The Mole: Is it worth watching?

By Avery Sharpe, November 15 2022—

Netflix has released some pretty awesome content recently, from new hits like The Midnight Club to more seasons of old favourites like Grey’s Anatomy. However, one new Netflix series that hasn’t gotten as much attention is The Mole, a reality TV show in which twelve competitors compete in a series of challenges to earn money for a final prize pot that only one of them will win. The catch? There is someone in their midst working to sabotage these missions, leaving the group with as little money as possible at the end.

This series has many new and entertaining elements that make it worth a watch, the best of which is that even the viewers don’t get to find out who the mole is until the end of the show. Each contestant is then up for debate, which lets anyone watching the show feel as if they are truly a part of the competition as they try to determine who is the likely suspect. This element of interactivity makes the show addicting, as you won’t want to stop watching until you find out if your guesses were correct. 

Fans of shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race will also appreciate this show strictly because of the mind-bending challenges that the contestants must complete in order to earn money for a cumulative prize pot that only one of them will win. With events like prison breaks, mountain climbing and giant games of hide and seek, viewers of this show will be entertained with a wide variety of puzzles that make every episode different. It’s also refreshing to see tasks that are not just physical or mental but a combination of the two, which allows every cast member to participate and contribute. 

The Mole is additionally very good at providing the interpersonal drama that fans of Netflix’s Love is Blind or The Circle will appreciate. As the game goes on the contestants continually get more and more suspicious of each other, creating room for plenty of accusations and calculated social sabotage that influences the course of the show. In a game where you can trust no one, emotions are heightened and even alliances are tentative agreements at best. The betrayals and lies in some of the episodes had my mouth dropping open, and always kept me on the edge of my seat.

However, not everything about a show can be perfect. In this case, The Mole still has some issues in terms of setup. For example, the way contestants are eliminated is through a quiz about who the mole is, and the person with the most wrong answers is sent home. This led to the contestants purposely sabotaging missions to make others think they were the mole and guess wrong on the quiz. Unfortunately, with multiple people trying to sabotage missions even though they weren’t the mole, it made the mole’s efforts to sabotage seem insignificant. It also made it difficult to root for anyone to win the prize at the end, as they all were preventing money from going into the pot and essentially ruining the experience for everyone else. This, combined with limited information about the contestants’ backstories, made it hard to support any one person. 

Despite some of these issues, The Mole is still truly an excellent show. The host, Alex Wagner, is fun and playful, the competitions are interesting, and the deceptive nature of the game makes for an extremely compelling watch. The series will appeal to a wide variety of people, making it a perfect show to watch with friends or family. See who can guess which contestant is the saboteur! If you are in need of a new series to binge-watch that will keep you entertained throughout every episode, I highly suggest you try out The Mole.