IS LANCELOT THE MOLE? - SUMMARY OF ALL HINTS - ENGLISH - DE MOL 2023 - MOL SEASON 23 - DE MOL BELGIE 

So. Lancelot. There's a lot of very good sabotages pointed out about Lance already mentioned between you and windfalls, so I'm just going to throw some spaghetti at the wall. 1. He carries the compass during the first challenge in episode 1 to the very end of the challenge. I don't know if it means anything, but I found it weird (note: a lot of what Lancelot does I find to be a bit odd, so buckle up). 2. I find it intriguing that at the very end of episode 1, you get a closeup of Lancelot's reaction to the light falling in the background. His startled response from his video in episode 2...doesn't quite match up. 3. He points out the expensive table on the train, which really didn't feel necessary as a mole. He also fights hard for the glass vase/flowers, which was also an expensive item. But he's also the one responsible for throwing it and misses spectacularly so yeah. 4. There's a very interesting music cue in episode 2, during the military challenge. Right before the pushups begin, you hear Lonely. Who would be Mr. Lonely this part of the challenge? Lancelot, because he's the only one who wasn't apart of the challenge as of yet. 5. He points out using the peeled potatoes would be better, yes, but even more he says it TO SAMYA'S FACE. She goes home that episode. I cannot tell if this was a genius way to look so obnoxiously obvious that it couldn't be him, or if she filled out the test on him heavily and went home which means he isn't the mole. She was on the train with him too and could really make a good judgement on him at that point. Man oh man am I looking forward to the behind the scenes this season. 6. For the horseshoe challenge, he called out the Bucephalus/Alexander the Great pairing which didn't feel all that necessary as the mole, but it is only $200. Still, is that really information anyone else is going to bring to the table? He called out two separate $1000 horseshoes badly, and gets called out on one of them. It actually is a reasonable sabotage to call out a good $200 pairing to look trustworthy, only to call out two bad pairings that would cost $2000. 7. For the eggs: I laugh at the realization that if Lancelot is the mole, Ruben had like a one way ticket to the finale really. He was paired with him in the very first challenge of the season where Lance was nothing but suspicious and then Lance literally breaks his egg right in front of him! I dunno man. He's sometimes so obvious it feels...too obvious. I said it in my review of episode 3, though; the easiest way to steal Lancelot's egg pre-challenge is for Lancelot to do it himself and blame someone else. Although that playful kind of sabotage does have a bit of a Toos flair to it. 8. Bunker, bunker, bunker. Oh la la, my sister has fully written Lancelot off, just because of this challenge. I have a hard time with it too. Lancelot had the opportunity to go underground, the far better position to be in. Why would you stay above ground with Lieselot, who literally last episode passed up an exemption to earn money, when you could go underground to make sure the lift is uninterrupted? It just didn't make sense to me. You could easily swap with Thomas, who JUST saw his best friend Conny go home, and would probably be chomping at the bit for a pasvragen. Just felt like a huge mistake to stay above ground here. But even if you are stuck above ground, you let Lieselot lead the conversation about the pasvragen. Like she's the one who mentions throwing them on the floor, so why don't you act on the suggestion?? And then you follow up this whole bunker debacle...by choosing the bingo hall???? WHYYYYY???????? 9. The mole diary after did feel very Lancelot-y. Serious, to the point, short sentences. Out of the final 3, he's the one that it matched the most to me (also true regarding episode 6 with the puppet). 10. He did really well with the drone at the airplane strip, which didn't feel all that necessary as a mole, but he could have seen Thomas and Lieselot mess up a lot and felt it was okay to earn money. Even more interesting that Lieselot is right with him, could have seen all his sabotages this challenge, but gets eliminated this episode. 11. The school is so obvious again, and it feels both reasonably sabotaged but again too obvious. Especially when you're about to have the diner challenge, which is stressful, and the $5000 bus challenge after that, which is also stressful. If Lancelot is the mole, kudos to him for going for it this episode. Earning back that lost $5000 from the bunker. 12. We've talked about the last episode already, but I'll say Lancelot messed up quite a bit in the saloon challenge also if he's the mole. Many different ways to approach this challenge. Do hideously bad, then beat out others in the shootout. Do well, then lie badly to be put in the shootout. If you knew you hadn't nailed your first 3 or so for the drink slinging task, like fail the rest. Be the worst! And he really called out Ruben, which felt just unnecessary. I struggle. Welp, at the end of the thoughts and I'm still really unsure. I follow my brain and it's Lancelot, I follow my heart and it's Toos. I follow the money (and ignore certain things that happened in the season) and it's Comfort. Last year's pick really bit me in the behind, so I'm going to go with Lancelot mole, Comfort winner, Toos runner up. Really hoping for a Toos mole though, and will jump around the room like a maniac if it's him. If it's Comfort my jaw will need to be surgically reattached after it falls to the floor. JK, looking forward to the Thomas video tomorrow! Thomas mole, Comfort winner, Toos & Lancelot runner ups. 😂😂😂

