Wie Is De Mol? - General Discussion

[stellavision]

Oh man, am I confused after episode 8.

The challenges themselves didn't offer a ton of information. It was very easy to mole in the first challenge, and considerably harder to do in the second (I'm on the fence as to whether the lost photo was a real or fake mole action).

But the discussion about whom to vote for! I REALLY don't think the Mole is Diederik or Jochem. But yet if it's neither of them, why are BOTH Sanne (who claims to have been voting for Jochem) and Jochem (who claims to be voting for Diederik) still around? And now Diederik says he's *spreading*? I thought that discussion was just a way for Diederik and Thomas to try and manipulate each other into screwing up the test, yet Diederik seems actually to have changed some of his intended answers.

I'm so confused. Watch it be Diederik and my mind will be blown at the finale.

[SnideAsides]

Man, those were some good hidden clues revealed in the reunion. I watched the season last year before it was subtitled, and again with the subtitles, and I still didn't notice one of the ones at the mirror challenge.

[Mike N]

OK. Just finished Episode 8.

I'm going to get this out of the way right now: Diederik was in green during the exemption assignment.

It was indeed hard to extract Mole information from the assignments. If I can grasp at a straw or two, Sanne was the one who was doing the most word association of the four during the picture assignment, in an "I'm trying to say things to confuse my partner" way.

I agree that Diederik and Thomas were posturing/psyching each other out more than anything else.  

I'm sticking with my choice of Sanne as the Mole. 

[stellavision]

NEW WILD-ASS GUESS:

Do we think the reason the elimination was put off until the next episode is that SANNE gets eliminated? The producers wouldn't have wanted us to see that, as it would have directly contradicted Diederik and Thomas's conversation.

It would also jive excellently with my track record this season of locking in on a Mol only to have that person be eliminated.

ETA: Aahhhh and I see the episode's finally up! I really hope I have time to watch it today so I can quit speculating.

Edited March 6, 2017 by stellavision

[Trip]

So, there's zero percent chance Sanne isn't the Mole, right?

It's the only thing that makes any sense given who's in the finals.  Thomas has been voting for her all along; Diedrick voted for her all along and got eliminated only because he didn't beat Thomas in the quiz; Jochem skated by with some backup answers for Sanne; and Sanne should not be there at all if she's a contestant and voted the way she claims she's voted up to now.  If the Mole was, say, Jochem, the final four would have looked very different.

Plus, I really can't imagine they wouldn't have the Mole win the challenge where the pot would get doubled.

[stellavision]

9 hours ago, Trip said:

Plus, I really can't imagine they wouldn't have the Mole win the challenge where the pot would get doubled.

This is what sealed it for me.

Also, unrelatedly, I have finally decided that Jochem is kinda hot.

Edited March 7, 2017 by stellavision

[Mike N]

10 hours ago, stellavision said:

This is what sealed it for me.

Also, unrelatedly, I have finally decided that Jochem is kinda hot.

Same, re: the sealing of the choice. If I wasn't convinced by her random moving of signs in Moltown or her haphazard "let's rope this tree and now this one and OH LOOK exactly the right amount" process, I was by the puzzle. To me, it was a classic case of "I know the answer but I'm going to pretend I don't". Stall long enough to not make it totally obvious but suddenly get a flash of insight once another person was solving it.

Tangentially-related question: if Art ever decides to stop hosting, which former contestant should replace him? Choose one woman and one man.

[Trip]

OK, I'll play.  I think my top choice would be a woman, Ellie Lust; she'd inject the fear of the Lord into the kandidaten as required.  Man: I want someone who will both have enough gravitas to be a good host and also be easy on the eyes, because I am shallow; I'm thinking maybe Tim Hoffman, maybe Jan-Willem.

[stellavision]

Ellie! From your lips to God's ears, Trip. I could also deal with Carolina -- her instant "because I'm black?" wisecrack when discussing the Black Exemption has always stuck with me. I have a feeling she'd be awesome with the repartee.

Although I hope Art goes on hosting for quite some time, of course. Even aside from the fact that he's nice to look at, I quite enjoy it when he twists the knife after a challenge has gone badly.

Edited March 9, 2017 by stellavision

[stellavision]

Are the English subtitles no longer working? I watched 2016 ep 1 several days ago and was able to see the subtitles, but I couldn't see them on Dailymotion in ep 2 or on Youtube ep 3. I hope I haven't missed my chance! (And thank you, widmbelgie, for feeding our obsession!)

