Whoever cast Carolyn on this show deserves a Peabody. She’s a star, and I hate what she’s going through, but I love watching her react to it. After being told last week that Danielle has been clumsily shopping her name around in the hopes of being the last Traitor standing, Carolyn wastes no time in the turret confronting her. Best of all, Danielle is so bad at this game that she can’t even deny it, so they quickly start sparring seconds into their meeting until Rob steps in. But Carolyn doesn’t trust either of them anymore and says the only people she wants to kill are them. “This is like a family,” Danielle says, which might sound insane, but when you think about it, it is kinda the first time she’s made sense this whole game. But can this dysfunctional, homicidal family actually heal their wounds? With her whole plan up in smoke, Danielle naturally suggests starting fresh and promises to make things right. They don’t have much choice, so a truce is brokered.
So if they can’t kill each other, who will they kill? The names they consider are Wes and Bob Harper, both of whom are suspicious of Rob, and Ivar, who everybody is confident is a Faithful and thus will never get banished. After some gorgeous B-roll of a badger, it’s off to breakfast, where everybody is heartbroken to find out that Bob H. was, in fact, killed. They continue to refer to him as Bob H. on account of there initially being two Bobs in the game, and that remains so funny to me. It makes it feel like the game is being played in an elementary-school classroom. But elementary-schoolers would be far better at this game than some of them.
Like Tom Sandoval, for example, who thought he might have been at risk before Gabby basically explains to him that the Traitors won’t kill him because they like how much of an idiot he is. Need an example? Well, right after that, he tells Britney his theory that Dolores is a Traitor. If Tom Sandoval were to somehow expel Dolores Catania from this game, the wrath he would face from me alone would put the entirety of Scandoval to shame. If he thought that public backlash was bad, just wait and see what happens if he were to harm a hair on Dolores’s head. Luckily, everybody thinks he’s an idiot, and nobody buys into it, but they do run and tell Dolores, who’s dressed like the Quakers Oats guy but chic.
But a name that is getting taken more seriously is Boston Rob, with his former cage mates Wes and Derrick both confident that he’s a Traitor. But it all comes down to choosing the right moment to attack — if they’re going to go out on a limb and accuse him, it has to be a guaranteed slam dunk.
Meanwhile, Britney tells Carolyn that she’s been told that Carolyn has been saying her name (follow?). Though she won’t say who, Carolyn knows it must have been Danielle, and we can practically see how that radicalizes her in real time. Gabby later confirms to Carolyn that Danielle was, in fact, the one trying to orchestrate a smear campaign, putting the final nail in the coffin of their newly brokered truce. What’s unfortunate is that all of this new intel is leftover from yesterday, before they made peace, and Danielle hadn’t actually made any new moves against Carolyn since then. But it’s too late … Carolyn wants blood.
When they all roll up to their mission, they’re greeted by a massive effigy of a cloaked Traitor standing in the middle of a field, much like the one of Elphaba that Glinda ignites during “No One Mourns the Wicked.” But instead of singing one of the greatest songs of all time, our players have to run off into the woods in teams to collect either shields or gunpowder from various crates. Rather than prioritizing the gunpowder needed to explode the effigy and win some cash, all three teams first focus on collecting shields.
However, the problem with finding a shield as a group is figuring out who it ultimately goes to. Carolyn swipes her group’s out from under Tom Sandoval like the queen she is, while the other groups play rock, paper, scissors for it. In any case, they all vow to keep their true owners a secret so the Traitors won’t know for certain who is safe and who’s not. But two out of the three groups have Traitors amongst them, so keep in mind that the only people protected by this secrecy are Dolores, Derrick, Britney, Sam, and Chrishell (who has it for real). Plus, Dylan, who Boston Rob knows, has one too.
With their protection acquired, they turn their attention to collecting enough gunpowder to blow up the effigy. But as they do so, I’m suddenly struck with great concern. Alan Cumming’s co-host and dog, Lala, is here, dressed in her finest as always — won’t she be scared by the loud boom of a massive explosion? Here’s hoping production invested in a pair of stylish doggy soundproof earmuffs. Or, what’s perhaps more likely, is that the ultimate explosion was primarily special effects done in postproduction. Nonetheless, victory!
