That’s IDists, not atheists.
I hate all the pre-game banter, too. I really couldn’t care less what your occupation is, how many children you have, etc. Just get on with the damn game already! That said, I root for the best-looking female or the rare person who hails from my home state of Idaho. Conversely, if one contestant comes across as an insufferable boor I’ll root against him. There was a guy on GSN’s “Russian Roulette” who was such an obnoxious jackass and I was so glad to finally see him fall through the trap door.
On Wheel of Fortune if the contestant lands on one of the prize wedges they get nothing extra if they choose a letter that appears multiple times. It irks me to no end when the contestant knows there are 6 M’s in the puzzle and wastes this letter. I feel the same way when they land on $5000, pick the one Z they know is in the puzzle, but then spin again, land on $300 and choose a letter they know occurs multiple times. DUMBASS!!!
snoooort
It’s funny because it’s true!
My only game show pet peeve is Wheel of Fortune - just, the whole thing. Pat always seems ackward and annoyed, Vanna doesn’t actually do anything anymore, just touches letters and they magically appear. Back in my day, she had to flip those bastards over! The contestants are always morons and yet I still somehow end up feeling bad for them because one particular moron always seems to end up racking up the bucks and guessing all the S’s and T’s and hogging all the air time, and when it finally makes it to the next poor, sweet little old lady, she immediately hits a Bankrupt, and then the next kind of cute guy who I like because he’s been so nice to the sweet little old lady immediately hits a Lose a Turn, and then we’re back to air time-hogging moron #1, who wins the goddamn thing!
And yet, I’ll still sit there and watch it because it’s on after Jeopardy. :smack:
My sister and a couple of friends were in the audience during my taping, and they told me that what happens is people who know the answer for sure kind of wave their voting doodads around so that other people can see. People who don’t have a clue don’t vote. Assuming you haven’t offended them. :smack: 
In terms of contestants being stupid, I gotta say, when you’re on the stage and the camera goes on it’s exactly like Cindy Brady and that red light. The producers (mercifully) edited out some of my babbling, along with the part where I jumped out of the fricking chair and walked away when I was ready to quit - I was scared to death they’d somehow misunderstand me when I said “I’ll take my money and go now, thankyouverymuch!”
I call them IDers because it’s funnier, but that might be a Southern thang. 
But I want a faster-paced game with more questions. That’s why I want to ditch the patter.
I don’t know if anyone else here used to love the show Card Sharks like I did, but the only thing I disliked about it was the patter. Similar to the reasons people here have cited for not liking Millionaire, but even worse.
For those who are unfamiliar with the show, Card Sharks was essentially a high/low game where contestants would try to run through a string of five cards by correctly guessing whether the next card in the series was higher or lower than the previous card. But in order to get a chance to play that, they’d be asked a question by the host.
The questions were all very silly and based on man-on-the-street surveys conducted by the show (or someone the show hired, I guess). For example, you’d see a question like, “We asked 100 housewives if they would be upset if their husband bought a Christmas gift for his secretary. How many housewives said ‘yes’?” The contestant being asked the question would give a number, and the other contestant would then be asked whether he or she thought the correct answer was higher or lower than the first contestant’s guess.
What I hated is that neither contestant was ever allowed to just pick a number and get on with it. Instead, what you’d get is, “Well, I’m a housewife myself. And I think all men are pretty much scum who do nothing but try to get in their secretaries’ pants when they’re at work anyway. I know my husband is scum. And if I found out he bought his secretary a Christmas gift, I’d rip him a new one since he never buys me gifts anymore anyway. So I’m going to say that number is pretty high. I’ll say 89.”
And then the second contestant will say, “Well, I’m a housewife, too, but I’ve actually hired private investigators to keep an eye on my husband’s activities when he’s away from home, and they assure me that his secretary thinks he’s a disgusting pig and won’t have anything to do with him. So if he bought her a gift, it would be out of genuine kindness and not because he thought he was going to get any, and I wouldn’t have any reason to be upset. Most housewives are probably more reasonable people, like me, so I think that number’s gonna be lower.”
I mean, I’m making up the words a bit, but these people really do drone on that long in run-on sentences relating the survey questions to their own lives in an effort to come up with a number. Drove me nuts.
