The Trust: A Game of Greed
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Eleven sunny and hopeful contestants step foot inside a beautiful contemporary mansion somewhere off the Caribbean coastline.
In this competition, they arealloffered the $250,000 cash prize from the jump.
Over time, we find that the game is less about greed and more about ones own deservingness.
If everyone can win, whoshouldwin?
Cue the discordant flutes and puffing vocalizations a laWhite Lotus.
It can take just one person to name a name for that contestant to be out of the Trust.
And so the game begins.
As they read each one aloud, they must guess to whom this secret belongs.
Even the secrets are generic confessions of infidelity and debauchery.
The most delicious of them all: At 21, someone in the house became a millionaire.
When asked, he denies that this is his secret.
By the end of the game, the contestants seem unsure about what they should be doing.
Without much of a clue on how to strategize, Gaspare keeps cracking jokes.
Tolu and Winnie fortify their alliance in their rooms.
Jake and Julie start flirting.
I start to worry that a game show where everyone is a winner does not have legs.
Come morning, Brooke surprises our contestants: Below their castle is a Vault!
At random, Juelz and Simone become the first to enter the Vault.
But then again, Juelz was really bold to arrive so puffed up to a game all about trust.
I do like to see a cop shoot himself in the foot …
The Vault is lavish, velvety, vapid.
Gold bars and fat stacks of money occupy sparsely arranged display cases.
They decide to add more money to the pot.
They choose the first two names on the list.
Tolu lets a few of the women know that she smells B.S.
with Juelz just in time before the first voting ceremony.
The first voting ceremony is upon us.
As the guys retreat to their rooms in shock, Tolu is relieved that her alliance shook the table.
These men need to start playing the freaking game!
We are getting bored!
Simmered down by morning, Brian stays true to his strategy and places his faith in the group.
Jake tries something different: Feign interest in the women.
Jake puts himself first in line as the smartest and best leader.
Lindsey and Mama Jay think its comical that anyone would proclaim that he is the best leader.
Julie, Lindsey, and Jay gawk at his audacity after all the things that they shared with him.
Jake thinks theyre being emotional.
Suddenly, its a girls versus boys game show circa 2005.
Did he … forget that Tolu was blocked with Bryce at the first voting ceremony?
So much for being the smartest of the bunch.
One floor above them, Jake is also stressed!!
It dawns on him that he will be crucified no matter which way his brothers decide.
When Bryce and Gasparre return upstairs after what seems like hours, a chill has set over the house.
Great, good for you, the team seems to say as they go back to picking Jake apart.
Brian and Gaspare are a little shaken by how much Jake has upset the house.
All of it reduces Mr. Military Guy to crocodile tears.
In the morning, Bryce finds a friend in Lindsey.
Great timing because holding in his secret is tearing him apart!
He divulges to Lindsey, but she is unfazed; maybe his crisp designer shirts have been dead giveaways.
The ever-direct Tolu confronts Julie about her clumsy balance of their alliance and her thing with Jake.
Tolu is okay with the apology, though.
Fine, I guess…
Hours before the next voting ceremony, Tolu calls her Julie-Jay-Winnie alliance to Cliffs Edge.
She shares that she will not vote anyone out that evening.
Julie and Winnie follow suit, but Mama Jay confidentially reveals that she will be voting for someone.
Is her big, bad Jake at risk?
But hey, this alliance is strong, right?Right?
!Julie warns Jake that the Trust could be broken that evening.
The tension is palpable at the voting ceremony table.
However, Jay is mum, as is the rest of the alliance.
If her noble plan works, nobody is going home.
Once again, Brian is irate.
Human beings really are harder to read than cattle.
Winnie has a problem with Julie throwing people under the bus for Jake.
In the morning, the very nervous group gets to play some shuffleboard with a twist.
One table has three scoring zones and putting it in one of those zones adds money to the trust.
The other table guarantees immunity at the next ceremony if they hit a target.
They head back to the house to celebrate with espresso martinis.
Julie pulls Winnie aside to share her guilt about voting for Simone.
Appeal all she wants, but Julies still on Winnies radar for putting Jake over the group.
By nightfall, Brooke reveals its time to head to the Vault again.
Jake and Bryce pick the winning keycards.
Furthermore, the offer values are doubling, testing peoples threshold to think for the group.
The first offer: Bryce and Jake each get $10,000 if someone goes home at the next ceremony.
In their deliberation, Jake reveals that he wants to clean house because theres a sniper on the loose.
(Mama Jay is literally a 70-year-old woman who stress-eats Milanos and embroiders in her bed.)
Ultimately, they take the second offer.
Finally, here is the opportunity for the family to go through one trust ceremony without an elimination.
Everyone partners up except our most easily likable character, Gaspare.
While everyone revels, Bryce thinks it is time to unload his burden of a secret.
She is also offended that the group accepts him as a liar and, worse, a millionaire.
Why is he here?
He doesnt deserve any of this!
She confronts him about this disconnect, but the conversation is heavy-handed and futile.
He picks Brian because the hardworking farmer ought to see the tropical forests while hes on vacation.
He also chooses Julie to accompany Brian because she comes from hardship and deserves something nice.
The next day, Julie and Brian go on a zipline adventure and a wondrous cave tour.
Back at the house, the contestants get massages!
Bryce overhears and asks Lindsey to fill him in as an ally.
But is it too late for him to rectify things?
Where theres Brooke, theres fire: another Vault is somewhere in this jungle!
There, she will give each of them an offer that will benefit only them.
If they launch the offer, they have to take it.
Brian and Julie dont even have to tell each other whether they take it or not.
Each of them approaches Brooke alone in the Vault somewhere deep among the trees.
After a dinner where she learns that shes still playing this game with a millionaire?
She does not hesitate.
My girl is going to take the offer.
The Vault
Is Julie a girls girl?
Does it even matter?
I think Julie is smarter than to see Jake as anything more than a tactic.
Coquette girlies be damned.
