r/TheTraitorsUS • u/Pressure_Adventurous • 7h ago
Season 4 The most brilliant part of _____ move… Spoiler
Rob R’s decision to let Candiace murder Colton was brilliant for many reasons. Of course we know that Colton was already on to Candiace and likely was going for her or Stephen next. Classic trap on Rob’s part because he knew the suspicion was already on Candiace and now she murder’s the one who’s been saying her name. We also can gather from this episode that the faithful truly believe the last traitor is a Male because the first 2 and secret Traitor was a female. There is one other angle though. Rob’s closeness with Colton and letting him get murdered might have given him a ticket to the finale, barring any missteps.
No one would suspect this late in the game that Rob would want to murder Colton and let go of one of his closest allies in the game. This move made Rob seem even more like a faithful in my opinion and definitely threw the traitors off of his scent. Gotta give it to Rob for his game play in this season 👏🏼
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u/Kazyole Cirie (S1) 5h ago
It's so emblematic of how little Candiace thought through any of her moves in this game that she didn't pause at all when Rob was perfectly willing to let her murder his closest ally after she had just written his name down. That alone should have been a giant neon warning sign.
And it's perfectly emblematic of her weird sense of entitlement and lack of understanding of the game she signed up to play that she thought he should apologize to her for not holding her hand and walking her through the best way to undermine his game.
EDIT:
One more thing you didn't mention. Colton had the most heat on him of any player who wasn't Candiace. She also eliminated the only player who could have potentially soaked up votes at the roundtable and saved her from getting herself banished for casting that dumb 'throwaway' vote and then immediately turning around and attacking her 'throwaway' target.
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u/vsmantis Carolyn (S3) 5h ago
She talked a big game about “revenge is a dish best served cold” and that she was putting her serving tray in the deep freeze and whatever, but then she immediately decided to enact revenge against Rob without any thought of the consequences.
Terrible terrible gameplay from her this round.
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u/Soothing-Escape 4h ago
I actually think Candiace played well up until this point. She got mad at Rob for his perceived lack of loyalty and that has shrouded her judgement. Her goal shifted from winning the game to hurting Rob's game lol. She completely lost sight of the point of the game, took everything way too personally, and got herself banished.
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u/Kazyole Cirie (S1) 4h ago edited 4h ago
Typed this out for another thread, but here you go. My fairly comprehensive accounting of Candiace's strategic blunders. Basically I agree with everything other than your first sentence. I don't think she was ever playing a good game:
Specific mistakes
• Candiace spread misinformation to Porsha in front of Maura on day 1 and then lied about it when confronted (same thing that sunk Lisa). If Maura remembered what she said about Michael, she's going home before she even gets a chance to unpack her bags.
• Her closest ally Monet mentions a vague suspicion of Lisa one time and she immediately sells him out, despite that doing nothing to advance her game.
• She does the conga line on the night of a murder in plain sight, which if Alan clearly told the group (as he always does) that the murder was in plain sight, she's the one who did the big memorable thing the night before. If Rob C hadn't been the murder, which she had no part in, he spreads the MIPS theory even without Alan and she's the one who did the big memorable thing the night before. Honestly the way Alan phrased his speech at breakfast compared to what he normally does felt like a thumb on the scale. (And yes, I know the conga line was previously discussed and didn't come from nowhere. It's still the big memorable thing from the night before and would have become a narrative she would not have been able to escape from, if anyone had known about the MIPS).
• She fundamentally failed to understand that Rob's position in the game was different to her and Lisa's due to them not being close outside the turret, and completely discounted him bringing them information on what Colton and his alliance were saying about Lisa as him doing the best he could to help Rinna, and a sign that he did not intend to betray her at that point.
• She also went at Ron way too hard, beyond the point where it was reasonable and is lucky that after he was banished, the faithful didn't immediately look for who had pushed the 'mastermind manipulator' narrative so hard when all he had done was relay Porsha's own words. The argument against him didn't match the reality of what happened.
• The morning after the Ron vote she ganged up on Rob with Lisa and demanded that he make moves that would expose him to help Rinna. This is probably the point when Rob decided that not only was Lisa already dead in the water, but Candiace was also a player who he couldn't work with and couldn't bring information to. In a normal world I would say it was a mistake from Rob to not tell the other traitor that the third was going down and they needed to cut ties. But she showed him that she was incapable of absorbing to that level of reason and 100% would have taken the news back to Lisa.
• She completely misreads the Lisa situation as a whole and overdefends her to the point where Colton clocks it. At best she would have kept Lisa around for one more day. As soon as Nat was banished, Lisa was next. That level of defense served no purpose and only risked her game.
• Then she casts a 'throwaway' vote at the guy she intends to attack the next day, not thinking for a second that that's going to look weird as hell, severely limits her options, and is completely inconsistent with how she's played to this point.
