Luckily for Bobby, The Mole's gay player, last night's episode was free of physically demanding challenges to leave him coughing, clutching at his hips in pain or limping. Instead players took a luge ride and then had a spa day ... one that eventually sent them all wandering the streets of Chile in their underwear.

The first challenge sends the players down a luge, with one person blindfolded and the other barking orders. While they speed downhill, they pass by signs with pictures of fruit and, based on their teammate's descriptions, the blindfolded member must recall the fruit signs in order. Bobby goes first in the "Fruit of the Luge" challenge with Clay wearing the blindfold. Bobby makes a few mistakes (including describing a picture of an avocado as a pear) that raise Clay's suspicions, but Bobby's worst mistake comes when he breaks one of the rules of the challenge and keeps talking after they've passed the finish line. That gets their effort disqualified, earning no money for the prize pot.

In the extra scenes at the show's website, it is revealed early on that Bobby entered into a coalition with Mark, with each promising to form a side-coalition with another person. We finally see Bobby's coalition with Mark tonight, just in time to see Clay (Mark's side-collation) turn Mark against Bobby.

The next day, the contestants are treated to a spa day. However, after some time enjoying the pool, hot tub, sauna and massage facilities, they find out that their clothes have been snatched away by the producers for "dry cleaning" and aren't ready yet. Since the next treat planned is dinner at a restaurant with a strict dress code, they now have to walk around the city in their underwear and convince people to give them their clothes so that they can be suitably attired by dinnertime.

Bobby teams up with Nicole and the heavy set Craig, who hilariously notes he and the slender Bobby look "like a walking impersonation of the number ten." They find some success but the effort becomes entirely moot when Craig finds the laundromat where their clothes were taken. Arriving at the restaurant with everyone's clothes, they learn that the directions they were given to the restaurant also had a hidden clue to the location of the laundromat, where they could have just picked up their clothes.

Find out who went home and more after the break!

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.

Last night, reality TV whodunit series The Mole made its return with gay restaurant manager Bobby (and "obsessed" Mole fan) in the cast. And despite initial misgivings, the series was just as good as this fan remembered.

The Mole has several people competing in challenges, and the better they do in each challenge the more money there is for the winner to claim at the end. However, one player is secretly a saboteur, trying to minimize how much money is won. The real game is to figure out who is the Mole. It's a wonderful concept, one that's simple to approach but gets compellingly complex the more you think about it.

Bobby does well in the first challenge, which essentially involves grabbing a bag of money (or worthless paper) while bungee jumping over a waterfall. However, it turned out that his bag wasn't filled with money so he failed to put any money in the pot, thanks to the woman who was in charge of the challenge.

That night only some of the competitors are allowed to spend the night in a warm bed and Bobby is one of four players chosen to sleep outside, a hardship he seems to take on without complaint. However, Nicole (an OBGYN) is pretty unhappy at the thought of sleeping out in the cold, creating some drama that gets her voted as the whiniest competitor ... and an exemption from being eliminated. Bobby isn't one of the players shown calling Nicole whiny; as a fan of The Mole I wonder if he remembered that there usually are benefits to being an outcast.

In the second challenge, Bobby is one of six players who have to run around an empty beach searching for items that Robinson Crusoe character Alexander Slekirk might have had with him when he was deserted on an island. Bobby has a hard time with the task, quickly running out of breath and failing to find two of the items.

Now, one strategy in this game is to do your best to act like the Mole. That way, you hopefully trick other players into giving wrong answers on the elimination quiz (the player with the most incorrect answers about the Mole in each elimination is "executed"). Bobby certainly seemed to have that in mind as he went into the game -- in his introductory interview he names his poor physical fitness as an advantage. So was Bobby's poor performance a sign of The Mole's sabotage or strategy-based "bad" gameplay? While scavenging on the beach, Bobby puts his hands at his waist showing how rail thin he is (he could trade clothes with David Tennant), so it's plausible that he's not as fit as his youth suggests.

Next week, we again see Bobby too physically weak to compete in one of the challenges, and he ends up needing a female teammate to help him get around by giving him a wheelbarrow ride.

That prompts resident loudmouth Paul to declare it "disgusting" that a "so-called man let a woman push him around in a wheelbarrow". It should be interesting to see how the show handles that outburst and if Paul faces any trouble for it.

What do you think? Is Bobby pinging your Mole-dar? Is it just too early to tell the difference between sabotage and feigned sabotage? How much of his poor fitness for real and how much do you think is a matter of game play?

Ever since Survivor became a big hit in the summer of 2000, there have been people who have claimed that reality TV is the of civilization... and ever since The Mole debuted in January 2001, there have been a lot of sentences that begin with, "I don't usually watch reality TV but..."

After years of waiting (and two seasons of suffering through a "celebrity edition" where Kathy Griffin's ability to make Corbin Bernsen and Stephen Baldwin's personalities tolerable was severely tested), fans of The Mole have a new series to look forward starting in June. The series, where contestants face challenges while being undermined by a Mole posing as an ally, was known for mixing intellectual and physical challenges with an overall whodunit, as the final goal in the game is to figure out "who is The Mole?".

ABC has been slowly releasing information about the contestants and restaurant manager Bobby is openly gay. In fact, he thinks being gay will give him an advantage in the game:

Being gay, he feels that his "gaydar", the ability to recognize other gay people, will help him read people in the game.

In the "Meet Bobby!" video at show's website Bobby adds that being gay and growing up hiding who he really was has made him a good liar, which will probably play well in the show. He also speaks Spanish, which will be helpful since some of the show will film in Chile. I'm sure being a total cutie will be helpful, too. 

The Mole has its place in gay pop culture as it was many TV viewers' introduction to gay fave news anchor Anderson Cooper, but the news of a gay contestant puts the show's long-awaited return squarely on our RADAR. (Can. Not. Wait.)