Last night, post-run we turned the TV on whilst relaxing. ABC was airing a game show called 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show. Had it been compressed into its actual meaningful bits the show would have run maybe five minutes, tops. Instead, it dragged on for a full hour before reaching an abrupt conclusion that barely left time for the fast-scrolling closing credits.
It was horrible enough to watch once in order to mock it later. Later is now.
The contestants must answer what the Wikipedia link above generously describes as an ‘educated guess question’, which usually amounts to trivia that most people would be pretty clueless on (the most hot dogs eaten in a hot dog-eating contest, etc.) The one who answers the most incorrectly (“3 million hot dogs!”) gets ejected from the show in some violent physical manner, such as being tied to an anchor and being dragged off a dock (ignore the fleeting glimpse you see of the rescue boat appearing moments after the person is dunked). To make matters worse, some questions have multiple answers provided and the contestants must choose the correct answers while avoiding the one incorrect one–except one of the contestants is randomly forced to take that wrong answer as his or her choice. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such idiotic game rule design.
In the episode that we watched one segment had the contestants suspended on ropes over the back of a boat. To add ‘drama’ a series of shots featuring a shark fin were shown and the trying-too-hard host pours ‘chum’ into the water to attract said sharks, the implication being that the losing contestant will be summarily devoured by said maneaters. This ignores the fact that the boat continues to speed well past the place where the ‘chum’ is dropped and if the contestants actually got eaten by sharks the producers would be serving time, not inflicting us with this imbecilic charade.
And that’s it, really–the send-offs for the losing contestants seem vaguely mean-spirited and borderline dangerous. The questions are useless trivia that don’t actually test a contestant’s intelligence in any meaningful way. Sticking random contestants with losing answers defeats any pretense to drama. As I said in the title, worst game show ever. Next time I’m resting post-run I’m going to play Bejeweled 2 on my iPhone.