But I loved the card-game aspect. 
But that would mean giving away more money, since the games are designed to give outs to idiots. What you want is a harder game with more contestants, essentially, instead of an easy game with few contestants.
IOW, watch Jeopardy and Cash Cab.
Hey, sometimes those long drawn-out ramblings are very revealing. I recall seeing on the Game Show Network an episode of Card Sharks where the question was, “How many of 100 people polled said they had ever slapped themselves?”
The contestant starts thinking out loud: “Well, I know sometimes when you’ve been drinking you need to wake yourself up before you drive home…” Naturally, watching this from across a span of about three decades of improvement in the field of DWI prosecution, my jaw dropped. The host, other contestant, and studio audience, however, seemed to think it was perfectly rational, and just nodded along with him.
How times have changed.
IDer, sweet as apple cider?
As for wealth meaning love, I suppose you never heard of Reverend Ike, the minister whose theology was that those loved by god should have lots of possessions and money, and that he was way loved by god. Not exactly your standard belief system, but there were a lot of cretins who bought it.
The Jeopardy folks told us that the producers like it when the contestants cleared the board, since the audience gets to see all the questions. We did, and the show was rerun - not that I got a second prize. Money spent in prizes is trivial on these shows for the most part.
Yeah, he was the guy who is said to have thrown money into the air while exclaiming that whatever stayed up was the Lord’s and whatever fell back down was his own.
(I wasn’t sure whether you meant “a god” or “God”, so I left you the indication of the meaning I took from it. Just so you know, it is customary and usual that the word is capitalized when used as a proper noun just as any proper noun would be, which would be the case if you mean some specific deity, such as that worshipped by Christians, Muslims, or Jews. It would also be very decent of you if you would refer to Him as God for Christians, Allah for Muslims, and G-d for Jews. And if you want to be as accomodating as Gaudere and some other thoughtful atheists, you could even capitalize the third person pronouns that refer to Him, as a gesture of respect to those who believe in Him. Not to push it too far, just saying is all.)
Now I’m imagining a guy “making it rain” in a church. Which, you have to admit, would make church more interesting.
This video was sent around work last week. Tonight, I searched YouTube for “Wheel of Fortune Idiot” to find it. It was the #1 result.
Cliff’s notes: AF Academy cadet has trouble solving “E-clusi-e Ni-htclub”. The look on Pat’s face is the best part of the clip.
I miss the old WoF where the contestants had to spend their money on the prizes offered in the studio. “I’ll take the ceramic greyhound for $3700, Pat!” My sister and I always cracked up whenever a ceramic dog showed up among the prizes - seemed to happen at least once a week, and they always bought it, too.
Honest pet peeve: what is wrong with the Jeopardy pens that makes most folk’s names look like they used their feet to write them?
Re. Deal or No Deal. All the filler gets tedious, yes, but at least I can accept that as a necessary part of the show. What I cannot…CANNOT stand is the brazen, craven, cowardly, disgusting, sickening, execrable use of 20/20 retrospect (which, of course, is completely worthless and not worth anyone’s time) at the end of every game, especially since it’s main purpose is to make the contestant AS MISERABLE AS INHUMANLY POSSIBLE.
Application 1: “Okay, you’ve taken the $66,000, the game is over, there’s no turning back. Now, would you like to participate in a purely hypothetical continuation-to-the-bitter-end thing where you get made to look like a complete loser moron if you hypothetically made the wrong decision and win jumping jack squat if you…I mean, “find out if it was a good deal”. Yes. That’s it. Would you like to find out?”
“Oh, I dunn…yes! Yes!”
“Ha ha! As if anyone ever says no. Seriously. All right then, which of the remaining four cases WOULD you have opened?”
