“The Anonymous” is a cross between “The Circle” and “Big Brother” with game elements from “The Traitors.”  Which should be no surprise since the show is from the producers of “Squid Game: Challenge,” “The Circle” and “The Traitors.” 

A group of strangers are commissioned (for various reasons) to live in a house to play this live action game called “The Anonymous.”  If you’re a fan of “The Circle,” you’ll love this 2.0 version of it.

The Players:

Pictured: (l-r) Marcel Cunningham, Andy King — Photo by: Rico Torres/USA Network

Most of the action takes place at the circular shaped house.  At the beginning of the first episode, a total of 12 contestants keep their identities under lock-and-key. Their strategies are to stay tight-lipped about what they are known for.  Xavier is a winner of “Big Brother” and during his private interview, touted that he won with the most “dominant alliance in the history of the game.”

The loudest contestant Dillion, or a.k.a “Big Country,” so far, seems like he’s being his authentic self.  More experienced players such as Xavier, and Nina (from “Survivor”), who we later find out who her identity is, remain secretive throughout the first three episodes.

Robbi was not revealing that she’s a professional poker player. Sydney was giving off pageantry vibes.  Although she didn’t reveal that, people figured it out.  Marcel, who plays games for a living, was an immediate target once he told everyone his true identity.

The Game Play:

The grand prize is a total of up to $100,000.  That’s right “up to” because like in “The Traitors” show, contestants here also have to earn the money won in the final pot.  Soon after “The Anonymous” players arrived, an A.I. voice, under the identity of DANI, introduced the rules of the game.  Half of the game is played in-person, in the Circular House, and the other half is played in the Square House under their anonymous handles that they choose for themselves. 

When the contestants are told to do so by DANI, they must retreat to their Square House and enter their individual hiding places, or “Hideouts,” to chat.  These are cubicle type rooms that are soundproof.  Once the chat ends, each player must vote for someone to get eliminated. It only takes one vote for a player to be up for the chopping block.

Winning ‘The Anonymous’ Title:

The best objective a player can do is to try to sway the votes to someone else.  They must do this in a way to not reveal who they are.  Whoever gets through the chat process and voting without being correctly identified wins the title of “the anonymous.”   The contestant who wins the Anonymous title has the power to eliminate one contestant from the pool of players that were voted for.

The objective is for the players to stay anonymous for as long as possible.  This requires them to chat with each other within the show’s own social media program under an alias that they choose for themselves.  It’s much the same as how “The Circle” is played.  They must be good enough that the other players don’t match up their real selves with their anonymous selves in the chat.  Some emojis that players chose included:  Donut, Fish, Wizard, Football, Butterfly, Alien. 

Every episode has a challenge that the players must compete in-person. And, like “The Traitors” challenges, they earn the money that is part of the final grand prize. Each challenge has a monetary worth that the contestant must try and bank as much of that total as possible.  For the first challenge that had a possible total of $19,500, they earned $9, 500.

THE ANONYMOUS airs Mondays on USA Network.

Revealing Their Identities!

For a game that is big on maintaining anonymity, it was very surprising to see a lot of the players divulging who they really were by the next morning after the first challenge.  Andy was the first one to tell everyone that he hosted the infamous “Frye Festival.”  Why he was so proud of that, made no sense.  The whole event was exposed as a chaotic fraud.

Soon after, Xavier came clean with his identity, telling everyone that he won “Big Brother.”  He was hoping to be viewed as more of an asset than a threat.   Nina, is the daughter of queen of “Survivor” Sandra Diaz-Twine, who also played on the “The Traitors” U.S.  Nina competed on “Survivor” twice.  She was keeping tight lipped on all of the above!  Jack, btw, was the only one who suspected she may be related to Sandra (and by episode 4, he figured it out).

Nina did say her strategy was to use her experience from Australian Survivor in a way to benefit her “from top to bottom.” 

