Starts January 2nd on Avrotros
10 socially distanced Dutch celebs travel to the Czech Republic to complete tasks for cash, unfortunately one of them cannot be trusted as they’ve been briefed with the task of sabotaging the challenges without detection. The person who wins all the money is the person who best works out Who is The Mole?
But who are this season’s contestants? From left to right:
- Charlotte Nils – Journalist and political reporter
- Renee Fokker – Actress
- Erik de Zwart – Radio DJ and media entrepreneur
- Joshua Nolet – Rapper
- Florentijn Hofman – Artist
- Remco Veldhuis – Comic and cabaret star
- Marije Knevel – Linda.nl editor and host
- Splinter Chabot – Writer, programme maker and political scientist
- Lakshmi Swami Persaud – Artist, songwriter and theatre.
- Rocky Hehakaija – Popular female national footballer
As ever, please don’t spoil until English subs are available, we are primarily a UK based site.
You can jump straight to the relevant episode discussion points from here:
And away we go.
Marije already works for de Mol in some capacity – she edits the website for Linda de Mol’s magazine.
Led to believe Splinter is the designated “Friend of Rik who’s been cast”.
From what I can figure from the Dutch comments from that contestant intro video, the rumours of this season featuring less well known celebs is true, though I don’t know if that was planned or just something that happened that they’ve now decided is a feature not a bug. Highlights of the comments include “Welcome to a new season of Who Is That?” and “Finally we get a season with unknown contestants.”
Queen Nikkie aside, most of the more famous people have been the duds who never do anything interesting in order to preserve their reputations though. And even Nikkie wasn’t really a mainstream name despite her Youtube followers. I’d much rather a season of slightly more obscure celebrities with diverse backgrounds than ten TV stars who don’t know how to entertain.
The ‘cold open’ they’ve previewed looks quite good, not that I can understand a word of what is being said…Merel seems to be a firm favourite of the producers though considering how often she seems to pop up in the seasons following hers!
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EPISODE ONE
Very likable group and a decent set of opening tasks. Good.
But I can’t figure out which male is which.
Erik is the older one with glasses. Joshua is the blonde. Florentijn is the buff one. Splinter is the younger nerdy one who looks like he got lost on the way to the Project Runway auditions.
Apropos of nothing, I learned today that Florentijn’s art includes that terrifying giant rubber duck that went viral a few years back, so clearly he’s my favourite this season.
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Very impressed that the Mole successfully kept 100% of the money out of the pot in the first assignment… I’m inclined to think that that assignment could offer some initial clues as to who the mole is not
I’m also very impressed that keeping the candidates isolated and safe in the pandemic era feels really seamless and natural… for all purposes, this feels like a normal season, which is great.
On a side note, has there been news as to whether the Belgian version was able to do the same? (Sorry if I missed word on that elsewhere)
Yes, we’re getting a new Belgian season, it was filmed early in the pandemic.
Germany is the location – Papa Bear was in Schliersee for the reveal picture.
On that subject, I wouldn’t be surprised if the premiere’s pushed back from the usual second week of March – not just because there’s a higher chance of being able to get everyone in the same room for the reveal and finale events, but because Dutch Big Brother has just returned and is a Vier co-production (with half the housemates being Belgian) and runs till April 9th.
EPISODE TWO
Well, I don’t know if there’s been a change of staff or just the stars aligning but this feels like a WIDM that’s got its mojo back – loved everything about the Metal Gear Ballerinas task, and it feels like they’ve taken a bit of Belgian inspiration for finding a more entertaining twist on pretty standard WIDM tasks – if they did the truck driving one last year, the correct symbols would probably have just been written down on a board somewhere, in 2021 they have to take photos from a fast bumpy truck! Also Florentijn’s extremely bored sounding description made me laugh.
Also not sure Swiss Toni added all that much so from an entertainment perspective it’s basically a non-elim.
I agree about the ballerina task- I guess they figured they already had the laser tag guns from episode 1, so why not get more use out of them…
The tour around the chateau was basically the old “Complicated day, simple question” task mixed with the Vietnamese dinner party from Belgian Mole, which in itself was based on a WIDM task.
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EPISODE THREE
Incredibly, a series where (Remco notwithstanding) the dead wood is going quickly, although I did enjoy Flo winding people up by basically being himself.
Enjoyed the first task, although was expecting it to be more Escape Room-y.
Think the second and third tasks would have been a bit rubbish if they DID give away four exemptions, but as they didn’t I thought the locations and direction were immense.
They’re really getting mileage out of the old Moles too. We had four of them this episode alone.
