‘The Traitors’: Peter Weber’s Holier Than Thou Attitude Is Great For Friendship — But Not For Reality TV

At this stage of The Traitors, it feels like most of the strategic game play has become the responsibility of The Bachelor‘s Peter Weber. After Janelle Pierzina, who was this season’s most outspoken contestant, suggested that her fellow Big Brother alum Dan Gheesling was a traitor, she was banished from the game. The following week, Peter took up for her, rallying everyone to vote out Dan who was in fact a traitor, and he then turned a suspicious eye toward traitor Parvati Shallow last week.

Parvati, sensing that Peter was a danger to her, convinced her fellow traitor Phaedra Parks to invite Peter to join them in their turret, their lair of murderous premeditation, to become a traitor himself. It was a savvy move, one that I personally thought was a brilliant way to bring some excitement to the show. We’re seven episodes into the season, and only one of three traitors has been identified and banished; the show’s formula needed to be shaken up. I was thrilled by the idea that Peter, who has been referred to as the “the most faithful of the faithfuls,” might actually accept the invitation to Traitor Town and turn on the very faithfuls he was leading. And – oh! – how he leads them! That’s the thing with Peter, he is not just looking for traitors to banish, he’s spearheading a whole movement against them, and he’s created a clique of followers consisting of Trishelle Cannatella, Bergie, John Bercow, and Kevin Kreider, who are at his beck and call. Last week when Peter received his invitation to be a traitor, he said, “There’s no way that anyone would suspect me being [a traitor] right now, adding. “If I don’t take this, like, I don’t see how they don’t murder me.” I was so sure he’d jump at the chance to liven up the game and turn on the very people who trust him. And then this week, Peter did the unthinkable: HE SAID NO.

After extending the invitation, Parvati and Phaedra were visited by host Alan Cumming who told them, “Peter refused your attempt at seduction,” and, like me, their jaws dropped to the floor.

“I’m a faithful till the end. I want to be a part of winning this the right way, there’s no way in the world I could betray my team, looking into Bergie’s eyes, looking into Trishelle’s eyes, I’ve given them my word. There’s no way I could do that,” Peter said in his confessional, which I assume was filmed with the help of cranes and telephoto lenses because he was perched so far up on his high horse. I mean, come on. This is a strategic reality show filled with some of the most outlandish personalities in recent TV history — go big or go home.

I can understand Peter not wanting to create drama for himself. Lord knows if it were me, all the deception would wreak havoc on my already delicate gastrointestinal plumbing. Maybe he knows himself well enough that he doesn’t want screw over the faithfuls the way he screwed over Hannah during his season of The Bachelor. You can’t fault him for not wanting to film yet another breakup on camera, this time with his four new reality besties, who he would then have the power to murder.

After Peter declined to become a traitor, he knew he would remain a target for murder, but what I wonder is whether he considered the fact that he’d also become a target for banishment. Because the thing is, Peter’s loyalty to his core group of faithfuls is serious off-putting, even suspicious. On several occasions he has literally closed the door in the faces of Phaedra, MJ, and Parvati because he was having private strategy conversations with Trishelle, John, Kevin and Bergie. And while their loyalty to one another is admirable, the exclusion of everyone else has roused suspicion and created enemy camps within the faithfuls. Peter has several targets on his back and now it’s more than just the traitors who want him gone.

It would have been game-changing to have Peter switch sides, and though I’m disappointed, this is a game that bends its own rules sometimes, who’s to say something even bigger and more shocking won’t happen before it’s all over?