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RSS'The Mole': To be or not to be
We're getting down to the final few contestants on The Mole, and while we all have our guesses as to who will win and who the mole actually is, things are very much still up in the air. Again, rather than doing a large preamble, let's get right down to business.
The episode got started with our final five contestants dividing themselves into two teams -- the smart and the dumb. Craig and Nicole jumped at the chance to be on the dumb team. Neither of them are, but that's okay, because the dumb team had to go and get five numbers from clues around Mendoza and the smart team only three.
On the smart side, Clay and Mark instantly started arguing about some of the math they had to do, with Mark being right and Clay completely wrong. Clay was trying to do some subtraction by rounding the number first and then didn't correctly take into account for his rounding at the end. It made some sense, but it was just a silly idea to begin with. I can't believe he's actually that unintelligent, so maybe he was trying to throw it all on purpose. The same exact thought could be uttered about both members of the dumb team as Craig mixed up numbers he shouldn't have and Nicole couldn't count tiles in a mosaic.
Back on the smart side, Paul did make a mistake reading his map and trying to get his group to the last clue, but I'm voting that the mistake was in fact lack of intelligence instead of deliberate. Though time was running short, the smart group was still able to get all their clues answered and back to Jon on time.
The real problem for the mission was not Paul or Clay or Mark, it was Craig and Nicole getting one of their answers wrong. They were given a chance to correct the answer and Nicole went off to redo a calculation. She returned with less than a minute left and an answer that couldn't possibly be true. Luckily, Clay had been trying to see if there was a pattern to the answers and along with the others they came up with the correct missing digits and earned their money for the mission.
The game really got going that night, with Clay consulting with Mark about how Nicole (or maybe Craig) was probably the mole and then going to talk to Nicole about how it was either Mark or Craig. Clay has clearly been getting very good at sewing the seeds of distrust.
At the start of the next mission Jon asked the players to state who they thought the most trustworthy among them was. Clay's game with Mark may have ended at that point as he stated he trusted Nicole more than he trusted Mark. Clay ended up with two votes as most trustworthy as did Mark (though Nicole voted for Mark apparently only to ensure that no one got a majority of votes).
With loved ones on trains in Buenos Aires, the most trusted person for each player had to learn facts about the player's loved one and answer three out of five questions correctly for the player to see the loved one. Thus, with Clay as Craig's most trusted person, Clay asked Craig 30 questions about Craig's girlfriend, Brendi, and then Clay had to answer three out of five questions correctly about her. If he succeeded, the train doors would open and Craig would see his girlfriend. If Clay failed, the train doors wouldn't open and Brendi would be heading back to the airport without getting to say "hello."
What a great mission! Whether or not the mole got to exercise his or her skills, the mission itself completely toyed with the players' hearts and minds. I just love that sort of thing.
Apparently the mole decided to take the mission off because Craig got to see Brendi, Clay got to see his wife, Nicole got to see her mom, Mark got to see his wife, and Paul (who didn't have answers for tons of the questions) managed to get lucky and see his wife and daughter too. Thank goodness about that last one, as Paul would have made everyone's life miserable if he hadn't gotten to see his family. Plus, while I like the idea of toying with people's emotions when there is an adult to be toyed with, Paul's two-year-old was on the train and she never would have understood why she didn't get to hug her dad if the doors didn't open.
Before the quiz, Nicole complained to the camera and her mother about being an outsider and being isolated from everyone else. She even alleged that she was contemplating quitting and said to the camera that she was going to throw the quiz and try to get "self-executed." Did Nicole forget her attitude at the beginning of the show, you know, when she deliberately and with malice of forethought became public enemy number one? What a ridiculous, ludicrous woman. At that moment I began to hope that maybe, just maybe, she was the mole, because then her lying would be excusable. If she's not the mole, then all the bad things I think about Nicole are probably true.
Nicole's suicide attempt did not succeed (she said to her mom at the execution that she couldn't throw the game, but who knows if that was true). Perhaps, as there was a tie, she just did her quiz more quickly than Clay, who was sent home tonight. I liked Clay, I'll miss him. I would have much rather seen Nicole go home tonight, but I do not get to decide such things.
Questions, questions:
- Well, obviously I have to ask if you think Nicole did try to commit suicide tonight and simply failed, if she backed off her desire to commit suicide, or if she's the mole and just was saying the suicide thing in order to throw us. So, thoughts?
- Who are you voting as the mole this week? I still like my guy Mark. You know I do, and now you're starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I'm right.
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
It's a shame you can't appreciate Nicole's sense of humor. She's by the far the reason to tune into this show, and i she WANTED to self execute, she could have EASILY (two of the questions were freebies for her, and last week she said in a confessional she is taking the quiz as fast a possible in case of a tie... she's NOT stupid. If she wanted out,she'd be out). Here's to hoping Nicole wins,and I still think Craig is the mole.
