BAMBOOZLED

‘The Traitors’ Is Annoying This Season. Memes Are Saving It

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

This week:

The Memes Are Saving The Traitors

The Traitors is both the best reality competition series I’ve watched on TV in a long time, and the most annoying one. I skip home from work on Thursday nights, whistle a lil’ happy tune as I cook dinner scroll through Doordash, and snuggle up in the corner of my couch to turn on the new episode of The Traitors when it launches at 9 p.m. And then I proceed to groan, roll my eyes, and scream at the TV.

The majority of the cast members’ decisions make no sense, the best and most fun competitors keep getting sent home, and the remaining annoying people seem to be dialing up their insufferableness with each successive episode.

Yet, whether due to expert editing or the fact that this merry band of reality-TV lunatics can’t help themselves, the series remains a lot of fun. That fun, however, is barely stitched together with individual moments or ridiculousness and fleeting hilarity. In other words: the memes.

(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)

This week’s episode featured an epic showdown between fan-favorite Carolyn and fan-nemesis Danielle, which, given their respective penchants for histrionics, became a fount of glorious memes.

Chiefly, there was Danielle’s camp meltdown after the roundtable results, a divisive moment:

Of course, there was the return of Danielle’s polarizing choice of headwear:

There was the completely random, utterly pointless, and yet, as is The Traitors way, totally fabulous and entertaining appearance by former cast members Kate and Parvati:

This person captured fans’ collective reaction to the fact that the show’s most pointless cast member, Ivar, is still on the show instead of our faves:

And then there is the context-unnecessary clip of Gabby and Britney saying the word “bamboozled,” somehow sounding as if the Minions were learning to speak the word for the first time:

I will be sending this bamboozled meme as a reaction text to everyone I know for the foreseeable future. For that, I am not sorry, and for that, I am grateful to The Traitors.

Errant SNL50 Thoughts

Saturday Night Live is a show that’s designed to be bad. And that’s why it’s been so great. For all the think pieces published over the decades of “Is SNL Dead?” or whatever, I think we all do understand that experiment, and the potential that comes out of it.

Producing from scratch 90 minutes of live comedy each week is a set-up for failure, which is why so many great comedy minds have flocked to—and thrived in—the challenge. We want SNL to be able to be bad, so that when genius hits, it recalibrates comedy as we know it. Or, at the very least, has us laughing hysterically.

I had a blast watching both the SNL50 concert and the anniversary special last weekend, endless TV events amounting to, in the end, about 2 percent of my time here on Earth.

Both provided a veritable field day for people—i.e. me—who enjoy spotting random celebrities in crowds at live shows. If someone hid a recording device in my apartment last weekend, it would be hours of silence, interrupted on the nights of the specials with squeals and chirps of “Meryl Streep!” “Jerry Seinfeld!” “Julia Stiles!” “Kristen Wiig!”

Everyone’s favorite SNL cast is the one they grew up with, so mine is the era with Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer, and Cheri Oteri. As such, the absolute highlight of the entire weekend for me was when Ferrell and Gasteyer revived my all-time favorite sketch, “Marty and Bobbi Culp,” at the SNL50 concert.

I wasn’t in the room at Radio City Music Hall, but it seemed to me watching at home that it got about a similar-sized ovation as huge stars Nirvana, Lauryn Hill, and Cher.

And Then There’s This SNL50 Moment

The sweetest part of the entire weekend happened in the final seconds.

What to watch this week:

The Monkey: It turns out that a toy monkey is the most malevolent movie villain we’ve seen in years. (Now in theaters)

Old Guy: It’s Christoph Waltz’s turn to be an AARP hit man. (Now in theaters)

Reacher: Reacher is back! Tell your dad! (Now on Prime Video)

What to skip this week:

Zero Day: It should be a crime to get Robert De Niro to do a TV show and waste him like this. (Now on Netflix)

A Thousand Blows: Definitely the new Peaky Blinders. But is that retread enough? (Now on Hulu)

Kevin FallonSenior Editor, Obsessed

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