Behold, episode of The Traitors where I learned not to underestimate Sam Asghari! That clever little trap he laid this week at breakfast, attempting to identify a Traitor based on how they described Alan’s outfit in the chapel? Sorry, that’s low-key genius. And it almost worked, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid, Tom Sandoval! Just when it started to seem like Tom (and his lace shirt??) deserved some respect in here, he stepped on Sam’s plans. But let me back up.
You’ll recall that last week’s episode ended with 6 contestants – Dolores Catania, Chrishell Stause, Tom Sandoval, Dylan Efron, and Gabby Windey, all Faithfuls, plus Traitor Carolyn Wiger – all vulnerable to murder, and this week’s kill would be done in person. The two Traitors, Carolyn and Danielle Reyes, would appear before whichever person they selected as their victim to condemn them to death, while the other five contestants in theory would be visited by Alan Cumming who would declare them safe. Except that Carolyn wasn’t visited by Alan at all, because of course she’s safe, she’s a stone-cold killer!
At breakfast, once Tom and Gabby described what Alan was wearing in the chapel, Sam had the brilliant idea to compare their descriptions with what the rest of the group saw Alan wearing. Danielle, nervously tapping her leg under the table, feared that this might be the end of Carolyn but then Tom, truly not getting what Sam was doing, stepped in to fully describe Alan’s outfit. Everyone’s like, really dude? And Tom, completely oblivious, went on with his day. This really is the best show with the best people. They just keep on giving!
The biggest shock was seeing Dylan walk through the breakfast room door though, because he for sure had the biggest target on his back of anyone, and yet it was Chrishell who was murdered. “Girl, you were too faithful. You never would have been banished,” Carolyn tells her.
“I wasn’t surprised to see Danielle but I was shocked to see Carolyn. We’re all idiots. She’s playing the best game,” Chrishell says before she’s carted off in a coffin. She’s right, though!
Last week, it was clear that the one person who was most blindsided by Boston Rob‘s admission of being a Traitor was Ciara Miller. She had partnered with Rob for the wedding/scorpions/mealworms-in-the-hair challenge and the two not only won but appeared to have forged a bond, because Ciara let herself really trust Rob. This week, that trust comes back to haunt her, because with very few new leads to go on, the rest of the Faithfuls have been looking for anything to hang their sus on. Ciara’s friendship with Rob, combined with the “Coffin Theory,” that the Traitors put one of their own into a coffin in Episode 3, and since Ciara is the only competitor left who went in a coffin, has left most of them believing she must be a Traitor.
For this week’s challenge, which is reminiscent of last season’s bird call challenge, the competitors are split into two teams, Team Doll (Tom, Ivar, Danielle, Britney and Ciara) who are eligible to receive immunity shields, and Team Castle (Carolyn, Dolores, Sam, Dylan, and Gabby) whose players are not. Team Doll are being sent to a house in the woods filled with dolls that are clearly haunted. (Completely off-topic, but these dolls remind me of an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories, one of my most favorite dumb shows ever, where Law & Order star Elisabeth Rohm claims to have been haunted by an actual talking doll with a demonic voice who spoke the words, “Thanks for the hug” to her. I’m not even the person that happened to and it terrifies me to this day. I can’t remember what happened on last week’s Severance, but don’t worry, this Biography Channel show from 2009 lives rent-free in my mind. ANYWAY.)
Some of the dolls in this house are programmed to sing nursery rhymes backward, so Team Doll needs to relay the backwards message via phone in the woods to Team Castle, who then must record the message on a gramophone and play it forward to reveal the nursery rhyme. It’s convoluted, clearly devised by an evil genius, and one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
“Everyone’s pretending to look for a doll,” Britney Haynes explains, adding that really, they’re all in it for themselves looking for a shield. Well, everyone except Tom, who is leaning hard into the musicality of the challenge.
Tom is the only one who calls Team Castle with his cover versions of old backwards classics like “Bebboo yup yup yup” (that one is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”!), but watching him frantically, proudly identify these songs is so sweet. “Tom Sandoval is pretty much debuting his lullaby album,” Ciara says, as she focuses on finding a shield, which she does find inside a stuffed bear.
At the round table, all the heat is on Ciara for a few reasons. One, as Ivar points out, is that everyone still believes in the Coffin Theory, and the other, as Tom points out, is that “Historically, girls are better cheaters.” The women in the group pounce on Tom’s slip of the tongue and he declares that he meant TRAITORS, not cheaters. “Guys are obviously much more likely to cheat,” he adds, the perfect mea culpa.
Ultimately, Ciara’s immunity shield can’t help her at the round table, and she’s banished by a unanimous vote (well, with the exception of her own vote for Britney). In the Circle of Truth, she tells the gang she’s not one for speeches, and simply reveals that she’s a Faithful before walking out with little fanfare, leaving everyone’s jaws on the floor. “We messed that one up,” Sam says. Uhhhhdoi.
Despite the fact that Ciara had the shield, the members of Team Doll are the only ones who know that, so if they keep her shield a secret, essentially they hope that gives them all protection. It makes sense. But then Danielle reveals to Carolyn that Ciara had the shield (and thank God she did, I would have been so mad if she played games with Carolyn about that). If it hasn’t been obvious, I’m Team Carolyn and desperately hope she wins this thing, with or without Danielle. Or maybe with someone new, because this week, the Traitors are given the choice to either murder a Faithful, or recruit one.
“I don’t think we need anymore people in here,” Carolyn tells Danielle after they’re given the choice. Danielle disagrees, begging Carolyn to allow her to recruit Britney. Danielle, why are you so short-sighted here? Britney is literally the only other person in the house with any heat on her, why bring her into the turret now? They could just as easily kill her then and there, because remember, the goal of the game is for the Traitors to eliminate everyone else? But Danielle’s strategy is not to get Britney killed, and I don’t know why that is. Britney’s not the sustainable choice, but Danielle is desperate. “Three female gamers? We could make history!” she tells Carolyn. I mean, history in the “I updated my own Wikipedia page with this information” sense, but sure, yeah, history. And once again, these two Traitors find themselves at odds, completely unable to work together.
My question is, if everyone thinks that the only Traitors that are left are women, why not throw people off the scent by bringing a man in? Hopefully next week, when KATE CHASTAIN and PARVATI SHALLOW return to the castle, they’ll knock some sense into this turret.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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