The Mole Returns

So, as my friend who goes by "the mole" himself noted when commenting on yesterday's post, last night a new season of the reality show The Mole began on ABC. I thought about writing something about this last night, and decided not to. But hey, now there's "popular demand!" Of one, but still....

The thing is, I don't watch that much reality television. A drop in the bucket, really, when you consider how much there is. But I loved The Mole for the short couple seasons it ran. (I'm not counting the Anderson Cooper-less crappy "Celebrity" installments.) The thing is, I love games, and I'm a sucker for game shows. The reality shows that manage to draw me in have a major game show vibe to them.

And none are more gamey than The Mole. (No, I don't mean it smells. Anyway...) A group of contestants compete in cleverly designed challenges to build a pot of money that in the end, only one will win. The prize goes to the player who is able to identify and best observe the actions of one fake player placed in their midst by the producers of the show, assigned the job of sowing distrust among the players, sabotaging efforts to win challenges, and generally being michievous: The Mole.

I'm very pleased to say that right from this first episode last night, I thought the show had returned to form. The new host is a passable replacement for Anderson Cooper, with that right degree of snarky attitude that takes no crap from the contestants. The games were perfectly engineered to engender suspicions among the players. And those players were well chosen with a variety of personalities sure to cause friction and be interesting to watch.

So, who do I think is the Mole? Last time this series ran (again, not counting the lame Celebrity editions), my roommate and I caught a real smoking gun of a clue dropped by the show's producers into the second episode. From it, we deduced the identity of that Mole with something like 10 episodes to go. We never doubted our conclusion, and in the end were proven right.

This time out, there was no "smoking gun" to point the way -- at least, not that I spotted. So instead, I'll go by my theories about how this game might unfold.

If I were the Mole, playing this game, I wouldn't want to get started too early. First impressions burn deep, and can be impossible to reverse. If I do anything too overt too early to sabotage a challenge, one or more players will catch wise to it. They'll identify me, and I may never be able to shake their suspicions. Furthermore, I know the good players will actually try to sabotage missions themselves here and there, to make it look like they're the Mole, and thus ruining other people's abilities to pass the quizzes.

So basically, I'd plan to kick ass at the first mission, if it was within my ability to do so.

Apply that to specifically the first mission of this episode, and the opportunity is even more perfect. There are 11 people tasked to go over the waterfall and grab for a money bag. Yet only 6 of those bags will actually have money. There's around a 45% chance that the bag won't actually even be worth anything. So now, as the Mole, I think: I can go out there, give this task my all, and still possibly not contribute anything to the money pot because of the very significant chance my bag will be empty! That's win-win for the Mole!

So, based off this logic, the six people who successfully grabbed bags from the edge of the waterfall are my first major suspects. That's Kristen, Clay, Bobby, Mark, Liz, and Nicole. (Oh, by the way -- I'm using ABC's web site to help with the names here. I'm not that good.)

From that list of six, I choose to discount Nicole and Bobby. And this is basically from an extension of my above argument. By the second challenge, I as the Mole would be willing to start taking a more active role in sabotaging the group's efforts during a mission. But the important thing above all would still be to act in a manner that doesn't draw too much attention to myself too early.

Nicole came on way too strong with her attitude and her refusal to sleep outside as she was told to do. She arrived at the beach mission with a huge target on her -- everyone there regarded her as the "biggest whiner." Now true, the Mole often gets to know in advance what an upcoming mission will entail. Knowing that the group would be asked to pick "the biggest whiner," she could have behaved the night before in a deliberate way to push the group to want to put her in that position. Then she gets a night away from the other contestants, on her own with the show's producers to plot the next move.

But I don't buy any of that. It's too overt an attitude, too early in the game. Most of the players already distrust or outright hate her, and the Mole wants to be trusted by as many people as possible.

Then there's Bobby, who's in his 20s, but can't walk up and down the beach twice without coming in danger of passing out. If he's faking, it's too obvious a move for the Mole to be making so early. If he's not faking, then the producers would be out of their minds to pick a Mole so physically inept.

I mean, even the "little old lady" Liz managed to snag a bad from the waterfall challenge. She'd make a far better Mole than Bobby.

So at this point, my list is down to four: Kristen, Clay, Mark, and Liz. I have a few inclinations to whittle down that list farther, but I'd say it would be a mistake (were I in the game) to commit to too few options too early. I'd look for more solid leads to zero in just one or two suspects.

So there you have it. For those of you who care about The Mole, this was I hope a deep enough analysis of this first episode to make up for not talking about last night. For those of you who don't care... well sorry. Television drives this blog a fair amount of the time, as you must know by now. Not even in the summer was that likely to dry up entirely.