I think they’re getting over reliant on the old moles, and they never have anything interesting to say or do.. except in this challenge. This is how they could have been used in Renaissance.
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Is there a way to see the results?
Dan’ll post them after the Mole is revealed.
Did results ever get posted last year?
I stopped participating specifically because I went all in on the mole last time (I forget if it was 2020 or Renaissance) and then results never got posted.
Both sets of results were posted within about a week. Have a little patience.
Ah, I found it! I thought it was never posted. I was mistaken!
EPISODE FOUR
Good episode, mostly very good. That said, the first task felt like filler; I was expecting there to be a second half to it, probably relating to the other people repeatedly on the paternoster, possibly referred to in a later task. On the plus side, I think the second task was one of the sweetest and most wholesome that I’ve seen in any version of The Mole (yet with enough bite to the gameplay to make it fit in well in context) and the third task was excellent by virtue of looking exciting and yet being a much more organic test of co-operation than most. Good series!
I’m going to be intrigued to see at the end of the series consensus is whether they’ve been a good Mole or not – I think the pot would suggest the Mole hasn’t been up to much but in reality the challenges this year have felt a lot more generous and not basically impossible and largely don’t have arbitrary “remove money from the pot” scenarios.
I quite enjoyed the Paternoster Lift game, which was very much an old-skool WIDM communication game with clever set-up as theme, mainly because it’s a really easy game to sabotage from every position. Easy enough to just not answer the questions, but also easy enough to not write down answers or, even better, just invent questions which I’m hoping happened. That they got about half the money makes it quite difficult to determine where the issues lay.
I’m really enjoying this series of the Mole. Actually getting the contestants to do proper challenges, good locations, and fun contestants. It feels like a big step up in some way that I can’t put my finger on.
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Colombia was a last-minute backup location and they had to quickly repurpose a bunch of their planned challenges (I’m pretty sure I remember hearing Guatemala, which had a volcano erupt right around the time they would’ve been preparing to film, was the original choice), China wouldn’t have given them a huge amount of freedom with what they wanted to do, and Italy was too focused on the anniversary stuff to be really good on its own merits. So basically this is the first proper season since Georgia, and while I think that season was better, this is holding up remarkably well considering Czechia was probably not their first choice either.
EPISODE FIVE
“This season is great after four episodes, hope this continues!”
*Episode 5*
“OH FOR (insert swear word here)’S SAKE.”
Sounds familiar?
That twist was *so* mishandled, that challenge was so unbelievably broken. Even the first challenge was really crap Pictionary, and like they just wanted to stop them winning money. Get in the sea, Producers.
We love a WIDM mid-season turnaround!
I’m really gutted cause I had high hopes for this season after four episodes. To lose the star of the season mid-season is annoying anyway, but coupled with a stupid twist? No bueno.
Another episode, another wild handing out of advantages. Real sad to see WIDM go down this route for its twists especially in a season filled with so many challenges that look good in isolation but compounded together with advantage on top of advantage on top of advantage, really has kind of killed a lot of the season’s moments.
Not happy, it has to be said, I’ve never loved Dutch-style “bid the pot” tasks, this one leaves a particularly bitter taste leading to the elimination to one of the most entertaining contestants. I did like the challenges in the main, and it looks like next week is going to continue with the escape room puzzle-esque theming which is nice.
Really surprised by Rocky’s bid. She was fine passing up exemptions at the abseiling, and seems to have played in a Nathan Rutjes for-the-team style throughout, now pays €5k for the *chance* of an exemption? She’s gone right up my list.
I’m a bit surprised that three people ended up bidding 5k to force how the teams were split-It would have been interesting if there had been only one high bidder who they would have picked- and being so excited at getting the exemptions they lost another 100 by forgetting to stop the clock?
I sometimes wonder if they keep “nuke the pot” challenges in their back pocket just in case the group does too well and they need to rein in the prize budget. Off the top of my head, I remember it happening in Oregon, Iceland, and now, and they all seem to have happened when the pot hit around 10k before the midpoint of the series.
The first challenge was entertaining but clearly impossible. There’s no way money was going to be added there, or no one was going to be confident in their guesses so they’d only go in the 25 slots.
The train challenge was neat, but broken the more I think about it. There’s no way either team was going to get to the central cab before grabbing the mail bag. So not only was there a catch-up mechanic that functionally negated the advantage, but the money clock was basically a lie because there’s no way it could have been stopped with four digits.