[SnideAsides]

I feel like the four WIDM hosts have been chosen to fit archetypes created by famous spies and spy characters - Angela as Mata Hari (who was Dutch), Karel as Skinner from The X-Files (though, oddly, usually dressed more like Carmen Sandiego), Pieter Jan as Pierce Brosnan Bond, and Art as Daniel Craig Bond. So with that in mind, Ellie actually makes a certain amount of sense, although obviously I would prefer Cecile.

On the men's side of things? It seems like the show has finally gotten over their random boner for Kees, so... Rik? I feel like he's got the right combination of gravitas and humour to really pull it off. Plus, also: So pretty. Or maybe Freek.

[widmbelgie]

On 3/9/2017 at 1:58 AM, stellavision said:

Are the English subtitles no longer working? I watched 2016 ep 1 several days ago and was able to see the subtitles, but I couldn't see them on Dailymotion in ep 2 or on Youtube ep 3. I hope I haven't missed my chance! (And thank you, widmbelgie, for feeding our obsession!)

Hey, I checked on Dailymotion, and the subtitles still work for me. You have to click on the CC button, and then click on English. That might be the problem? If not, let me know, and I'll see if I can figure it out :)

[Trip]

...Huh.  So, that happened.

I'm not convinced that the Mole necessarily did a "great" job so much as a "did less than many previous moles" job.  

And I'm really ticked that "Miss Mole" wasn't a clue, but that other book supposedly was.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Trip

[stellavision]

12 hours ago, Trip said:

...Huh.  So, that happened.

I'm not convinced that the Mole necessarily did a "great" job so much as a "did less than many previous moles" job.  

And I'm really ticked that "Miss Mole" wasn't a clue, but that other book supposedly was.

Co-signing all of this. All I get is that the other candidates were better at mole-ing than the Mole!

Edited March 14, 2017 by stellavision

[SnideAsides]

Yeah. The other players (like, literally almost every single one of them) were better at being the Mole than the Mole was, and even the clues were doing a better job at pointing to Diederik. I don't think they made a bad choice (especially because SO PRETTY), it's just that everyone else was better. And I guess it's good if your cast is so strong that that can happen, but also: way to simultaneously be both an anticlimax and a deus ex machina.

I do love that Miss Mole actually wound up pretty much being "If you focused on this, you missed the Mole". That's gotta be one of the best clues ever.

[stellavision]

1 hour ago, SnideAsides said:

Yeah. The other players (like, literally almost every single one of them) were better at being the Mole than the Mole was

It's really unsatisfying when the reveal happens and half the time or more, the Mole was just sitting back and letting everyone else do all the work.

Those clues...yeah, not so much. Do we think Diederik wore Avogadro's number to try and make people think he was the mole?

Edited March 15, 2017 by stellavision

[Meander]

Thanks for highlighting this. Went through the season, and it was enjoyable.  At first the classic treatment felt a bit weird, after so many years of WIDM, but the standard reveal (though I thought predictable) was fine.  Agreed on the December challenge being great.  

I really like the mole showing where there was failure in sabotage (don't remember any such reveal in past).  

[Watermelon]

I don't really see what can be done with viewer dissatisfaction. The point of the Mole is to be underground. If other people are being obvious and causing more money to come out of the pot...it's not really like he/she can do even more without pointing a big red arrow at himself.

[SnideAsides]

What a bunch of absurd, impossible-to-get clues. Like I don't have any issues with "here's a QR code we used as part of a challenge; scan it to reveal something about the Mole". But "here's a QR code we used as part of a challenge; scan it to reveal a number that coincidentally refers to a specific Lego set related to the Mole's occupation, plus some dead pixels that form a constellation that refers to a word from an earlier wordsearch challenge, then overlay the code on the wordsearch grid and shift it specific coordinates left and up to reveal a sentence confirming the Mole's identity in two specific rows of the grid" was just too much of a stretch.

[Trip]

What, you didn't solve that one?  You slacker.

[widmbelgie]

On 4/11/2017 at 6:46 AM, SnideAsides said:

What a bunch of absurd, impossible-to-get clues. Like I don't have any issues with "here's a QR code we used as part of a challenge; scan it to reveal something about the Mole". But "here's a QR code we used as part of a challenge; scan it to reveal a number that coincidentally refers to a specific Lego set related to the Mole's occupation, plus some dead pixels that form a constellation that refers to a word from an earlier wordsearch challenge, then overlay the code on the wordsearch grid and shift it specific coordinates left and up to reveal a sentence confirming the Mole's identity in two specific rows of the grid" was just too much of a stretch.

