conspiracy and sabotage
My favorite reality TV show of all time has been The Mole, ever since I first saw it on TV back in 2001. Back then, the first season was on. Even though the show returned for an even better second season, the show was canceled afterwards. The reason was simple: the show is too cerebral and intriguing for your average reality TV crowd. A pedestrian viewer tuning in by chance would have been confused and bored.
But to my pleasant surprise, the show has returned this summer. For many reasons, this revival will never be as good as the original seasons. (One of the most important reasons is that Anderson Cooper is no longer hosting the show. Anderson’s delivery and demeanor brought a sort-of posterity to the show that played well with the spy-thriller look and feel of the show.)
But despite inherent flaws, the show seems to be holding up well. Episode 5 last Monday was the best so far. I was concerned that the games this season were not as intriguing or cerebral and too physical, but the games on this last episode seemed to return to the tried-and-true formula for the games on the Mole: force the players to trust each other to win money. Of course they can’t, because one of the players is secretly the Mole, hired by the producers to sabotage the game.
At the end of each episode, the players take a quiz, and a typical question reads like: “What color shirt was The Mole wearing yesterday?” or “What year did The Mole graduate from college?”. This forces the players to not only try to figure out who is the mole, but also to be extremely observant. The lowest-scoring player is executed from the game. The thing I really like about this game is that your fate is entirely in your own hands – no popularity contests and no luck. It’s purely a game of keen observation.
One thing that I have not enjoyed about this season is all the fighting. The original seasons always had everyone getting along well. It seems that the producers hired more colorful personalities this time around, perhaps to boost ratings. But this sort of bickering and fighting doesn’t suit this show very well. The show used to have more of a very cool and thrilling spy-mystery sort of vibe. It’s still got some of that, but all the fighting seems to be destroying that mood.
Either way, the season seems to be getting better, so I will keep watching. A surprise appearance by a past season Mole or Anderson Cooper would be really awesome.
