- Ten contestants meet each other for the first time and are told that they have to complete several challenges to win money for their prize kitty, but one of them is the Mole, who is trying to secretly sabotage their money-making efforts. They have to perform a skydive, face having some of their luggage items repacked into backpacks, with some of them trying to predict an item that would be left out, and have to locate a cell where one of them is being held hostage. All ten contestants then have what they have learned about the Mole put to the test in an elimination quiz, in which the person with the lowest score is eliminated.—Allister Coots
- Host Grant Bowler began the episode on the night of Day 18 at Port Arthur, by saying that he is reporting a journey taken by ten Australians, when five men and five women set out for an unknown destination. Many of them would not arrive because most of them would be eliminated. Of the three who would make it to the end, one would walk away with nothing, one would win a great deal of money, and one would be revealed as a traitor.
Back on Day 1, the contestants arrived at Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne. Nine of them were selected from hundreds who applied through a newspaper advertisement, while the other one was hired by the producers as a double agent. As they arrived and met each other, the contestants did not yet know that one of them was a secret saboteur. Over the coming 18 days, they would work together to complete a series of challenges. Every challenge they succeeded in would earn money for the group's kitty. In order to succeed at the challenges, they had to trust each other, but one of them was their enemy. The contestants were Rocky Warren, a 39 year old marketing executive from New South Wales, Linda Cameron, a 28 year old fine foods merchant from Western Australia, Beverley Rilatt-Richardson, a 55 year old homestay interviewer from Queensland, Jan Moody, a 40 year old school services officer from Victoria, James Douloudis, a 37 year old computer programmer from Victoria, Patrick Fogarty, a 48 year old winery manager from Queensland, Alan Mason, a 37 year old environmental officer from Victoria, Abby Coleman, an 18 year old student from South Australia, Josephine Pennicott, a 35 year old aromatherapy consultant from New South Wales, and Ben Taylor, a 27 year old hotel manager from New South Wales.
As they travelled on a coach to their first destination, they started to get to know each other, but their mood changed when Grant delivered a message via the coach's on-board video, telling them that over the next 18 days, they would take part in a series of challenges, with every successful challenge earning money for the group. If all went well, they could earn in excess of A$200,000, but there were two catches. Among the group of ten, one person was a traitor and saboteur, a person whose aim was to disrupt as many of the challenges as possible - that person was the Mole. At the end of every episode, the person who knew the least about the identity of the Mole would be eliminated. Grant then told them to sit back, relax and enjoy the trip, and in a few minutes, they would find out about their first challenge.
The coach took the group to Essendon Airport, where they had their first chance to meet Grant in person. There, he gave them their first challenge - to fly to Tasmania and land before the plane did. To achieve this, the contestants would each perform a tandem parachute jump. If all ten of them jumped, they would win A$10,000 for the kitty. The contestants boarded the plane that would take them to Tasmania. Although some of the contestants were nervous about the idea, especially Josephine and James, all ten of them jumped, winning the money.
After all of the group had jumped, Abby, Ben, Jan, Patrick and Rocky were taken to the hotel, but Alan, Beverley, James, Josephine and Linda were stopped along the way and given the task of repacking the luggage of all ten players into a backpack for each. Any items from the luggage that were kept out of a person's backpack would be lost to them for the rest of their time on the show. After they had packed the backpacks, Grant met the other five contestants at the hotel and set them a challenge of each predicting one item that the packers would keep out of the backpacks. If all five of them were correct in their predictions, they would win A$5,000 for the kitty. After the contestants made their guesses, Grant showed them a video recording of all of the items that were left out of their backpacks and sent home. Each contestant's predictions turned out to be correct, and the money was won, taking the total in the kitty to A$15,000.
After the packers joined the other five contestants at the hotel, Grant asked the group to choose someone who would be woken up very early the next morning. The majority of the group voted for Patrick to be given the early call. Just after 3 AM the next morning, Grant woke Patrick in his hotel room, blindfolded him and took him to a white-walled cell at a location that was a 45 minute drive by car from the hotel. At a more respectable hour, the other members of the group arrived for breakfast and found that only nine were there, and that there were maps on their table. It was the starting point of their next challenge, where the contestants were split into groups of three, all with the task of finding Patrick, who had been taken hostage. One group would travel by car, another group by helicopter, and the third group by boat. Each group would receive a mobile phone that they could use to contact each other or the hostage, and if they found where Patrick was within two hours, they would win A$10,000 for the kitty.
Not long after the teams departed, Grant called Patrick and gave him one final clue - he needed to find a blue envelope that was somewhere in his cell. After a search, Patrick found the envelope under his bed, and opened it up to find a note that told him that each of the three modes of transportation had a key hidden somewhere in it, but only one of the keys would open his cell door. Patrick looked outside his window and could see two radio towers on the other side of the river from his cell, which helped the helicopter to be the first to locate him. The helicopter team dropped a message in a bottle which had the details of the challenge, and soon contacted the car team to guide them to Patrick's cell, but they were unable to contact the boat team until Rocky noticed that Abby appeared to be concealing an extra phone battery. All three teams reached Patrick's cell in time, and they found that the key from the boat was the one that unlocked the cell door. Grant was with the group when they opened the door and seemed to win the money, but he had some bad news for them - on the way to the cell, Ben drove extremely erratically and well in excess of the speed limit, and failed to stop when the police tried to pull him over for his infractions. For these breaches of the road rules, the challenge's prize was lost.
With A$15,000 of the possible A$25,000 offered in the kitty, the ten contestants then faced their first elimination quiz. Each contestant had to answer twenty multiple-choice questions about the Mole, some about where the Mole was during the challenges, while others related to the Mole's identity, such as "In which state does the Mole live?" The final question was the most important - "Who is the Mole?". The contestant who scored the lowest in the quiz would be eliminated. After all of the contestants had completed the quiz, they met each other and Grant again. Grant then explained that he would enter some of the contestants' names into a computer, and if the screen went green after a name was typed in, that person was safe, but if the screen turned red, that person was eliminated and had to leave the group immediately. Grant then typed in the names Alan, Rocky, Josephine, Patrick and Jan, and they were each followed by green screens, but after he typed James' name in, the screen went red and he became the first person to be told by Grant, "James, we have to go."
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of Episode #1.1 (2000) in Brazil?
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