Haha, it's funny you say that, because the Belgian and Dutch forum actually got the Lego clue basically right after it aired. So a lot of people were pretty convinced (correctly so) about the mole going into the finale. People didn't get the constellation part of it, though. And people saw the clue in the animal puzzle after Episode 2 aired, but I didn't see anyone who put the QR code on top of it to confirm it. (So there were the criticisms that the episode mentioned in that people argued you can form anyone's name with the letters if you wanted to.)

Edited April 15, 2017 by widmbelgie

[Lantern7]

Bumping up because this would be the place to talk about the American version. I admit that I haven't seen stuff outside the U.S., but I think it holds up well. It would have lasted longer, but ABC straight-up did not give a fuck about it, especially the last season that was called for during the writers' strike.

I'm still a little bitter. I actually tried out for the series twice. Got a little further the second time. Here's my blog entry about that.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Lantern7

[stellavision]

I really have no guesses after all this. At first I enjoyed the all-teams-in-different-cities concept, but once it came to the test and execution, I found it unsatisfying -- the teams have so little information that it seems like a complete crapshoot. You don't even know how many other teams succeeded or failed, so if you choose to spread, you can't even use statistics to decide whether you think the Mole is more likely in a group that opened their safe! (I guess you could use factors other than statistics, like thinking that the Mole is more likely to have figured the puzzle out since it doesn't necessarily add dough to the pot to do so.)

All the groups made a thousand-euro phone call to Art, right? That seems like something the Mole would push for, since there's no warning before you call Art how much it's going to cost. But since everyone did it, that doesn't exactly narrow things down.

Edited January 7, 2018 by stellavision

[Jeffurry]

This was one of my favorite episodes ever! I knew the TV shows they went through at the beginning of the show were in different languages but it didn't hit me right away why they did that.

I suspected Loes the entire time but now that her partner was the first one eliminated the whole fairness factor bugs me.

[Trip]

"Georgia on Their Minds"?

I also loved the episode.  I agree that it's not all that fair, but we've had other seasons where people or teams were split up in the beginning, though they did come together for at least one task before the execution.  But if you just go the typical Episode 1 spread-and-go-fast technique (and use your joker, if you got it) you should be okay at the execution.

[stellavision]

Georgia On Their Minds it is!

Nobody is hot this season except Art. (Ok, maybe Ruben.)

Edited January 7, 2018 by stellavision

[SnideAsides]

Go check out at least the earlier Australian seasons, if you haven't seen them. And if you can stomach subtitles, the two most recent Belgian seasons. They're all incredible.

[Lantern7]

I'll try those. I take it the stuff is on YouTube?

It's also fun to remember the second American season, where the producers kept telling up that Bill was the Mole without much secrecy, and the believers on the forums called themselves "the Billuminati." I tried to make a case against that, but I don't think anyone was convinced. While I'm at it, here's my interview with Dorothy.

[Trip]

Different strokes.  I think Jan is very hot.  Ruben ain't bad either, and I'd do Emilio as well.

[Trip]

I'll second the recommendation for Belgium, but man do we disagree on Australia, which I found painful to get through.

[Jeffurry]

Ruben and Emilio here.

[Meander]

I have to agree with all the comments,  this was a great start, but at first the execution feels unfair, however thinking about it longer, I always find the first execution unfair, and at least in this one they controlled their faith, a reasonable challenge where you could be safe  with little advantage to the Mole of messing up to safe component.  The only thing that felt odd to me, is what if you are part of the only pair that fails  with the Mole.

[SnideAsides]

The last three seasons are painful, I agree, but the first three are top-tier early-era reality television.

And even the sixth season gave me my absolute favourite gif of all time.

[stellavision]

Maybe I need to re-watch:

Did we ever get an explanation of the second voicemail message about the letters being wrong? Because I expected, based on the team that got that message, that the M-18 in Art's last message would have to be converted into something else. That wasn't the case though.

What am I missing?

[seltzer3]

I don't think the mole would try lose the challenge.  That would be so unfair, if hypothetically if just one pair fails (with the mole).  If that contestant even knew their partner is the mole, they would be executed by default.

I think Simone is my top suspect.  She immediately called Art, forcing every additional call to be a penalty.  I also found it suspicious how she was the only one who magically M-18 answer.

[stellavision]

10 hours ago, seltzer3 said:

I think Simone is my top suspect.  She immediately called Art, forcing every additional call to be a penalty.

Good point.

Ep 2: I feel like I don't have a whole lot more information from this one than I had before, especially from challenge 2. It looks like success meant not only seating themselves to Art's FINAL instructions, but also seating themselves in a way that satisfied ALL the previous instructions -- and since there was no partial credit, all the Mole has to do is go along with the group, since it would be pretty tough to have zero mistakes even in a group where no one is trying to draw suspicion to him/herself!

