MSN TV Blog: Games

No Deal For the President

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:41:10 GMT

The Hollywood Reporter says that President Bush's appearance on Monday night's "Deal or No Deal" didn't do much for the show's ratings:

"The NBC game show matched its lowest Monday rating ever despite the much-publicized visit by the commander-in-chief. The two-hour "Deal" was seen by 10 million viewers and earned a 2.7 rating among adults 18-49 and a 7 share, down 27% from its prior season average."

Ouch! I'm sure there's a Britney joke in there for those of you who want to find it.

- Posted by Kate

A Second Look at 'Identity'

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:57:16 GMT

So I had dinner with my friend who's affiliated with "Identity," the new game show hosted by Penn Jillette in which contestants try to guess the identities of 12 strangers based mainly on visual clues.

Needless to say, she wasn't pleased that I bashed her show. I got punched a couple of times. She wished that no one reads this blog. She threatened me with the roving army of thugs "Identity" has at its disposal to beat up critics (When I told her that that it would be one busy group of thugs, considering how everyone reviewed the show, she said she'd put me at the head of the list). AND she banned me from competing on "Identity" if it gets picked up.

Then she said that Thursday's show was better and that I should give it a second chance and if so, blog about it. I said I would. "I'll be reading," she said.

So watch it I did. And truth to tell, I did like some aspects of the show better this go-around than my first viewing.

I think, fairly or unfairly, my original viewing suffered because it was one of the rare times when I've watched a show live. To fill "Identity" out to an hour, there are a ton of commercial breaks. Being able to TiVo through things made things somewhat better.

Also, Penn was a little more relaxed and funnier. I still wanted to break his wrist off each time he pointed to someone and said, "Is that your identity." And I still was annoyed by the strangers trying to come up with clever lines based on their identities.

It helped a lot that the contestant was much more enthusiastic about the game and did a lot better. Then again, she had a lot of easy identities to solve. Two of her 12 strangers were pretty public figures: Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man, and Maurice Green, the world-record holder in the 100-meter dash (who she for some reason claimed to be a huge fan of, yet called him Marion Jones, a female sprinter).

The show inherently has a tough line to walk in making the identities guessable but not obvious. I would say on Thursday's show, they erred on the side of making things obvious. As the contestant pointed out, Lee was about the only one on stage old enough to have created Spider-Man. There was one who was the youngest who was wearing a Catholic school girl outfit, an opera singer who had an evening gown, a fitness model who was in a bikini so you could see how buff she was.

In fact, in one way I was more angry with the show than I was before. The contestant managed to get down to the last three strangers, two women and a man. They had to be matched up with CSI investigator, kidney donor and alligator wrestler. She had two lifelines left, ask the experts and mistaken identity. She asked the experts to give their opinions on who was the alligator wrestler. Now to me, that is criminally stupid, since it's extremely unlikely that the man is not the alligator wrestler. When all the experts indeed said that they'd guess that he was, she was left with only two people and two identities. But then the show cheesed her out by taking away the mistaken identity lifeline. So naturally, she just takes the $250,000 instead of the 50-50 chance at going home with nothing. It seems like dirty pool to withdraw an unused lifeline. I actually cursed the TV out when I saw this happen. And I don't know if they had told her in advance that you don't get to keep the mistaken identity one if you only have two choices left. If they didn't, that's even more skeezy. If they did, then she's just a bad player. It would have made the most sense to guess on the two women and either get that one right or use up the MI, which would then allow you to run the table to the top prize of $500,000.

So there you have it. A slightly better show, but not with enough improvements that I would voluntarily watch it without the Game Show Mafia making me an offer I can't refuse.

- posted by Raoul

The Cinch List

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:56:35 GMT

I love game shows more than most, so I really expected to love "The Rich List." But I got to tell you, I was screaming at the TV more than I have for a long time. In frustration, I mean.

The basic concept is that strangers are paired together and given a category. While in soundproof booths, they bid how many things they can list in that category. The other team has a chance to outbid them, until one bid stands. Then the winning team has to make good on what they've bid, naming them one at a time. If they list one wrong, they lose the caegory.

The first team to get two lists gets to play for money. They get yet another list, and for every three or so answers they get right, they get a cash prize. They can quit and keep the cash they've earned, or keep going and risk losing everything with a wrong answer.

In an hour, the various teams had the following categories:

"Tom Cruise Movies" (The winning team bid 18 and didn't make it.)

"Books or Short Stories by Stephen King" (The winning team bid nine and didn't make three. THREE!!! They could have said each of the "Dark Tower" series and done better!)

"People Magazine's 'Sexiest Man Alive'" (It was a tiebreaker and the losing team missed out after only three were named.)

Best Picture Winners (They stopped after six correct answers to win $25,000)

"Top 50 Broadway Musicals" (The winning team bid 15 and only got six.)

"Top 50 Most Read Daily U.S. Newspapers" (The winning team bid 10 and got it.)

"Animated Disney Movies" (and Pixar movies counted too) -- The winning team got 12 and $150,000 and then stopped rather than risk their winnings for $250,000.

Is it just me, or are those fairly pathetic results? I think the only one actual result that I couldn't have done better than all by myself was on Tom Cruise movies. Of course, it's easy to say that from the comfort of my living room.

My take is if two people can't come up with 15 Disney and Pixar movies between them, they have no place being on a game show.

Other parts of the show were basically alright. I don't know if there's some law that says every game show has to have a garish set, but if so, I wish they would repeal it. And I could tell that "The Rich List" comes from the makers of "The Weakest Link," because host Eamonn Holmes would force the words "The Rich List" from his mouth about every 3.2 seconds.

But going against "Lost" and "Criminal Minds" might mean that the list of episodes for "The Rich List" might not end up getting very long anyway.

- posted by Raoul