By Alicia Bartolotta
On the very first day of 2020, Netflix dropped a new social media-based reality show called The Circle. A show where average people compete for 100,000 dollars without ever seeing each other besides in pictures. They play games, compete in competitions and rate each other each day. Of course, everyone hopes to be top-rated and have the power to vote someone off. The catch is some people are playing as a catfish, pretending to be someone else with the hope that people will like and believe their fake persona. Since its premiere in 2020, Netflix has been pumping out season after season, with season five having finished in late January. The following will be my honest review and recap of the season, so spoiler warning now.
This season started with a theme: everyone was said to be single. Season five has eight original players. There are the full-on catfishes, Brian, playing his daughter Brittney, and Billie-Jean, playing her ex, Bruno. Those who changed a little bit about themselves are Marvin, an engineer pretending to be a personal trainer, Xanthi, a model pretending to be a preschool teacher, and Chaz pretending to be both single and a nurse. Finally, there are the people who are fully themselves, Brent, Sam and Raven. I first wanna talk about Raven. She is deaf and her interpreter, Paris, is living with her but not playing the game. I really enjoyed seeing a deaf player in the game. This is not something often seen on television and the constant use of sign language between the Raven and Paris taught me what deaf people have to go through in their day-to-day lives.
The first blocking of the season was not how they typically do it. The group rates each other first to eight as they usually do. However, during a get-to-know-you game, titled “Who are You?”, each player was asked to vote on who they would like to block from the circle. Then the top-rated players, called the influencers, were revealed to be Raven and Chaz. Along with this is the reveal of who they choose to block. Raven chooses Brett and Chaz chooses Xanthi.
Those two being blocked leads to a very interesting plot choice. Instead of kicking the two out of the circle, they were asked to team up and catfish the other players and play as a fifty-year-old dog walker named Jennifer. I enjoyed them doing this because it showed how people react differently to someone based on their picture and description. “Jennifer” enters the circle the next day alongside Tom, a British man playing as himself. Everyone takes to Jennifer, giving her the nickname “Aunty Jen.” It is shocking to the audience and Brett and Xanthi when they see how loved they are after both being rated in the bottom half and blocked the day before.
After Tom and Jennifer join, Brittney, aka Brian, is blocked for being called boring and two new people enter, Tasia playing a makeup artist named Tamira, and finally Sasha. Sasha is played by season one runner-up Shubham. Though Shubham was very loved in his season, I was not a fan of his actions in this one. He starts by forming a connection with Bruno, or Billie- Jean, but then blocks them when they have to pick between them and Jennifer. Shubham is shown to be a bad liar when many people start to suspect Sasha is not a girl and do not trust her. He also tries to start a newbie revolution after the last player, Oliver, playing himself, joins which no one wants to. Finally, after three episodes Shubham is blocked, but not before giving Jennifer the power to hack someone and telling everyone else about the newbie revolution. I did not like this because it brought a lot of drama over a revolution that never even made it out the door.
The hacking power I mentioned earlier is also very important when it comes to who the winner is. Jennifer decides to hack Chaz and have a conversation with Sam bad mouthing Tamira. Jennifer is trying to protect themselves because they know Tamria does not like them. This ends up backfiring because Chaz and Sam realize the conversion was not between them, pinning it on Jennifer since she is the only one who knows the nicknames they use with each other. This confrontation really showed the two, especially Sam, as honest and emotional people. Sam felt betrayed when she learned Jennifer was the hacker and I enjoyed seeing her stand up for herself.In the last episode, Sam is revealed as the winner! I was surprised when I saw this happen because Chaz was rated top almost every week. However, Sam never lied to the group, she was herself throughout the process and after hearing what the other players have to say about her I think she deserved this win. Overall I am satisfied with this season of The Circle. If I had to rate this season out of ten I would give it an eight out of ten. It came with plot twists, some good and some not-so-good. Along with an interesting and diverse cast of players. I hope they continue to cast people with different backgrounds and stories in the seasons to come.