marlaallison

There's nothing wrong with season 2 of The Mole. There's also nothing really right. A large part of reality shows relies on the personality of the host, think Allan Cummings in Traitors. There's nothing wrong with Ari Shapiro but nothing interesting either. A good host keeps us entertained and committed to the characters, think Jeff Probst in Survivor. But Ari Shapiro has a bland and controlled persona and the whole second season feels bland and uninteresting. There's also some heavy editing going on during the challenges and you feel how staged everything is. It's less of a reality adventure and more of a poorly scripted series. Too bad, I quite liked season 1.

This program is so unbelievably bad, the only thing that has kept me watching it is Boston Rob. They better make him a co-host if, miraculously, it gets picked up for a second season. Some people haven't like the Survivor aspects of it but to me, that's the only interesting part and even they are pretty tame and lame. The actual game of Deal or No Deal is not too bad, it's the 45 minutes of blather inbetween that make me feel like I'm wasting my life. And it's another American program of scheming, unpleasant, dishonest, backstabbing people will ill intent that I'm sure no one needs. If I wanted to watch that, I'd watch the news.

It's unbelievable that the producers could ruin this program. It had everything: physical challenges, competitions, beautiful scenery, eliminations, deceit, loads of cash, strong athletes, everything. And yet, ruin it they did. The last episodes were unwatchable for the boredom and can be fast forwarded through the weeping from letters from home, the weeping from zoom chats (do they really need zoom chats at the top of a mountain?) and the repetition of the previous scenesafter the commercials. Honestly, this program became so disappointing after the initial episodes draw you in. It's as if they wanted to incorporate every reality series ever done and failed miserably in the doing.