How "The Mole" Helped Me Appreciate Modern Reality Shows

Spoilers ahead for The Mole Season One... it's been twenty-one years how have you still not seen it?

Oh how I would roll my eyes every time my family put on Survivor, The Challenge or their newest obsession, Big Brother Canada. Each episode would show the same deceitful race to the precious reward of large sums of cash. These shows are often staged and redone to deliver the ultimate packed punch of action.

My mother sits there screaming, "The music is picking up! She's about to win!" These shows are so formulated that my own mother is picking up on them. This has to be it right? Reality TV is definitely an ugly shade of humanity. I really thought, this couldn't get worse... but it can.

To understand my new found appreciation, we are going to take a look at one of the best reality game show concepts with one of the worst executions. The Mole, a reality game show created by Jill Dickerson, Sandi Johnson, Derrick Speight, Brian Szot and hosted by Anderson Cooper was a breath of fresh air when it comes to modern cut-throat competitions. This is the first completion based game I have seen where people get themselves not voted out, but eliminated. The players are dependent on one another to complete challenges for various amounts of cash to add to the pot. The mole is a secret player whose only agenda is to try and halt as much cash from going to the pot as possible.

Why do they do this you might ask? I'd love to know too. They never disclose on the show what the mole wins for playing the game, whether it's a set amount or the remainder of the pot that wasn't won. The finalist of The Mole can win up to a million dollars depending on how well the players work together to fight the mole. At the end of each episode the players take a test asking random questions about the mole that they could know from playing the game and careful observation. The contestant with the lowest score is executed from the game and sent packing. This is an amazing premise where no matter how much you hate your team you are extremely dependent on them for information and help to grow the winner pot.

Starting from left: Kathryn Price, Anderson Cooper, Afi Ekulona.

The show's biggest issue is either the editing or the collection of footage to choose from. Often Anderson will recall a moment in the game that was crucial for the mole, but we've never seen it. In fact, so much game play is missing we barely see the contestants talk to one another. Personal interviews to the viewer often do not reveal enough information to pick up on what is actually happening in the player's perspective. This is partially due to the fact that the mole also gives personal interviews acting as a regular player to fool the audience, but results in viewers who do not believe anything they hear to be genuine. The show seemed to shy away from juxtaposing dialogue or scenes together as to not confuse the audiance or give away the secret of the mole. This led to the show being quite bland at times.

Let's not even begin to talk about how the game is more luck based then strategy. Look back on the sheep counting challenge in S1 E7. Anderson asked for two players who could count to at least 751 and get all of the loose sheep herded into their pens. At the beginning of the challenge, Steven and Charlie were offered a herding dog but they had to guess which one was trained out of three dogs. An english sheep dog, a german shepard and a mut. This test ended up being too complex because there were multiple herding dogs available, so there was no way you could make an educated guess of which it was. The group chose the wrong dog and ended up having to herd all the sheep on their own. In a very infamous scene we have Charlie chasing a bunch of sheep screaming "Here Hoochie Hoochie" with their dog following playfully behind without a clue as to what's going on. They somehow manage to gather every single sheep into the pens before time ran out, but did not manage to figure out that Anderson gave them the answer to how many sheep there were before starting. The answer was in fact 751.

Charlie herding sheep screaming "Hoochie. Hoochie..."

The show is designed so that the viewer can join in on the fun of figuring out who the mole is but the game play feels like it's been cut drastically leading to an inability to grasp who was doing what during the competition. I was absolutely shocked in the S1 finale to hear that the fan clues were things like introducing the mole as the fourth player because they're are four letters in the word "mole" or holding up the bag with the mole's name on it. Then my favorite, in a dramatic delivery by Anderson when he says "Henry payed the Price"-- this was an indicator because the mole's last name was Price. Now that was a sad excuse for hints if you ask me. I was sitting there the whole show trying to guess the mole from the little game play we were shown, not from overly complex clues that I wasn't even thinking to look for.

Even though it's a mess at times, it's still a show that was loved by it's contestants, host, and viewers. The unique flavor of early 2000s television helps this show still be enjoyable today. It's a great lesson on what and what not to do for anyone who wants to learn more about reality game shows. So without further ado, it's time to sit back and figure out who is the saborteur, the traitor, the mole on Netflix.