The Mole in the Media

[Meredith Quill]

Your Media Topic!

[BetterButter]

[Lantern7]

I used to write for a reality TV-based website way back in the day, and I wrote two articles on The Mole, both centered on the (sadly seldom-seen) second season. I know that they were written in 2002, but I'm spoiler-spacing the links because the stories deal with the winner and the Mole from that edition.

Spoiler

"What If It's Not Bill?" Trying to look for the Mole beyond the person that was more or less spoiled midway through the season.

"An Interview with Mole 2's Winner, Dorothy Hui" Basically, I met her on line during auditions in NYC, and I interviewed her a few days after her $636K victory was broadcast.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Lantern7

[Irlandesa]

Ugh.  That preview dropped my anticipation level significantly.  The cast looks like a bunch of Love Is Blind rejects. Part of what made the The Mole so much fun was that it was cast like an Amazing Race or Survivor in that there was diversity in the ages and backgrounds/careers.  There's diversity in genders and ethnicity in this version but they all look like they're probably instagram influencers.  I get why that's who you get for a dating show but for an adventure show where people don't have to be single or looking for love?  Nah. Yuck.

[Meedis]

I'm definitely excited to see the Mole coming back on Netflix.   I literally just saw the AD pop up after finishing the Dahmer series.   Uggh.   Back to the Mole... I re-watched all the old Seasons in the last year and still kept some small hope over the years that it would come back.   I will probably wait till all episodes are dropped before watching.   I hope that it can maintain the allure of the original series without being dumbed down too much.    Time will tell.

[BetterButter]

The Mole behind the scenes: an oral history of its early seasons

[SnideAsides]

It's concerning that all of the early reviews floating around seem to pretty consistently amount to "the challenges are good, but everything else... look, stick with it if you can". Considering almost all of the challenges we've seen in the preview were in last year's Dutch and Belgian seasons, if nobody has anything nice to say about the rest I'm probably not going to bother watching.

[j4lambert]

I just discovered that one of the contestants in this season, Avori, released her first song "Revive" in August 2022, one year after the competition was filmed...

[LakeGal]

An interview with the mole, winner & runner-up

interview

[LakeGal]

Interviews with Greg & Avori

interview

[SVNBob]

Just recently found out about this: a sort-of Mole-esque show from a South Korean YouTuber.

It's called Accomplice, and is actually based on the mobile game Mafia42.  But there are a few similarities to the Mole; enough that I think the audience here might like it.

The cast is made up of people from all walks of life in SK (although most are in entertainment in some fashion (game streamers, fashion/beauty vloggers, MMA, etc.)) gathered at a private and secluded location.    After all arriving, one is secretly selected to be the Mafia, while the rest remain Citizens.  During the nights, while all the cast are locked in their private rooms, the Mafia selects one to get "killed".  During the day, the cast investigate the "murder", question each other, and try to determine who the Mafia member is, in order to vote them out.  The Mafia can occasionally recruit additional members, changing the balance of citizens and Mafia.  Additionally, after the first Night, the citizens get a chance to solve a question or riddle in order to gain a power that can possibly give them an advantage, like being able to find out the alignment of a limited number of other players, or being able to protect someone from the killer.

The game ends if the Citizens eliminate all the Mafia.  Mafia wins if at least one is a member of the final 2 players.  And the winning team gets the cash prize of 100 million won (around $75K)

 

Available on YouTube, there's one completed season, and a second currently airing.  I've only watched Episode One and Two of the first season thus far (and part of the 3rd to understand more about the challenge to gain the game power), but it looks pretty good.   And since they are on YouTube, there's English captions available (except on the preview materials and the most current episode of the second season, which went up within the last 48 hours... those captions will be added in time.)

[nb360]

Any info on whether or not this will be renewed?

[LakeGal]

It is renewed.

 

The mole renewed for season 2

[SnarkShark]

7 hours ago, LakeGal said:

It is renewed.

 

The mole renewed for season 2

There are some tweaks they ideally should make, like cutting down on The Confessionals by at least 30%, but overall I'm glad.

 

Alex Wagner was good enough I hope they don't swap her out for some more overtly showbizzy type host.

[Lady Calypso]

I'm happy for the renewal, but hopefully the show makes some tweaks for the second season. It has a very solid premise and the first season was good, but I do think some minor adjustments could help immensely, such as:

• Allowing The Mole to do more solo sabotages throughout the season. All of their sabotages seemed to only happen during challenges. I think allowing them to sabotage on their own time would really up the stakes. I feel like the other versions of this show have allowed this, so I hope this show follows it. There was a moment in the finale during the final challenge where I thought "this would be a great opportunity to split up the Final Three and allow the Mole to do some deceptions without the other two watching, to allow for more paranoia."
• Have a freaking reunion at the end. They rushed the reveal of the winner and Mole, which did NOT allow for any meaningful discussions and reactions to be had. 
• Less confessionals. It became blatantly obvious who the Mole was early on, especially if you're a fan of deceptive shows and could pinpoint the editing techniques, and the confessionals felt forced a lot of the time. I wrote off a lot of people by episode five due to the confessionals aspect.

