I came to the same conclusion while staying in a hotel in Venice, Italy.
No whammys!
Hey, from my couch I’m AWESOME at Jeopardy.
But I know that if I were on the show, I’d think “Oh, I know Tonto’s horse!”, buzz in… and then everyone would wait while I stare into space …“Fluffy?”
The other problem with Jeopardy! is getting the timing correct as to when to buzz in.
Ah, yes, the infamous buzzer timer problem.
The British and Russian versions of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ca. 2000 were far superior to the syndicated American one. Not only were they much better paced, the contestants had to go through a live screening process that weeded out the dumbest of the lot. Once in a while, though, I correctly answered a question that someone who grew up in the UK or USSR should have nailed but didn’t.
I can’t speak about the US nighttime edition hosted by Regis Philbin because I’ve seen only short clips from it.
Scout.
Now name Zorro’s horse!
Big Brother, reality tv meets game show. Anyone watch this? These kids are not doing anything but spying on each other and backstabbing each other.
Contestants get paid $1000 a week to share a house with strangers of different backgrounds. Prize money for the winners. What’s a winner I have no idea. Young attractive players also shallow and self centered while looking good in swimwear. Must be comfortable with cameras rolling 24/7. Boring until the couch potatoes start whispering among themselves their prejudices and disgust towards other contestants. Hateful content apparently edited out or downplayed by producers.
I watched a couple shows with friends and they were so invested in it but I thought it a complete waste of time.
A million rubles isn’t all that much, though, is it?
Classic Concentration, hoseted by Alex Trebek, 1987-1991, has the same thing. To play, you select two numbers out of 25 and look for matches. Easy. But the contestant are all “well, my daughter’s birthday is the 20th, so I’ll pick 20.” So it’ a dinette set. “Well, I like that dinette set, in my apartment, to go with my new couch, so I’ll lok for a match or a wild card under number…3.”:
Just say “20, 3”.
No, runaways are fine. But what they should do is quit with the (whatever it is now) $1000 for third and $2000 for second, and award whatever they have on the screen. J! has the cash. And it would make betting useful. When you have 2000 to the others’ 12000 and 25000, you have no incentive to bet anything at all.
…Or the $1000 or $2000, whichever is higher. Because you don’t want someone to go home empty-handed because they made a daring wager.
Thanks to Putin, it was worth a lot more 25–30 years ago than it is today.
How about a celebrity calling the contestants “fools”?
At the time, the joke was that the Russian version should have been called Who Wants to Eat a Meal?
I know this is a long video, but believe me when I say it’s worth watching to the end:
.According to the documentary Game Changers William Shatner was tapped by Mark Goodson to host “Family Feud” until Richard Dawson threatened to minimize his participation during “Match Game” until Dawson was named host of “Feud.”
I think that Family Feud was dumber, but “The Weakest Link” was terrible. The host had the charisma of moldy bread, and the elimination of each contestant by the vote of the others was pathetic. The contestant would leave commenting on how stupid the remaining contestants were.
Two times I knew the answer when the Russian contestant didn’t:
(1) “Who was the first conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the United States?” Despite being given the correct answer (Arturo Toscanini), he didn’t hesitate to choose Glenn Miller. Forgivable perhaps, since he wasn’t an American, but the young man had claimed to know a lot about music, and Glenn Miller was probably the only name he recognized.
(2) An older woman was asked “The 1936 movie Tsirk [The Circus] ends with what famous scene?” She went through the choices one by one, and when she got to the correct one (“With a demonstration on Red Square”) her response [translated here] was “Not bloody likely!” The host was flabbergasted, since there was probably no one from the former Soviet Union who hadn’t seen the movie at least once. (Hell, I had seen it, and I’m from Minnesota!) All he could think of to say was “Have you seen Tsirk?!?” in obvious disbelief. I don’t remember what her final answer was, but she blew her chance to move on to the next question.
To which iteration are you referring: the American, British, or Russian? I’ve seen all three, and the female hosts are virtually indistinguishable from one another.
Shatner’s shining moment on The $20,000 Pyramid. I don’t think he was ever invited back.