OK! Here we go... Some Lancelot mole actions: -In the first assignment in episode 1, Lancelot was the candidate who stood out to me the most as a potential mole (this was before Toos grabbed my attention in the slackline assignment and made me disregard Lancelot, lol). He and Ruben chose to leave Conny and Samya behind at the quote task, then made no effort to communicate with the other team during the snake/spider task. It was kind of obvious to me that Lancelot was the one taking the lead during these tasks, and Ruben was just going along with things. Lancelot also added extra turns to the hourglass tally for no reason other than he felt like doing it and he knew he could get away with it. He and Ruben got to Gilles SO early. If Lancelot is the mole, pairing up with Ruben and leaving Conny and Samya behind was really smart; I imagine that Conny would have had something to say about rounding up the number of turns of the hourglass, and pressing the button before the other team was even in sight. In the second assignment, Lancelot is in the dancing group, which is a good position for the mole, because the dancers have an impact on the slackline group as well, due to the pig. Lancelot is in the group who does 3 dances, and thus has the potential to affect the first 3 candidates on the slackline. He messes up one of the dances, but so does everyone else except for Leïla. -In episode 2, Lancelot was in the “drunk people throwing objects off of a moving train into nets that look like they were built by drunk people” group. Honestly, I don’t know that any moling was necessary here. In the second assignment, Lancelot is in a group with Conny and Ruben. He basically doesn’t have to participate in this assignment, other than running 1 km, and shooting the potato gun. As far as the potatoes are concerned...I’m not terribly impressed with any potato-related sabotage. The producers set the whole thing up in such a way that OF COURSE all of the candidates were going to think that the bucket of peeled potatoes was meant for them to shoot. Minimal sabotage required. Yes, Lancelot suggested using them after he knew they were worth money. But that is almost too obviously moley to be taken seriously. -In episode 3, Lancelot definitely comes across as suspicious in the horseshoe task. With “Jolly Jumping” of course. But also because of the way that he seems to be familiar with all of the names, but then isn’t really helpful. The one moment that stood out to me the most was when Toos and Ruben were arguing about “Witse”/“Witje” and then Lancelot says “OH. WitJE. Pipi Longstocking’s horse.” As if it was suddenly the most obvious solution in the world, as soon as the “s” was changed to a “j”. If it was so obvious, why not tell the group to be on the lookout for a “witje” as soon as they knew that Pipi Longstocking was one of the horseshoes? Maybe then, Toos would have heard Ruben correctly. -In episode 5 (yes, I am skipping episode 4; that might require its own separate comment) Lancelot earns nothing in the grocery store and takes the bonus money out of play. In the film/drone group, he is the only one who gets the wrong film clip. He also goes along with Thomas’s terrible idea and says that all 3 candidates in the other group flew. -In episode 6, Lancelot was in the most important position in the school assignment (even though he didn’t choose it for himself? That is one of the most puzzling things about Lancelot as mole, to me. It comes across like he doesn’t care what group he’s in). There’s really not much I can say about this assignment that hasn’t already been discussed. Students failed the test, no money earned. What I would like to talk about instead is an idea that I had about the candidates’ conversations with the taxi driver. When the taxi driver tells the candidates that he is the mole, most of them have kind of nervous reactions, start laughing, etc. What does Lancelot do? Looks at the driver, and asks, calmly and seriously “what is your name?” HOW MUCH do you want to bet that after the reveal, we will see that video clip again, only this time the driver will say “my name is Lancelot.” ?!?! -For episode 7, I’m not going to go into much detail, since we just discussed all of Lancelot’s moling with Tuesday’s video. There was quite a bit of it, particularly in the first assignment. For the second assignment, with the duels, I think that if Lancelot is the mole, he messed up with the whisky glass task, and then had to kind of adjust his strategy. He was supposed to get one of the top 2 scores, but ended up being the second-worst. I think that he claimed to have a “zero cm” score as a way to try to get everyone to vote for him, so that he could keep Ruben out of the duel. He probably thought that claiming a perfect score was so ridiculous, how could they not vote for him? But unfortunately...Ruben was there. Poor Ruben, lol. So...yeah. At this point, Lancelot is my mole as well. I would be pleasantly surprised if it was Toos. But either of them would be cool. AND technically the three candidates that I called out as suspicious in episode 1 were Toos, Lancelot, and Samya. So there is a 2/3 chance that I spotted the mole in the first episode 😁 (yes, I am pretending that I didn’t just spend a solid 3 weeks 100% convinced that Thomas was the mole. Thomas who? 😂😂😂)

Clap Clap... I'm swapping my mole from Reuben to Lancelot

I think it's Lancelot as well. There's just too many things pointing to him. Now that Ruben is gone, all of those things that went wrong involving the two of them (Ruben's egg smash, the first episode timing mishap, the fact that the two of them were the only ones to get their questions wrong in the diner, etc) now seem to point straight to Lancelot. HOWEVER: I'd kinda love it if Toos was a really good under-the-radar Mole. I'm seriously worried about him. For one thing, character-wise he seems to fit the stereotypical Mole persona better than Lancelot. (The big funny guy or the big strong guy is often the Mole. Lancelot is more of the big awkward brainy guy. Not so much of a Mole type.) For another thing, it's always bothered me that his attitude to "advantages" seems to vary depending on whether or not they'll earn money. The guy who one episode declined an exemption (therefore keeping E3000 out of the pot) in the next episode was willing to cut throats for a single free question (also losing money from the pot). I can't rule out Commy either. She didn't get a single baby picture correct when she got "red-screened". She has the single biggest loss of the group in episode 1. She's the only remaining candidate who was in the "zoo group", which lost a lot of money while the bingo group didn't seem to have much of an opportunity to do very much. And in the only Mole Diary of the season so far, where the Mole talked about not having influence in the bunker challenge, Commy kinda fits that picture as well or better than Lancelot did. I think the thing that's making me think it is Lancelot is that Toos and Comfort just haven't been around enough when stuff has gone wrong. Especially Commy. Toos, on the other hand, was in a lot of places you'd expect the Mole to be. However he hasn't seemed to do much wrong when he's there. In the supermarket task, where Lancelot made such a hash of it and ended up knocking over the E1000 bonus, Toos and Commy were the two who earned money. So yeah, I think Lancelot. But I'm not sold. This season has done a fantastic job of keeping their Mole hidden.

I knew he wasn't.