I did wonder whether there's something to Jan showing up to the third challenge in a plaid shirt. He was the only one dressed like a construction worker out of the group, perhaps because he knew what he'd be doing ahead of time?

I enjoyed the Stine-Olcay rooming situation. Especially with those ridiculous stilettos Olcay put on versus those tragic things Stine had on her feet!

[Trip]

I feel reasonably confident it ain't Loes, because she's just being far too obvious.  I also don't really suspect Emilio, who seems to be too fanatic.  No strong suspicions otherwise yet.
I do love that two seasons after Ellie Lust, we're still getting "etherdiscipline"!

[stellavision]

I think I'll stick with seltzer3's guess of Simone. Being alone in a car is a great place to be for the Mole -- who knows whether she was passing information to the people in the red cars? Of course Ruben was alone also but he had the lowest euro amount and also got knocked out early. I think the Mole would either make it to the end or come very close to it.

I don't suspect Olcay, just because giving up the black exemption is such an insane thing to do that I think it has to have been done sincerely. The Mole doesn't need it, of course, but I can't imagine the Mole potentially outing herself by giving it away and thus arousing suspicion that she doesn't need an exemption. Although it's interesting that no one except she and Stine know that Stine is the one who has it.

I suppose another possibility is that Olcay suspects Stine, and is giving the black exemption to the one person who doesn't need it, perhaps hoping Stine will play it and negate everybody else's items. But nah, Olcay might as well just play it herself if she wants that to happen.

[Trip]

Oh goody.  Get rid of one of the few people I know it isn't.  (Pro tip: the Mol is NEVER the youngest contestant.)

I still don't have a clear bead on the Mol.  I do think it's a woman but I'm not sure which.  I'm still on the "Loes is moling too obviously" track, and sort of doubt Olcay, so I guess I'd focus most on Simone and Stine by process of elimination.

[seltzer3]

On 1/21/2018 at 1:54 PM, stellavision said:

I think I'll stick with seltzer3's guess of Simone. Being alone in a car is a great place to be for the Mole -- who knows whether she was passing information to the people in the red cars? Of course Ruben was alone also but he had the lowest euro amount and also got knocked out early. I think the Mole would either make it to the end or come very close to it.

I don't suspect Olcay, just because giving up the black exemption is such an insane thing to do that I think it has to have been done sincerely. The Mole doesn't need it, of course, but I can't imagine the Mole potentially outing herself by giving it away and thus arousing suspicion that she doesn't need an exemption. Although it's interesting that no one except she and Stine know that Stine is the one who has it.

I suppose another possibility is that Olcay suspects Stine, and is giving the black exemption to the one person who doesn't need it, perhaps hoping Stine will play it and negate everybody else's items. But nah, Olcay might as well just play it herself if she wants that to happen.

Funny you say that, because I'm starting to doubt Simone being the mole.  I seriously have no idea who the mole is  (Ruben? Olcay?  Loes? Stine?)  It also doesn't help that this team is a giant hot mess in general.  The fact that they almost remained in a negative bank account this episode, is hilarious.

Just out of curiosity, if the bank stays negative, does that actually mean the winner has to pay money?

Edited January 23, 2018 by seltzer3

[Jeffurry]

Was Olcay the one who said she didn't even have a Mole Book in a previous episode? In this episode she spoke of her wonderful (she may have used another word) Mole Book.

[stellavision]

On 1/23/2018 at 2:47 PM, seltzer3 said:

Funny you say that, because I'm starting to doubt Simone being the mole.  I seriously have no idea who the mole is  (Ruben? Olcay?  Loes? Stine?)  It also doesn't help that this team is a giant hot mess in general.  The fact that they almost remained in a negative bank account this episode, is hilarious.

Just out of curiosity, if the bank stays negative, does that actually mean the winner has to pay money?

I doubt the producers would allow that to happen -- somehow I suspect that the reward for the zipline challenge was originally planned to be more like 1000 or 2000 euros!

I think there will be footage from this episode that will not be shown until the finale, in which the Mole gets to the question "Are you the Mole?" and answers yes. Nobody except Simone appears even to have taken the path that would get you to that question (it looks like you had to say yes, you wanted to know who it was, but no, you would not sacrifice the named player). And she did say "no" to "Are you the Mole?" and took the corresponding path. But perhaps she said yes first and then they re-filmed the scene with her lying?

I also think the Mole would either secretly empty the envelope if s/he had the lucky one (although not if it contained the group exemption), or else if s/he knew that the lucky envelope had already been taken, make sure to go across so the group can see that s/he didn't try to prevent a win by not going. Of course the first did not happen, but if Emilio was correct in knowing he had the right envelope, that does make me suspect Simone a little more than Stine.

