Wer ist The Mole?

By | May 6, 2020

Just a heads up, the German reboot of The Mole starts tonight on Sat 1 at 7:15pm (UK)/8:15pm (Germany). Hosted by some cowboys and set in Argentina.

We’re not going to give it its own page as this first series is effectively a “best of” Belgian and Dutch Mole challenges by the looks of things, and it’s been made with help from the Belgian production company which should be a sign of quality. But apparently the runtime is two hours an episode which feels a bit unneccesary and gives me horrible flashbacks to the Australian one that was on several times a week. We’ll see.

51 thoughts on “Wer ist The Mole?

    1. Brandon

      I’m really not sure how this is going to be paced. Maybe 3 challenges per episode, but a lot of filler like this year’s Belgian finale. At the other end of the scale, you get the UK and Australian versions that try to cram it all to an hour + adverts, and it feels like you’re missing something.

      Reply
      1. TVs Michael Harmstone

        It’s probably going to be similar to the French version – that was about two hour episodes and had 3-4 challenges and a loooooooooot of filler.

        Reply
  1. David

    At least you didn’t find yourself having to rewatch the Australian season Brig.

    Reply
  2. Dale

    I think it was OK overall, super mad they are using the STUPID finger print scanner at the eliminations and not just typing names in.

    It felt kind of slow at first (could just be because I’ve seen the challenges before). I seems most of the extra run time is coming form confessinals and not extra game play. jury is still out for me. Its different.

    Reply
  3. John R

    How long is Belgian mole in TV broadcast terms? It has always seemed to vary in length on the uploads, 1hr 20 as a peak I think but it has advert breaks which you don’t seem to get in the Netherlands (just super long ad breaks before and after the show)

    I’m still a bit confused about how the UK hasn’t had another crack at it, considering they could go down either a civilian route or a ‘celebrity’ route and the prize money budget would have to be nowhere near as excessive as Channel 5 was back in the day

    A fingerprint scanner does seem about as nonsensical as that utterly stupid touch screen idea they had in the US brief revival season, hope they’re wiping it down with a bit of detergent after each finger has touched it 😉

    Reply
  4. TVs Michael Harmstone

    First episode is in Jujuy, Argentina (which is where the Belgian Argentina season started).

    Challenges:
    Challenge 1 – The Mexico opening challenge of Coffin Escape Rooms. Instead of pairs being worth different amounts chosen by the Mole, they’re all worth €1,500. One pair is still buried further away – the details of which are unlocked by picking the funeral songs.

    Neither Boss nor Hoss know who the Mole is. They have an envelope in their car with the Mole’s name. When they all get to the hotel, they’re in set rooms where they find Mole books. Thankfully they provide pens after what happened in the last Argentina season.

    Challenge 2 – The second Argentina challenge of lassoing, but not on the ranch they’re staying on this time. They get a demonstration from some gauchos, then Boss asks for two people with a good eye for detail. They will get pictures of alpacas with different amounts, for a total of €4,000. Two of the llamas are bankrupt ones – the money is opened in reverse order of winning, and a bankrupt one loses them all money found so far. They have to describe the good llamas to the group over walkie-talkie. The other eight face the llamas to lasso the money.

    The graphics were a bit intrusive on the screen when they did the reveal at the end. They cut off about a third of the screen.

    Challenge 3 – The iconic bridge challenge from the Belgie Argentina premiere. Each of them is hanging at different heights from a bridge over a reservoir. All they have to do to win €5,000 is all release themselves and drop into the water. The night before, Boss & Hoss asked them to rank their fellow candidates from most to least suspicious – the person who is most suspicious is nearest to the water (at 5m), the least suspicious is furthest from the ground (at 12m). The rest are at 1m intervals in order.

    A few stray points:
    * They’re not driving themselves. That’s a big difference from Belgie.
    * The bridge is the same one they hung off in Belgie.
    * Goes without saying that Boss & Hoss aren’t a patch on Papa Bear.
    * My two favourite jobs are circus performer & “professional sportsman” (translation: he plays an obscure sport that involves hitting a golf ball as far as you can).
    * Looks like next week has the iconic paint bomb challenge.

    Reply
    1. TVs Michael Harmstone

      Typed too soon – looks like next week will instead have the Joke on the run challenge, not the paint bomb one (although we do know that’s coming).

      Reply
    2. Brandon

      From the trailer, I thought it was a different bridge, but you’re probably right, it looks similar enough. I wonder what the reason for not driving themselves is, possibly some kind of insurance thing.

