John Dolan: Traitors cast are so judgy about jobs...

We live in an age when being judgmental is viewed as a sin. In fact, we’ve even come up with a snappy word for it - ‘judgy’.

It’s a wholly negative insult aimed at anyone who jumps to a swift conclusion based on their own in-built prejudices.

In modern Ireland, we pride ourselves on not being judgy - at least in public.

But it is one of the reasons why The Traitors Ireland makes for such compelling TV: a group of strangers are thrown together and forced to be judgmental on a daily basis, and the results can be very surprising, and highly entertaining.

The RTÉ show thrives on constant tension. A handful of the 23 contestants are selected as secret Traitors whose task is to bump off the others, the Faithfuls. The latter group must try to spot a Traitor and banish them.

But how do you tell who belongs to your tribe, when you don’t know who is telling the truth?

The contestants in the show are often left grasping at straws, especially in early episodes when they are still forming alliances and sussing out their suspicions. And they are frequently led astray by both Traitors and Faithful.

One of the fascinating aspects of the latest series has been how much the focus has been on people’s jobs.

It seems your occupation is the one area where people feel it is safe to make judgment calls.

Quick - often lazy - assumptions used to be made about gender, sexuality, appearance, where a person was from, the way they spoke, and the way they dressed.

None of that is deemed correct in polite society, so, in The Traitors Ireland, you get the sense that what a person does for a living is the last bastion of judgmentalism.

Which is odd really. Because a person’s job often doesn’t tell us much about their personality at all!

Notwithstanding that, contestants in this series have gone out of their way to spotlight, or hide away, their career choice.

At the start, we had the case of Cork contestant DJ O’Sullivan, who decided to fib about his job as a car salesman, and pretend he was a car parts salesman instead, This, he felt, was a crucial distinction, as there is a perception that car salesmen can be loose with the truth - ‘one lady owner’ and all that.

DJ soon fessed up about this con and eventually got banished for being... well, loose with the truth.

Watching at home, this decision to hide his job - to almost be ashamed of it - surprised me. I wouldn’t make any judgment call about a car salesman I met socially. Certainly, after a lifetime of experience, I wouldn’t assume them to be liars or even to be extroverted, flash wide boys.

If I were playing the TV game, it wouldn’t make me think him any more or less likely to be a traitor.

But DJ wasn’t the only one worried about his occupation being perceived as traitor-friendly.

Traitor Páraic Kerrigan, who was banished early on, pretended he was a ‘mere’ English teacher rather than an Assistant Professor of Communication and Information at University College Dublin, which is admittedly a bit of a mouthful.

He decided on the deception having seen academics on previous series be targeted based on their qualifications. “I just wanted to be kind of blending in for the first few days, not bringing attention to myself,” he explained.

There is some logic to this - I recall a contestant being eliminated from a previous series of The Traitors purely because they were spotted reading a book in the library - ergo, notions: they were deemed far too clever for their own good!

However, I can’t help thinking that Páraic’s secret only piled more pressure on himself.

A similar decision was taken by Cork contestant Denis Ryan, who told his fellow contestants he was a writer, withholding the fact he is also a psychotherapist who prides himself on his ability to read people.

Again, this was done to avoid being picked out and murdered, but it didn’t help Denis as his training shone through anyway at the round table and he was perceived to be too much of a threat to the traitors.

The fibbing about the day job even extended to another Cork contestant, Fionula Linehan, who described herself as a drama teacher rather than mentioning that she is also an actor.

It’s a moot difference, but I suspect she felt that her fellow competitors would wonder if she was acting as a traitor (she was). Fionula had such main character energy that I reckon she should have spilled the beans about her work anyway.

I find it fascinating the way so many contestants in The Traitors Ireland have wrapped up their personality with their occupation; it has become an intrinsic part of their identity - more than their class, or religion, or home county, or any other of the older yardsticks.

It’s odd, too, that your occupation is open to judgmentalism. Like, we are allowed to make knee-jerk calls on a person based on what they do for a living, but on no other part of their character.

“He has a beard, he must be a traitor.”

Sorry, you can’t say that.

“She’s a Dub, she must be a traitor.”

Sorry, you can’t say that.

“He is an Assistant Professor of Communications and Information at Trinity College Dublin, he must be a traitor.”

Hmm, you might be on to something there...

Do people’s careers really reflect their personalities? There is a perception that journalists are pushy, but, in my experience, most are on the shy side of that spectrum, and those are the ones who tend to draw more information out of people.

Interestingly, the biggest meltdown in this series of The Traitors Ireland occurred when Sean Adair ranted and raved his way to banishment. And he is an Emergency Management Officer!

Personally, I would have thought stay-at-home dad David Moran’s experience of trying to stay patient while all around are losing their heads would put him at an advantage - but he was banished on Sunday.

The TV show is such a pressure cooker, that pinning someone’s personality down on the basis of their 9-5 seems a wrong course to take.

Thus far, the second series of The Traitors Ireland has not matched the heights of the first, but it is still a superior production. The Faithful in this series have generally been too clever by half and the Traitors have not been allowed to settle into a stride - apart from Carla Geary, whose role as an early years educator has been deemed above suspicion.

I felt a trick was missed early on when it was noted that the first few murders were of women. The Traitors could have had great fun bumping off the female contestants one by one, and causing havoc in the castle!

As for my thoughts on who will win as the final three episodes unfold from Sunday, I believe we have two strong Cork contenders.

Pete, from the Irish Defence Forces (now there’s a Faithful job), is popular but appears to be unravelling.

So I think Diego Caixeta, secret husband of the murdered Denis, has the credentials to go all the way. He’s likeable but has demonstrated an ability to get his hands dirty if it gets him the prize.

Diego is a Physician Associate, for what it’s worth. But, not for the first time, I don’t think his job is relevant.