I loved The Mole.
It was a reality show that did a lot of things right, many of which I could list for hours on end (And that my Elder brother waxes nostalgic about in this old blog post, although the YouTube videos are dead), but there is one that needs to be highlighted: more than any other reality show, it made the viewer a part of the game.
When we watch Survivor, we are watching a social experiment from the outside looking in, judging these people based on a situation we can’t understand. When we watch The Amazing Race, we have the visual sensation of enjoying the sights and excursions but without the same sense of killer fatigue that has done in many racers. And, when we watch American Idol, we can vote as much as we wish but we will never have a deciding voice as part of the tens of millions of votes cast.
But watching The Mole, the viewer is a player in the show’s central game: discovering who, out of a group of 12 strangers, is the one hired by the network to sabotage their efforts to earn money for a group pot is something that the audience gets to enjoy just as its players do. Sure, we aren’t part of the games, and that ol’ “Parts not affecting the outcome were edited out” disclaimer means that we obviously don’t have the whole story, but at the end of the day the viewer is the 13th player in the game.
Perhaps its because my eating habits would keep my from surviving on Survivor and The Amazing Race, and that my voice is not quite good enough for a music competition series, but of all of my various non-options (Go Canada!) The Mole is the one reality show that I would actually want to participate in. And, after being seemingly canceled and seeing its host move on to a far shinier gig, Americans with my mindset have their chance: tomorrow night, June 2nd, The Mole returns to ABC.
And consider me cautiously optimistic.
Cultural Learnings 