Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grade Announcer - STFU!

The BBQ Pit
1

Not sure if this belongs in cafe society, so apologizes in advance if I screwed up.

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader is a primetime game show. Game shows are meant to be played along with at home, especially ones like this (and they typically ask questions that most dopers could answer without missing a beat). Like most primetime shows, they like to build up tension by letting the contestant sweat, and crap like “you’ll find out the answer right after this commercial break.” So why in the hell does the voiceover announcer have to tell us just how far each contestant is going to make it, before they even started playing? Usually, they’ll say it right at the beginning of the show “tonight, our contestant makes it all the way to the 1 million dollar question,” so now we ALL know that this contestant is either going to answer every other question correctly, or get saved with a cheat on every question. First of all, who the hell wants to get spoiled on a show like this, and if they’re going to spoil us, why not edit out all of the tension so that more questions can air in an episode.

Now, I combatted this by muting or fastforwarding until I saw the first question asked (I FF through the drama anyway), but tonight there were two contestants, and right before they second constantant, it was announced as “meet this woman, who makes it all the way to the million dollar question”, just as she comes out. Thank you for ruining another episode, FOX. Why don’t you start announcing “in only 119 minutes, you’ll find out that Jordan Sparks wins this season of American Idol. See how she reacts!” or “tonight on the OC, Marissa dies!”. Oh wait, now that I think about it, they do exactly this with 24, which is why I can’t watch previews anymore either. I think I started a separate pit about that a couple years ago.

2

I watch the show with my nine year old daughter, and that really aggravates both of us. So I record it on the PVR so we can start it and immediately fastforward until we see the contestant being interviewed. Then it’s safe to watch.

I don’t know what moron thought it would be a good idea to announce the results before the start of a bleemin’ game show, but it sucks. I guess someone thinks that people want to tune in more if they know someone’s going to be facing big money. But that’s ridiculous. It’s a game show. You watch it to follow the game.

3

I think we all know by now that Fox is run by morons, but this is a new low even for them.

4

Well, the answer is probably either:

" . . .? Well, you’ve got our management beat, then!"

or

“No, but we believe you probably have the attention span of one!”

5

That…that is your beef with the most irritating game show in history??*

Jeeziz…never mind the fact that a lot of the questions are stupefyingly easy. Never mind the fact that it throws in a few questions which are above a 5th grade level that trip up even some of the best contestants. Never mind the nearly incessant screaming and whooping over the most meaningless chickenshit imaginable. (“If you get this right…” I KNOW, GODDAMMIT!!) Never mind about a dozen out-of-context shots each episode, something that was incredibly tired even when The Simpsons did it.

Even all that doesn’t compare to seemingly every contestant who gets deep being the BIGGEST SPINELESS GUTLESS LIMP-WRISTED SNIVELLING WEAKLING COWARD ON THE PLANET and dropping out at the 500,000 level…needing all of about 5 seconds to reach this decision…and then invariably…in-fucking-variably…asking to see the final question for Orochi knows what reason, and then realizing he/she could’ve gotten stone-cold flush on 5 drinks and a nasty concussion.

Again. Sinvelling weakling. Chicken out at 500,000. Asks to potentially get punched in the face. Gets punched in the face. I’m amazed they don’t have a 15 minute “Youuuu fuuuuucked uuuuuup!” chant. And of course, Foxworthy has to have a full helping of schadenfreude…“You coulda won a million! But you had to be a worthless chickenshit coward HA HA HA HA HA HA HA NYAH NYAH YOU SUCK!”…for which I’m astonished no one’s punched him in the face.

So I ask you, what does it matter that they make the first 45 minutes meaningless? At least 95% of this show is as predictable as the tide as it is, and once it gets to 500,000, you can forget about even the tiniest deviation from the script.

