Another season of The Circle has come and gone on Netflix, and once again, I'm left wondering why I gave this show my time and energy. I've seen most seasons of this show, including the first two seasons from the original U.K. production, the Brazil edition, and all seasons of the US edition on Netflix, and while the concept is still interesting, each season leaves me feeling like there's a lot to be desired.
(For the rest of the article, whenever I refer to The Circle, this will be in reference to the US edition on Netflix. Any other edition discussed will be otherwise specified.)
Let me be honest: I already know the answer to the question posed in the title of this article. The reason I keep watching this show is because it's reliable competition TV. In a sea of 90% dating shows about insufferable and unintelligent influencer-wannabes acting like degenerates, The Circle is a rare find as a competition show that requires at least some degree of awareness and heart, surpassed only by shows like The Mole (which is FABULOUS).
If you don't already know, the concept of The Circle is simple: players are isolated in apartments and their only interaction with other players is via profiles they create, which can either represent their real selves, versions of their real selves, or a completely fake persona, referred to as a catfish. It's a game that requires strategy but also emphasizes being decent people and making genuine connections, which is refreshing to see when so many shows like Big Brother and Survivor are about banding together with your fellow alphas and trampling whoever you can.
It's not like The Circle doesn't have any shady or backstabbing or toxic players, but unlike these other shows, it doesn't really encourage toxicity overall, and those players never win. Because of this, it's incredibly important for the show to have a solid cast, and unfortunately, that's an area that has gone downhill since the earlier seasons.
We used to have at least a couple players and profiles that were older in age, but now it's pretty much just people in their 20s and maybe very early 30s. Also, apart from season 1, every season has had at least a couple insufferable players, which I'll get into later on in my spoiler-filled breakdown. I know praising the season 1 cast is like pinning a participation ribbon on an award-winning stallion, but they really struck gold with that one because since then, so many cast members have aligned with the influencer-wannabe types that I want to avoid.
The show also has too many people playing as themselves which gets kinda boring if there's not a good balance of real and fake identities. Apart from the genuine bonds people form, catfish are what really carry the show because it can be hilarious watching people interact with each other when one or both of them are catfish, and it's always worth watching to see people react to the catfish identity revelations.
HOW THE SHOW CAN IMPROVE
Honestly, we need an ALL-CATFISH season where everyone's playing as a catfish, but none of them know the others are all catfish. Of course as blockings go on, people would start to see that everyone's a catfish, but this can be easily remedied by simply not sharing identity reveal videos on the newsfeed the next day.
It would also be great if the show had more chats and more messages. Having limits is definitely a good idea because otherwise it would be chaotic, especially for the production crew, but players need the chance to be able to talk to more people and more times throughout the day to develop the bonds and alliances necessary to win the game because after all, this is a popularity contest.
I'm usually not a fan of games that require alliances because that can make the game come down entirely to the luck of casting and it mostly leaves a player's fate in the hands of everyone else, even if they do their best in terms of strategy and socialization, but in this game, the alliances are smaller and mostly hidden. Yes, their fate is still partly in the hands of others, and luck is still a factor as it is in any show, but this makes it so that people are focused more on their own personal gameplay since there's no one else in the room with them watching them make their decisions, and people aren't voted out based on how well they did during a challenge or mini-game.
One major issue with the show is that it claims to be this social media strategy game, but nothing about this show apart from the profiles is really related to social media. Most seasons have the players only revealing a couple of their photos even though they have entire photo albums to choose from.
I think it would be interesting if they had to post a new photo and caption to the newsfeed after every round of blocking and have the newer contestants come in with their profiles including that number of posts. They should even include other aspects of social media, like creating clubs around a particular interest or having players "subscribe" to fan pages. It would also be cool if people's jobs came more into play because a lot of people on social media tend to create unique content related to their professions.
As you can already see, this show has a lot of potential but simply doesn't go for it.
CIRCLE TWISTS SO FAR
Season 2 is where the show started adding in some color. A woman came in playing as singer Lance Bass, a makeup contest exposed a young guy who was catfishing as a girl, eliminated players got to join together to form a new profile, and one lucky player got to play a secret character to share information.
Season 3 gave a blocked player the chance to clone an existing player and gave another blocked player the ability to choose someone to receive a special benefit: a second profile. But that was it. This season was even more insufferable than the last season but we'll get to that later.
The fourth season is probably the most forgettable for me, despite having more going on than season before. Apart from two members of the Spice Girls showing up to play a catfish in order to boost the total winnings, and then later revealing they were there but not who they were, there were only a couple other circle surprises: a circle data breach (which wasn't all that exiting) and an antivirus that got passed around until a player got blocked (probably the best twist they've had to date).
