Back in the day of roughly 20 years ago, two of my favorite shows on US TV were The Amazing Race and The Mole. While The Amazing Race has continued to have tremendous success for the past two decades, The Mole was sadly cancelled after only a few seasons. So I was pleasantly surprised to see it pop up on Netflix recently after not knowing ahead of time that it would be returning.
So how did it turn out? Overall I'm happy to say that it had plenty of intrigue and fun challenges. The contestants were hit and miss in terms of entertaining to watch, but that is true of all reality and game shows. There were some nice surprises along the way as well. Of course, nothing is perfect. The identity of The Mole became undeniably clear to me with about 3 episodes to go, and there were too many obviously scripted interviews with the contestants during each episode, particularly with contestants making mole accusations. I would have liked to have seen more natural interaction among the contestants in between challenges instead.
That said, it's hard to complain too much about what we got. Even with its flaws, this is still a far superior reality show compared to much of the trash reality shows that are on modern TV. It's not quite up to The Amazing Race standards, but then again that's not a realistic expectation. It's a quality season one reboot, and I'm hoping for another season with a few adjustments in the right direction to make season two even better.
