Jack left hanging

We should’ve known that a rail replacement bus wouldn’t just deliver its passengers to their destination, but suspend them in a deathly limbo between that destination and complete desolation.

Hung in three separate cages, Jack, Alexander and Fozia were made to pitch their credentials to their potential saviours below, and it felt like each of the three pitches revealed their true characters. Whereas Alexander delivered a politician’s pitch, smooth-talking and drawing on his experience “in conflict zones overseas”, Fozia appealed straight to the heart: “Who was the first one off that train?” Then it was Jack’s turn…

To be fair, the “Yorkshire gardener’s” work was cut out for him after those two. But he could’ve mustered better than “I’m 6ft 5!”, “I swim in the ocean!” and “let’s get this money!”

Fozia was duly rewarded for being the first to sacrifice herself by also being the first to be released from her cage, closely followed by Alexander. An indirect vote of no confidence for Jack: was it that speech or his clanger of a dad joke (asked how he was doing up there, he said he was “just hanging around”) that bought him his ticket home?

Nice guys finish last

Poor Kasim. It just goes to show that you can be the nicest person in the world but still be brought down by the rampant paranoia induced by the game. His gradual ostracising led to a heartbreaking image straight out of Mean Girls: as he carried his bowl from room to room, merely looking for a group to sit and eat dinner with, Kasim looked like the new kid in a particularly cliquey High School canteen.

At least he got the final word in with that sassy reveal. He revealed on The Traitors: Uncloaked that when planning his speech, he was racking his brain for the most ridiculous accusation he’d faced. He traced his time under the microscope all the way back to Joe supposedly glimpsing a “twinkle in his eye.”

After his banishment there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and rightly so. Kasim faced some genuinely strange, serial killer-y accusations in his time, and for nothing more than being a thoroughly decent guy and a doctor with a good “bedside manner.” As Aisling Bea said on Uncloaked: “this is why we don’t deserve the NHS.”

Cliquey Castle

In episode five, it got even more Mean Girls. “Morale’s going down, but at least the money’s going up,” was Joe’s telling summation of the day’s challenge. And then we had Cliquegate, which amounted to little more than a series of adult temper tantrums, sparked by Freddie making the perfectly fair assumption that one of Tyler, Livi, Leon and Leanne might be a Traitor given that they had formed a relatively tight-knit group and were all gunning for him.

His cardinal sin? Accurately using the word ‘clique’. And you can tell it was accurately used because the accused lost their collective rag. Looking back, it was actually Minah (it’s always Minah) who encouraged Freddie’s defence in their private chat after breakfast.

Divide and conquer. Which leads us onto…

The Fall of Tyler

Rising from humble origins, he successfully courted a King and his clique, only to fly too close to the sun, get stripped of his title and executed for treason.

No this isn’t Wolf Hall and I’m not talking about Thomas Cromwell. Tyler, a Leicester barber with the luscious curtains and easy smile to prove it, had won plenty of favour among the Faithfuls. Especially his clique, led by one of their most ostensibly ‘powerful’ in Leon. But then the worst thing that can happen, did happen: he correctly voted out a Traitor.

Cue the inevitable hubris, claiming the Faithfuls’ first win by raising a toast at the bar-side celebrations and letting it be known that he had other important suspicions. “I didn’t think I was this clever but I think I actually have got a little bit in there,” he said in his next confessional, before revealing that these suspicions were over two 100% Faithfuls (Kasim and Freddie). It was ultimately his flip-flopping between the two – and that smile – that led to his downfall, and both were on hilarious display when Leanne and Livi confronted him in the hallway upon banishing Kasim and not Freddie.

Here we saw just how 16^th century Tyler’s gameplan was, blaming Leon for his last minute change of heart. “He's like a King...back in the olden days where you listen to the King and whatever he says you go by.”

But if this sounds naïvely acquiescent – just look how fast everyone fell in line when King Leon turned on him at the Round Table. Cliquegate can’t have helped, but Tyler might not be the only one acquiescing to the King’s whims, even though the King in question is a self-proclaimed “humble guy who normally sells mobile phones.”

Ordained Faithfuls

“What’s up with the whole God thing?”

Anyone analysing the modern decline of religion should take note of the backlash Lisa prompted by merely deploying the phrase “as God is my witness.” Amid sprouting suspicions, Lisa nipped them in the bud by dramatically gathering the group and announcing that she was “an ordained Anglican priest,” and would “never, ever take God’s name in vain.”

But, as Anna said: why does that count for anything in a game defined by deception? No one is ordained a Faithful. At least Joe asked: “Why come on here if there’s a chance you could be picked as a Traitor?” But she parried with a great line, albeit one quite clearly rehearsed: “Because what self-respecting murder mystery doesn’t have a priest in it?”

It was great seeing her stride into breakfast with her dog collar on like it was Sunday Service. It seemed as if she had cemented her Faithful status, until the group found out that she had told a bare-faced lie in that day’s challenge…

Gunging

One for the 90s kids: who would’ve thought that the one thing to phase Minah, that most unflappable and inscrutable of Traitors, was a good ol’ ‘gunging’?

It was hilarious to witness the punishment of an early noughties kids’ gameshow (Dick and Dom? Get Your Own Back? choose your poison) terrorise a group of grown-ups. There was Alexander, a professional conflict negotiator, building trust among his fellow players by diplomatically deciding to own up to pouring slimy goo on someone’s head. 

I say it phased Minah – she was visibly shook by her gunging but she managed to turn it into the banishment of a very strong Faithful. Dan didn’t help himself by doubling and tripling down on his refusal to own up to it, but Minah seized on this dishonesty to devastating effect.

Glaring Horses

Imagine having a towering monument erected, in the heart of your nation’s capital, to your utterly shambolic acting ability. For Linda this became a stark reality after the BBC plastered a massive billboard of her likeness lifting an Oscar-esque trophy above Leicester Square.

I speculated in last week’s Ranking that her background in opera might go some way toward explaining her operatic behaviour. Update: I’ve since stumbled across this glowingly backhanded appraisal from another former singer in The Traitors’ subreddit: “as a former opera singer myself, I can say that Linda’s performance was superb opera acting - big enough to translate sadness to 2,300 people at the London Coliseum, but completely unbelievable at 5m (16ft).”

But clearly we’re all missing something. Did you catch Jake calling her a “dark horse”? To which she mumbled some nonsense about bottling up her emotion only to unleash all Hollyoaks when Livi didn’t turn up at breakfast. “Oh my God, she’s my little girl!”

Viewers are seemingly torn between wanting to enjoy a full series of such iconic line deliveries and hoping the Faithfuls banish this most glaring of horses to the gods.

Honourable Mentions

Give Armani and Maia a reality show based on their Traitors Uncloaked appearance alone. Keeping Up with the Gouveias?

We knew we were in for a treat with that gunging challenge as soon as the tilting camera revealed Claudia to be luxuriating in her mob wife era, draped head to toe in fur and sat on the shoulders of two masked brutes.

The Peacock Quill/Death Match was a brilliant, suspenseful spin on last series’ Poisoned Chalice mission, and obviously a necessary one. I can't imagine anyone would accept a glass of fizz this time around, lest they end up in an open casket.

I’m thoroughly enjoying Linda’s vendetta against Fozia. I can see why she feels threatened: Fozia’s headstrong, perceptive and hasn’t bought any of her theatrics. I hope Fozia survives the Death Match if only to see this particular war rage on.