I am watching 1 vs. 100, honestly I like the show for the most part. Bob Sagat is great, I think the fact that he spent so many years with America’s Funniest Home Videos, but he really knows how to do this job, he’s good at it. Easily the best of the prime time game show hosts (not that it is hard.) I think the format of the show is cool, the idea is good. And they don’t leave you hanging from one show to the next like Millionare used to do which I’m sure was a way to get you to keep watching every week but in reality made me forget why I was pulling for the guy (or girl). The mob allows them to have a lot of themes and celebrity guests. However, my five issues are these:
#5) Where in the world do they find the idiots in the 100!?!?!? I mean criminy most of these people are stupid! It is rare for the show to get to a point where you are answering difficult questions like in Jeopardy and Millionare, so these people are just stupid. One of the questions that was on was what are the standard IRS tax forms: NC-17, 1-800, or 1040. It amazes me to no end that 2 got it wrong! Even if you didn’t know the name NC-17 is a movie rating and 1-800 is a telephone number, so those are automatically out. It is rediculous and I am convinced that these people are payed to get the wrong answer so that there is progression to the show. Even the contestant is an idiot, the current contestant doesn’t know how many 6s are in 99 because they don’t drink beer (it is formed in the 99 bottles of beer & 6 packs).
#4) That leads me to this one. The questions are far too easy. One of the cool things about Jeopardy and Millionare is that they are difficult. So when you do get a question right, you feel like aww cool I got one right! And when you don’t get one right you can be like “oh that’s a cool little factoid.” In this game I don’t feel any self congratulations for getting it right nor do I think any of the questions offer any sort of interesting information like other quiz shows. I get nothing from the questions except that they are worded in interesting ways (and are more often than not they are trick questions because of it).
#3) Annoying contestant!!! Good god the contestants are annoying as hell. I realize this is likely the productions fault and not the contestants. They are likely told to act all combative with the 100 and be grandstanding and all that but in the end the contestant looks like a major asshole. In addition they aren’t bright, they get easy questions wrong, and while again I am sure they are told to work the questions out verbally for every question regardless of if they know it because it is easy or not, the working out of lame questions is iritating. All this leads up to the only game where I am actually hoping for the contestant to lose, and they almost never do lose in this game.
#2) Almost no chance of “winning.” By this I mean that they advertise that the person has a chance to win $1 million, and in reality this chance is low. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen anyone win more than a quarter of that. The way the game is set up is that the morons in the 100 will likely be taken out in the first 5 or 6 questions so when beating a mob member is actually worth decent money, there aren’t many left to get it. I am sure this is done intentionally because they don’t want people to win the jackpot because then they’d have to pay out more money. This is a drastic change from the previous round of Game Shows which went out of their way to give out more money. Millionare had their Super Millionare where they gave out like $5 million, and Greed hell they brought in two former contestants to do a single question for $1 million just to guarantee that it would happen. The real reason it will never happen in this game is because it is all or nothing. There is no $100,000 to fall back on like in Millionare, once you are done with your helps, you’d be an idiot to not take the money, and this seems to hold true for all the modern game shows.
#1) The delay. My god the delay, it’s aweful. It doesn’t add to the tension, it adds to the annoyingness of the show. This is definitely production, it’s done top bottom to do it, and it has for all the modern games, they think it is the thinking bit in millionare that adds tension. It isn’t, it is the whether he will get it right or wrong. When it is random like in deal or no deal, or when there are idiots answering idiotic questions then there is no tension no matter how long you wait. It is just plain annoying.
I may be done watching 1 vs. 100, I was hoping it may get better, but it doesn’t seem to be. Too bad, someone had a great idea, they just let the execs screw it up.