ABC Resurrects ‘The Mole’ for Summer 2008

[EDIT: Welcome, more recent visitors. As you’ve noticed, ABC has started airing quick snippets to help preview the return of the Mole. If you seen anything involving a premiere date or any more information, feel free to comment below!]

They just don’t make reality series like The Mole anymore. Some of the more recent shows can be described as an amalgam of various parts: Survivor meets The Apprentice, or The Amazing Race meets Big Brother. It seems as if truly original ideas in the reality competition field are all but gone, which one might think is only further evidenced by ABC’s decision to bring back an old reality show to fill their summer schedule. It seems like it’s just another series coming back because of the Writers’ Strike, a lame attempt like American Gladiators to cash in on an existing property.

But there’s something different about The Mole, both in terms of the nature of its return and the quality of the programming. The show’s first two seasons were fantastic examples of how to do reality television: it was smart, humorous, and featured personalities that we rooted for. It had twists and turns that didn’t feel choreographed, and surprised the contestants as much as it surprised the audience or vice versa. Its return, according to the story being circulated today by Variety, was a labor of love from original producer Scott Stone, whose original shingle has dissolved and who had to fight to regain the lapsed rights to make it happen.

Can you imagine someone fighting for the lapsed rights to any other canceled reality series from this period? Sure, two celebrity editions which followed were not quite appointment television, but the original was beloved and has enjoyed a strong word of mouth credibility in recent years. A lot of this has to do with its host, Anderson Cooper – while he’s since moved onto bigger things at CNN, and thus won’t be returning to the series, his big break was acting as the lovably sarcastic and mysterious guide for this journey.

And it was actually a journey – although the travel was not quite as exotic as the Amazing Race, and the locales often far plushier than Survivor’s jungles, the constant need to be on the lookout for clues was taxing enough for the competitors. It was a game filled with mind games – their belongings were dangled over fires, their sanity was challenged by “Tiny Bubbles,” and all the while they had to figure out which of their brethren were attempting to sabotage their success as The Mole.

My favourite task, and one indicative of the show’s quality, was the epic three-room hotel challenge at the end of the show’s first season. The three competitors were locked in hotel rooms and forced to cooperate (In obscure ways: a stationary bike powers a light in another room, which lights up cues in that room): this is an easy sabotage for the Mole, and demonstrates how some of these challenges are like real world brain teasers that require a lot of logical thought. Unfortunately, the Mole knows all of this ahead of time, and can easily manipulate the game to their ends.

Stone, who remains responsible for the series, notes that changes are in order – the game will be moderately simplified in order to allow for more viewer interaction, and obviously a new host will need to be found (But one who is in the “Anderson Cooper vein”). On the host front, this is both unsurprising and obviously a concern. However, say what you will about the rather limp Celebrity editions, but they remained entertaining and Ahmad Rashad was not the worst host of all time.

I’d say that changes to the game are more concerning, but I see where they’re coming from – while I loved the game as it was, you never really knew where everyone sat, and the end of episode quiz was filled with questions to which we really couldn’t find the answer without some serious TiVOage. I’d actually be concerned, though, that making the game too easy could actually be a detriment – if the internet already ruined the second season due to figuring it out extremely early, then imagine what can be done in the age of PVRs.

But what I like is that we are no longer imagining so much – I think that we’ve all harboured a spot in our hearts for the series, and upon reconsidering the series I don’t believe that we are romanticizing The Mole’s success. You can pick up the first season of the series, or the Celebrity Mole: Hawaii edition, on DVD if you were amongst the many who didn’t see this the first time around. For fans, however, it’s not a waiting game to see whether or not the show can recapture its past glory.

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t offer many of the shows best moments: as a result, I’ll settle for the opening to the Celebrity Mole: Hawaii.