      Reply
  5. Holger Mat

    According to a “super secret message” by the Mole on the webiste, the Mole did choose the pairings in the first challenge.

    Reply
    1. TVs Michael Harmstone

      Ah cool – I wasn’t clear in my quick notes I don’t think. In Belgie’s version, the Mole paired people up and they were in incremental amounts rather than all being worth 1,500.

      Reply
  6. Joseph M.

    Someone posted the 1st ep with English subtitles but it got pulled for copyright before I could watch it.

    Reply
  7. TVs Michael Harmstone

    Episode 2. Oof. Boy, am I glad we’re not podcasting this one now.

    Something I forgot to mention last week – I think we had NINE screens shown in the first episode.

    Challenges:

    Challenge #4 – Joke on the Run from Mexico. Yves was chosen last week to be the Joke and look for jokers. The rest must hunt him down and prevent him from grabbing all the comically oversized jokers to earn money for the pot. Yves had to run over a 5km course and find black pieces representing jokers, which nullify wrong answers in the next test. The other eight have three modes of transport – horses, a car and a helicopter which has to return after 20 minutes. Inside the joker boxes are also €500 white pieces. They have an hour to stop him and/or bank their money and beat him to the finish – they can knock him out by grabbing the tag hanging from his belt. He can win up to four jokers (as opposed to twenty in Belgium!) and the team can win up to €2000.

    * No mention I believe as to why he was chosen – at least Joke had to win her way to the chance.
    * The problem is that they rely on GoPros for a majority of the camera footage, so it’s not the best quality.
    * The problem I have is that there’s…less fun with this version. Joke didn’t just have to claim them, she had to brand them before the team branded them. Her course was also 10km if I remember correctly.
    * This is also where Boss & Hoss had their official promo picture taken.
    * It’s SO. SLOW. The post-challenge bickering is like 5-10 minutes and this challenge is nearly half of the episode runtime. We even have time for a post-challenge beer-drinking debrief with Boss & Hoss, who weren’t even there for the challenge except for at the end really.

    Challenge #5 – Finally, something new. They’re taken to a vineyard. Two of the group are separated at a table. Two people must play memory with actors on cards. Three of the others must find bottles of wine in the vineyard – the memory cards chosen will give a hint to the film that they’re looking for. Two of them stay behind for some reason. The matching pairs in memory are pairs of actors in particular films – for example, Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan is “Email für dich”. They have to use the bottles to fill big containers with the correct colour of wine. That frees a key which opens a box, containing a money value, for a maximum of about €5000.

    * This challenge is confusing. I have no idea what the two at the table are doing?
    * We saw them claim one key. Apparently they earned six?
    * Boss & Hoss doubled their winnings for some reason?

    Challenge #6 – The Vietnam Bungee Jump. One person gets to go on the blackboard. Everyone else plays for someone else. Instead of juggling, they have to hang off a bar for as long as possible to earn cash – whoever lasts the shortest makes their partner jump to bank the cash and get letters for the hangman puzzle to spell out a common phrase. Each second they last is worth €10, up to a maximum of about €1000 per round. The jumper has thirty seconds to decide whether to jump. They can’t look at the hangman puzzle and must give the lone person the letters from the other side of the board. If they get it right, they get the opportunity double their winnings from this challenge – if one of the most successful pair jumps.

    * This is a random challenge to do a version of, given the whole point of it in Belgium was to test who would be the best Mole and to reveal the season-long twist in the hangman puzzle.
    * There are a lot of old people in this cast to try and make bungee jump.
    * I’m 99% sure they only let the ninth person be on the board because Jessica nearly died on the horses.
    * Not entirely sure what the point of the puzzle was (except to give someone something to do) if it was all going to come down to whether the last person jumped or not. I suspect they would have got the ninth person to jump to double it.

    Side notes:
    * It doesn’t feel like the Mole has really done well so far. I know Belgie started off quite well for the team, but it always felt like the Mole wasn’t *struggling*. If I’m right, they’re at about 67% so far.
    * Boss & Hoss are still…dross. They’re like Rik, if Rik was even more boring.
    * Yes, it’s still silly to do elimination via fingerprint scanner.
    * They love neon on this version. The test room is decked out in it, as were both elimination locations.
    * PAINT BOMB GAAAAAAAAAAME!

