the roundtable, Dylan finds himself alone in the kitchen with Carolyn, and while he almost hesitates, he decides to tell her that Danielle has been throwing her name out there. Carolyn is a legend when it comes to facial expressions, so I can’t overstate just how much of a gift it is to watch her react to this information, which naturally completely changes her approach. When the episode started, she felt that Rob going rogue made him the dangerous Traitor, but now her sights are set on Danielle, and a Survivors partnership in the turret might just be on the horizon.