PASADENA, Calif. — At first glance — even at second or third glance — ABC's "The Mole" looks like the most complicated of the current genre of unscripted network shows.
Oh, there are games and challenges and so on associated with everything from "Survivor" to "Big Brother" to "Temptation Island," but it's all a bit more involved on "The Mole" — 10 people traveling to different cities in different countries on different continents and participating in various "tests." However, one of the 10 isn't really a contestant, he or she is the Mole, who can, at times, work to sabotage those tests.
The Mole's role is not always to sabotage, however. "The Mole's job is not to be detected, just like any mole would be," said executive producer Scott Stone.
And each episode leads up to a weekly "quiz" in which the contestants have to answer questions about the Mole, and the one who does the worst is "executed" — the show's version of being voted off the island. Through a somewhat complicated formula, the sole survivor (pardon the pun) can win up to a million bucks.
But the show's producers insist that, all the details aside, "The Mole" is a rather simple game.
"You're watching for clues. You're playing along," said Stone. "When you watched 'Murder, She Wrote,' it was all about clues — trying to figure out in advance whodunit. That's what this is. It's a classic whodunit.
"The details of how the quiz works and what the tests are and the scoring are all sort of a sublayer of intrigue that creates a lot of controversy, but it really isn't the basis of the show."
The ratings for last week's premiere were good, if not spectacular. There are already myriad Web sites with myriad postings of people who are making like Jessica Fletcher and pondering the clues. And the producers promise that if you watch every episode of "The Mole" closely enough, you will be able to figure out who it is.
"There are hints in every episode," Stone said. "It's really a thinking man's reality show."
The producers insisted they did not include any red herrings, but they did say that they've read postings on the Web in which people have looked at the first episode almost frame-by-frame and are making much ado about parts of the show that mean nothing.
"People are . . . trying to make a story where there is none quite often, and we're not going to comment, confirm or deny," Stone said. "If they want to believe that, that's certainly fine."
And they said the series' ninth and final episode will be like the final minutes of the movie "The Sixth Sense" — all the clues to the mystery will be revealed.
"The finale reveals who the Mole is, who the winner is, who the last victim is. (It) goes back and explains how the Mole did it," Stone said.
The Mole was chosen from the same applicant pool as the other contestants and is briefed by the show's producers about what to do and how to act. And there's no chance of the Mole himself (or herself) failing the quiz — it's all questions about the Mole, and, presumably, the Mole can answer questions about himself (or herself).
"As you get to the end of the 20th question, you would have gotten 100 percent on the quiz, so, therefore, you couldn't be executed," Stone said.
The producers weeded through nearly 5,000 applicants to find their contestants, looking for people "across the board that viewers would be able to relate to," said executive producer David Stanley. "And we want them to have enough depth that people would get vested and have a rooting interest in them."
Not that they necessarily wanted 10 entirely likable people.
"You always want to have people that viewers will like and not like and play along with," Stanley said.
They were also looking for people who like puzzles and games, and form something they called "The Mole Factor" — something about each contestant that could make the audience believe that each could be the Mole.
"We're feeling kind of good about that, actually," Stone said. "Because even after we revealed that Manuel (Herrera) is the first victim, people are still voting for him on the Web sites that he's the Mole. So somehow the Mole Factor worked for him." "What's really going to happen is in the next episode, I come back. It was all a dream," Herrera joked.
(Um, not really.)
The producers were intentionally vague about how they picked the Mole, but they did say he or she came from the same applicant pool as the other contestants and was not just an out-of-work actor.
"No, we are not trying to cover up the fact that we hired an actor," Stone said. "It is not an actor. We did not go out and cast him like we would an actor."
And the Mole has no financial stake in who wins the contest — he or she is paid separately from the others.
"They're an employee working for us," Stone said.
The producers met with each of the nine "real" contestants and the Mole separately each day — but while they were pretty much just checking up on how the players were doing, they were briefing the Mole on "strategy points for what might be coming up the next day." -->
And the producers are promising that, unlike "Survivor," "Big Brother," "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" and "Temptation Island," there are no unpleasant revelations about their contestants in the offing — their background checks were better than those done by the other show, they insist.
"We don't have any dirty laundry that we need to wash in public," Stone insisted.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com