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      I think the biggest problem here out of all of these is that we have no idea how Yves got into that position. Contestants being selected to a certain part of a challenge for no reason is the worst thing about WIDM but it’s something most of the other versions I’ve seen manage to avoid, it’s bad for transparency. If the producers or the Mole get to choose who plays what role in some challenges, all it needs is one bit of voiceover saying so. Maybe there was something like that, and you missed it because of the language barrier, but I doubt it
      It’s especially unfair in a challenge like this where only one player has a chance at pasvragen. This also means we don’t get a repeat of the brilliantly mysterious moment Joke left after the elimination with no explanation after reading what’s in the envelope.

      Reply
      1. TVs Michael Harmstone

        It just feels disjointed. There’s no reason to use both viable second-episode twists right away, especially as I don’t think the paint bomb game works as well with an even number of players left in the game.

        Reply
  8. John R

    Good news, the kind person doing English subs for the German episodes has found somewhere to upload them to (or they’re doing Dutch subs then auto translating those to English)

    https://www.realityworld.org/forum/themole/?topic=69561.0

    (my Google Translate in Chrome auto translates the thread into English, then go to Page 4 for the links, you need to download the episodes and the subtitle files)

    Episode 1 and 2 available!

    Reply
    1. Tom Lancaster

      Thanks for these. Just caught up with the first episode.

      The English subtitles for episode one only have about the first 10 minutes in English (the rest are in Dutch), so run these through a translator first. Otherwise it plays perfectly with VLC and the machine translation is pretty good.

      This series is slow. But maybe it’s because I’ve fallen a bit behind and only just seen the Argentina series of Belgian Mole with much the same challenges and contestant profiles. There isn’t the warmth of Belgian Mole there and having two presenters is odd, but I guess if this was ever revived in the UK we could have Ant and Dec at the helm.

      Strategically, if you knew you were on this show, would you not check all the challenges that have been used in the many international versions? Some of the contestants did seem more clued up than the others about what they’d need for the quiz.

      Anyway, I shall follow the series with interest. It’s not as if UK TV has that much fresh material to offer right now.

      Reply
  9. TVs Michael Harmstone

    SPOILERS:
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    This show is a trainwreck.

    Episode 3:

    Challenge #7 – It's the paint bomb elimination game from Argentina! Last week's red screen person has an hour to crack a code and return to the game with 1,500. Everyone else can help them return, or send them home. Instead of a number plate, they must find a sticker on the outside of the car with a country on it – inside the car are ten tickets for football matches played between different teams. The code they need is on the one ticket with the country that matches the sticker. They get one free fail – if they fail once, the timer doubles in speed. If they fail twice? Weeeeeeeeeell…. Everyone gets a question – the first letter of each of their answers eliminates one country, leaving just the one on the correct ticket.

    * €1,500 is light. Belgium's was €5,000.
    * The Mole *in theory* should want the person to come back, as it shields them more. However, it does bring money into the pot too. €1,500 is probably a necessary evil.

    Challenge #8 – They're split into teams (by production!) and given ninety minutes to do mini-challenges to earn cash and get there via horses. Of course, one of the remaining eight can't do any physical exercise after what happened last week, so someone has to ride for her twice. They bank the cash if they're all back before the end of ninety minutes.

    The first challenge is riding a horse inside a pen full of cows. They have to roll a D12 and use a sponge on a stick to mark the correct number of cows over up to four rounds. Each round won earns €500.

    The second challenge is part of the mini-challenge from the Maria Maria challenge in Mexico – each person gets a card with a famous person on it. They have to ask questions to a gaucho in Spanish to work out who is on their card which they can't see as it's attached to a sweatband on their heads. Each correct guess earns money, not that they tell us how much given how quickly this is bailed on.

    The third challenge is throwing horseshoes round a pole. It's riveting. They have letters on a board and have to work out the word in the category to earn a horseshoe. Each one thrown correctly earns €300. They get one throw per horseshoe, which essentially renders this whole thing pointless.

    * You know, instead of doing a Double Elimination LIKE A NORMAL SHOW, they send someone home before this challenge. ON A QUAD BIKE.
    * Given they're split into three teams, it's…ridiculous to do a 3-3-2 split rather than an equal split and just eliminate two at the end of the episode.
    * The helmet cameras are still stupid.
    * The clock is odd – at one point we see it say "00:75:00", like there's more than 60 minutes in an hour.
    * This show is just…sloppy, honestly.

    Challenge #9 – Boss & Hoss take everyone aside individually during dinner and ask who they trust the least. Boss & Hoss actually acknowledge everyone's existence for once and serenade them like Willy Sommers. Anyone not chosen by a single other person has a meal with Hoss with ALL of the Argentinean barbecue. The others join Boss for a physical session on a rooftop, where they have two hours to burn as many calories as possible. They have to burn more calories than the non-suspicious people eat over the first 90 minutes. If they succeed, they earn €5,000.

