The Traitors: When Reality TV Looks Good But Feels Empty

Imported from the wildly successful Dutch show De Verraders, and made popular by the gloriously deadpan Claudia Winkleman in the UK version—the iconic Alan Cumming hosts the US version currently, along with Lala, his rescue dog from the streets of Costa Rica—The Traitors has all the juicy ingredients of a high-stakes game show. Within a locked castle, there are three traitors who are up to sabotage and “murder the innocents”. There’s mind games, literal games, simmering paranoia, sneaky snitches, and bubbling betrayals. But The (desi) Traitors doesn’t trust its own format. Instead of letting tension simmer, it drowns the game in overwrought music cues, aggressive editing, and over-the-top theatrics from the contestants.Anshula Kapoor on ‘The Traitors’ : Ptsd, Isolation & Emotional TollThe cast has its icky elements too. It is a fever dream concocted with the semi-famous and the scandalous. There's Raj Kundra, best known for still being under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money laundering case tied to alleged production and distribution of pornography through mobile apps like HotShots. Then there’s Mukesh Chhabra, the casting director with four separate #MeToo accusations against him (allegations he has denied).Sprinkle in a few influencers, some industry-insiders (hello Maheep and Anshula Kapoor), the reliably unfiltered Uorfi Javed, and Apoorva Mukhija (The Rebel Kid) fresh off the controversy boat, and you’ve got a cocktail of people who are all a little too media-aware to give us anything but rehearsed lines and reactions.Ashish Vidyarthi is the only one who seems uninterested in performing for the cameras. He is too busy taking daytime naps in between the usual shenanigans, which saved him from a (kind of) dramatic elimination in the very first episode. Honestly, he is a mood!The rest of the show was so dull that it inspired me to actually get up and start doing the pile of dishes that had been staring at me for an entire day. I did not even use The Traitors as background noise. Instead, I started reminiscing about the good ol’ days of reality television when the likes of Dolly Bindra and Pooja Misra dominated the zeitgeist.For a country as chaotically rich in stories, contradictions, ambitions, and social tensions as India, it’s frankly embarrassing how repetitive our reality formats have become. Every show is either a talent competition or a Bigg Boss-adjacent house trap.It’s also no coincidence that this recycling is happening just as social media has taken over as the real reality arena. Today’s influencers are reality stars without a production budget. So, what’s the point in watching them hack it out on another platform?I’ll be the first to admit it: reality TV is kachra. It is called trash TV for a reason. This is what you fill your brain with when you cannot, or do not, want to engage with the world outside. It gets my goat that people think reality TV is showing anything authentic. It is called reality TV simply to differentiate itself from scripted television. That said, I’ve still consumed my fair share, mostly unwillingly, mostly because I am chronically online. I may not watch everything, but I’ve stayed up to date with the genre’s most iconic pop culture moments. I know all about Kim Kardashian losing her diamond earring in the ocean and being promptly shut down by Kourtney’s deadpan: “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” I’ve watched Bigg Boss, where Dolly Bindra gave us the kind of chaos that reality TV producers pray for in their sleep—her screeching “Baap pe mat jaana!” echoing through the house like a banshee with a personal vendetta, picking fights over everything from eggs to exercise cycles. And yes, like every internet-raised millennial, I quote “What is this behaviour, Pooja?” with alarming frequency. I will do it to Netanyahu’s face if I ever find myself in the same room with him.I’ve watched early seasons of MTV Roadies and Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi. I sang along to Indian Idol. I've even hate-watched a couple of seasons of Splitsvilla. I’ve seen enough of Bigg Boss to know what made early reality TV so addictive: unadulterated, unhinged behaviour from the contestants locked up in a house with nothing else to do. Yes, they were all doing it for the money, some were trying to hold onto fading fame. But at least they kept us entertained! Whether it was rain or storm or war—they got the memes flowing like the spices of Dune. If there was ever a show that pulled back the curtain on the manufactured messiness of reality TV, it was UnREAL (2015-2018). The first two seasons were fire! It gave an insider look at how producers manipulate contestants, edit narratives, and engineer breakdowns just to keep the audience coming back for more. I know how this is supposed to work.So, when I say that The Traitors India edition is an overproduced snoozefest, it’s not coming from a place of ignorance (okay, maybe there’s a little bit of prejudice). It’s coming from someone who has done her time.Where the UK version worked because it featured ordinary people—lawyers, priests, students—navigating extraordinary tension, the Indian one gives us a bunch of reality show regulars and overexposed content creators, who’ve already been through the wringer of public performance.The contestants—all veterans of reality or reality-adjacent fame—have the air of slightly older kids at the playground, not enchanted by the swings anymore, just humouring the younger lot until it’s time to be called in for dinner (or as is in their case: disappear from the screen for good).Remember Roadies? Back when it was all wide-eyed college kids, awkward tank tops, and the kind of raw emotion that only came from forcing random strangers to share tents and do stupid tasks? It was messy. It was chaotic. Watching regular people forming bonds, breaking them, backstabbing each other and revealing their true colours over multiple episodes was what made it fun to watch. The contestants were blank slates to us.Reality (Show) Check : Indians’ Craze for ‘Bigg Boss’ Is the Same Across RegionsKaran Johar, ever the canny media operator, knows his biggest competition isn’t Zoya Akhtar or Sanjay Leela Bhansali. It’s viral content, meme culture, and the undeterred messiness of social media stars.KJo knows that Bollywood’s aspirational sheen has dulled. That star kids, no matter how carefully launched, now compete with YouTubers who built followings without PR machinery. So, of course, he’s leaning into formats like The Traitors. It lets him remain a central figure in an ecosystem where he might become irrelevant any minute.He saw how people lapped up The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives and decided to double down. If people are bored of scripted Bollywood, give them (seemingly) “unscripted” Bollywood. If people don’t believe in film stars anymore, give them influencers in palaces pretending to be murderers. But The Traitors is not it. Give us cake. Entertain us. Distract us. But this is not the way to make it happen. Here, we have a cast that is confused if it’s playing to win or just playing to trend. And an audience, like me, that knows exactly what’s being sold, and still ends up disappointed. This is post-post-truth entertainment if there ever was anything like it. I could not even hate-watch it.And really, how much fake reality is too much fake reality? At some point, even the kachra starts to feel like a manufactured pile of goo dumped on the floor as if by some pretentious modern-art-peddler looking to make a quick buck while depriving us of the ultimate dopamine kick. This shizz is sizzlingly stale and that’s that.(The author is an independent film, TV and pop culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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Is it 'Big Boss'? Is it 'Roadies'? No, it's 'The Traitors'

KJo knows his biggest competition is viral content and the undeterred messiness of social media stars.

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Topics: Bollywood Karan Johar Raj Kundra