Pictured: (l-r) Christopher Shulstad, Nina Twine, Xavier Prather — Photo by: Rico Torres/USA Network

Friend or Foe?

Jack leaned into the fact that Andy trusted him and built an immediate alliance with him.  But, then Jack threw him under the bus every time he was in anonymous mode!  Jack’s argument was that he didn’t have much of a choice and the game “demands it.  I don’t really have a different play here,” said Jack.

Andy was onto whoever was voting him for elimination (he didn’t know it was Jack) and called it when he suspected that this person was using him as a diversion.  He still trusted Jack the most and was sure he didn’t want him eliminated.

The show relies on cliffhangers to keep viewers coming back. The player who won “the anonymous” at the end of episode one was revealed in the second episode.  Out of the twelve players, it came down to Sydney, Lily or Andy who was eliminated.  DANI revealed that it was Sydney as the first elimination.

Jack, who won “The Anonymous” spot in the first episode (and again in the second episode), said he was threatened by the tight alliance between Sydney and Christopher.   By breaking that up, he hoped that Christopher would either fall quicker to a mistake, or even open up for an alliance with him.

Accidental Blocks! Or Were They??

The drama was ramped-up when the challenge in the second episode allowed players to Block each other from Safety from elimination by throwing a ball under their name.  The biggest problem with that was some of the players were blocked by accident.   Contestants had to throw balls into holes to successfully bank money for the pot.

“The Anonymous” game play forces players to back-stab each other directly and indirectly.  After they cast their votes under their anonymous handle of who they want to put up for elimination, the players are thrown back out into the real world to chat amongst themselves at the Circular House.  This is a chance to (down and low) campaign for themselves on not getting eliminated.

Then each episode, so far, ends with the contestants’ “Test” where they have to match up the players with their handles.  Whoever comes out unscathed, not being accurately matched up to their handle, has the power of “The Anonymous” and to eliminate one player.

Overall Review:

The show moves very slowly and uses drawn-out reveals to lure viewers to hopefully keep coming back.  The first three episodes were dropped on two consecutive days, Monday, August 19th, and Tuesday, August 20th.  We get it that episodes one through three were edited to go together to allow viewers to binge.  That’s the intent of the network and for viewers to maybe get addicted to the show.  

But, what seems like an over abundance of voting is done (in two rounds) per show, and then we don’t even get to see who is voted out and who “The Anonymous” is by the end of each episode, it’s a bit overkill, and annoying.  It’s a tall order to think viewers are going to keep tuning-in without being invested in heavy drama and mystery like we get when watching “The Traitors.”

It has yet to be seen if at any point the voting will have to be done solely on their handles and not who they are in the real world.  The interesting fact is that the eliminations are based on the who’s the biggest threat, and not so much about who received the most votes.

The Game Gets Started in Episode 3:

It’s in episode three where the players really start playing a game of strategy and align together to try to vote out two players, Lilly and Tyrenna.  They think Lilly and Tyrenna are in cahoots with each other.  After the players were voted as being up for elimination in episode three, DANI threw them a curve ball and gave them a chance to rebound and become safe. 

Only the contestants who were up for elimination participated in a second challenge where they had to choose one box each.  The boxes contained a note which either read “safe” or “in danger.”  Marcel was the player to become “safe” from elimination by choosing the box that had the word “safe” in it.  He even told the group that he had the “safe” box and none of them believed him!

Pictured: (l-r) Christopher Shulstad, Marcel Cunningham — Photo by: Rico Torres/USA Network

At the end of episode three, when the players all paired-up each other with their handles, “The Anonymous” title came down to Tyrenna or Xavier.   If still invested, viewers will have to wait to watch episode four to see who it is and who’ll get eliminated next.

New episodes air on the USA network every Monday, and stream on Peacock the next day.

Update! – A twist is added in episode four where three new players are brought into the game and bring the pool back up to 12 contestants.  And another twist is that all players have to create new handles.  Some contestants benefit from this and others, like Jack, not so much.