2024 Show
United States of America · English
Good game mechanics bolster another generally trashy, but addictive, reality competition series
At its core, The Trust is everything you expect from American reality TV, complete with several highly irritating contestants and drama that just never hits as hard as it tries to. So it’s good that the central game mechanics are simple yet designed to have the players sow as much discord among themselves as possible. With the constant temptation of higher individual shares dangled in front of them, and each contestant having the power to send somebody home with a single, anonymous, uncontested vote, the paranoia runs rampant fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the players themselves aren’t the most interesting bunch to watch, and their strategies are decent at best, completely illogical at worst. There’s still lots of excitement surrounding every voting session, but getting to know the players becomes a slog.
In this reality series, strangers compete to share a quarter of a million dollars. Will they split it evenly — or cut each other out to raise their take?
Through a series of trust-based challenges, eleven strangers are tasked with deciding if they'll choose to divide a sum of money equally among themselves or eliminate other players to increase their shares.
One of the very few redeemable figures in this house is Brian the rancher. Sporting a cowboy hat, a full beard, and a heart of gold, he automatically becomes the warmest, most genuine figure in the room. There's definitely some naivety to how he comes to trust everyone so quickly (and how easily he becomes convinced of their better nature after repeated betrayals), but that still makes him more interesting to watch in a reality competition setting than the usual schemers.
All these adults on an island getaway, and not a single board game? What do they do all day?
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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