As this week’s episodes marched on, as much as viewers might have been hating on Colton Underwood, it became increasingly impossible to root for anything but Michael Rapaport’s demise.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Peacock
Spoilers ahead for the two most recent episodes of The Traitors season four.
After five episodes of terrorizing the Traitors castle with his foghorn voice and aggro personality, Michael Rapaport, the most unambiguously villainous contestant in the U.S. run of the show, was finally banished, likely into the accommodating arms of Andy Cohen on the reunion episode. Michael’s ouster came largely at the hands of the man who holds claim to being the season’s second-biggest villain — especially if you ask Bachelor fans — Colton Underwood. The roundtable at the end of episode five turned into a battle of wills and words with Michael trying to alliterate his way into taking out Colton and Colton expressing what increasingly appeared to be the will of the entire cast to be rid of Michael once and for all. Colton’s side got its way, and Michael’s reveal that they’d just banished a Faithful was met with a collective shrug and the unspoken wish that the castle door not hit Michael’s ass on his way out.
At a time when reality-competition shows are seemingly shying away from casting contestants who are willing to play the villain, Michael Rapaport has been an odious but useful throwback. These five episodes have been like watching an old America’s Next Top Model contestant who doesn’t care about how much she’s antagonizing the other girls or a Real World housemate who gets kicked out for no other reason than everyone else is sick of putting up with them. He targeted the very Housewives he claimed to lionize, he was obnoxious in pointing an accusatory finger at Survivor alum Yam Yam Arocho, and he was enough of a loudmouth in basically every setting that a player as savvy as Rob Cesternino cast him a vote in the first roundtable not because he genuinely thought Michael was a Traitor but because he found Michael’s presence to be a hindrance to the Faithfuls’ process of deduction. The man was catching I can’t hear myself think with you around votes from minute one!
By episode five, Michael had moved on from suspecting Yam Yam to suspecting Colton, who was a ringleader in the previous episode’s banishment of Big Brother fan favorite Tiffany Mitchell. Colton was wrong, but his process wasn’t altogether unsound. Nor was Tiffany’s, despite the fact that her suspected Traitors were Yam Yam (no), Ron Funches (no), and Michael himself. One of the encouraging elements of this season’s early stages has been the sound gameplay by both Faithfuls and Traitors alike. Sure, Rob Rausch is merely riding a wave of vibes and other people’s lust (he broke out the overalls this week and the girlies did notice), but his fellow Traitor Candiace Dillard Bassett is doing a rather excellent job of cosplaying as a Faithful, taking an active role in (faux-) Traitor-hunting. Among the Faithful, this week’s episode saw Kristen Kish gathering allies and clues to make a move against Colton, while Colton was assembling a fairly logical case against Michael (three of the four people who’d voted for Michael in the first roundtable have been murdered). Both of those suppositions were wrong, of course, but when it comes to The Traitors, I can appreciate a sound process even when the results are bad. For the most part, everybody seems to be playing a real game this season — and not just a Dolores Catania game of throwing suspicion on the people they don’t get along with. (Okay, Dorinda Medley is doing that with Ron.) And for the record, Colton has the exact right read on Lisa Rinna, pegging her as far too quiet in the roundtables for her usual demeanor.
Colton’s good game instincts and ability to rally other players to his side have the show setting him up as a Pilot Pete–style crusader of the Faithful, charging into battle and sticking his neck out to play an aggressive game on behalf of the more timid Mark Ballases and Stephen Collettis of the group. But those game instincts also play into the less appealing side of his personality: an arrogance and a condescension that were on display in the episode-four roundtable as he accused Tiffany of being a Traitor, at one point smugly asking her if she spells her name with one F or two. Fans of The Bachelor (or at least People magazine) are more familiar with this side of Colton. His backstory, as conveyed by The Traitors, has focused on his athletic prowess (seriously, how many times is he going to invoke football?) and his late-blooming coming-out as a gay man. But he brings a lot more baggage to the table, including past charges of stalking his Bachelor ex. So when he started getting nasty with Tiffany at the roundtable, he stepped into a villain narrative for which a lot of fans were already well prepared.
But as the next episode marched on, as much as viewers might have been hating on Colton, it became increasingly impossible to root for anything but Michael’s demise. In the ramp-up to the roundtable, he stomped from room to room, braying that Colton was a failed ringleader for the Tiffany vote and that he should humble himself and shut up. The irony of that sentiment was apparently lost on Michael as he engaged in a flurry of finger-pointing and, to put it in Candiace’s immaculate cadence, shouTing that only served to further send the house to Colton’s side.
By the time the roundtable hit, Michael had gone full Trump, working up elaborate, alliterative nicknames for “Conniving, Commiserating, Colluding Colton.” He for some reason kept repeating that Colton’s false accusation of Tiffany left her “crazy, sad, and alone,” a turn of phrase Michael might have thought was an expression of sympathy, though I doubt Tiffany would have appreciated being called any of those things. Amid even more finger-pointing, Michael declared that “nobody in this room would be better at holding a secret” than Colton, an insinuation that many in the cast, and certainly every queer person, took to be a reference to Colton’s 29 years spent in the closet.
That was pretty much the end of the road for Michael. Colton may be a problematic figure outside the castle, but in this battle of bad versus worse, it suddenly became very easy to see who was who. Once you’ve got Johnny Weir and Eric Nam calling out microaggressions and saying that the game would be better without Michael, whether he was a Faithful or not, the writing is on the wall. The absolute highlight of the episode (and the season so far, I’d say) was Rob snapping that Michael was using commiserating wrong. “Commiseration means to feel sorry for someone!” Rob shouted. (Merriam-Webster agrees!) When the time came for Alan Cumming to cease deliberations, Michael was reduced to sputtering epithets in random sequences. (“Colluding! Isolating! Crazy, sad, and alone!”) Cumming’s “The time for talk is over” has never sounded so forceful. Eleven votes later — against five for Ron — Michael was banished.
As unpleasant as Michael Rapaport’s demeanor, tone, and torturing of the English language was, it’s tough to deny that he was a gasoline fire that illuminated these first five episodes. The early phase of a Traitors season can feel frustratingly random with the Faithful at an extreme information disadvantage and reduced to just pointing fingers at any unusual behavior and retaliating for previous votes. Michael’s awfulness and aggression drew a lot of heat his way and helped activate most of the cast into what will hopefully be a competitive back half.
On a more basic level, it’s incredibly satisfying to watch such an overtly Trumpian figure experience the consequences of his actions and rhetoric and be told, in the words of Johnny Weir, “I don’t give a shit what you are — I just want you out of my castle.” In some small corner of the globe, it is still possible to say, “Enough. You have made our lives hell. Go away.” So thank you, Michael Rapaport, for that; for being the villain we needed to see vanquished; and for falling prey to the lesser of two evils.
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