“[gives the order]”
“Here we go! Ooh, $1,000. Which would’ve increased the offer to $90,000. Next case…$75, which would’ve given you an offer of $125,000. Oh no, one cent, which would’ve shot the offer all the way to $300,000. And…the $50,000 case, which would’ve resulted in a final offer of $500,000, and of course you should just take it for granted that I’m not pulling all these numbers out of my butt, because I’m the host and I say so. Wow…you could’ve had half a million dollars. Much more than the $66,000 you took. Yessir, much, much more. Way more. You know, I’m not the kind of person to say ‘Ha ha what a loser ha ha ha you threw away $434,000 you threw away $434,000 ha ha you suck’, but I’m certain that you’ll nonetheless be hearing it for the rest of your miserable, worthless life. Thanks for playing!”
Application 2 (Didn’t I start a thread about this?): “Okay, so either your case or the one case you hypothetically would not have picked has the million. Now, we’ve already established that you’re a pathetic coward loser moron for accepting a measly $95,000, but we need to know how much of a pathetic coward loser moron you were. Go ahead…open your case.”
“AUUUUUUUUUGH!!!”
“One million! The million was in your case! You had the million and you threw it away! Of course, this is assuming that you get to claim your case before it comes down to the final two, which of course is never a possibility, and we’ll also conveniently forget that you always get the option of switching, meaning that you really only had a 50/50 shot at the million, and anyone with half a brain would take the last offer instead of making such a crazy gamble, but who cares because all anyone’s going to see is that YOU THREW AWAY $905,000 HA HA HA HA HA…hey, don’t cry, at least you did your best.”
It’s amazing the host hasn’t backhanded anyone? It’s amazing no one’s beaten him to a pulp. :rolleyes:
Re. Press Your Luck: All that “No Whammies! No Whammies! Big Bucks!” is just this show’s equivalent of “Come on seven!” and similar exhortations. It’s not supposed to influence anything, it’s just the regular window dressing. At least it doesn’t hurt the pace of the game.
Re. Millionaire: This wasn’t the greatest show, but at least it had its share of entertaining moments (who could forget Richard Hatch infamous bass-ackwarding or the bulldozers who blew the $100 question). The thing you have to remember was that the discussions, the explanations, the jawing with the host…that was part of the deal. You were there to shoot the breeze with Regis Philbin every bit as much as to answer questions for cash. Smart contestants realized this and made the most of it…self-promotion, testing out jokes, shout-outs to friends, what have you.
Re. Wheel of Fortune: Y’know what, I think the awful truth is that a lot of Americans are simply really, really bad spellers. (I’ve seen this on Scrabble as well, which is why the spell-the-word format didn’t last long.) And I don’t see what would make an Air Force cadet any better than a civilian schlub.
Re. The Amazing Race: The problem is the one-at-a-time elimination format, plain and simple. If it had eliminations in blocks, like a golf tournament, there wouldn’t be any need for wire-to-wire drama. (And I don’t see why the host has to personally greet everyone at each and every checkpoint…get an official in there, for crying out loud.) Even better, it would demand consistentcy…rock bottom plus one ain’t cuttin’ it…and allow a team that stumbles one round to make it up the next (isn’t the big comeback one of the most exciting events in any sport?).
Anytime you have a contest of this scope and magnitude…The whole world!..there’s a chance that someone will fall hopelessly behind and never have a chance. The contest must be designed with that as an acceptable outcome. Anything else kills its legitimacy as a contest, plain and simple.
That’s what always bugged me. Basically, if you haven’t used the Ask the Audience option before about $4,000, just forget it’s there.
I have wondered if you could do this: Say you know for a fact the answer is not C, but you’re not sure about A, B, D. Could you ask the audience “If you have no idea, please vote C.” Has anybody ever done that?
The Running Man Now that’s what you call a game show
Oh, I agree–it’s simply to die for!
I, too, hate the long-winded contestant interviews. Don’t mind a brief bio–“I’m from Alabama, got a wonderful husband, three great kids, and I love to read and sing.” But the *Jeopardy! *“fun facts” segment is too much.
I know that they no longer air, but it was the Pyramid games that had one of my biggest peeves. After the contestant would get stuck on a category in the end game, and fail to win the big money, here he’d come, Mr. (What A) Dick Clark, sailing over with absolute perfect clue! I’m surprised that no one ever told him to shove it right up his American Bandstand.
My Husband and I are convinced that the contestants on “Wheel” must receive a substantial amount of cash for calling their significant other “wonderful!”
Bless you. And amen.