[stellavision]

I'm starting to get more on Stine, although I'm not ready to give up Simone as a suspect yet.

It's hard to tell much from the circus challenge (which could have been the one named "Chaos"!). In the car challenge, Stine had nothing, but she was trying awfully hard to finish. I guess a candidate trying to cast suspicion on herself could also do that, but then came the word search challenge. The way the remaining question was phrased ("Did De Mol cross DE MOL out?") makes me think there was a clue planted there -- the only phrase that actually had DE MOL (not just MOL) in it was WIE IS DE MOL. And Stine, although I don't think she physically crossed those words out, is the one who pointed them out.

Stine's also been hanging onto that black exemption for a while now. Makes me think she feels confident in not needing to use it, so she'll hold it until the group accumulates more stuff that she can negate with it, just to cause some drama.

[Trip]

And for the third episode in a row, the departing candidate is someone who I knew with utter certainty was not the mole.  NOT HELPFUL.  She had actually been my prediction to win the season, because it's pretty common for someone who's obviously fake-moling to make it to the end, as others feel like they have to spend some questions on them just in case.

At this point my order is Stine > Simone > Olcay> Ruben > Jan.  I'm not buying into this whole "Could it be Ruben, COULD IT, COULD IT, MAYBE IT IS, HMMM" edit the show was pushing so hard this time.

[stellavision]

24 minutes ago, Trip said:

At this point my order is Stine > Simone > Olcay> Ruben > Jan.  I'm not buying into this whole "Could it be Ruben, COULD IT, COULD IT, MAYBE IT IS, HMMM" edit the show was pushing so hard this time.

Yeah, not even a little bit convincing.

Also, Art's pretty hilarious as a circus announcer.

[amazingracefan]

I really wish someone would finish translating the Polish first season, I really enjoyed what I saw.   Old school reality TV with normal people.

The Dutch version of course has had some great seasons, the latest episode was a classic, a reminder to US TV that a slightly longer episode (than the tight 1 hour with commercials format) can do wonders for quality competitive reality tv.  The Australian version was great, though their later attempt to resurrect it wasn't well thought out, it looked relatively low budget.

[seltzer3]

I'm pretty sure its not Olcay or Jan.  The mole would not try to sabotage the puzzle the way Olcay did.  That was not discreet whatsoever.  Also, I feel like the mole would actually be using the paint rollers, it would be hard to sabotage without them.  Olcay's reaction of Reuben being the treasurer cracks me up.

 

Thought of some mole clues.  I noticed the episode before where they were playing the yes/no game with art.  Art would ask certain people, "Are you willing to get rid of _____?"  I noticed that Simone and Stine's named never got mentioned.   Is it because they never will get eliminated since they are the mole?  And it doesn't seem like it was just a random person (Reuben's name was asked twice).

I also wonder if anyone knows the history of any famous moles or spies in a particular country (Georgia, Azerbijan, Armenia etc.)  Just because it would be cool clue for the mole to start in one of those 5 countries.

[SnideAsides]

Mata Hari was Dutch (which is why this version originally had a female host), but I don't think that was what you had in mind. ;)

Edited February 6, 2018 by SnideAsides

[Watermelon]

I’m only on the start of episode 3, but my first thought was Olcay is the mole. 

 

That very first episode when Jan askes where in Kiev they are, Olcay just lets the comment pass. And when Ruben goes no no, different country, she never looks up from the map. She never looked shocked for a second.  It’s weird to me.

[stellavision]

I really don't think it's Olcay, unless the act of giving up the Zwarte Vrijstelling was the most insane act of reverse psychology ever (doing something that screams "check me out! I don't need the black exemption because I'm the Mole!" to make others think that she can't possibly be the Mole).

I agree with Simone's reasoning -- Stine has held onto that thing for a long time, longer than one would expect a real contestant to do. On the other hand, why is Simone sharing that reasoning with someone else? (I forget who it was she was talking to when she said that -- Jan?) If she's really sold on Stine as the Mole, she should be keeping that theory quiet. Perhaps she herself is the Mole, and is using a very rational argument for casting suspicion elsewhere.

In the hotel challenge, Stine was banging on the door for a long time with no response. But do we know that she was banging on the door that would have allowed the contestants to hear her? Olcay and Simone both seem to have been locked in smaller rooms with only one door to bang, whereas Stine looked like she was in a larger suite. I wonder whether she was making a big show of banging on the door for the camera, knowing that she was banging on a door that wasn't facing the hallway Ruben and Jan were in.

So I'm still on Stine, with Simone as my second choice.