The Mole, Week 7

Alright, color me completely confused. Clay's execution last night left me so at a loss, I don't even know what to make of it. Perhaps the most bewildering thing about it in my mind was that last night, I felt like he looked more like the Mole than ever.

There was his preposterous "subtract 8 twice" method of doing math during the first mission, which not only ate up lots of time, but would have led to the wrong answer had Mark not been there. There were more strange lies in his interviews that would seem to be for no one's benefit but that of the home audience -- talking about all the games Mark has sabotaged, for example. (Huh?) And yet out he goes, my second wrong guess on the identity of the Mole.

Since I'd be out of the game twice over by now, and since there's now just a one in four chance of randomly guessing the "right answer," it seems almost silly to move onto another suspect at this point. But I think that's what this show is all about, so here goes one more stab. Let's look at the options.

Mark. If Mark is the Mole, he's basically the worst Mole ever in terms of keeping money out of the pot. He's single-handedly won missions for the team (like with his run on the treadmill last week), and on many occasions has corrected mistakes other players have made that would have cost the team money (like Clay's math error this week). He simply can't be the Mole.

Nicole. Last week, Alex went out saying he suspected Nicole of being the Mole. This week, Clay was saying the same thing. Both Alex and Clay said this not in a private interview, but in front of other players, so one would think they were each lying about their true suspicions. So could that mean Nicole really is the Mole? Lunacy! Each week, her attempts to sabotage the game look even more desperate.

My best explanation to reconcile this apparent contradiction is this. Clay really did suspect Nicole, and was being truthful with his coalition partner (Mark) when he said this. He steered most or all of his answers toward Nicole, thus doing badly on the quiz and getting himself eliminated.

As for the tie on the quiz, what about this? Nicole really was trying to "self execute" from the game. All that stuff she was saying at the end about, "I was sitting at the computer and couldn't go through with it." Crap she started spewing to save face when confronted with the fact she couldn't exit the game deliberately on her own terms. Pretty much Pee-Wee Herman "I meant to do that" kind of nonsense.

Because what would a contestant do if he or she were deliberately trying to blow the quiz? Answer everything as if they themselves were the Mole, knowing that it's not right. Nicole's problem was, she sped through the quiz, easily able to answer more complicated questions about herself. (Where was I sitting in relation to Jon? How many people picked me as "most trusted" in the family mission?) Clay, meanwhile, had to stop and take just a little more time to work out his answers, and consequently was the slower of the two players to completely bomb the quiz. Out goes Clay, in stays Nicole.

Who is not the Mole.

Craig. Having been so wrong about the Mole twice now, I wonder if I've been wrong to dismiss him so completely as a suspect. His frostbite and oxygen deprivation back in the Gold mission a few weeks ago doesn't have to have been fake -- he could have had a serious health emergency and be the Mole, unrelated to one another. I'm hard pressed to find moments from past missions where I could point to him as a viable Mole, and yet maybe that's because it's always been out of my mind to even be looking? I almost get there, but then I think...

Paul. I said last week he was a viable "second choice" in my mind. And now that Clay's gone, I guess that's where I'm going. He has thrown a wrench into a few missions, and it does seem like they've been subtle. He got his team lost tonight during the first mission. He refused to settle the math dispute between Mark and Clay, perhaps hoping they'd continue to argue and chew up time without a need for sabotage by him. As I've mentioned before, he's always encouraged strangling players to take breaks during time-related challenges (Liz in the Soccer mission, Craig in the Gold hike).

It's looking like Paul to me. And yet, having been wrong before, I can't really claim I feel this with any certainty now. At least in a few weeks I'll know for sure.

Then I'll be able to go back and see where I went so completely wrong.