Other than that, I think the show is fairly good and had a good cast. 

[nb360]

Also, I think they need to go back to having older contestants and the journals (or maybe now iPads?) from the Anderson Cooper era of The Mole.

Edited March 2, 2023 by nb360

[blackwing]

On 2/16/2023 at 10:16 AM, Lady Calypso said:

I'm happy for the renewal, but hopefully the show makes some tweaks for the second season. It has a very solid premise and the first season was good, but I do think some minor adjustments could help immensely, such as:

• Allowing The Mole to do more solo sabotages throughout the season. All of their sabotages seemed to only happen during challenges. I think allowing them to sabotage on their own time would really up the stakes. I feel like the other versions of this show have allowed this, so I hope this show follows it. There was a moment in the finale during the final challenge where I thought "this would be a great opportunity to split up the Final Three and allow the Mole to do some deceptions without the other two watching, to allow for more paranoia."
• Have a freaking reunion at the end. They rushed the reveal of the winner and Mole, which did NOT allow for any meaningful discussions and reactions to be had. 
• Less confessionals. It became blatantly obvious who the Mole was early on, especially if you're a fan of deceptive shows and could pinpoint the editing techniques, and the confessionals felt forced a lot of the time. I wrote off a lot of people by episode five due to the confessionals aspect.

Other than that, I think the show is fairly good and had a good cast. 

Less confessionals.  I don't need to hear every single player pointing out everything everyone does.  I don't need to hear "that's suspicious" 50 times.

Some sort of way to make there be consequences for the players purposely trying to look suspicious to draw votes onto themselves.  I've suggested in the episode 10 thread a "vote-off" midway through or some way to diminish their winnings should they be the winner.

More older people.  I think Joi and Casey were the oldest and they were 39 or 40.  And then there could be less challenges that depend on strength.  People say that Will added the most money, well yeah, when some of the challenges are like "hike up a snowy mountain dragging 100 pounds of ice behind you".

[aradia22]

From the articles posted above

Quote

Joi: I have a health and fitness/inspirational [Instagram] page where I share my story of becoming an airline pilot; I’m a fitness enthusiast, fitness influencer. Casting reached out to me; they were very impressed with my page. I couldn’t say no to an opportunity like this.

Will: “Mine was the old-fashioned DM slide on Instagram. It was basically just a casting producer. I remember the line. He was like, I’m looking at a sheet that has you written all over it, from head to toe. It’s everything they’re looking for. And he was like, I can almost guarantee this is for you. And I was like, Say less, let’s rock!

Kesi: “So I never had an Instagram until recently, so no one slid into my DMs. I am historically a software developer, and the day after I quit my job, one of my really good friends from high school messaged me and said, Hey, like, show? I think you’d be great on it. And I remember sitting with my brother and laughing because the juxtaposition of these two occurrences seemed supernatural in a way. And I was just thinking, You know what, why not? I have the time. As Joi said, life is about being bold and taking risks, so I took it.”

Greg: “I was actually the only person who auditioned through a flyer. Everybody else was recruited—either through social media or a mutual friend. I had been laid off from my job, and was doing freelance marketing on Reddit—that was one of my domains—and I saw the flyer on Reddit. I made a video and I heard back within 24 hours.”

Greg: “I definitely knew what The Mole was. And seeing The Insider flyer, you could do a quick Google search and realize that it was The Mole. I was taking it at face value, and I didn’t know that the show would be called The Mole until I was in Australia. Because I didn’t get the final word that I was cast until two or three weeks before the flight, I’d already gotten hold of the season one DVDs, and of course on Reddit, everybody has all of the files for all the international versions. So I had that with me, but I wasn’t going to watch everything available.”

Avori: “I got reached out to through some contacts I had in the gaming industry, and I had no idea that it was The Mole. It was one of those things like, Are you down for adventure? Do you like playing in-person games? I was like, Yeah, that sounds great. But I’m so busy with my gaming stuff, not now.

Good Lord. They really were casting all the pretty people. This makes me like Greg more.

Spoiler

Will: “I see that question a lot from people who watched the original shows, and the mole journals used to be—we had them. It had the mole logo and everything. I promise you: People were very, very diligent about these things. But thanks to Joi here, part of my game strategy was—I figured out pretty early that Joi was voting for me, so I stopped taking notes…”

Joi: “That messed me up!”

Will: “…because I know Joi was like, Will doesn’t take notes. Will doesn’t need to because it doesn’t matter; Will’s vote doesn’t count. So there’s parts where I’m like, Damn, what was Kesi wearing? I can’t write it down because Joi’s looking at me. I’m waiting until Joi’s not around to [ask people]. I stopped using my journal, because I knew that was a big thing for Joi.”

It's good to know they did have journals.

