The Mole, Week 6

In my reexamination last week of The Mole so far, I mostly eliminated Alex as a suspect due to his failure to keep a journal as I assume a true Mole would do. Admittedly, that was not the strongest of evidence, but it panned out for truth this week when Alex was eliminated from the game. The timing of it was somewhat amusing, too, I thought -- in the hour long "re-cap with new footage" show before the true installment tonight, it seemed like every other time Jon Kelley spoke the word "Mole" in his voice-over, the editors put an image of Alex on screen. They almost had me doubting myself before the actual execution tonight, which I imagine was exactly the point.

As for the new episode, and what clues can be drawn about the remaining contestants, I'll work backward and start with the bungee jumping mission. I do this simply for expedience. Everybody still in the game missed the target. And it seemed impossible to me to tell who missed it deliberately, who tried and failed anyway, and who couldn't cope with the fear of heights enough to even make a real attempt. Call that a wash.

As for the rest of the episode, I'll just go suspect by suspect; easy enough to do that now that only five remain.

Clay. He was my new number one after my review last week. He wasn't particularly suspicious in the "Grapes of Cache" mission. Again, his most suspicious behavior this week was in his interviews. This time, he tried to suggest to the audience that Mark was a worthy Mole candidate. This after Mark's stellar performance in the mission, and after being in a coalition with him for five weeks and counting. Preposterous!

Craig. I've mostly dismissed Craig as a Mole suspect, but if you're looking for evidence in support of him this week, you've got it. He was almost completely silent in the Grapes of Cache mission. He worked the problems somewhat, but let Nicole steamroll him at every turn with right answers, wrong answers, whatever. Sure, Nicole's a powerful force, but Craig kept a strangely low profile here. A Mole could have done that knowing that Nicole's bogus attempts at sabotage would be detriment enough to the task.

Mark. I'd also dismissed Mark as a suspect too, and tonight's performance feels like it locks that in. I suppose you could argue that every once in a while, a Mole does want to do well at a mission to get suspicion away. But he was a frakkin' rock star tonight. He basically solved all the problems himself, kept Nicole's raging personality largely in check from his position on a treadmill, and stayed running on that treadmill for almost a full hour. I'm pretty damn sure I couldn't keep all that up, and there seems little point in a Mole doing so either. He could have easily "gotten too tired" about, say, 35 or 40 minutes in and still looked like he'd given it a major effort.

Nicole. Nicole's been off my list from day one, even after the recalculations. Her mistakes tonight continue to appear like the work of someone trying to make people think she's the Mole. I can't believe anyone would still buy that at this point. (And for the record, I don't think Alex did either, despite what he was saying. Why would he have publicly told everyone of his suspicions if that's really what he thought?) Plus, we learned tonight that she keeps even fewer journal notes than Alex. So I apply the same logic -- a real Mole would make more of an effort to keep a journal and look like a real player.

Paul. Here's the only other suspect besides Clay that I lend any real credibility to at this point. Tonight's two suspicious moments in the Grapes missions: he misread the coordinates to the Runners at one point (and then tried to blame the mistake on the Thinkers), and he wasted a lot of time arguing with Nicole, keeping the Thinkers from working the puzzles. You could possibly argue a third act of sabotage in the way he relayed coordinates to the Runners. With all of the answers having been worked out before even half the bottles had been found, he could have arranged the coordinates in more of a "straight line" order that made less back and forth for the Runners, and less time on the treadmill for Mark. Of course, to believe this, you have to assume he knows enough about how latitude and longitude coordinates work to lay them out in a line in his head. I know that I and most people I know could do it, but I wouldn't call that a given for the average schmoe. In any case, Paul remains a solid "second choice" in my mind.

There you have it for this week.