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The plague of game shows
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2008
Feb 05
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Comments
4
As I watched the last hour of Deal or No Deal, I realized why game shows like this don’t last and shows like Price of Right do: pace and people. These two shows deal with players in very different ways. On Deal we know everything about the contestants. We know their name, their family, their sad bastard story…hell, sometimes we even know their hobbies and favorite color. What a bunch of shit. I’m not saying it’s all fake, I’m saying it’s just worthless fluff that turns a 20 minute game into a 2 hour show. It’s just boring and slow.
On the Price is Right contestants are nothing but a name tag - a first name at best. I’m just Brian from Ohio. Nothing more. I make a bid, win the pinball machine, spin the wheel, win a cruise and go home smiling and waving. Short, sweet, exciting, happy. Exactly what game shows used to be, what they were meant to be, and what they should be. Every episode of Price is worth watching and delivers a good result. Somebody always wins.
All this happy family, sad story crap just needs to stop, please. I don’t care about people’s lives. I care about people winning or losing, preferably winning. We all like to see people win. It makes us happy. But it honestly doesn’t make us feel any better when we know the player’s back story. Seriously.
Deal will end soon, I predict, because there are not enough winners. This show caught on like a bad rash and I was hooked, but after they started drawing out 2 hours shows that focused more on people than the money, it got stupid boring. A game show with no winners is like Dairy Queen without ice cream. You need winners to make interesting TV. Unfortunately for Deal, they had to resort to ridiculous circumstances to create a winner. Oh but wait…there wasn’t even a winner! No! Even when they stack the deck with 10 chances at a million they can’t even win!! So how good of a show can it be?!
Regardless, game shows need to be about the game. People are just accessories.
Watching people under intense pressure for an hour and walk away with $200 isn’t fun. The Price is RightIt is kind of like Wii Sports. A bunch of fun “mini” games that result in people winning more times than not. They also feature the occasional idiot, who is usually done in about 45 seconds. When they idiot is on the stage for an hour, that also isn’t much fun to watch either. I also think Drew Carey is doing a good job on the show. He is as regular a guy as the contestats, and it works well.
I was never much for game shows, but I’m certainly guilty of watching the price is right when home during the day for some reason.
The game show that I can’t stand is the new lie detector show. I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment. I watched a little bit of it a couple weeks ago and changed the channel. It’s nothing but spiteful. I know the contestants choose to be on it, but wow, what a terrible premise for a show.
it’s right up there with going on Maury to tell some guy that he’s not the kids father after all… on national TV.
G+
I haven’t seen the lie detector show but the commercials alone make me cringe. Chris is totally right: “Deal” is intense then the people walk away with a few hundred dollars and that just sucks. The game has become a let down. I think Deal has the best potential if they do more episodes (or totally change the rules) where the contestants are trying to beat each other to see who ends up with the most money. They would also do better maybe if they picked more random people or if the people weren’t all so down on their luck…maybe they’d be willing to take more risks?
The dramatic pauses are also incredibly annoying. Price is Right zips from beginning to end. The lie detector show sucked rotten eggs too because of your point - TMI - and the dramatic pauses were endless. They could have done an hour show in about 7 minutes if they also axed all the personal chit-chat. It’s like most of these people nowadays go on the game shows to air their dirty laundry because they might get a bonus of some money out of the deal - rather than just bruises from the bodyguards on Springer.