I concur. Bob Saget clearly has never had a job on TV he hasn’t despised in all aspects besides the paycheck.
I really think the format of the show is creative and good, and could be a really good gameshow.
But, like all other recent gameshows, it seems to want to be based on suspense, and that just makes for a boring gameshow. “The question was ‘what’s 2+2?’ and you selected 4. Let’s see the right answer… you got it!”
It’s so blatantly artificial, they just sit there.
More importantly, though, the questions are imbecilic. It’s multiple choice - you don’t even have to come up with the answer. The questions themselves are something that a 10 year old should know. They only have 3 possible answers, and of those three, one or two is often obviously not it.
And yet, with these pathetically simplistic questions, they go so painfully slow, as the contestant slowly reasons out how many sides a triangle has, making it as painfully boring as possible.
One reason, I guess, they want to keep the pace slow is because they don’t want to give out a ton of prize money. Fair enough - but why not speed it up, and lower the prize money? Or at least make it more difficult to win a large amount?
It would seem, based on how gameshows are going these days, that offering a huge prize is apparently a big draw for an audience. Why? What do I care if SOMEONE ELSE THAT I DON’T KNOW is winning a hundred or a million? Well, to be fair, I guess it might seem inconsequential if they were only up for $100… but if they lowered the top prize from a million to $100k it wouldn’t lose anything, and then they could speed the show up and not bore us to death while still keeping the prize money low.
So, I really like the basic format, how people are eliminated, how the mob can win money. The 3 helper things are fairly well designed. So if they kept all that, but made it somewhat challenging, and sped it up, it would be a really good game show.
It is shows like these that make me feel bad for the people on Jeopardy. One of the Jeopardy contestants would dominate for seasons on end on one of these shows, but who do they cast? Some guy who probably couldn’t even tell you how many eggs are in a dozen.
*Well, let’s see…
Eggs come from chickens…
And there’s the joke about “why did the chicken cross the road?”…
And it probably wouldn’t be much of a joke unless it was a major road…
Interstates are major roads…
And Interstates go between states. That’s what “Inter-” means (I’m so smart)…
California’s a big state. So that’s my answer.
There are CALIFORNIA in a dozen!*
I have to mildly disagree. Since this show (and Deal/No Deal) involve deciding whether to gamble or take the money & run, the dollar amount is of ultimate importance to the contestant – and by extension, adds to the suspense and the play-along mentality at home. If the contestant had to choose between bailing out at $1400 or taking The Mob…I think they’d take the mob every time. And the people at home would be saying “well, duh”.
I don’t know…I don’t eat eggs.
The set looks like the Klingon courtroom in ST-VI: The Undiscovered Country
I’m such a geek.