The Traitor

The Traitor is the fifth episode and season finale of the first season of the American-Canadian series High Schooled.

Summary
TBA

Cast

 * Derek de Jong as Derek Lipton
 * Nicholas Merchant as Ryan Brahmer
 * Jacob Beiser as Victor
 * Paul Ingersoll as Sean
 * Jason Merchant as Principal Pearson

Story and Script
The episode was originally assigned to writer Stephen Cote during the summer of 2016. Unlike other episodes, which were officially transferred over to Merchant as writer and began development, fairly little development occurred on the episode after the disbanding of the writing team. Development initially ceased at the end of summer 2016, when Merchant had created the basic premise, and only restarted a month before production began. Paul Ingersoll, who left the show as a main star abruptly after episode 2, was set to make a guest appearance in the episode, locking the episode into being a sendoff to him.

The episode went through fairly little changes and developments before the script started to be written, which was unusual for an episode of High Schooled, which usually goes through three or four outline at a minimum before work on the script begins.

Production
Due to the connected nature of the stories, episodes 4 and 5 were filmed back to back. This was done, in addition to being one story arc, due to Ingersoll's availability to film. He was only available to film for one day in late March, which was nearly three months before the episode was intended to start production. Therefore, his scenes were written before work on the script or even the final story treatment began. After filming his scenes, and one scene at the beginning that had already been locked, production shifted focus onto episode 4, with episode 5 returning to development. During the following development, and due to Merchant's approval of Jacob Beiser's performance as Victor, Victor's role was greatly expanded.

Ariadne Merchant served as an uncredited assistant director for the episode, and was giving directing duties for one scene of the episode, which marked the first time Nicholas Merchant had help directing since the pilot. Ariadne Merchant's involvement serves as training for an expanded directorial involvement during season 2. Additionally, due to her presence on set, Ariadne Merchant had an uncredited cameo added as Amanda which was written on set, though Amanda did not appear in the script.

Production on the episode restarted after episode 4 was completed, and finished in mid June. The episode was edited in less than a week. It is the first time in High Schooled history where an episode was completed before the previous episode had aired.