Season 5 was marketed as The Circle: Singles where everyone either was or played as single. I'm not sure how this was supposed to be groundbreaking because most players under the age of 35 play as single anyway since flirting with other singles can help create alliances. This season had two blocked players come together to form a new player profile and I have no idea if they had any other twists because the season's Wikipedia page stopped summarizing the episodes.
While the cast for season 6 is probably the most memorable it's been since season 1, it felt like very little happened. The circle had an AI play as a real person and told the players one of them was an AI, but then revealed the AI immediately after the first blocking. Why waste this idea like that? They should have let the AI stick around for at least a couple more blockings and honestly, they could also have held off on telling people there was an AI until after someone was already blocked.
They also had a twist where players got matched up as ride-or-dies based on anonymous answers, which gave me mixed feelings because on the one hand, people had worked hard to establish alliances, but on the other hand, it forced people to work with opposing alliance members that nobody could know about. The dumbest part about this though was that if you got blocked, your ride-or-die would get blocked with you because that's so unfair and no longer leaves your fate (mostly) up to you.
Also, they only had two new players the entire time which is super weird because every season has several new players coming in to replace the blocked players. On the one hand, it did give the players more time to get to know each other and the audience more time to get to know them, and most of the time in this show, players that come in way too late in the game don't have a fair chance, but on the other hand, two new players the entire time is ridiculous.
To make things more fair, I think at least four new players is probably a good number (though I might be lowballing), but then let there be more games and chats and really spread out the latter portions to give these new players time to catch up. Sometimes the show will let new players throw parties or invite members to a group chat, which is definitely a great benefit as well.
For the first UK series, I can't really remember what twists there were, but they did use a 5-star rating system which fortunately didn't stick. The second UK series had Richard Madeley, a British TV presenter, play as a fake profile and intentionally get himself blocked which is hysterical. It also had the public vote for two blocked players to form a new catfish profile rather than having a new player enter, and had two profiles enter as anonymous eggs that had to fight for their right to stay in the circle before revealing who they were.
The Brazil series didn't have any twists as it came out earlier than most seasons of the US version, but it had the best cast of all the series. If there's any one season of the show to recommend, it would definitely be the Brazil edition on Netflix. There was only one season, but the cast was great and I remember the games being interesting as well, like for one game, one player had a motion capture suit and had to perform dance moves for the other players to guess.
SPOILER BREAKDOWN
Now I'll get into the more opinion based section of this article with discussion on the seasons and the players.
Since season 6 just ended, I'll start by talking about that one. I'm quite happy with the winner being Olivia, aka Brandon, who played with just the right amount of heart and strategy though there were some questionable decisions (like not pretending to thank the secret influencer). Tres Fuego's dominance was lowkey annoying the whole time, even though they all seem nice as individuals, and either Myles or QT winning just would've felt lame. Brandon was the only person I could really see myself rooting for from day one, and I did like Kyle a lot so I would've been okay with him winning as well.
A lot of viewers seemed quite mixed on Jordan, some believing that he made the show unbearable, and while I'm quite averse to players that act like complete jerks, Jordan was so over the top it was actually hilarious and quite entertaining. The best part was that everyone knew he was wilding so he ended up not winning anyway.
One of the players that was kind of hard to watch was Lauren because that girl was just so dumb it was unbelievable. Cassie also made a lot of really poor decisions that resulted in her blocking, and the first girl Steffi made such a bad impression that even though she obviously wasn't AI, you couldn't feel bad she got blocked.
Of course, I thought Paul should've been the first to go, but we had to tolerate Caress's blatant lying and corny shenanigans all the way through the ride-or-die stuff. Good for her letting Kyle survive, but as dumb as the both-get-blocked twist was, this essentially rendered it pointless. It also wasn't a very good setup — it should've been a proper prisoners' dilemma where if they both sacrifice, then they both get to stay, and if neither sacrifices, then they're both out and maybe even get to join together to form a new profile (though they wouldn't know this until after the decision making).
Seasons 5 and 4 were honestly not memorable enough for me to really comment on them. I remember liking both winners and their alliances, that Sam from 5 was the first female profile to win, and that Shubham from season 1 came back as a catfish in five and did really poorly. Also, both casts ended up with some wholesome friendship connections that I rooted for the whole way (and ended up doing well), which is something I always love to see. That's about it, though I'm definitely open to revisiting these seasons later since they don't stand out as unbearable to watch unlike...