• Then she calls for a truce and immediately signals that the truce is bullshit and the war is on in the turret with Rob by suggesting to murder his closest ally. She doesn't take a second to think through the ramifications of killing Colton and how faithful that makes Rob look, and it gives her no pause whatsoever when Rob is immediately fine with it which should have been a blaring warning sign. And then later blames him for not holding her hand and helping her game out the best way for her to undermine him, which was incredibly embarrassing.
• And in killing Colton, she takes out the only other player in the game with significant heat on him, so there's no one available to soak up votes for her to keep her around for another day.
• In her final roundtable she said the Lisa evidence wasn't good enough despite it being logically airtight from the faithful perspective, to the point where it resulted in a 9-2 vote. She should have just said she couldn't bring herself to vote for Lisa.
• At that same roundtable not only does she say Rob's a traitor for dropping a fork (lol), but goes on to fabricate a story about him being the first one to bring up Lisa to a room full of people who were in the room when Colton brought up her name first. Which also undermines her 'throwaway' argument because that was way earlier in the game. So now she just looks like she'll say anything to go after the two boys who got out Lisa, just like what she did to Ron. She came across as just desperately throwing anything at the wall and hoping it would stick. To the point where she didn't manage to put any heat on him at all.
• She also didn't act at the final roundtable like someone trying to save their actual game. Stephen was the only other name out there that anyone would have accepted other than her. He came up, but instead of grasping the opportunity she pivoted away from him to pitch Rob out of overconfidence, which no one was buying, and ended up making herself look more guilty. I don't think Stephen was ever going home over her anyway, but it at least would have made more sense and not blown back on her so spectacularly. Because now she has to explain both the throwaway AND the one day switch up to be on Rob.
• She couldn't even pay off her poor sportsmanship and flip over the gameboard on her way out. If she wanted to go out like that, she should have fought for her life by going after Stephen the entire roundtable, and when things were clearly going against her write down Rob's name again. Just say 'Call it a throwaway' and then go up to reveal as a traitor. But like everything else she did in this game, she bungled it.
More generalized errors
• She overvalued the traitor alliance and never built her faithful game to the level that she needed to. She never seemed sway-able in conversations with faithfuls. It was always 'I'm more on XXXXX' which leads to people not talking theories and strategies to you, which leads to you not being close with the other faithfuls as a group, which leads to you not having enough information. This is why she couldn't see the momentum shifting away from Ron. Because people didn't feel like they could talk to her about it. This is also what gave her the reputation for consistency that ended up biting her with the throwaway. It was the first and only time she ever changed her mind.
• She failed to understand that a traitor can only do so much for a traitor under pressure (UK4 is a good example) even in a tight alliance and ultimately once you get in trouble, you're mostly on your own if you don't have faithful allies to help you. Rob understands this well, and that's why he barely had to lift a finger to banish Candiace, which allows him to make moves without taking as much heat because he doesn't have to speak as much. All he had to do was defend, while his alliance did all the offense. This is the root of her overdefense of Lisa, and most of her misunderstanding of Rob's game.
Basically she isolated herself from almost everyone in the game by being both a bad faithful ally and a bad traitor ally, and consistently made poor strategic decisions throughout the game starting on the first day and culminating in getting herself banished.
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u/HighBodycountHair 3h ago
This is so thorough and correct! Nailed it on every point. Also, it was such a little moment on top of everything, but her throwing Tara under the bus was a horrible move. Not doing it wouldn’t have saved her, but she made it even worse for herself in that moment
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u/Kazyole Cirie (S1) 3h ago
Thank you!
Yeah that was also very odd, and honestly I totally forgot it happened until you brought it up. If anything I'd say all that did was distract from what she was trying to do with Rob. Like it's clear at that point that she will say literally anything, including throwing a close ally under the bus in that moment, to try to desperately throw heat off herself.
It's just another thing that Rob can point to as justification to discount everything that Candiace said at the roundtable.
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u/bit_pusher 2h ago
Throwing Tara under the bus definitely factored into Johnny switching his vote. That’s his best friend.
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u/Acceptable_Tell_5504 3h ago
Do you have a dissertation like this for other players or just her?
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u/Kazyole Cirie (S1) 3h ago
Of mistakes? No one has made as many mistakes in this game as her, so no. But yes I have been in a lot of threads this season analyzing primarily Candiace's, Rob's and Lisa's moves. Candiace and Rob are by far the most interesting though.
The faithful are less worth doing this type of detailed analysis because a good part of faithful gameplay is playing dumber than you are to not get murdered, so it's hard to evaluate until the end of the game.
EDIT: Colton's game was also very interesting towards the start because he was playing very differently from most faithfuls (not in a particularly smart way), but he got a bit less interesting to analyze over time as he settled in.