    * This challenge is distinctly less fun without Bart ordering everything.
    * I wonder what they would have done if it was unanimous or near-unanimous. That would have made the challenge impossible.
    * It doesn't even have the fun payoff of them being able to ring the other team and tell them to STOP CONSUMING.

    Challenge #10 – Because there's not been enough twists towards the end of episodes, we have the Jeffrey Memorial elimination game from Mexico. The pot has been divided unequally between eight suitcases – €0, €0, €1,070, €3,000, €5,000, €6,000, €8,000 and €10,000. Each person takes a suitcase, the value of the suitcase that the eliminated person has is taken from the pot. If the entire €33,070 boards the bus to Buenos Aires which they're taking right after the elimination, they earn an additional €3,000 for the pot. They have ten minutes to choose their suitcase.

    Privately, Boss & Hoss then offer each person with a non-zero suitcase the chance to buy jokers for €1,000 each from the value of their suitcase.

    * Jokers were €500 each if I remember correctly in the Belgian iteration.
    * If you remember the Belgian version, they've got no chance of keeping all this money, regardless of what happens with the elimination.
    * THEY BOUGHT FIFTEEN JOKERS?!

    Reply
  10. Brandon

    Oh no, not more of production splitting people into teams, that’s so stupidly unfair. At least it’s not on a challenge where any of the players have a chance at pasvragen or exemptions, but it’s still unfair for finding out who the Mole is. Maybe it’s done to prevent one player constantly following their suspect around and winning, but I’m not sure why they would want to stop that. None of the mini tasks in that challenge sound particularly exciting but at least they’re not terrible, just standard Mole minitasks, but the Celebrity Head game from Mexico was made 10 times better by one of the names being Donald Trump.

    I think WIDM has done 2 separate eliminations in an episode before, but that would kill the pace of the episode badly. The Belgian South African season would have had this if Hans hadn’t scored higher than Jessica on his first test, but at least that was part of a challenge.

    We know this was filmed after Belgium filmed in Greece, so why did they do a worse version of the eating challenge? If I was in the Belgian production crew, I would take working on another version of the show as an opportunity to re do old challenges but better, not just different for the sake of it. This version is more winnable though, as the eating contestant isn’t trying to eat as much as possible.

    I see the whole unwinnable challenge thing from WIDM has taken over this show with that last challenge to. This show just sounds like Belgian Mole with some of the things I don’t like about WIDM throw in, and some baffling production decisions on top.

    Reply
    1. TVs Michael Harmstone

      Yeah, basically.

      As a result of the Hans NEL though, they did a double in that episode to compensate. They’ve never let everyone stay the night and then go “oh, by the way, we only need eight of you today, so see ya!” which is basically what happened here.

      If I had to sum up the season after the three episodes, it’d be “Belgian Mole, but utterly perplexing and infuriating”.

      Over/under on a Bertrand-style non-elimination or fireworks next week?

      Reply
  11. John R

    I tried watching the first episode but just couldn’t get into it sadly, it is almost as if the Belgian team tried their best but then the German team got their hands on it and thought ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if we had a FINGERPRINT reader?!?!?!’

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      If this has worked, the rights holders could have used it as an example of how this format can and does work outside of Dutch speaking areas, but instead they’ve ended up with another example of just why it doesn’t. See also Qui EstLa Taupe (or the one episode I bothered to watch.)

      Reply
        1. Brandon

          Chain Gang is probably my favourite of all the standard challenges that turns up in most versions, so I might try to watch all the way to episode 4 to see this. I hope it’s worth it.

          Reply
  12. TVs Michael Harmstone

    Episode 4:

    * Why were both of last week’s eliminees shown in the previously segment appearing to be active players?
    * Did they not have enough time to show a departure for the loser at the end of last week’s episode?

    Challenge #11 – It’s the Hippodrome challenge from Argentina! They can earn up to €7,000 by answering quiz questions about horses – €100 for each correct answer. Each person is assigned a horse based on the speed that they finish their quizzes in – the earlier you finish, the better a horse it’s likely you’ll get. They then watch a horse race and whoever’s horse wins earns an exemption. In the second part of the challenge, they have to work out who had the winner – if that person remains undetected, they win the exemption. Otherwise, the money from the quizzes goes into the pot.