As far as my Mole, I’ve been locked on to Charlotte from episode one. Something about her acting in the very first challenge seemed fake to me, and I’ve been tunnelvisioning onto more and more instances of her trying to swerve people off the right track (like trying to convince Marije to open more panels in the photo game last episode) or just acting that feels really bad (like her convoluted way of arriving at 5000 for the bid for the information in this episode).
I’m really going to miss Joshua and Lakshmi. I did have Lakshmi at the top of my list the week before she was eliminated (goodbye, perfect score), but as a viewer, she played the game in such a way that I was always suspicious of her without ever giving her top billing, great Mole material. Joshua, on the other hand, always felt like he was Molling and sank to the bottom of my list as a result, but dang, I really appreciated his personality. That said, Charlotte always feels like she’s trying hard to Mole, but in a way that never really works. I have a fear that my tunnelvision is going to kill me very quickly. Marije and Renee have both been very low on the list from the start (Marije mostly my 0-pointer), I’ve got a sinking feeling it’s going to turn out to be one of them.
Oregon also had the double the pot challenge at the end.
The whole point of WIDM is that the person with most mistakes during the test has to go home. Imagine if Renee were the Mole, meaning Joshua and Splinter are right. Then my personal opinion is that its so unfair to let someone go home who has been onto the Mole so early in the season – and who seems to make their life difficult (based on the first task, grouping with Charlotte etc.). Or the fact that candidates are the ones losing money now rather than the Mole… To make it fair, simply do the test, let one group get the exemptions, then if a candidate with red screen has an exemption simply let everyone go through to the next episode. But yeah, my emotions are running high rn. Maybe I’ll better understand things in the final episode.
As much as I liked the previous episode, I would note that this and the last-but-one episode only really had two challenges rather than three and really spread one of them out each time. Not impressed.
With a +0, a -5,000 and a +750, has a Dutch episode ever taken away more than EUR 4,250 from the pot before?
Georgia episode one did but it feels like that was part of the design which then made the games worth more the rest of the season. This epsiode was pretty poor, I like train tasks but even that didn’t save it. There was no money available here. As previously noted the money clock in the last game was kinda pointless since you couldn’t get the post bags until very late in the challenge.
The first challenge was poor and felt deliberately impossible and the middle thing didn’t feel thought through at all. The season was back on form until this point but this was just poor all round. Oh well, hopefully next week is better!
Yes. There’s a previous season with an 8.3k episode loss because of a single challenge.
It went against the simple speech that Rik does, oh y’know EVERY SINGLE WEEK ‘It is time for the test, 20 questions about the identity and actions of the mole…whoever has the most questions wrong has to leave the game…except the mole who never goes home’…EXCEPT THIS WEEK WE’VE CHUCKED IN 3 EXEMPTIONS SUCKERS!
At least the visuals and sound were next level
I sort of enjoyed the first assignment for the pure comedy value, so much so I had to pause the episode at points as I was too busy laughing my head off, I didn’t get why they were sticking guesses in the €25 line though when there was seemingly no penalty for just going for the higher values even if they were completely wrong
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On an entirely different note, it was quite cool reading Weaver’s Week on UKGS and finding out Jan Versteegh is in charge of the Dutch version of Lingo!
Interestingly, I have no clue who the mole is right now.
I’ve been suspecting Renee for awhile.
Charlotte has repeatedly done things that scream Mole to me. Such as checking under the raft AFTER all the tubes are in the bucket, and most notably, GIVING AWAY A JOKER TO SPLINTER. I’ve seen/hosted several amateur live Mole games, and only twice has someone gave away, or attempted to give away, a joker for nothing in return. BOTH TIMES it was The Mole doing it to help a friend/out of guilt.
As someone mentioned, Rocky suddenly bidding $5k is striking to me. When I saw the offer my immediate thought is “great, I hope we don’t get a Mole that knew this was coming up so they could just bank money leading up to this round then take it all away, because that’s so silly.”
Hated the auction twist, loved the way Belgie did it with the countdown (count-up?) that, once it hits the max, starts going back down.
Curious – does anyone think Josh will return next episode? We have yet to have a non-elimination episode this season. I accidentally got spoiled ahead of the episode so knew watching the episode that Josh was going… but I had this weird feeling that I wouldn’t be surprised whatsoever if he gets to return next episode… then again, that might make the $5k loss even worse if it were for nothing, hmmm, idk.
I’ve got a feeling there won’t be a non-elimination episode, mostly on the grounds of COVID and not extending the trip longer than they have to. The anniversary season didn’t have a non-elim either.
I think they’ve confirmed it as the standard 10 episode season.
Looking at the positives, I now have an extra hour of free time on Sundays.
