The Mole 5: Episode 4

I finally have a car on campus, which means if I want to make puppy chow because I saw it on Jon & Kate Plus 8, then I can drive to Safeway at 11pm and buy the ingredients to make it. Yeah, this has nothing to do with the episode. Also, today was my first day of classes as a grad student. I don't have anything interesting or relevant to say about that, just felt like sharing. I got a new purse today. A friend thinks I should do a podcast, but apparently she doesn't realize this is what I'd end up talking about.

Mark: I apologize if anyone who knows Mark is reading this, but I cannot stand his character on the show. What a baby. Let me just say that if you are a true fan of this show, if you really know how this game is played, you know that you cannot rely on your journal. You know they will do something with the journals at some point. They always do. Victoria is right. Certain people need their journals to feel secure. He is Patrick exactly. It's kind of ridiculous how this is exactly what happened in season 2. Except Mark didn't get executed yet. Is he going to be Al and stick around way too long to annoy the hell out of me? It really pisses me off that he got that visibly angry about his journal. Also that nobody told him to grow up. This is both on a personal and game level. I'm pissed personally because I hate when people throw childish hissy-fits and I'm annoyed game-wise because any good player would not let that affect them that much. By the way, the puppy chow is delicious. Kate calls it monkey munch. It's chex mix with chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar on top.

Alex: Is he gone yet? He didn't do anything obnoxious this episode, but really, if he had or if anyone else had, I wouldn't have remembered it thanks to Mr. Hissy-fit. I do approve of him and Paul discussing how stupid it is to rely on a journal. He's too team-minded. Or at least Paul-minded, pretty much going along with Paul generally.

Victoria: See guys, VJG means nothing. I'm telling you, with the increased technology capabilities, if there is a hidden clue in the intro, it won't be so blatant. It'll be something that you have to figure out after you see it. When she agreed to give Clay the exemption, I immediately said she is not the Mole. I know I questioned it last week because she did say some questionable things, but the way she was acting this episode and especially how she was edited, I knew she'd probably be leaving. Now, she is the 5th to leave and we apparently the slowest by 5 seconds, so I will hold out on the fact that Australian Mole 4 did execute and bring back that season's Mole. Although I think if they did that it would be a mockery of the show. Please don't do that, producers. It was so obvious on Australian Mole. No, I really think Victoria was just a genuine player who had random red herrings tacked onto her character that made people think she was suspicious. See, even with my earlier insistence that she wasn't the Mole, I started wondering last episode and saw small things in her behavior that were meaningless.

Paul: Paul was less annoying this episode, but once again, what do we know, they all could've been raging lunatics but we would've never known. I find it interesting that he didn't think the giving up the journal thing was exemption-related and Nicole did. I pretty much saw that it wouldn't be exemption-related since there wasn't really an official task announced. I think Paul has a really good grip on this game. I can't say much more.

Nicole: She is not the Mole. I am so sure of this, it's like with Dorothy. A lot of people were telling me that she was the Mole, but I knew there was no way. She was so obviously playing the game. I will say it right now and if I'm wrong I guess I'll have to eat my hat or whatever, but I don't ever wear hats because of my huge head. She is not the Mole. I don't know what the audience consensus is on her, but I like her. It seems they've put her up against Paul, this bully-type character. I'm thinking the viewers will tend to dislike Paul and therefore will like Nicole, or at least not dislike her that much. I don't know though. All I know is a show returning after such a long hiatus will not edit their winner as an ass. Most likely they will make the winner likable, so I am not yet going to predict Nicole to win, but she's feeling like a Dorothy to me right now. Don't quote me on it, but I am thinking a Craig-Nicole-Paul finale with Nicole winning and Craig the Mole. I'm not going to say that for certain quite yet because I can see Clay sneaking in there, but I do want to put it in writing because that's how I feel right now. I was not surprised that Nicole tried to look suspicious during the climb and then at dinner. I'm afraid she'll become too blatant, but apparently not because a lot of people still suspect her.

Clay: Clay is interesting to me because he's very apparently last night's dinner. That sounds horrible. I actually mean he's like the type of character I would see as the Mole of a previous season. This is why I'm keeping him in there. And I was right about his character developing. It is inconsistent with what I would've expected, though, which is even more the reason why I'm keeping him out there. Lately, he's cost the team money by choosing not to do the public humiliation task and he tried to cost the team money by insisting on the exemption. This is interesting because it could easily be explained both ways. He could've insisted on the exemption because he knew he could get the other three to agree with him eventually if he was insistent. On the other hand, he could've insisted on the exemption thinking that Nicole would also insist on it. Knowing Nicole, I wouldn't be surprised if she had refused to give it to him. In fact, I think if the teams were any different, she might have. So this makes me wonder about Clay.

Kristen: She is probably not the Mole because who goes along with a decision so quickly when you have a valid point that could slow down the decision and potentially cause money to be taken out of the pot? Both she and Victoria had very valid points as to why they should get the exemption but they just went along with the group. It is not uncommon for players to be incapable of making a decision on this type of task, so the fact that it went so smoothly makes me pretty aware that those girls are not the Mole. Plus, haven't we established it's probably definitely a guy? The only one who came out even slightly suspicious in the exemption part of the task was Clay. I was surprised Nicole didn't say anything, but at the same time I wasn't. She likes to vary her game randomly to throw people off and if I was playing, I'd be very curious as to why she didn't even try to get that exemption. I'd like to think she thought of the entire scenario as an opportunity to screw with people's minds that was perhaps even more valuable than an exemption. Maybe she confused Victoria and Victoria voted for her. Maybe Alex still thinks it's Nicole and he and Victoria tied for last. I like how I'm talking about everyone except for Kristen in her section.

Craig: Do I even need to? Yet again his himself-ness held him back in a challenge and gave him an excuse to be completely missing for like half the episode. I'm never going to question something like altitude sickness or hypothermia because who would be able to or ever want to fake going in and out of consciousness? I will question small injuries til the sun goes down though. So I bet he tried so hard to get up that hill slowly so their money wouldn't count and what better way to conceal his suspicious behavior than to have his team holding a shitload of gold. Then, I wonder if it was the plan for him to act like he was sick, but then he actually got sick. I'm sure they had medics all over the place so that they wouldn't risk losing their Mole to illness, but I'm sure the producers were concerned when it got pretty serious. Then he got to miss a challenge and therefore the team had to forfeit what money he could've won automatically. And the stuff he missed conveniently was journal-related, which brings us back to the original 11 clue. Oh, and did you all see how his SLIKE shirt shows up so much in the previews for next week? That shirt is really suspicious to me. I feel like it wants to be a clue but I haven't actually found anything concrete. I'm waiting for SILKE to appear somewhere or to find out that his actual last name is spelled differently. Then that would be I lie with my eyes (I's).

Mole suspects: CRAIG, Clay
Not the Mole: Everyone else.. especially Mark