The Mole

Back in the day of roughly 20 years ago, two of my favorite shows on US TV were The Amazing Race and The Mole. While The Amazing Race has continued to have tremendous success for the past two decades, The Mole was sadly cancelled after only a few seasons. So I was pleasantly surprised to see it pop up on Netflix recently after not knowing ahead of time that it would be returning.

So how did it turn out? Overall I'm happy to say that it had plenty of intrigue and fun challenges. The contestants were hit and miss in terms of entertaining to watch, but that is true of all reality and game shows. There were some nice surprises along the way as well. Of course, nothing is perfect. The identity of The Mole became undeniably clear to me with about 3 episodes to go, and there were too many obviously scripted interviews with the contestants during each episode, particularly with contestants making mole accusations. I would have liked to have seen more natural interaction among the contestants in between challenges instead.

That said, it's hard to complain too much about what we got. Even with its flaws, this is still a far superior reality show compared to much of the trash reality shows that are on modern TV. It's not quite up to The Amazing Race standards, but then again that's not a realistic expectation. It's a quality season one reboot, and I'm hoping for another season with a few adjustments in the right direction to make season two even better.

The revival doesn't hold a candle to ABC's Season 1 & 2. I feel a lot of the cast members are caricatures and the production team's edits are very suspect (such as the countdown clocks, contestant confessionals, and how the missions are structured). In contrast to earlier seasons, we really don't get a full sense of the competitors' motivations. I really can't say that I'm rooting for any particular player to bring home the prize money. The show is a way to eat up my time; I'm not as fully engaged in it as I thought I would be. This is because very few of the missions are exciting. Many of the games have ambiguous rules or just seem downright impossible. I felt lost when I tried to make sense of some of them, especially the Detonator mission and the bank heist mission.

Alex Wagner is a fair host. She has a good mixture of motherly warmth and seriousness. I can't rate her as highly as host Anderson Cooper, who incidentally also is a journalist.

The aforementioned ABC seasons were set in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and Monaco. This season in Australia simply doesn't have that same spark.

It's just another scripted reality show. Watch at your own leisure but be prepared to be let down.

I really hope someone in charge of making this series is reading this. I get that you choose selfish people for this show to make it interesting and also throw the viewer off but this is no longer a fun watch. Genuine people getting screwed over by a majority of selfish individuals that don't even care about the money! This game should be about winning, sure but also empathy and TEAM effort and respect. All of these shows only showing us how ugly people get in order to win- doesn't even matter whether there's money on the line or not... please cast less of the corporate screw over type. It's unfair und really sad to watch people who don't care about anything win this show at all costs. It hast potential but this is just a sad representation of human "nature" bred by a capitalist society.

I don't think it's bad. I do think they fall into some of the same pitfalls that plague so many other reality shows.

The weird thing is that this version is very clearly based on the latest Belgian run (some games are almost literal copies) but they don't quite get why that version is superior.

* You barely see people interacting when not playing a game.

* The constant skipping to the interviews/contestant voice overs make it seem very scripted. They need to limit those. Let the action and interactions speak for itself.

* Notebooks! Bring back the notebooks!

* Diversity. What you have is a group of people from a fairly narrow age range (25-40) who all look like they could start a modelling career and whose hobby is cross fit. Diversity is more than a bunch of attractive millennials with a different skin color. The Belgian runs have people between 18 and 50+. It's their personalities and different experiences that bring so much more to the game.

* I do like the use of cell phones instead of the large screen they use in the Belgian version.

* I didn't like the "ending on a cliffhanger" of the episodes. Why does everything have to end on a cliffhanger? Just finish after the selection. It destroys the pacing of the episodes because the elimination should be the emotional high point of the episode. Not the lead in.

* More of a personal note but the Belgian presenter, Gilles de Coster, has a very dry, factual way of interacting with the contestants during the games. I think that works better than Alex Wagner's.

If you want to see how good it can be, try and find the current Belgian version (especially series 9 (Germany) ).

No one saying "Who is...the Mole?"

It's okay. But missing some of the elements that made the first ones so great. A better host to amp the suspense. Where are their handy dandy little notebooks they were always writing in?! I remember them always writing notes in their little notebooks. Also the phones instead of a big screen is a bad choice. The huge screen was fun to see turn color.

Overall I am glad it is back. But don't ditch the things that made it so good the first time.

I really miss Anderson Cooper, though I get her has other things to do. But the host could really do a better job of saying things to build suspense, etc.