EPISODE SIX
I’m not understanding why they’re giving out so many exemptions again- clearly they wanted this to be a non-elim ep (if the winner of that last task isn’t TM but pretty much knows by now, they could have made just one person be at risk by letting TM see their screen) but right after giving out three exemptions? (I know that was mainly set up to take money out of the pot last week, but still)..
To me it seems silly having non-elimination eps this late in the game, if you’re going to do it at least do it towards the start to give everyone a bit of extra time with these personalities.
This being said, I’m a sucker for get the key to the lock style challenges and prisons are a great setting for this sort of thing – did wonder if Marije being put on her own with a tough task was the producers declaring her The Mole and making the game unwinnable. Similarly I quite enjoyed the The Hunger Games-esque final challenge, even if it went one twist too far.
One twist too far is the perfect description of this season. So many great challenges on paper, in isolation. But all pieced together with as many advantages as they’ve been handing out, just far too much and exhausting.
I’m honestly amazed they didn’t add the black exemption in again.
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EPISODE SEVEN
Guys… I found a way to Google translate the subs. It still needs a lot of fixing, but it does cut like an hour or 2 off my subbing time. So let me know if these subs were different from the regular ones…
I hate word/sentence making assignments, cos they don’t make sense translated. Also, I hate the word ‘afvaller’ cos it’s a word that describes the person to leave or who loses, but it doesn’t have a 1 word translation.
Sentence 1 was probably the only good one.
Sentence 2 has a line that says that Rocky is a red screen and that should be something like ‘gets’ or ‘has’ a red screen.
Sentence 3 says Charlotte is the pot otherwise a screen. Makes no sense.
Sentence 4 starts with but which is gramatically not ok
Sentence 5 has mole-candidate in it, probably not accepted as a word.
If you hadn’t mentioned it I wouldn’t have had a clue you changed anything 🙂 I can’t thank you enough!
What I didn’t quite understand was the rules of the singing challenge, ‘some of you continued to mimic and that was not allowed’ meaning half the correct guesses were excluded
They weren’t allowed to lip sing or hum along or make any noise or sound that would count as saying or mimicing the words and that’s what they did. Probably the mole…
Fhanks as always for your work!
Poor Marije, she was good value.
The first task had all the ingredients of a good WIDM game but did quite a poor job of getting across the scale of the task – we know they were 83 down, sure, but we have so little idea as to *why* they were down so much – were they missing codes? Were there more clothes in the lockers? Did they hoist the wrong clothes? What? It looked like they were doing quite well.
Game two was OK, game three was at least quite funny.
They’ve gone big on editing Charlotte as Mole, which makes me think even more it’s Rocky. Although I’d love for it to be Renee.
I did the maths on the podcast last night (spoilers) – of the 200 items, they needed to raise 130. I think Rik said only ones that should have been raised that weren’t cost them money, so they raised 48/130. It also means the Mole raised 22 of the ones that should have been left down.
Very pleasing to hear that Marieke had to temporarily take Episode 7 down just while they edit ‘that bit’ out but Avrotros were very nice in understanding the English fans love the show and have no issues with the subtitled episodes being uploaded every week for us to enjoy!
If only VIER (Now Play4 seemingly!) were as accommodating…
The episode has now been replaced. Unfortunately, I cannot edit the link into my original comment. You know where to find the video.
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Sorry about the delay. All the more time to contemplate just which of the remaining contestants is The Mole. I think it’s all of them.
https://t.co/9yxV3ogL1Q
Regarding the sentence task: Given some of the words were a bit interesting, I wonder if there’s a possibility that there’s a ‘right answer’ where it’s possible to create five sentences which happen to reveal some of the secrets of the series?
“All the names were there, but you could have had ROCKY IS DE MOL.”
I think it might be the other way round – said this on the podcast, but we only didn’t see one of the five names. Rik stressed they didn’t have to be factually correct, which I interpreted as it was impossible to make one of them factually correct – (x) is de mol.
EPISODE EIGHT
BUGGER.
Yes.
One thing is for sure- unless they can win a ton of money next ep this will be the lowest final pot ever (€10,150 from 2019 is the current low)…
Poor Splinter 🙁
For someone who isn’t the Mole, Charlotte’s done a great job of taking money out of the pot.
I want Rocky and her no shits given attitude to win and Renee revealed as The Mole.
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Fun fact – I suspected 3 people at the start of the episode, and of course all three survived.
Ep 9 up
https://youtu.be/sFeTUvZQ9rs
WELP
I guess I’m glad I didn’t use my Joker last week, but I don’t know how I should guess at this point.
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I’m so torn as to who it is this year. So torn!
Niemand is zeker.
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