Season 3 and 2, which are tied for worst seasons because the casts were so unbearable. In season 3, we had to deal with the annoying Nick and his alliance with "Isabella" played by her younger sister Sophia whom Nick was really not pleased to see at the final reveal. He really thought he got a girlfriend out of all this and it was satisfying when both Sophia and his other main ally "Ashley" aka Matt rated him low to boost themselves.
His antagonism towards Kai's alliances were also really annoying. Kai was teamed up with Ruksana and Daniel and they were a really great bond that I was rooting for and they honestly could've gone to the end together until...James showed up. James built an alliance with Kai and said he would always protect her but then proceeded to let Nick talk him into knocking out both Ruksana and Daniel, which is what ultimately led to Kai placing no higher than fourth.
Of course, knocking them out solidified James' place at the top that season because he had a strong connection with everyone else in the top five so whether he got rid of Kai's allies on purpose or whether he genuinely felt pressured into doing that, it worked out for him in the end. As a relatively newer player he probably wouldn't have won if he hadn't shown up in the middle of a divided warzone where he managed to befriend everyone on one alliance while keeping a good relationship with the other alliance and also if Sophia and Matt hadn't simply been using Nick (deserved btw). Like I said earlier, if the alliance that made it to the final five was Kai-Ruksana-Daniel then they definitely would have voted each other for first and second and James would not have won.
Season 2 was really damn annoying as well. The winner Deleesa was who I wanted to see win and probably the only person I can remember who didn't get on my nerves, apart from Jack and Lisa, who were kinda boring but also kinda iconic for reasons expressed in the non-spoiler section, so they get a pass. But everyone else...we had two super annoying girls who fought over lying, throwing each other under the bus, and essentially acting like children.
Chloe, the topic of their fight, made it to second place. She was nice but also kind of annoying, though significantly more tolerable than Courtney and "River" aka Lee who were beyond irritating and unfortunately made it to the top five. It was even more annoying when Courtney of all players got the secret power. And as for everyone else, I literally can't remember anything about them.
Then of course there's the beloved season 1. Some people complain there wasn't enough drama in this season but honestly that didn't really matter to me because I prefer people being genuine over being overly fake and annoying. Shubham probably would've won if he had rated Joey low in the final rating the way Joey rated him low to boost himself, but I don't think he really cared about that in the end seeing how he and Joey had become genuine friends. Plus he's probably the most well-known contestant from this show so it worked out for him anyway.
Chris, Seaburn, and Sammie were also fun to watch, which is why this final five remains the best final five. As iconic as these five were, there were still some memorable and non-annoying characters in the rest of the cast: the guy who showed up with his mom, the guy who showed up to prove how fake social media was and ended up learning he was wrong, and the girl who ended up revealing herself as a catfish and showing her real photos.
The UK series 1 had a pretty decent cast from what I can remember, but I don't like who ended up winning or the guy who fell in love with the character that winner was playing. He was so butthurt about it, but I guess he got over it later on. The series 2 cast though was better. They had Fatboy Slim's son Woody, a very eccentric professor Tim Wilson, a scouser James playing Sammie a single mom inspired by his own single mom, and a woman Katie who did an absolutely terrible job playing her son Jay.
Ironically, the top two were probably the most uninteresting to watch, but they were both very kind and genuine and hoped people would see past their conditions and get to know them for who they were. Some viewers said they probably only made it there because their conditions made everyone else admire them or feel bad for them, but honestly it was probably a combination of people not wanting to block them or rate them lower and also genuinely liking them as people.
Interestingly enough, both these UK versions have like 18-22 episodes which is a lot more than the US's 13, and they both also featured some questions related to politics which would definitely not go down well in the US version.
The Brazil edition as I've said before has the best cast. Everyone was funny, entertaining, amusing, all the words, and no one really seemed to take anything personally which is great. The winner definitely deserved their crown (still refuse to spoil so you go watch it ASAP), and I don't really have any complaints about this season.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Clearly I've got a love-hate relationship with this show, and I would honestly appreciate it so much if Netflix improved the design of this show and cast better people. Tuning into this show shouldn't feel like a chore, and just because you know we'll probably watch it anyway doesn't mean y'all shouldn't at least put more effort into making future seasons the best they can possibly be.
Utilize that social media aspect, give people more time to develop connections, put in at least a couple twists each season but make them make sense and not feel pointless or targeted to get certain players out, cast more older people or at least older profiles, give us more catfish, and for the love of all things round, ENOUGH WITH THE HASHTAGS!
That's all.
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