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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Back in the bullring, Coop brings Steve out. The fingerprint goes green.
"Congratulations, Steven, you're the winner," Coop says.
There's some big brassy movie music.
Steve doesn't know that Jim's already been bounced, so it's supposed to be dramatic when Kathryn comes walking out into the ring in a long, black coat.
But remember, Steve got here by answering questions about the identity of the mole, so he must have already known who she was in order to win the cash.
If the show wanted to create drama for its viewers, it would have revealed the mole first and then let us bite our fingers over who took home the money. Instead, we got the mole and the winner in one deflated moment.
That's OK, at least we have Coop's scintillating post-win interview with Steve, right?
"How do you feel?" Coop asks him.
"I don't know -- I've never won $510,000," Steve replies.
Drama!
Everyone reunites back in the studio. Now Kathryn, the imp, is the star. Turns out she auditioned for the show just like everyone else and was under a lot of stress the whole time -- she even broke down once!
"I could never be myself," she says. "I had to lie 24 hours a day!"
"You're a lawyer -- aren't you used to it?" Coop says.
That's a line she's never heard before!
There follows a very long and tedious explanation of all the mischievous little things Kathryn did to impede the game. It all looks good in retrospect, but a tape of similar doings could have been made of Steve or Jim -- or even Charlie.
It's clear that Jim, Steve, Charlie and Kate all knew the mole was Kathryn. It turns out that Charlie had Kathryn pegged the very first day of the show.
Then we get a sequence of how Steve had flirted with just about everyone, men and women, to get information from them. There is even a great shot of him stroking Jim's sideburns in a car. (Jim is gay.)
Those undercover cops -- you can't trust them.
There follows the all-time lamest "Mole" sequence, which is saying something. Coop tells us that careful viewers were given clues as to the identity of the mole. At one point, Coop picked up a duffel bag that had Kathryn's name on it. He once used the phrase "pay the price." (Kathryn's last name is Price.) Coop also tells us that the word "mole" has four letters and that Kathryn was the fourth player introduced on the show.
Coop then wraps up a few loose ends.
Kathryn really did faint during the hatchet-throwing sequence.
Jennifer says the best part for her was "just getting on the show."
Jim wouldn't do anything differently.
Kathryn says she still feels bad.
"You were a mole with a heart," Coop says.
"Everything about it was so great," Kathryn says.
Easy for her to say.
(Bill Wyman)