    * Even in Belgian Mole, this…isn’t a brilliantly fun challenge.
    * Interesting that they *had* to complete the quizzes this time, rather than giving them the option of just turning straight around.
    * Mercifully, it’s less than twenty minutes long. I’m taking any positive I can get now.
    * Something not specific to this challenge, but still irritating – we have another Boss & Hoss play-by-play following it that *LITERALLY NO ONE CARES ABOUT*.

    Challenge #12 – It’s the subway challenge from Argentina! Yet again, Boss & Hoss sing. Yet again, it’s ultimately irrelevant. They can choose what they do today by picking an item – either a luggage tag, some headphones, some string or sweatbands. For some reason, the major twist of what the sweatbands mean is revealed before they pick. One person must run a course to beat the metro to a point four stations away. Boss & Hoss will ride the metro and at each stop on the way, two others will have a challenge to complete to be able to board and earn money for the pot – up to €6,000. The earlier along the route they are, the more they can earn.

    At the first stop, two candidates must put a series of suitcases in order of distance from Buenos Aires. At the second stop, two candidates must complete a buzzwire. At the third stop, two candidates must identify the ten songs being played by a keyboard player.

    * Fun fact: The route is exactly the same as the Belgian one, from Venezuela to Parque Patriciós – a route of about 3.4km. For some reason, the voiceover says it’s 2.7km though.
    * The time advantages are essentially wiped out by having to read an entire letter instead of getting the instructions off-screen.
    * The keyboard player is basically just doing the four chords song. It even goes from You’re Beautiful to Where is the Love? to Forever Young.
    * I think my problem with Boss & Hoss (aside from them being terrible alone, never mind together) is that they’re downright antagonistic. The best (and better!) hosts don’t feel separate to the group.
    * Interestingly, they’re listed as “Alec & Sascha” at one point in the voiceover.

    Challenge #13 – The theme park challenge from Mexico is back! The team of seven need to split into four subteams – two “animal spotters”, two “riders”, two “translators” and a runner. The animal spotters must spot animal mascots around the park with letters pinned to their backs. The runner must write these down for the riders, who ride a rollercoaster and have to spell out the letters using on-ride photos. The dictionary readers must work out the word and find which page it’s on in the dictionary, which is the code to the box with money – €3000.

    * I sound like a broken record here, but this is a distinctly less fun version of the Belgian iteration.
    * There was a very obvious bit of Moling in this challenge.

    Challenge #14 – Because this show is ridiculously cheap, they’re back at the theme park. They have to split into a group of four and a group of three. The group of three get to go to a coconut shy. They’re then taken away and seven changes are made to the stall. The other four get to watch them on a monitor and assign values to the changes – €100, €200, €300, €400, €500, €500 and €1,000.

    * FOTB Bindles said something interesting when we discussed it – it’s like Mole AU6 but using BMole as the source material, rather than WIDM.

    Execution – Of course, we can’t have a typical execution, so there’s an offer of €5,000 if the person who won the horse race exemption sells it back.

    This was a better episode, by virtue of it not being complete garbage. I’m so glad I didn’t podcast this season.

    Reply
      1. Brandon

        As long as the contestants aren’t forced to say the name of the hotel again rather than just saying hotel, I’ll be happy. We don’t care if you’re going to the Sheraton, it sounded so awkward, presumably it was product placement.

        Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      I find the elimination twists a bit odd – like the Germans don’t trust the format. You have to have a normal version of something before you can start mixing it up, and the best versions only tend to do their special eliminations where it might surprise and end up a shock.

      I quite liked the horse racing task in the original Belgian Mole, but I’ve quite enjoyed all the tasks where someone in the know has to try and playalong. It’s like The Mole in miniature.

      Reply
      1. TVs Michael Harmstone

        There hasn’t been a single episode so far without an elimination twist of some description:

        Episode 1 had the Joke on the Run ending.
        Episode 2 had the Paint Bomb ending.
        Episode 3 had the suitcase ending.
        Episode 4 had the exemption buyback ending.

        Reply
        1. Steve

          There’s plenty of issues but this is my biggest like trust the format there doesn’t need to be a twist to every single Elimination

          Reply
  13. TVs Michael Harmstone

    So, Episode 5.

