Trivially entertaining
The television is on and I can feel the edges of my brain melting and dripping wherever such things go. Lay the blame (first, because I can’t figure out how to reprogram the remote and change the channel, on me) squarely with the producers of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?“. Obviously, no. Anyone who has school tomorrow is already in bed or doing something more entertaining. Perhaps playing WOW.
It’s not the questions. I am a trivial knowledge connaisseur. Spell that word, guy from American Idol whenever. It’s not the kids, who are confident in what they remember from earlier this year. The speedbump is the pacing. If someone made you stretch out your answers, to every question, so that commercial pauses would occur on schedule, you would also come across as “less than brilliant”.
Blame the pacing on a concept that rewards answering the fewest questions possible. After all, if there are only a fistful of questions attached to the fistful of dollars, one might actually get all the answers correct. Instead, I’d like to watch a program based on encyclopedic abilities. If you can’t answer five hundred questions in an hour, you shouldn’t be there. Who cares if the audience gets confused? Lots and lots of trivia. That would be entertaining.
Then we could let speed talkers like Regis Philbin do what they do best; blather. In short sentences. With tons of data. Go. Go. Go.
In passing, the guy from Idol didn’t have to sing.