Spoiler

Greg: “If I was zeroing in on exactly what I thought I needed, it would have been helpful. I wanted to see for sure if Joi actually was a pilot, and when I looked in the dossier, I was like, oh, there’s pictures of her at work, she is a pilot. You could see where people went to college. One thing that I thought that was weird that in the dossier it said Kesi spoke Mandarin fluently, and that was something that when she was asked about it, she really downplayed it. And I never heard her say a single thing in Chinese.”

Ooh, now we know what was in the dossiers.

Quote

Will: “I’ll address something because it hurts me to do it. Believe it or not, guys, I love Jacob. Our relationship is so perfect because we’re so similar. … Showing our love is messing with each other. A lot of people, unfortunately, think I despise him. He was one of my favorites there. I had an absolute blast with them. The whole cast was amazing, but the one dynamic that I think might get shifted when you watch is people thinking I hate this poor guy. I don’t; he’s a good guy.”

Quote

Will: “I’ll speak personally, and it’s a thanks to all the people who took care of us in Australia that probably don’t get appreciation. There were so many things behind the scenes that they had to deal with—especially with me being so difficult. I only eat chicken and rice for 90 percent of my meals, and we had people running in cars to grocery store. The people on the ground who made everything possible, I can’t think enough, they’re unsung heroes of the entire show for sure.”

Quote

Kesi: “There were so many offscreen moments that are pretty incredible together. There were nights we would be playing cards, or there were other nights or days we would go hiking. One of my favorite nights is that we caught this dance party together.”

I don't need it to be a reality show but if that's the dynamic they want, I'd prefer seeing hangout time to the talking heads. But it has to be genuine, not the stuff set up for production where they only discuss the game. Let me see the dance party.

Spoiler

Greg: “My intuition was kind of split in two: I had game intuition, and then I had TV intuition. And sometimes they were at odds, and if they were ever at odds, I went with TV versus game—maybe to my demise. But I had a few different strategies going in. The first is to just be myself 100 percent of the time. It’s very mentally taxing to be questioning what is going on around you. So I didn’t want to put any effort into code switching: being one person and then another person. I was just myself.

Part of being myself is being the center of attention, and I knew that when I got into the jungle, and I acted kind of outlandish, I knew that it would send a message to the mole—and to the show—that look, when the mole is next to me, nobody’s going to be looking at the mole.

I saw in watching the show that strategy worked. Kesi was next to me for every single mission. Other parts of my strategy and preparing: a lot of meditating to just remain calm. It didn’t want to form any coalitions or alliances. I didn’t really want to discuss my suspicions with anyone, and I pretty much stuck to that.”

Greg: For that reason, I went through the quizzes as fast as I could. I just picked one person. I would say if you are studying for the quiz, with the understanding that you are only going for one person, and you take the time to get to know that person, and you also remember all of the questions that production asked about us— which I did—I would say my quizzes were highly accurate, but not always about the correct person.”

Greg is genre savvy in a good way.

Quote

Avori: “I know why I went home. Back in episode four, me, Sandy, Pranav, and Jacob were on the bank heist team, and we all worked together. During that mission, I developed a pretty close relationship with Sandy. Because the money was counted incorrectly, [Sandy] started to believe that I was the Mole, and she actually ended up going all out on me on the quiz that night.

But before she took that quiz, she and I had a conversation—a very in-depth conversation—about how I told her I was extremely suspicious of Kesi, and that I was going to put some answers for Kesi. But Sandy, not believing or trusting me, told me that she was going all out on Kesi on the quiz. She said, I’m gonna go all in. I’m voting for her. If I go home, that’s who I’m going for.

I trusted her good words throughout the remainder of the game—which is funny because, in my dossier, it says I trust people’s good word too much, and that’s my weakness. That’s ultimately what led to me going home: I truly believe that Sandy went for Kesi on her quiz.

But as it turns out, Sandy actually went all-in on me. So through the remainder of the game, I kept going back and forth in my head: Kesi is really suspicious, she keeps doing this. Then I was like, nope, Avori, don’t let yourself go there, because Sandy went out voting for Kesi.”

Aha! So that's why Avori lost.

Quote

Greg: “I single handedly put [$10,000] in the pot across two different missions that you didn’t get to see. That would have been great because I’m proud of the fact that I’m smart, athletic, agile, and can get it done. I would have loved for the audience to see that.”

WHAT? Confused about this. Did they lose that money?

[Irlandesa]

It looks like Alex Wagner won't be returning to host The Mole.  Apparently, the show wrapped up filming and she hasn't been missing from her MSNBC show she's had for the past year.  The Mole filmed before she got her own show.

The rumor is Ari Shapiro is the new host.  I will miss Alex but I do think Ari might be a good choice if true.

https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2023/08/mole-netflix-season-2-host/

 

 

 

[LakeGal]

New season premiere date: June 28, with episodes dropping weekly for three weeks

[BetterButter]