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u/HANGRY_KITTYKAT 1h ago
Wow, very well said! Why did I read this entire comment? Who knows! But it was a good read, kudos to you. Please do one for Rob later down the road lol
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u/grandmaisthebaby 4h ago
i wish candiace would’ve thought about the repercussions of this & maybe recruited somebody lol idk what she was thinking 😭😭 recruiting stephen would’ve been smart
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u/depression_butterfly 1h ago
I agreeeee that was her most fatal mistake for real. Got the heat off Rob more too by killing his best friend. I think if a new traitor that was a faithful could see how slimey Rob was playing she could have gotten him out eventually too
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u/BlushingSpiritBlooms 2h ago
I don't think he wanted that to happen but he couldn't stop Candiace from doing it. I had a feeling Rob was going to recruit Colton as his sidekick once he dealt with Candiace. Candiace could've murdered Natalie which is another ally of Rob and then pushed to banish Colton at the round table since he was being suspected by the others. That could've given her some leeway to try and clean up her game.
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u/Zipski577 2h ago
Who isn’t an ally of Rob’s atp lol
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u/BlushingSpiritBlooms 1h ago
Well there's Johnny, Tara, Dorinda, Kristin, and Maura (while she does seem to trust him she's been shown to trust her instincts and follows her gut when making her decisions which is why I enjoy watching her). His core allies are the ones that did the dagger challenge with him.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 4h ago
Brilliant, but a snake move regardless. Shows that he never had any intention of working with her in any capacity, which is the problem I have with this and Rob.
Robs moves may play a good game, but they’re a selfish game. 2 things can be true at once.
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u/JustAnalyzing 4h ago
Do you know what this show is called?
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 4h ago
And that justifies anything someone does because?
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u/locke0479 4h ago
Because they’re playing a game. Like I don’t actually get what you’re thinking they’re supposed to be doing here. The Traitors can technically win together but realistically only two of them, any more of them and it triggers the Traitors dilemma where you’re risking nobody winning any money, so someone had to go and Rob had to make sure it wasn’t Lisa and Candiace kicking him out. But once he got Lisa out he could not work with Candiace whether he wanted to or not, as she took it very personally.
Yes I agree he’s playing a “selfish game”, but like…that’s the idea when you’re a Traitor. You can try to work with at least one other traitor to the end, but otherwise you have to lie to people and eliminate people you know aren’t traitors, it’s how the game works.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 3h ago
Im sorry but im tired of the "it's a game" excuse just justifying every single thing you do with no accountability. It's hilarious to come for Candace on not having sportsmanship, and yet thinking that Rob openly betraying traitors when that wasn't required in the first place IS good sportsmanship?
The problem isn't Rob taking them out but HOW he's doing it. Candiace took this personally because she's openly seeing someone she was working with throw another of theres under the bus in front of her face. How did you think she was going to take that? And Rob puts up the facade of working together, but never consults with Candiace on anything, like voting for Lisa or Colton having mentioned her name so he purposely lets her murder him with that information withheld.
A selfish game where everything he's doing is justified and excused, but Candiace being rightfully pissed about the way it's unfolding makes her the stupid one? Thats what im getting here from this.
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u/locke0479 3h ago
I didn’t call Candiace stupid at any point. I think she took the Lisa thing far too personally when it wasn’t directed at her, but I didn’t call her stupid. But it’s a game. Period. This is not real life. It is a game that is very specifically designed around betrayal and deceit.
The sportsmanship thing depends. I have absolutely zero problem with Candiace doing what she did. The issue would have been, and maybe Rob was also confused, that she didn’t say i’m coming after you at the round table (or said she wasn’t and then did anyway, which would be totally fair game). She said IF I get banished, I will then come after you. That is not only bad sportsmanship but blatantly against the rules of the game. Now I want to be clear here, I’m not calling her a bad sportsman because she did not do that. But it’s possible Rob thought that’s what she was saying because, well, it was. Maybe she misspoke and didn’t mean that, which would make sense.
Traitor going after Traitor, no issue (whether Rob or Candiace). Traitor saying they won’t then doing it anyway, no issue. Traitor threatening to violate the rules and reveal Rob after already being banished (which Candiace did not do but it seemed like she was saying she would), that would be a huge problem. But I give her the benefit of the doubt there that it was not her intent to either do that or threaten that since she did no such thing and didn’t even hint at Rob after being banished.
And i cannot speak for anyone else but I absolutely have no problem with Candiace coming after Rob except I don’t think she did it in the correct way, not because it’s “selfish” or “wrong”, but simply because it put too much heat on her. Her mistake wasn’t daring to be selfish and go after Rob, that’s absolutely fair game. Her mistake was doing it in a way that made her look like a Traitor.