Back at the castle, everybody scatters to share their theories and float names for the impending roundtable, but to me, the most entertaining exchange was Britney asking Sam, “Do you have any joy in your life? You should try a brownie.” It’s a question and suggestion worth posing to anybody with Sam’s physique. Meanwhile, Dolores gets word that Tom, who’s standing hunched over the table shoveling food into his mouth, has kept floating her name. She reacts calmly but seems ready to go to the mattresses if need be.
As for Derrick, he’s hard at work trying to get people onboard against Boston Rob, bringing the plan to Ivar and Danielle — but he’s wary of Britney, who he thinks has buddied up to Rob and might also be a Traitor. This anti-Rob mission seems to be relatively well poised, but Chrishell, who you may remember from last week can read energies, tips Rob off. That robs (wordplay!) Derrick and Wes of the element of surprise and gives Rob the chance to prepare a defense.
And a defense he has! But before we get to that at the roundtable, Dolores wants to kick things off with the more frivolous case being made against her. As Tom begins to stumble over his words, she hits him with, “I don’t want you to be nervous to say this because I don’t think any of it will make sense. So I’m okay with it.” Viewers not familiar with Housewives might not realize that Dolores, who thus far this season has been very levelheaded, has a vicious, scrappy alter ego by the name of Patterson Dolores, after her New Jersey stomping grounds. Patterson Dolores will come for blood. She will call you a “fucking lying cunt” with every forehead vein on her face bulging. She is a gift to us all. But this is not Patterson Dolores; this is almost scarier. Her intense calmness is coming from a place of power, and she’s able to crumple Sandoval with the ease of flicking a piece of lint off her shoulder. It’s the perfect approach to being under fire at the roundtable, and I can’t wait to see her in action against a worthy opponent.
Since everybody knows this is a ridiculous proposal, Derrick quickly takes control of the conversation to present his very thoughtful and well-constructed case against Boston Rob. But Rob is prepared and hits back by weaving a narrative of his own, arguing that he’s still alive not because he’s a Traitor but because the Traitors want to frame him — and the only person smart enough to pull off such a bold move … is Wes. Anytime a name gets dramatically dropped like that, I hear a “Dun! Dun! Dun!” sound effect in my head.
But Wes is just as prepared as Rob was, and he brilliantly recalls the exact moment by the statues that started this whole mess, when Bob the Drag Queen called out the three newbies. Wes accurately identifies that as the powder keg that made Rob turn on his fellow Traitor. We as the audience know he’s right on the money, but to his fellow players, this is just another theory.
And to Chrishell, Wes is coming off a bit aggressive. When this comes up, Wes says he’ll work on that moving forward, but in the same breath threatens anyone who makes the mistake of writing his name down, saying he’ll have his eye on them. Heads turn at this remark, Boston Rob smirks, and Derrick sighs. All their hard work is blown with that one stupid comment. He lost everybody with a threat.
The vote itself is a nail-biter, coming just one vote away from being a tie between Rob and Wes — but ultimately, Wes threatened his way right out of the game. As he enters the circle of truth, he maintains that he’s the winningest person there — ignoring the fact that Dolores has won eight straight seasons of The Real Housewives of New Jersey — before revealing that he was a Faithful. “Fuck all you guys,” he says, flipping them off as he leaves, like a big crybaby.
The vote leaves practically everybody in a messy situation. Derrick feels certain Rob will kill him in the night, but the Traitors have bigger fish to fry. Even after their truce, Carolyn voted for Danielle, and Danielle voted for Rob, so the internal bloodbath continues. The good news for them is that nobody will be able to figure them out based on their voting patterns.
Back in the turret, they don’t even try to fake making peace. Right to her face, Carolyn says that they’ll have to go after Danielle, calling her out for wanting to be the last Traitor standing. But Carolyn’s confidence comes not only from seeing right through Danielle’s plan, but from the fact that she now realizes that she’s in the strongest position of all the Traitors. Rob’s fighting for his life, Danielle’s playing a terrible game, but nobody at all believes that Carolyn could possibly be a Traitor. It looks like Carolyn will finally use that to her advantage and do whatever she wants.