    Challenge #15 – Oh God, they’re doing the best challenge of the Belgian Argentina season. Four of the group are on a city sightseeing bus and the other two are in a radio studio. They must communicate three locations to the other group by playing songs over the radio. If they find the right location, they’ll find poster tubes. The first location is the Puente de la Mujer, the second is Recoleta and the last one is Floralis Genérica. The two in the radio station can see the bus’ location on a map. When everyone reunited (after an unknown time limit), the two in the radio station must identify songs played by an accordian player – one per tube found. Each one is worth €750.

    * Yet again, there’s no nuance to this. In the Belgian version, they had to first work out *that* there was a challenge already, *what* the challenge was, and that they they had to enter the taxi to find their instructions. Here, Boss & Hoss just tell them what to do. They even get potential locations on cards. This show sucks.
    * I’m pretty sure this is the same radio station.
    * It’s incredibly short-sighted to *DO THIS ON AN OPEN TOP BUS RATHER THAN A TAXI*. They have to have a bluetooth speaker to hear anything.
    * What is their obsession with GoPros? There’s no point having both a cameraman there and GoPros strapped to their chests so we get shaky crap camerawork occasionally. It looks like they’re trying to do a YouTube video which ends with someone flying into the sky like Superman.
    * Big love to the random guy filming them running to the bridge because of how obvious it is that they’re filming a TV show.
    * If I had to say one positive, they used different locations to Belgium I guess? *shrug*
    * Nice to hear Mein kleiner grüner Kaktus played. It’s not a patch on Die Nervensäge Bommes though.
    * For some reason, everyone – INCLUDING BOSS & HOSS – can give clues. What in the heck?

    Challenge #16a – Before this, we’re treated to far too much (ie more than 0 seconds) of Boss & Hoss talking, then an extended scene of two people getting haircuts, then Boss & Hoss eating empenadas…and I wish I’d made any or all of this up, but I haven’t. The group is forcibly split into two teams – four with Hoss and two with Boss. Boss’ two must identify the ingredients inside five pairs of empenadas on a table and then recreate them to the satisfaction of the chef. For a perfect recreation, they earn €500, for a mediocre one they get €250, if it’s rubbish, they get €0. Any money they make can be swapped for a joker each and a peek at the Mole cam recording of the previously eliminated player where they reveal their suspicions before the previous test.

    Challenge #16b – Hoss’ four are taken to an art studio and one is volunteered to go downstairs and describe paintings to the other three (in a repeat of a Belgian sub-challenge from Argentina). The other three must paint what they say and after the time runs out, the two empenada tasters have to match them to the original paintings hidden in a gallery of thirty for €1,000 a pop.

    * Sadly, no empenada contain marbles, toothpaste or frozen peas.
    * There is absolutely no reason why two pre-determined contestants should get the choice to swap money for jokers or knowledge.
    * This challenge was also notable in the Belgian season for being one of the rare ones where roles were pre-determined (at least in the sub-challenge that wasn’t the gallery one).
    * Surprisingly, they actually enforce the rule that no-one can help the two identifiers this time.

    Challenge #17 – It’s Chain Gang in Boss & Hoss’ horror film warehouse. Everyone is attached to a chain with just enough slack for one person to reach a cage in the middle. Beginning ten minutes after the challenge begins, every five minutes the cage opens for 90 seconds – giving one person the chance to free themselves and head to a nice hotel nearby. If everyone makes it to the hotel before sunrise, they win €5000 for the pot. However – underneath the key is also an exemption for the next test. If anyone takes the exemption, they free themselves but everyone else gets to sleep in Boss & Hoss’ nightmarish underground warehouse for the night and stays attached to the chain.

    * I believe Chain Gang is the most frequently-played challenge on Mole by quite a way.
    * I know I (quite rightly) criticise a lot about this show, but the exemption tokens are so pretty.
    * Why is Boss wearing a holster?
    * I mean, it’s a cool location (although neon *again*), but is there the threat of lions? I think not.
    * For all my disappointment at this season, THIS IS COMEDY GOLD. Absolutely none of the credit goes to the Production team though. It’s entirely the contestants.

    Reply
    1. Brandon

      For a start, the music challenge had one thing slightly improved, the contestants were told they were doing a challenge. In the Belgian version, I think it’s either total dumb luck or off-camera hints that led them to figure out they should get in the taxi. Everything else about it is much worse though. Is it the same hotel as the Belgian one?

      Reply
        1. Brandon

          Looks like the German production cannot get the difficulty of the challenges right at all, they’re either impossible or too easy with nothing in between. How hard can it be?

          Reply
  14. TVs Michael Harmstone

    Episode 6

    * For some reason, the previously includes scenes from the past two episodes, including Boss & Hoss enjoying empenadas.
    * Everyone gets to record a message on a phone. In any other show, I’d hope this’d be relevant, but all bets are off with this show.

