I’ll admit that when I first heard about this show I thought it was a pretty stupid idea, but after watching it a few times it has completely won me over with its realism, good humour, and, most importantly, its entertainment value. What a great show! Wait—scratch that; reverse it.

This is a new low in television. Surely nobody plans their night around this show. The screening process for contestants must consist of a sound wallop on the back of the head with a surgical two-by-four: average people are not this dumb. I’ll leave alone the fact that most contestants are probably from the Southern United States.

And if that’s not enough, they needlessly put recent university graduates on the show to try and convince people that they are stupid, too, despite doing more academic work in a term than any kid will do in their entire elementary school career. While researching to prepare for this post (i.e. I had to watch the show), they had a guy on there who had recently graduated from university, and he was a terrible actor. I’ll cut him some slack, though; I’m sure I wouldn’t know how to pretend I didn’t know what 5 x 2 was, either. Add to that the fact that he needed help to answer the question “How many E’s are there in the phrase ‘Pledge of Allegiance?’” and you have a recipe for a powered-off television. This guy left the show with $100,000 in prize money.

Perhaps the worst part about the show is that they make the contestants stall for time. Even if they know the answer immediately (and are allowed not to pretend they don’t), they have to stretch it out to try to manufacture some type of suspense. At least on “American Idol” it is suspenseful when they say, “We’ll tell you after the break,” (even though most of that suspense is lost in annoying commercials), but here it is just enraging: “We’ll tell you which country has the longest border with the U.S. when we come back!” The contestant guessed Mexico.

Heck, even “Deal or No Deal” is more exciting, and I could write a computer program in about a minute that would fare just as well as any contestant. First, it would generate a random number between 1 and 26, then either jump up and down or get really upset, depending on the dollar amount that showed up between $.01 and $1,000,000. After that it’s pretty easy: just look at how many cases are left with values below and above the bank offer, and analyze expected value to make decisions. If you have time, use calculus.

Anyway, I found this poll on the “Are You Smarter than a 5^th Grader?” website, and I found it pretty interesting. I added some statistics of my own.

This show’s premiere episode was the highest-rated premiere on any network in eight years. I guess that’s what having the slot after "American Idol" will do you for. I don’t know if it’s because I got about a 95% average in Grade 5 while reading the Hockey News more often than not, but this show is just bad.

I never thought I’d say this, but if you’re thinking about watching “Are You Smarter than a 5^th Grader?” please just go read a book instead. If aliens found us and discovered this show, I shudder to think what they might do.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:00 p.m. | Permalink