I was looking at the much-viewed Cafe thread about Ken Jennings when he first appeared on Jeopardy! in 2004- Merv Griffin announces that something “amazing” is going to happen…- and it got me thinking about trivia shows and how great they are. The complicated rules and elements, the money and wagers, the competition, the grandeur of it, even the slick production values and the cool visuals and sound effects, and above all else, the knowledge- this is what gives life meaning.
I kid you not. Capitalism itself is an elaborate ‘game show.’ Knowledge and fun give my life meaning, at least.
Anyways, I got to thinking- as I’m sure studio execs have- about what stakes haven’t been done on trivia shows. There’s that Comedy Central show Distraction, where they blow up or destroy your prizes as you get answers wrong, and distract you as you try to answer other questions- very original.
My only thoughts for higher stakes than that- besides Russian Roulette Jeopardy!- are: a.) a game shot on a casino or Indian reservation in which people bet w/ their own money :D, or b.) Answer the Question or the Gerbil Gets It in This Blender.
How about one with incredibly difficult questions, so difficult they have to search the internet for the answers. Hmm, not a very telegenic show.
Not trivia but a fun game show might be having them build very large versions of board games and then have contestants get in them to play. A different game every show. Say for instance the game of LIFE 100 feet by 100 feet. Then Sorry, Mouse Trap, Shuts & Ladders, CLUE, etc. Well since they’ve gone to all the work to build these large sets, maybe they get to reuse them a few times. And they’d probably have to edit down the game play to fit in a half hour show.
Not that original, at least not the destroying prizes part. MTV had a show several years back in which contestants competed to save several of their prized possessions from destruction.
There was a version of Monopoly about 15 years ago that used the giant board but not with people playing inside it.
A game show called Collage or Jail. Parents start the game with enough money to send their kids to the most expensive ivy league schools. Every time they get an answer wrong, their pot gets lowered a level. The levels go from Ivy League College down to negative numbers-- Bail Your Kid Out of Jail.
The trivia questions would be in subjects like Nutrition (Who invented bread?) and Real Estate (point out Finland on this map.) and Psychology (Why do they paing Green Rooms green?).
If you get, say, a nutrition answer wrong, the host would say, “Bad Parent! You know so llittle about nutrition, you feed you child solid food at 2 weeks. Minus $10,000 for you, dropping you down from lesser known private college to State University. Sorry about that!”
Or if you get a Real Estate question right he could say, “Good Parent! You moved when the school board passed the resolution to teach Intelligent Design instead of evolution in public schools bringing you son up to level Getting a GED. That’s a two level jump from On Parole.”
Think that’ll work?
In this half-hour show, you’re answering trivia questions. Your opponent is a real-life enemy of yours: the slut that your husband left you for, or the boss that fired you, or your neighbor with the evil damn dog.
You each start with a thousand bucks. When you get the right answer on a question, you can either lower your opponent’s money by $100, or administer some painful or humiliating punishment on your enemy: mild electric shock, spraying stinky grease all over your opponent, getting 60 seconds to use makeup however you’d like on their face, assigning them a nickname that the host will call them by for the rest of the show, etc.
Well you know how The Price is Right kinda has you walk on that Yellow Brick Road path thing on the stage for one game? Well there is this gameshow- I couldn’t ever tell you- for youngsters that had them on a studio floor that was pretty much a gameboard painted onto the floor, and they moved around it like game pieces and they answered questions like correctly answering whether a majority of the audience would say yes or no to a poll, and the prize was like a new computer. It was a nice show, chill, not a big studio audience or on a big network or loud or glitzy and stuff.
Ah- I just learned on Wikipedia that a life-size version of Mousetrap did exist in England (where the game was invented, IIRC).
Sounds kinda stupid, but it was for the kids :D. Our version, Fern, will be all grown-up, including a man being flung into a barrel at the end (possibly breaking his neck), causing a steel cage to come down around the loser- but the winner gets a lifetime supply of brie!
Capitalism itself is an elaborate ‘game show.’ Knowledge and fun give my life meaning, at least.