Non Game Shows
Somewhere, years ago, I heard second-hand a stand-up comedy routine about Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and specifically the quality of contestants you see on each show. Jeopardy! relies on educated professionals: lawyers, engineers, doctors, journalists, and plenty of teachers. Wheel of Fortune contestants bounce and shout, “Big money! Big money!” The challenge of the questions, for contestants and home viewers alike, is scaled to match; Jeopardy! is big on geography, history, vocabulary, and of course the Academy Awards. (If we are to measure human achievement by trivia contests, fully 10% of our existence is to make the Oscars possible.) The Wheel of Fortune sticks strictly to the lowest common denominator of human experience: household items, well-worn clichés, and headline names.
But still the contestants manage to miss the answers: “A stitch in time sounds fine?” Awwww…. You have to be a special brand of stupid to by the third player in a row to ask for an L. If there weren’t any L’s available for the last two guesses, they won’t appear magically for a third try. I still chuckle when I think about Family Feud: one player, asked to name a bird you see in springtime, offered “Squirrel.”
Everyone likes a winner, including the folks who supply the purse. Denying the viewers the vicarious thrill of victory is bad for business. So what do you do when the common man can’t measure up to even simple challenges? You remove them entirely.
I thought the show Deal or No Deal would be unique in its revamp of the old Let’s Make a Deal. You give the contestants a series of choices: take what’s hidden in box A, or what’s in box B? It’s impossible for contestants to shoot themselves in the foot. Yes, there are right choices and wrong choices, but there’s no way at all to distinguish them ahead of time. No matter how stupid the contestant, he can’t make a stupid choice; either way, it’s a blind guess. And the game is rigged, too: the contestants make a sequence of choices. This is treated as a way to squeeze out maximum drama, but in fact it lets the director tweak the odds. Too many players losing? (Or winning, for that matter?) Just let them keep choosing until they get to a better result.
Like I say, I thought this game show would be unique, because there’s no game to the show. The market for the vicarious thrill of pointless challenges, I figured, couldn’t be that big. Never underestimate the lowest common denominator. Apparently, Deal or No Deal is doing just fine, because I’m seeing ads for new game shows similarly designed. Gone are the game shows of my youth, where you actually had to know something to win, or show some tactical sense. Now we’ve got Jeopardy! and a half dozen games of “flip a coin,” with each non-choice accompanied by dramatic music, because that’s the only drama they have to offer.
I’d trade them for what I could get behind door number three, but I fear it would somehow involve Paris Hilton.