TV Obsessive
Welcome back to Larks & Recs! It’s been a minute, and I apologize. Blame the summertime of it all if you have to blame something. Just don’t blame us! We love you and are back to recommend things we think you might enjoy. This week, Caemeron Crain is obsessed with the reality show The Traitors and Robin Moon wants you to read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
The Traitors
Caemeron: While I’ve always been a fan of game shows, I’ve never been huge on reality TV. Sure, there was a time some 20 years ago (before the age of streaming) when I would watch The Amazing Race or Top Chef because there was nothing better on, but once it got to where I was consistently choosing what to stream, all of this kind of stuff fell out of my TV diet.
But, then, recently The Traitors caught my eye on Peacock. I’d heard some buzz about it, but seeing Alan Cumming the thumbnail inspired me to look into the show’s premise a bit more. Contestants work together to earn a pot of money that they’ll then split unless it gets stolen by a traitor? Sounded intriguing enough, so I clicked play.
And… there went a few weeks of my life, because not only is The Traitors deeply compelling, it has to be the most bingeable reality series I’ve ever watched. Plus, while there are only two seasons of the US version hosted by Cumming, Peacock was all too happy to recommend that I watch the UK version, the Australian version, and the New Zealand version. Watch them all I did.
There are some minor differences in the game play between these different versions of the show (most notably with the first season of the Australian version), and they all have different hosts, etc., so I’ll limit my recommendation to the US version. It’s the best version, in my opinion, and, while that might be because I’m American, I’d like to pin it instead on how Alan Cumming chews through the scenery with his Scottish accent.
Regardless, you’re probably curious for a bit more detail about how the show works, and there is something of a difficulty in deciding where to begin in explaining it. Basically, a group of 20 or so contestants is assembled. After they get to know one another a bit, several are secretly chosen to be Traitors. The rest are known as Faithfuls, and you’ll just have to excuse the offense against grammar that you’ll hear over and over again as people on the show say, “I’m a Faithful.” It’s an adjective, not a noun. But I digress.
Each day, the entire group will do a challenge in order to earn money for the pot. Some of the challenges are more entertaining than others, but this isn’t really the point of the show. The point is figuring out who is a Traitor.
Each evening, the group comes together around a table to vote to banish someone from the game. This is the opportunity the Faithfuls have to get Traitors out, but, of course, the Traitors also get to vote and are always pretending to be Faithfuls, so they are constantly engaging in strategy about how to get the group to go against a certain person and so on.
That’s the real intrigue of the game, but there is another element. Each night, after the banishment, the Traitors get to “murder” someone to thin the group further. Everyone, including the audience, finds out who has been murdered by who doesn’t show up to breakfast the next morning.
In this way, The Traitors always ends on a cliffhanger. We’ll see who the Traitors are thinking about murdering, but not know who they chose until the next episode. This makes it really hard to stop watching if you’re engaged in a binge. Indeed, I would find myself watching the first ten minutes of an episode sometimes to reach a calmer resting place before I went to bed, having already stayed up later than I should have watching this thing.
You do know who the Traitors are in this show, if that’s something you’ve been wondering. I was wondering that going in, and while I could imagine a version of the series where that’s not the case, it would be a very different show. As it stands, this is very much reality TV and a lot of the drama is in the interpersonal dynamics between contestants. But, there is also strategy, though knowing who the Traitors are might put you in the mind frame of thinking about what they should do more than anything.
At the end of the game, if everyone left is a Faithful, they split the prize money. However, if there is a Traitor in their midst, that person takes all of the money. If there is more than one Traitor, they can split the money, but there may be some more wrinkles to how that works out.
In the US version, a lot of the contestants are people from other reality TV shows, but since I don’t watch any of those shows they were all strangers to me and I don’t have a lot to say about that. It might be more relevant to the viewing experience of others, but I’d guess it would probably enhance that experience more than diminish it.
They also do a reunion show hosted by Andy Cohen with the US version, and I couldn’t help but watch it. There is no equivalent with the UK, Australian, or New Zealand version—or, if there is, it’s not on Peacock. That’s a little unfortunate because I’d love to see the people who finished out Season 2 of the UK version confronting one another in this kind of context. Alas…
Anyway, I’d expect that you can tell I’ve become fairly obsessed with this show. I believe the third season of the US version debuts in January and I’m currently kind of upset that the Canadian version doesn’t seem to be available in the United States. I’ll watch any version that’s in English.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Robin: At this point, it’s perhaps redundant of me to recommend Donna Tartt’s novels considering her fame and success as a writer. But this is Larks and Recs, after all! And boy, do I recommend Tartt to anyone who’ll listen. My most recent read of hers was The Goldfinch, published in 2013. Having won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it’s safe to say The Goldfinch was extremely successful, and I firmly believe it lives up to the hype.
The near-900 page novel follows Theo Decker, a boy whose mother is killed in a tragic accident at the start of the story. From then on, we follow him partially through his adolescence and partially through his early to mid-20s. Through it all is the constant presence of The Goldfinch itself, a famous painting from the art gallery that is significant in its strong association with his mother. I won’t reveal any specifics of the plot, as it’s: a) actually quite hard to sum up; and b) to avoid spoilers, but essentially it’s a first-person perspective of Theo’s life from the moment he loses his mother. He struggles to accustom to new living situations and guardians, forges some life-long friendships, and experiences more than his fair share of further woes along the way.
Ultimately, The Goldfinch is a profoundly human story. Each of the cast of colourful characters are deeply flawed and nuanced, never condemned nor condoned, in an impressively realistic way. Tartt’s prose is nothing short of stunning; she paints each scene in vivid, visceral colours that feel so very close to home despite their abstract descriptions. In spite of how heavy and, to be frank, depressing the events of the book are, there is a surprisingly hopeful worldview behind it. One of redemption, of happiness, or simply peace, always remaining a possibility, no matter how far down the line you may be. If bad can come from good, then why can’t good serendipitously come from bad, too?
If you’re going to read The Goldfinch, prepare for an intense ride that will undoubtedly make you feel a lot. If you do, I hope you get as much from it as I did!
