Love to See It with Emma and Claire

This week, “The Traitors: New Blood” is back on the air – but we’re down to one new episode. And it’s a relatively uneventful one, with barely a round table or murder to speak of. Instead, most of the episode is spent on the antics of the three Traitors as they try to commit a murder in plain sight. The mechanism: throwing a “cursed” apple to a Faithful on the murder shortlist, and having them successfully catch it. It’s a wildly conspicuous act, especially in a game fueled by paranoia and mob justice, and all three of the Traitors manage to incriminate themselves by the end of the night – especially Joe. Can he wriggle his way out of this jam?

Buckle up, we’re catching up on news & gossip! With Mikayla and TFP out the door, ‘SLOMW’ is down to a skeleton cast. Was there ever any other outcome? And what’s next for the franchise? Then, the breakup between Taylor and Clarke of “Love Island” S7 has gone from amicable to messy, after she claimed on a podcast that Taylor stranded her at a gas station in Oklahoma and he countered with equally troubling, but vague, allegations posted on Instagram. Then, Chris Harrison’s upcoming MAGA-coded dating show on Fox Nation, “The Vow,” dropped a teaser that takes some obvious potshots at “The Bachelor” – so, of course, Warner Bros fired back with a cease and desist. Was this part of a longshot attempt by “The Vow” to get some actual buzz going? Finally, the “Love Is Blind” Boston bios are out, and we trawled through all the Italian-food-loving New Englanders, searching for standouts.

With bodies and banishments piling up, the game is really underway now – and while Joe Vanella is playing his own secret angle, casting doubt on the athletes of the castle, the three Traitors are leaving a breadcrumb trail straight to their teeniest member. The Faithfuls are casting about wildly for clues, and Jay has decided to just cast about wildly in every sense. He drops knowing hints about his secret theories, which will be revealed at the round table – and, once at the round table, he announces that he is a body language expert but unfortunately has been taking a mental health break from observing body language. While he is chaos personified, Victor is flop-sweat personified, though he has finally decided to lean back into his strength: flirting with pretty girls. Can Katie survive another round table? Or will Jay’s chaos be so unbearable that his fellow Faithful just kick him out? We have to wait two weeks to find out!

A cast of non-celebrity American players feature on this season of “The Traitors: New Blood” – an unusually “Harry Potter”-inflected season, especially considering how radioactive J.K. Rowling’s brand has become. (Why, exactly, are the Weasley twins here?) The cast is packed with standout personalities – a funeral director, a dog trainer, a mulleted executive, a 23-year-old, a baseball scout, a lawyer posing as a basketball coach – though some of these newly minted reality stars have done more strategic preparation than others. The first two episodes feature some classic “Traitors” blunders, including one that cruelly ended a blossoming showmance. Is “The Traitors” a dating show? Sadly, not at the moment.

Season 5 of “SLOMW” ends abruptly, after an on-camera revelation that Dakota’s friend has called CPS to report Taylor. But it’s not entirely out of the blue. The last two episodes contain ample signs that Taylor and Dakota’s toxic pattern is escalating dangerously. Meanwhile, Jen is trying to get her “pink back” by becoming a musician and returning to the Mormon fold, Jessi and Jordan throw a housewarming brunch that becomes a de facto divorce brunch, and Mayci and Mikayla have reached their wits’ end with the Taylor-Dakota situation. Annemarie Navar-Gill joins again to finish our discussion of this truncated season – and the path ahead for Taylor and the show, which has chosen to keep her on the cast.