‘The Traitors’ Recap: Phaedra Vs Parvati … And How Did Trishelle Cannatella Become Sherlock Holmes All of a Sudden?

If there’s one thing that makes reality competition shows like The Traitors and House of Villains more compelling than most, it’s that the lines between good and evil, friend and foe, are completely blurred and there’s truly no way to know who you can trust. It’s right there in their names! We’re conditioned to not root for traitors or villains, AND YET it’s the villainy and the betrayals that create legends (legends with twitchy eyes and a real love of a brunch spread) and they are why we watch.

This week was the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the traitors got even more traitor-y, because they turned on one another in an effort to save themselves. With the heat on the two remaining traitors, Parvati Shallow and Phaedra Parks, the two women both tried to plead their cases for why they shouldn’t be banished, and in the end, they sold each other out to try and stay in the game. Ultimately, Parvati was the one who couldn’t shake her sneaky reputation and she was banished, but the vote at the round table was a little too close for comfort, with 7 people voting to banish Parvati and 5 voting for Phaedra, and both women casting votes for one another.

Parvati has been under suspicion for weeks now, and this week, she plead her case to both Peter Weber and John Bercow, telling them that she unwisely chose to form an alliance with Dan Gheesling, who turned out to be a traitor, which earned her the reputation as a traitor, too. Peter, John and Parvati all deserve awards for their performances this week, because Parvati’s lies resulted in Peter’s own lies that he believed her and wanted to form an alliance with her, felt convincing enough that I started to forget if they were actually enemies or what. Later, Parvati openly wept to John about being misunderstood, and he was correctly able to determine that the lady doth protest too much. Knowing her tears were false, he voted for her banishment, calling her a “duchess of deception” and a “mistress of murder” and I clapped for this alliterative ass-handing.

On the other hand, Phaedra has escaped suspicion for much of the game, and it was only when Trishelle – who is now somehow the game’s leading strategist (?!) – checked her notebook (?!) and decided that Dan was giving the Faithfuls a hint about Phaedra when he was trying to save himself. Dan’s accusation toward Phaedra was only one of the reasons Trishelle was suspicious of Phaedra: most hilariously, both she and Kevin latched onto the fact that Phaedra gets a twitchy eye when she’s lying, and they called her on it at the round table. (“Just curious, have you grow up with twitches?” prosecutor Kevin asked her, a question she actually twitched at.)

But it was Phaedra who opened the gates of betrayal, when she told the faithfuls that Peter and Parvati had struck a “backdoor deal” to work together. This not only sold out Parvati for engaging in shady behavior, but in a genius chess move, Queen Phaedra also trapped Peter, the most faithful of the faithfuls, in a situation depicting him as being untrustworthy to his core group of allies. No matter what happened to Phaedra this week, this genius stroke turned the attention on Peter. (Kevin and Trishelle, two of Peter’s faithful flock,had to pick their jaws up off the floor after learning that Peter had secret talks with Parvati.)

When it came time for the final vote, the contestants were in two nearly-equal camps, Banish Phaedra or Banish Parvati. In an effort to save herself, Phaedra voted for Parvati, telling the group that it was because of “the Dan scenario.” Phaedra then said in her confessional, “I think she was a great traitor, but… time to leave the game.”

When it came time for Parvati to vote, she had no choice but to try and banish for the only person under suspicion who was not herself. “It feels bad but it’s either me or her, so I have to take my shot,” Parvati expained, and then voted for Phaedra.

Parvati lost out, and as she revealed to the rest of the group her true status, she told them she’s spent the past two years “practicing truth-telling and emotional authenticity.”

“Coming out here, I wanted to play a faithful game,” she told them all. “But I am not… a Faithful. I am a Traitor,” she said with a perfectly-timed dramatic pause. And with that, Parvati knew it was time to pack her headbands and go.

As everyone else celebrated, Phaedra sat there trying to keep tears in check and being consoled by Sandra. In a final twist, Phaedra learned that she’s not going to be the one and only Traitor in the turret for long though, she was allowed to recruit a new Faithful to the dark side by offering them an ultimatum: join as a Traitor or die. As Phaedra told Alan her choice, to recruit Kate Chastain, she told him, “We’ll be a murdering duo,” those words delivered with an emphatic zeal that my memory shall never erase.

As exciting as this new pairing is, I need to remind myself that an alliance like this is about at stable as a sandcastle. This is The Traitors after all, and when it comes down to it, it’s every Traitor for themself.