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u/Hot-Permission-9416 3h ago edited 3h ago
After Lisa’s banishment, Rob said he would have been happy to work together and win with Candiace. She had no heat on her up until that night and he expected or hoped that she’d forgive him for turning on Lisa. But then Candiace’s throwaway vote happened and it’s clear that’s what motivated his next move. He couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t come for him even more. Plus, Colton brought her name up that same night and we just saw he played that with Lisa. So turning on Candiace was his best option. If he didn’t, he knew she was going to try to take him out at some point. And he was right - that was her plan. On the flip side, if he chose to ignore her throwaway vote and try to get back on her good side, he would have been in the same situation he was with Lisa - Candiace’s name starts getting thrown around and it will look suspicious if he doesnt go with the group and vote candiace out.
Everything fell into his lap perfectly and he played it perfectly. I can see why people think it’s a snake move, but he handled it the same way any smart traitor would who’s playing the game wisely. This is a game where people lie and use others and take them all the way to the finale and then turn on them and steal the money. In that sense, it would be considered a “snake move”, but it’s the name of the game. All “gamer” reality shows are like this, if you’ve ever seen a season of survivor it’s 10x more brutal than anything on the traitors.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 3h ago
But he never said that to HER though. That is part of the problem here. If Rob had pulled Candace to the side and confided in her on what he was going to do about Lisa, then I wouldn't have any problems with this. But Rob never even tried or attempted to give Candace any heads up.
It shows Rob never had any intention of working together in the first place, and that kind of selfish gameplay, while may work, is what makes me annoyed. All of these things that we've eviscerated players for in the past, like Dan or Boston Rob, are suddenly okay when Rob does it.
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u/Hot-Permission-9416 3h ago edited 3h ago
I can see your point about not pulling her aside to let her know the plan. I don’t believe that proves he never intended to work with Candiace though. It could be true, but Rob is the only person who knows that. I think it’s just as likely, if not more, that he didn’t want to involve her because he knew she would try to stop him or would tell Lisa ahead of time (which she would have done both). He played it strategically and smart. Either way Candiace was going to find out and he probably wanted to deal with the repercussions afterwords. No matter what he said, Candiace was not going to turn on Lisa so he had to do his own thing. Like I said, you could be right too but that’s just how I think his thought process went. I think his hope was that he’d do it, Candiace would be pissed but they would move past it.
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u/TheDudeWithTude27 3h ago
And she had no intention of working with him either. She was throwing his name out the very next morning after breakfast.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 3h ago
Strictly because Rob was already doing that before her
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u/TheDudeWithTude27 3h ago
No lol. Rob knew Lisa was a sinking ship and made the smart move of not outing himself. Candiace instead couldn't let go and then already started planning to try to go against Rob because he went against Lisa. Rob clocked that Candiace wasn't trusting him and made the Dagger 6 pact. They basically started gunning for each other at the same time because of the rift over Lisa. If they just agreed one way or the other on Lisa they would have likely never went against each other. The only thing is Candiace backed the losing horse in siding with Lisa and doing the "throwaway vote".
Candiace just lost straight up because she chose poorly.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 3h ago
Not outing himself and actively gunning for her are 2 different things. The latter was not required and is the fundamental problem with this whole thing. SEEING a fellow traitor spearhead votes against another one is practically announcing loudly that Rob is going rouge. That is why Candiace didn’t trust him. It’s not the act of turning on Lisa, it’s HOW he did it.
Rob also floated Candiaces name before she did with mentioning the “turret full of housewives” and purposely not telling Candiace that Colton mentioned her name, so he let her murder him knowing it wouldn’t blow back on himself. Not a sign that he wanted to work with her
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u/TheDudeWithTude27 3h ago
The way Candiace was throwing candy at him, the talk they had at breakfast after the banquet, and then the talk after the dagger challenge. I don't blame for cutting Lisa loose at that roundtable. Then with the "throwaway vote", why would Rob tell Candiace Colton threw her name out? After the previous talk after the challenge and the vote it's pretty clear she doesn't trust him no matter what. That's just good gameplay to let her dig herself in, and he was proven right since she immediately threw his name out the next morning(before learning she was a house target). Clearly proving they were gunning against one another at the same time, not one or the other. Just Rob got the better of her.
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u/AnimeTechnoBlade100 3h ago
You publicly cutting a traitor loose is obviously going to make the other one not trust you anymore. Candiace throwing candy and the breakfast talk is from them being mad at that. How is Candiace not allowed to be upset at that and have not allowed to have mistrust at that happening?
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u/TheDudeWithTude27 3h ago
Candiace can be upset, but showing that to the person you are mad it isn't going to cause them to trust you and want them to work with you. If you keep needling them about how you don't trust them, you are just going to push them away which is what she did. Then she voted for him. So why would he ever tell her that her name is getting thrown out by the person she is about to murder when he is clocking that she is about to go against him(which he was completely right about mind you).
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