Prime Time Game Shows

A general rule of thumb is that any time a show has to waste time convincing you to watch, there’s nothing there to see. Currently, prime time game shows are the most shameless examples of this. When a show, such as Fox’s Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? or Don’t Forget The Lyrics whittles down their alloted running time with a minute or two of opening tease and two or more “coming up next” commercial bumpers, it’s happening because the producers don’t have anything more interesting to show you. Or worse yet, the producers know that the first half of their game – the part with questions that a first grader could answer – is spectacularly dull.

What’s worse is that these “coming up” teases are condescending. A recent episode of Fox’s Don’t Forget The Lyrics showed the same shot of a female contestant freaking out at the show’s host twice before it actually happened in the show itself. Sharp eyed viewers can pretty easily deduce what moment in the show the so-called “exciting moment” is extracted from. When a show’s format is set in stone, and you can see the question on the big screen behind the contestant, you know that the game is going to proceed at least as far as that point. That renders every moment en route to there a moot point.

Worst of the lot is NBC’s Deal Or No Deal. Here is a game show that is manufactured suspense minus intelligence. Contestants pick from a randomized set of briefcases, each of which contains a dollar value from $.01 to $1,000,000. When opened, that dollar value is removed from the big board and at periodic intervals, the contestant gets offered a median-biased average of the remaining cases. What this boils down to is a simple game of “pick a number”.

This is a show designed to be watched by parents and young children who want to shout “pick number 12” at the screen, and subsequently feel superior when the on-screen contestant picks number 17 and disaster strikes. In one episode last year, a contestant lost well into six figures of winnings, when, with the mathematical odds strongly against him, he used the rhyme “let’s go with eight, because eight is great!” to guide his decision making.

Eight is great indeed. Too many prime time game shows are populated by struggling actors wearing the milktoast personna of a long-abandoned home town, or they’re true heartland-bred idiots who are willing to blow $200,000 on the advice of a nursery rhyme. It’s an hour long show, so its understood that for the first fifty minutes the same contestant will be staring slack-jawed at some flashing lights, making inane banter with the host, and repeating “no deal” until about 6 minutes before the show is up.

Hell most likely has several outposts on earth. One of them would have to be the editing room where someone is cutting promos for Deal Or No Deal. Any promo producer who has to excite an audience about a prime-time game show, especially the current crop, is dead in the water from the word go. Having to make the inert and repetitive gimmick of Deal Or No Deal seem worth watching on a weekly basis is an impossible task. Just for fun, during NBC’s Sunday Night Football this fall, keep an eye out for these spots each week and think about what it’s trying to sell you. A rube from somewhere east of Los Angeles, Howie Mandel, more screaming, leggy models, and some shocking twist that has to be hidden behind a flashing graphic.

Or, as Public Enemy have so eloquently phrased it: Don’t believe the hype.