    Challenge #18 – It’s the football sub-challenge from Belgium: Argentina! The team have to solve puzzles whilst footballs inflate. If they solve the puzzles before the balls explode (~90 seconds after they begin), they keep the balls to use to score penalties against a professional goalkeeper. To begin with, two have ten minutes in the stands, looking for cards with €500 written on them, with a maximum of €5000 to be found. Two of them solve the puzzles, and then the last one plays for 10% of the cards’ values with each of the penalties. They can then double their takings on a (literal) golden goal – one penalty, one chance.

    * Mercifully, the Belgian version was “you score three, you win the money” as the rule. It all seems mightily convoluted to win any money in the German version.
    * The puzzles all seem to be football-themed. Interesting (not).
    * I’m pretty confident who my Mole is at the moment. This challenge did very little to dissuade me.
    * God, there’s so much time spent on the discussion of whether to gamble.

    Challenge #19 – They get eight multiple choice questions to answer. Two producer-chosen contestants must use tango dancers in the park to spell out the answers to the remaining three in the tower nearby. The eight letters spell out a word worth €3000.

    In addition, each of the dancers has been given a key, and will swap it with anyone that they partner with during their dances. One dancer is brought up by Hoss – they need to keep an eye on where her key ends up to unlock a box containing more money. (The second part is based on the Belgium: Mexico dancer sub-challenge from Episode 3)

    * Why are there so many similar challenges? Yes, this is a new one, but we’ve seen a very similar challenge with the theme park one just two weeks ago.
    * The eight-letter word is nonsense – it’s two at best.

    Challenge #20 – It’s one of the other Mexico sub-challenges from Episode 3! Three of them get fifteen multiple-choice questions to answer, each worth €250. To confirm their answer, the other two drink – if they’re right, they get water or fruit juice. If they’re wrong, they get schnapps. To double the cash, they must not be over the limit by the end of the challenge.

    * Three challenges, three challenges with multiple-choice quizzes. Booooooooooring.
    * All of this takes place in a smoky tango hall. There’s no atmosphere.
    * After the Schnapps challenge, they all get to learn to tango.

    Challenge(-ish) #21 – It’s the “Can you hear me Mole?” challenge from Argentina. Each person gets three minutes to stand behind a two-way mirror and speak directly to the Mole. Everyone is lined up wearing headphones – the Mole is the only one who can hear the person speaking, everyone else hears music or sound effects.

    * This is not Mole talk.
    * I remember in the Belgian season the Mole saying that this was their most nerve-wracking challenge.

    Reply
    1. TVs Michael Harmstone

      Of course, there’s a twist.

      Challenge #22 – Two people receive red screens. They’re taken to a room where they’re sat opposite each other…and that’s how the episode ends.

      Reply
        1. TVs Michael Harmstone

          The question is whether they both *should* have got red screens for me. If they were the bottom two in the quiz, it gives whoever returns a huge advantage.

          Reply
  15. Brandon

    I think one of them might be whoever finished in the fastest time, or it might have been chosen randomly.

    Reply
  16. Holger

    I think after last night’s show it’s fairly easy who the mole is: Yves.

    Colleen saw a red screen last episode and Martin just plays too well to be it but people got eliminated early on who went for him as the mole.

    But what do I know since the last WIDM series? 😀

    Reply
  17. TVs Michael Harmstone

    Episode 7

    * I’m literally only still watching because I know people are enjoying reading my challenge write-ups. This show is a genuine struggle.

    Challenge #22 (cont.) – The two people who got red screens last week are sat opposite each other. Under their chairs is an envelope containing paper and a pen. Boss reads out statements spoken by one of the first five players to go home in a confessional – they have to guess who said it. It’s sudden death – whoever gets a statement wrong that their opponent gets right goes home.

    * Okay, this is complete bullshit. This is a twist for twist’s sake. SEND SOMEONE HOME PROPERLY SHOW.

    Challenge #23 – One person is volunteered (…by Production, again) to listen to songs with their head in a pot of water. They must then pass it to someone else (also volunteered by production) who has to use a megaphone to shout it to the other two who are on paddleboards in a lake, who need to find life rings with the artists’ faces on them. They get €1,000 per correct answer, for a maximum of €8,000.

    * On the one hand, it’s a new challenge – yay! On the other, it’s – yet again – another challenge where Production are assigning the roles and is therefore nonsense.
    * I know I moan about them *a lot*, but when Boss & Hoss are reduced to the role of “hold the walkie talkie” between the two of them, there’s no point having one of them, never mind two.