It’s depressing. I remember the questions on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire getting very challenging near the end. I remember many contestants…not one, not two, many…having the courage to go for it. And succeeding. I remember one genius who breezed all the way to the last question, hesitated, used the “call” lifeline…and proclaimed that he didn’t need the help, he just wanted his friend to be the first to know that he was going to win it all. And he did. I could get into this. I could feel for these contestants. I could cheer them on. How the hell did it come to this?

  • I don’t turn this on. Someone else who’s lost all sense of judgment about 30 years ago turns this on. I’m going to ask him to stop.
6

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you here. The show is set up so that it would be kind of stupid to take on the $1 million question. At that point they can have a guaranteed $500,000, which is a lot of friggin’ money and can significantly change a person’s life, or risk it all on a completely unknown variable. Once they see the question they have to answer it and if they’re wrong, they lose everything. It may be easy, but it may be difficult or something they simply don’t know, and why take that chance when you already have $500,000 in the bank?

You’re comparing that to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, where the contestant gets to see every question before deciding whether to answer it or walk. Big difference.

7

I can’t fault the contestants for gaming the system, and taking the sure-thing. After all, it’s set up to actually encourage that behavior. And if it’s so set, well, who’s fault is that? The show itself. Which show sucks and blows.

Scrub this pimple of a show, and the minds of its creators, and begin again.

8

They are not smarter than a fifth grader. Ha!

9

It’s a great show, because it’s the only game show on TV that my 9-year old can play, so we watch it together and try to beat each other to the answer and it’s a hoot.

It’s idiotic to go for the million dollar question. It’s essentially a 50/50 proposition - either lose $475,000 or win $500,000. On a question that could be anything. That music question tonight could have been a question about some more obscure composer, or something right out of left field.

The last guy to try for the million got ‘Astronomy’ as his category. He said he was good at science and astronomy, so he went for it, probably expecting a question about the planets, or the sun, or some other astronomical phenomenon. Instead, he got “What was the first US satellite to orbit the earth?” I’m guessing only space geeks like me would remember that it was Explorer 1.

If someone came to you tomorrow and offered you that exact deal for your house, would you take it? If not, does that make you ‘a ‘sniveling weakling’’? Or just not stupid?

Anyway, the thing that really amazes me about this show is that A) they go out of their way to get people who should be smart - college grads with high GPA’s, often. And B) They’re incredibly freaking stupid anyway. The questions are incredibly easy, for the most part. The other night a woman got, “How many feet are in 9 yards”. First she said that a yard had 5260 feet in it. Then she said no, it’s like 60 feet or something. Then she looked embarassed and said, “I should know this. I’m taking a chemistry class, and this is a chemistry question.” WTF? Anyway, she got it wrong.

Another question a couple of weeks ago that the contestant blew was, "If one angle of a triangle is 70 degrees, and another is 30 degrees, what’s the third angle? She had absolutely no clue. Don’t most people remember that the angles in a triangle add up to 180?

Anyway, it’s a fun family game show. And I like Jeff Foxworthy. He doesn’t mind really tweaking the contestants with their lack of brilliance, yet he does it in a way that somehow isn’t really insulting.

10

Actually, I think the rest of us can tell the difference between Fox and FoxNews. Fox has same damn good shows.

11

And FoxNews has some damned good games. :smiley:

(My daughter just stumbled across this show and I would have to say that the contestants are the most irritating aspect. They generally act as though they were the ones that Leno rejected for his on the street interviews as too dumb for TV. There was a purported college grad on the other night who had to be bailed by the kid on every question and flopped right out on the first question for which he could not get help–questions my developmentally disabled daughter was answering correctly. But, it beats the shows with girls trying to be the next stupor model or Brit twits yelling bleeped obscenities at people who can’t run a kitchen.)

12

I bet a sharp, modern 5th grader would have emailed this rant to the producers, where it might actually do something.

13

Yeah, I was wondering what was the point of telling us that the woman made it to the million dollar question.

Even worse was the guy before. The question was, “What is the capital of the United Kingdom?” Now granted, the nomenclature of the islands containing our cousins over there can be confusing. But even if you’re unsure, wouldn’t you guess London?

Toolbox got it wrong. I think he went for the cop-out where the kid guesses for you. When Foxworthy asked him how he would answer, he said “England.” :confused:

Even sadder was the fifth grader, who guessed “Georgia.” :eek:

The show is heinous, the skill level of the show is all over the place - some of it is mind-numbingly easy, and others are ridiculously hard. It would be great to have a new, exciting quiz show for the entire family, but this is not it. This is one of the shows that makes me get up out of the chair and do something productive.

14

I realize most of the people on there are pretty dumb. (The lady last night was the smartest ever, I think.) But I don’t care what anybody says. The composer of some obscure 18th century string quintet would not generally have been taught in fifth grade. (The million dollar question is supposed to be a fifth grade question.)

15

I’m pretty sure I’ve noted this before, but I’ve found that if you just FF from question to question you can finish watching the show in under 10 minutes.

16

I’d like to see the contestants calmly state the correct answer even before Foxworthy finishes reading the questions, as I can do most of the time. What put me permanently off the show after two viewings, though, was all the mugging from the contestants and the kids (some examples here), all trying hard to be an enthusiastic audience-pleasing part of the show and dragging the whole thing to an even slower crawl. I mean, c’mon, four to five minutes to evaluate one question? Jeopardy! is halfway through the round by then.

17

if I could figure out how to actually email the producers, I’d send this rant that way as well. I guess I’m not smarter than a fifth grader. I am going to make a similar post on the official Fifth Grader FOX site, and hopefully somebody official will see it.

The Four Seasons by Vivaldi is NOT an obscure composition. It’s probably the most famous suite of violin concertos ever composed. I definitely knew about both it and Vivaldi (although all I knew about Vivaldi was his name) when I was in 5th grade. Of course, back in the 80s, music was a required part of our curriculum. I understand it’s one of the first things cut from elementary schools these days.

And I sometimes question why I watch this show. I think a part of it is because 9 out of 10 questions I CAN answer correctly before they finish reading it, and I like fast quizzes. It’s funny how the host kept badgering the contestants last night not to answer too fast, and every time they did, they were correct.

I was commenting to a friend last night about how nobody ever picks Marki, the new girl. And then when she caused the first contestant to lose by saying Georgia was the capital of the UK, I understood why. I don’t think she got either of her questions correct with the second contestant either, not that she needed her.

18

Yes, Vivaldi is well known. But how would you have answered if the question were on some part of music theory kids would know, but you might not? For example, the grade 5 music curriculum teaches you the difference between a Pentatonic scale and a major and minor scale. You learn the different forms of music (e.g. binary, ternary, rondo), you learn what makes up the qualities of the human voice (range, timber, dynamics).

We all remember grade 5 as easy now, because we largely remember the core subjects that we built upon grade after grade, which cemented all the concepts in our brains. But there are a lot of things we learned then and never revisited, which many people have forgotten, and are not at all trivial or obvious. The last $500,000 question required that you know that Explorer 1 was the first satellite the U.S. orbited. I’ll bet if you stopped ten people on the street and asked that question, you’d be lucky to find one or two who know the answer.

Why would you risk a sure 500,000 to double up on a question that you know is going to be selected from the hard ones, when you have no idea what the question will be?

The show should correct that flaw by giving you a guaranteed $200,000 or something once you reach that level, to give you more reasonable odds and to flatten your utility curve out a bit. You’d see far more people going for it.

19

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader is NOT a game intended for smart people. It is intended for normal people, and normal people are not all that smart.
Game show pacing in general is shit these days, with this show no worse than any other. I know your used to 61 questions in less than a half-hour, instead of maybe 10 to 15 in an hour: just get a DVR. :smiley:

20

Well, I didn’t mean to be too bitchy, just playing along with the spirit of the show title and this forum. I would hope your rant would do more good on their forum. Fox.com has an Ask Fox/FAQ page two clicks away from their main page that has a couple of links and entreats you: