The Traitors’ Dan Gheesling has one last shot to win back my respect

polygon.com:

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for season 2 of the U.S. version of The Traitors through episode 5.]

The Traitors season 2 has been a delight in every single aspect except one: Dan Gheesling, a Big Brother legend who looks like he’s about to be outplayed by Pilot Pete from The Bachelor.

The Traitors is a murder mystery whodunit game similar to Werewolf, Mafia, and Among Us, where a secret group of players, known as “Traitors,” choose someone to “murder” every episode. Along the way, the Traitors must evade the suspicions of the “Faithfuls,” who vote to banish a player from the game every round. The goal is to only banish Traitors, since if a single Traitor makes it to the finale, they walk away with the entire grand prize, which has a potential pot of $250,000.

Like in Big Brother (and even, honestly, Housewives), social gameplay and manipulation is key to surviving. This is why I was thrilled when Dan and former Real Housewife of Atlanta Phaedra Parks were the first two Traitors recruited, before they were joined by Survivor’s feared Black Widow, Parvati Shallow. Other than Phaedra — who I knew would thrive in this cutthroat, dishonest environment — Dan was the one I was most excited to see run absolute circles around the other players. Yet for five episodes straight, his strategy seems to be “go girl, give us nothing,” despite the ballooning target on his back.

This is a shock for Big Brother fans, who credit Dan with delivering the best moment in the CBS show’s history: Dan’s funeral. In season 14, Dan found himself up for elimination alongside his ride-or-die ally, Danielle Murphree. He came up with an outlandish, multi-step plan to stay that involved staging a fake funeral for himself. During the “funeral,” he brought several houseguests to tears with his kind parting words — and blindsided Danielle when he went after her for betraying him. The thing is, Danielle had been nothing but loyal to Dan; this was all part of his master plan to keep them both