Last week he said, " ... And then there were six ... "

You can probably guess what he said the week before that and the one before that, and what he will say next week.

Coop is nothing if not consistent.

Last week we related some very interesting news about Coop. We said that the host of "The Mole" is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, of jeans fame, and that his mom had recently moved in with him after having yet another set of financial problems.

It turns out that the story, from the highly reliable People magazine, was true but woefully out of date, and that intrepid ABC news correspondent Coop hadn't taken the "The Mole" gig, as we posited, out of a desire to get out of the house.

It leaves unanswered the question, though, of why in fact he did take "The Mole" gig.

In researching Coop's incredible career online, however, we found an interesting fact: That last year a 1969 photograph of Coop taken by Diane Arbus -- the photographer famous for snapping pictures of people with Down syndrome, wrinkly nudists, twins, midgets and grotesque normals -- was put on the auction block at Butterfield's.

It sold for $4,600, and if it was, as we suspect, a shot of the then 18-month-old Coop bare-assed on a bearskin rug, the person got the deal of a lifetime.

But back to less happy subjects. This episode begins with the news that the show's producers tell the group to stay in their rooms that night. We're then informed that Jim and Kathryn ended up in Steve's room, where they were discovered during a "surprise bed check."

Threesome city!

That violation, Coop mumbles to the assembled group the next morning, costs the players $60,000 out of the pot.

This woefully obvious contrivance is not leavened by the news of who exactly the ringleader was.

There's a quote from Kathryn that makes it seems as if she was the instigator, but you can't really tell; we don't hear Steve's or Jim's side of the story. And we don't get to see how the other players reacted -- whether any of them made inquiries into whose bright idea it was to break curfew.

We're sure "Survivor," say, isn't telling us the whole story either, but at least the editors there have an extremely strong ability to create and maintain story arcs, crafting them a beginning, middle and end that makes the show seem fulfilling and gives it a patina of coherence.

"The Mole" you don't trust at all.

We're told that Jim and Steve have had an "alliance" since the beginning of he show. But it's not clear, in "The Mole," what good an alliance does.

And then we get this soundbite from Steve: "I am and will be induced to playing the game below my moral and ethical standards."

Oooh!

But if Steve is the mole and has been fooling Jim the whole time, Jim would probably have been kicked off the show, since his guesses about the mole would have been 100 percent wrong.

The first challenge today is called "Capture the Flag." The players are told to protect a glass vase on a pedestal in an old fort against an invasion of attackers.

Since the attackers are ABC operatives, we know where this is going. The group always gets scorched in these match-ups.

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