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Genre, if I can be so pretentious, usually comes down to how a movie/show/book makes you feel. Horror makes you scared; comedies make you laugh; romance gets you all hot and bothered. But how do you categorize the feeling of betrayal? You know the feeling - the vicious rich family who will stop at nothing to get their dying patriarch’s money, the dirty politician who’s blackmailed into sacrificing their constituents, the royal spouse that sneaks out for a rendezvous with a commoner. What exactly do you call that genre?

Allow me to suggest to you, dear reader, the backstabathon.

Created right here in the word labs of Popverse, backstabathon refers to a piece of entertainment in which betrayal is one or the primary movers of plot and feeling experienced by the audience. That’s not to say that every TV show with some cutthroating is a backstabathon - we similarly don’t consider The Dark Knight a comedy just because Joker has a couple solid one-liners. 

But perhaps a better way to explain the concept is to provide some examples. I’ll try to keep them pretty recent and, in certain cases, even project the term onto what I believe will be betrayal-based entertainment. As always, you’re welcome to add your own examples (or disagree with mine) in the comments below.

• Survivor, season 46 (February 2024) - Survivor has always had its share of shifts in loyalty, but the recent season’s Charlie Davis/Maria Gonzalez shocker is a standout.  
• Shōgun, season 1 (February 2024) - Not to spoil anything, but episode 7 is a masterclass in making your audience feel that knife.  
• Couple to Throuple, season 1 (February 2024) - There’s a reason why “triangle” is the most dangerous shape for love.  
• Drag Race All-Stars, season 9 (May 2024) - Described by Popverse’s Ashley Victoria Robinson as “Roxxxy Andrews vs. Everyone.”  
• The House of the Dragon, season 2 (June 2024) - Arguably, anything in the Game of Thrones franchise is more backstabathon than it is fantasy.  
• Perfect Match, season 2 (June 2024) - Elys’s revenge on Micah and Harry is nothing less than Shakespearean in its drama.  
• Bridgerton, season 3 (June 2024) - Money and power sure are motivations for treachery, but my god, so is horniness.  
• The Penguin, season 1 (September 2024) - How loyal do you think Oswald Cobblepot is to the Falcone family, really?  
• The Traitors, season 3 (2025) - I mean, it’s in the name.  
• FX’s Alien TV series (release date unknown) - As confirmed by Noah Hawley, this show will focus on the Weyland-Utani company, the most infamous backstabbers in scifi.

You’ll notice that all of my examples are TV shows (many of them reality shows; take from that what you will), but the backstabathon is hardly limited by medium. Literature, movies - hell, even true crime podcasts - are littered with examples of stories primarily driven by duplicity and deception. Forgive me for being bleak, but maybe that just speaks to how universal the feeling of betrayal is.

At the very least, it speaks to the fact that it’s universally entertaining. 

The backstabathon may be more than a genre, it might just act as therapy. Learn how watching betrayal on TV might help deal with it in the real world.