Craig is the mole. There was no pattern in the numbers. 89 and 144 does equal 233, but, the pattern ends there. Craig first said 232 and let Clay offer 233. Craig let Clay think he's a math genius when in fact he couldn't do simple subtraction (remember, Clay's funky math figured 1947-1492 =439) As the time ran out Paul jumped in and insisted 233. Craig was clever enough to let the others think they were in control. I suspect that any number Craig entered would have been "correct". Craig is the mole!
Did anyone else wish Nicole's mom was on the show instead of Nicole? I almost fell off the couch when her mom called Nicole "Omorosa". LOL!
I had wondered if the contestants really would know how much The Mole gets paid for being The Mole. Paul's comment to his wife about how The Mole doesn't get as much money made me wonder... and made me feel sorry for The Mole (what DOES the Mole get out of this, anyway?)
Also, was there any significance to hanging on Nicole's room number (23) before she told her mother about self-executing? I couldn't think of any, but they used to stick clues in the show...
I cannot stand Nicole. She railed against the men for second-guessing her in a snippet before the final number was entered and she was wrong again - so the men were right to ignore her answer in the first place. Plus that comment she made to Clay along the lines of "Since you're a brother - I trust you" basically saying something about the other white guys? What the heck?
I wonder if Nicole is really as sexist and racist as she's acting, or if that's all part of the game. I am so done with her woman-among-men bit (like there aren't zillions of female OB/gyns), and trusting someone because of skin color is just as bad as not trusting someone because of skin color. Even if she does win, she is not coming off as a person I'd ever want to know, much less trust the care of my body to.
ahh yes, Nicole still on the show. Mole! She was highly involved with this week's missions and attempted to make a big impact during the Go Figure game. Nicole, the woman who throughout the game wouldn't back down to anyone, wanted to quit. It's not Nicole behavior, it's mole behavior.
RE: Brandon, "Also, was there any significance to hanging on Nicole's room number (23) before she told her mother about self-executing? I couldn't think of any, but they used to stick clues in the show..."
I'm not one of those conspiracy theorists who read into every "clue" - but I did the cliched wikipedia search and was reminded of this (which relates to Nicole's profession): Human sex cells have 23 chromosomes.
I am sorry to see Clay eliminated, since he was one of the few tolerable contestants. At the beginning of the series, I had thought Clay might be the Mole (like when he refused to walk around in his boxer shorts and beg for clothes). However, the reason I was able to conclude that he was NOT The Mole was because I could see that he was taking actual notes in his journal (unlike Nicole, Paul, and Alex), and he wasn't sabotaging the more recent challenges, like 'The Grapes of Cache'.
I have been saying for the past few weeks that Craig is at the top of my list to be The Mole. I could see Nicole or Paul possibly being The Mole as well, but I highly doubt that Mark is The Mole. I know a lot of people are still su****ious of Mark (like Josh said in his recap), but I think Mark has been helping win more money for the pot, instead of trying to sabotage. Mark's journal is filled with excruciating detail, he solves all the math problems in this episode, he solved all the brian teasers in last week's episode (while running for nearly an hour on the treadmill), he correctly guessed what Paul wrote about him in his journal, etc. All I have to say is that if Mark turns out to be The Mole, then he should win an Emmy Award for Best Actor! ;-)
My first instinct is to stick with Craig as The Mole because I think that all the remaining players (maybe even Clay) chose Craig as the answer to all or most of the questions on the latest quiz. I remember Mark saying in the private confessionals that he suspected Craig, but then Mark purposely tried to mislead Clay into thinking it was Nicole. Also, I think that Nicole and Paul know it is Craig, and that's why they can finish taking the quizes so quickly. Of course, I'm not 100% certain that Craig is The Mole, so I would say that Paul is my less likely suspect to be The Mole. :-0
By the way, I'm glad that The Mole did not sabotage the 'Ticket to Ride' challenge because it would have been too cruel (and uncomfortable) if everyone's loved ones were at the dinner except for one person's family.
Craig is definitely the Mole. He always sits in the background and quietly messes the others up. Notice how, even in the end, he was pushing for the wrong number to be entered into the computer. The Train mission wasn't sabotaged because Craig didn't get the chance. He wasn't one of the people who was considered "trust-worthy".
I can't stand Nicole, although I think I understand her a little better now. Notice how Mom immediately blamed the "men" for making her daughter miserable and then tried to convince her to walk away from $300k+! Are you kidding? Maybe Mom is the Mole! No wonder Nicole blames everyone else for her own short-comings--Mom's been teaching her that for years.