    Challenge #24 – It’s the secret hotel challenge from Mexico. Everyone checks into a luxury hotel with their own room for the first time. One person has the nightmarish situation of finding Boss & Hoss lurking in their room and watches as the other three have interesting situations. They must decide what they think will happen, with €1,000 per correct guess. The first has a massage, but the masseuse is replaced by a middle-aged man before it begins. The prediction is whether they will leave the room when they realise.

    The second situation is that someone is at the pool with their stuff on a pool lounger – will they confront someone who moved their stuff? The final dilemma is whether the last person will give their number to a woman flirting with him at the pool bar.

    Of course, this is all a big joke, and everyone else got a note telling them to do the opposite of what the guesser would think to earn €1,000.

    Challenge #25 – Production splits the final four into two taxis. Those taxis take them to exactly the same place – a park where two vans are parked. There’s a red button hidden somewhere in Buenos Aires, and they have an hour to find it. They can win €5,000 per team for finding it within the hour, and the fastest team win a joker each and a peek at the Mole cam of the last loser. In the vans, they have a camera feed showing the button, a camera feed showing the other team, a mobile phone & a laptop. However, they can’t leave their trucks, so they have to convince someone over the phone to push it on their behalf.

    * I’m 99% sure that the driver of one of the taxis also drove the Belgian Argentina Musical Mystery Taxi.
    * I shit you not, Boss & Hoss are in the park playing chess while the contestants have to read their own (VERY LENGTHY!) instructions out. It takes them the best part of two minutes to read the instructions, which is a problem when they only have an hour.
    * This should be an entertaining challenge. However, it is not.
    * Of course, there’s a twist. Only one of the winning pair gets the joker, only one of the winning pair gets the peek at the Mole cam.

    Challenge #25 – Of course, there’s…ANOTHER twist. Everyone is called into a mirrored room with the vastly overstaffed Boss & Hoss and privately shown their screen. The person with a red screen has to hide their status from everyone else. If they succeed, they are safe and someone else goes home. If not, they go home and the group wins €5,000. However, as they debate it, the pot – currently at €52,770 – is counting down at €10 per second.

    General thoughts

    * You genuinely could have this version without Boss & Hoss given how little presenting they do. We actually see more of them arsing around in this episode than we do of the person who goes home.
    * This is an incredibly long episode. It’s 1h47 without ads.
    * The countdown elimination is pointless, because they’ve built up the pot so much that it’d take 88 minutes to empty. It’s a twist for twist’s sake, and this show is stupid.

    Reply
  18. Holger

    Why do comments bite in the back? I’m quite mad that Colleen intentionally saw a red screen on the Final 5 test to distract people, especially if it’s been said that the Mole doesn’t get a red screen.

    Furthermore, I think she was an incredibly bad Mole, first and foremost by the fact that she was voted least trustworthy on Day 2 of the game.

    And if I’m that nad, I don’t know how much Michael is. 😀

    Reply
  19. John R

    Episode 8 in English is now available! (yay?!)

    What is annoying is the episodes are so bloody long they exceed the Mega free download limit so you either have to wait several hours to resume the download or manipulate via several VPN connections

    It is quite incredible how the kind subtitlers even managed to get to the end!

    Reply
    1. John R

      For a show knocking on 2 hours each week The Mole was unveiled, explained their sabotages and hidden clues and then the winner was announced…ALL IN JUST 10 MNUTES! (It was also greatly amusing how the winner reveal was about 100 times more dramatic than the actual Mole unveiling)

      “You could tell I was the Mole because I went fourth at one of the eliminations and there are 4 letters in the word Mole” erm…

      Reply
  20. Tom Lancaster

    Here is the direct link to the episodes and subtitles (courtesy of Brtdm).

    https://brtdm-3.stackstorage.com/s/tBXoaPE2pPfq9Ey?dir=%2FOndertitels+en+afleveringen+los&node-id=4421

    Apparently someone has then been taken these, putting them on Mega with the subtitles and trying to take all the credit for having done the work.

    The part revealing the sabotage seemed a bit rushed, but there again there’s probably the same amount of content as on the reunion shows once the filler is taken into account. I wonder if they just couldn’t do a reunion show due to Covid-19?

    Lots of twists, but it also seemed that the contestants who did well had worked out the challenges from the international versions, so perhaps this was inevitable.

    Reply

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