'The Mole': One last exemption

We're down to the final four players now on The Mole... or is it the final three players plus one mole? You can't really count the mole as one of the final contestants, can you? After all, they're not really a contestant so much as they are, well, the mole. There was only a choice of three possible people to be eliminated tonight, not that we knew who the fourth person, the safe one, was.

The first mission this evening split the group into two teams, each with a "young at heart" member. That member had to wear a headset that covered their eyes with a video screen. The video screen was hooked in to a camera held by the other team member. The young at heart individual, wearing the headset, had to complete various tasks like putting different shape blocks into a cube or hitting a soccer ball into the net. It may have sounded simple enough, but everything the young at heart people saw through their goggles was a mirror image of what the reality in fact was. It was terribly disorienting and certainly made things more difficult.

Virtually everyone, except for my choice for mole, did something to cost the group money. It was only my choice for mole, Mark, that seemed to do a good job holding the camera and getting good angles for Paul to see things. Nicole was absolutely incompetent with the camera, Craig asked Nicole a question which Nicole answered (strictly against the rules as those with the camera couldn't speak), and Paul seemed to have trouble with hitting a net with the soccer balls even though Mark gave him a perfect angle with the camera and made the task very easy.

I was exceedingly impressed that the team of Paul and Mark completed the final task, which had the young at heart folks walk across a wooden plank placed between the roofs of two buildings, pick up a piece of chalk during the walk, and then copy a sentence on a chalkboard once they reached the far end of the plank. Paul kept to his repeated lie about getting interference from the camera system, but did the walk and wrote the sentence anyway. Craig never stood a chance. He somehow managed to get the chalk, but was unable to get to the far end of the plank and write the sentence in the time allotted.

Even after the mission, the still obnoxious Nicole couldn't imagine how Craig was unable to orient himself correctly during the mission. She is, she told the camera earlier, a laparoscopic surgeon, so she's used to things being backwards like that. I would have loved to see Nicole do those tasks, because I'm absolutely convinced she would have done just as badly as Craig and I've been dying to see her take some blame for weeks now. I knew what Nicole was supposed to be filming during the task and still had trouble making out what she was actually filming.

Mark was absolutely sure that the second mission tonight would have an exemption, and that was pretty much the first thing Jon told us about it. There was no guarantee that an exemption would be issued however, but one was in play.. The only way to get it was to solve a doublet (a word puzzle in which one word has to be changed into another by changing one letter at a time and having each individual letter alteration create an actual word) in order to become a sniper in a paintball game and then manage to hit whichever of the remaining contestants had the exemption card in their pocket.

Mark finished the doublet first (and incredibly quickly), followed by Craig, Nicole, and then Paul. Rather than going into the paintball area one at a time, Nicole and Craig waited for Paul. It was a smart tactic, because it gave Mark some extra distractions and the least amount of time to shoot people and Mark was already at a disadvantage never having played paintball before.

Despite any disadvantage, perceived or real, Mark managed to hit Nicole and then Craig who happened to have the exemption card. At one point, he seemed to hit Paul, but if he did, the pellet didn't break so the hit didn't count. For a guy who claimed, even to the camera, to not know anything about guns and paintball, Mark did really well. Also, if you care, the exemption card placement was determined by who went into which cell to solve the doublet, and Mark chose his room second (Nicole instantly chose a room and Mark chose his as quickly as he could following that).

Paul, who was really quite perturbed with Mark's getting an exemption this late in the game, may still have been a little flustered the next night during the quiz. Paul was the man eliminated tonight. He claimed, all episode, to have been guessing Craig. I wonder if he was lying the entire time or simply couldn't answer questions about Craig correctly. I guess we'll find out soon, because we're now down to the final three.

Odds and ends:

• Every week I notice that these people seem to eat really, really well. Seriously, did you see that meal they had just before the quiz? It looked outstanding.
• So, have I convinced you yet? Do you believe me now that Mark is the mole? I've said it from week one, and there he was tonight, guaranteed of a spot in the finals due to his exemption.

The TV and Film Guy's Reviews - Where there are no exemptions.

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon