Don't Forget the Lyrics!

Anybody see this? My new summertime guilty pleasure, now that National Bingo Night has gone off the air.

(The concept – karaoke, but they take away a few words in the second verse, and the singer has to fill them in. Get them right, win money.)

The entertainment was entirely derived from the first contestant – a bundle of charm & smile & dance moves with a delightfully awful voice.

The flaw in the concept, though, is that you have to exactly nail the lyrics – including any extra “baby’s” thrown in, and you have to decide whether “gotta” is one word or two.

I think she did well to get $350,000. I don’t blame her for walking away.

Although I would have so totally nailed “Satisfaction.” :cool:

I watched it Wednesday night, and enjoyed it. I didn’t watch it last night–had other (non-TV related) priorities.

My biggest complaint with it is the same complaint I have with many new game shows.

Please–don’t use “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” as your model. Skip the lifelines, skip the elaborate “Did she get it right or not?” lose the artificial pressure created by elimination coming after a single mistake, and the each question is worth more and more money, and just focus on challenging the contestants and the viewers, please.

Either “Satisfaction” or “Sympathy for the Devil” are pretty easy for me. I could sing those songs without any prompting and get every word right. I mean, it’s the STONES.

But a previous Eddie Money song would have completely stumped me. I would not have had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that. I didn’t know there were people who actually listened to Eddie Money songs. There’s a lot of luck involved in a game like that. “Classic Rock” is a heck of a wide category; it could give you a song you know as well as your own address, or it could give you, well, Eddie Money.

However, like all new game shows, it’s almost wholly ruined by being too fucking slow. In the case of “Don’t Forget The Lyrics” it’s taken to an extent absurd even by the standards of other new game shows; it took them the entire half hour to answer, by my count, four questions. Consequently, it’ll probably have a short run of success based on the novelty and then die as people realize it’s just too boring.

Shows should take “Jeopardy!” as the model of success. Why do people like Jeopardy!? Because there’s a lot of action, that’s why. The game moves fast. Despite the fact that there’s really nothing unusual about it at all, that it’s just a straight up trivia contest, it’s still popular in large part because you get a lot of bang for your buck; you get to see a question about every 25 seconds or so.

Really? Even “politesse”?

I’ve been listening to Satisfaction for …what, 42 years now…and last night I learned that it was “**fire **my imagination”. I always thought it was “fry”.

The one that gave me pause was the Leann Rimes. Because that same line is repeated twice, once as Baby you would take away everything good in my life, and then later as real in my life. I think that’s why the contestant hesitated too.

I hate this new trend in game shows that try to turn a competition into a soap opera. Contestants are no longer chosen randomly or based on skill - they’re auditioned. It’s not important whether you’re smart - it’s whether you’ve got a good sob story, or if you’re charismatic, or crazy, or sexy hot, whatever. So the show becomes this big character-driven ‘event’ with the game itself being almost an afterthought. The protracted pauses for suspense before revealing answers are incredibly annoying. The constant questions like, “What will you do with the money?” ("I’ll build a big playground for all the world’s children, Bob! ") are a complete waste of time. Parading out the family is always annoying.

But this is why we have the DVR. I like watching these game shows, but only because I DVR them and skip all the filler. That means I can watch a half-hour game show in less than 10 minutes. American Idol and America’s got talent are done in about 25 minutes. No commercials, no annoying touchy-feeling crap about what it all means and how hard the contestants worked and how much they need the money.

If I didn’t have a DVR I wouldn’t watch a single one of those shows. Between the filler on the show itself and the commercials, I don’t know how people can stand to watch them without a DVR.

Ug, the commercials made me want to kill it with fire. Look! He doesn’t know the rest of the words but HE KEEPS ON SINGING IN GIBBERISH!!!111 OMFGLOLERCOPTER

That’s your money shot? Pass.

I’m in total agreement with you about the DVR. I couldn’t watch it if I couldn’t blow through the commercials.

replace “it” with “any television ever” and you’ve got my feelings on the matter.

I missed the show, though. I know lots and lots of lyrics, it might be fun.