I can't believe how happy having The Mole back on television makes me. I was excited when I heard the show was making a return but watching the show, I find myself grinning like I just unwrapped a season three Wonderfalls DVD set under the Christmas tree. (Note: There is no season three of Wonderfalls, which is why getting it on DVD would make me super, super happy.)

So. Is The Mole's gay competitor Bobby really, really physically weak or is he laying on the Mole act rather thick? If he seemed to fall apart easily last week, he really had a hard time with this week's challenges.

The first challenge had two teams working against each other. Two players, Mark and Kristin had to race up a mountain on a tandem bicycle while the other players were allowed to take a skytram to the summit ... after scoring a goal in a soccer game. If Mark and Kristin win the race they get exempted from elimination, but that'll mean $35,000 won't go into the game's final prize.

Bobby, in the "goal oriented" team, starts off sounding confident, having played soccer as a kid. Everyone gets even more confident when they see that their soccer match will be against a children's team ... and then those kids score fourteen points in a row against them. By this point, in addition to everyone feeling demoralized, Bobby and Paul are physically worn out. Bobby yells about needing water and takes over for Nicole as goalie. Paul, meanwhile, nearly throws up and takes breaks to lie down.

Ali comments about Bobby's performance on the soccer team, saying "He is such a wimp. He needs to man up a little bit if he wants to stay ahead in the game." This brings us our first comment questioning Bobby's manhood and as irritating as it was, I was screaming at the TV about how wrong Ali's statement was. There's no voting off teammates on The Mole so all Bobby has to do if he wants to stay ahead in the game is have a better idea of who is The Mole.

Finally, the "goal oriented" team gets some penalty kicks and Ali scores a goal, setting the team free to find their way to the skytram. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they're on their way, as Ali splits them up by pointing to a shortcut and Liz feels the need to take a break to keep from passing out. In the end, Bobby's "goal oriented" team loses the race and fails to add any money into the prize pot.

The next challenge has the players splitting into teams looking for clay piggy banks in town. Bobby's team (accompanied by Craig and Kristen) does incredibly poorly from the start. Bobby is limping and slowing his team down, prompting Craig to suggest they carry him in the wheelbarrow meant for the piggy banks. When they finally reach town, they visit a pottery shop the other teams had already visited and emptied out. A clerk tries to tell Bobby this — and remember that Bobby said that his mastery of Spanish would be an advantage to him in this game in his introductory video — but he acts like a clueless tourist and responds by introducing himself to the clerk. Neither Craig or Kristen seems to have understood the clerk so the three end up wasting a lot of time fruitlessly searching the shop.

Bobby's team offers to help out the other, more successful teams by taking some of their piggy banks back. While the proposal sounds reasonable, Nicole's team refuses, noting, "I was really concerned the Mole would try to take half of our pigs and accidentally drop them because he got a leg cramp." I'd say Nicole is right — whether he's the Mole or just acting like the Mole to throw everyone off, that kind of mishap would match how Bobby's playing the game.

As promised in last week's previews, Paul can't help but mouth off about Bobby's wheelbarrow ride: "It just boiled my blood that this so-called man has no heart whatsoever and he let a woman push him around in a wheelbarrow to find pigs. That, to me, was like disgusting in my eyes. Disgusting. Disgusting." Hey Paul, could you sum up your feelings for Bobby in a single word?

After the challenges, we see Bobby and Craig in their hotel room, discovering that Alex left his journal behind. Bobby laughs at how foolish it is to lose your journal, an important tool in the game, but finds it empty of insights: "This is really useless. We already know you think it's Nicole. We already know you're a moron."

One of the things I love about The Mole is its paranoid "But do you think that they know that we know and are basing their plans on us knowing they know we know?" nature and Craig brings up the possibility here:

Craig: Maybe he left it in here on purpose, so you'll think he's a moron.

 

Bobby: No, he's really a moron.

Except it turns out that Alex did leave the journal there on purpose, hoping it might set Bobby to wrongly think of him as the Mole (and causing him to do badly in the quiz and get him executed from the game). And your fiendish plan could have worked, Alex, if Bobby thought you were smart enough to be the Mole.

Then again, a smart Mole player also plays the producers ... so was he really hoping that Bobby would think he's the Mole or is he the Mole hoping that the journal would lead Bobby to think he's too stupid to be the Mole? Does Bobby really think Alex is a moron or was he trying to get Craig to see Alex that way? This reality show has me questioning people's motives more than Battlestar Galatica.

It's pretty fascinating to watch Bobby because he's so over-the-top in his physical shortcomings and in whining about them. If he's not the Mole, I wonder if he's trying to be the next Elavia (who walked away in season two with $50,000 after being voted least favorite player) or Dorothy (who played weakly in challenges and eventually won). On the other hand, if he is the Mole and playing a "too obviously sabotaging things to be the Mole" game, he's taking it to such a level its hilariously brilliant. I know he boasted about being in poor shape and how that would help him in the game, but he seems like one sickly 26-year old. (On the other hand, while I expect he's faking and find him funny, my partner finds him annoying ... where do you fall?)

Next week, the players get their clothes stolen, forcing them to walk the streets of Chile in underwear with Mole fingerprints on them ... and somebody tells the slender Bobby, essentially, that he needs to eat a cheeseburger.