If you look at the first two puzzles as practice rounds (which they are, since you can win both or lose both, and that has Not Thing One to do with whether you'll get to $500 or not), then the whole game hinges on the last two puzzles, making it a best-of-three. And that's not so horrible. The scoring also means all four players will get one chance to act out the charades during the game- Anthony's idea could have the game ending before one team gets a chance to play their second round.
I didn't really think about that until you had said it, but you're absolutely right...hmm; I guess my idea isn't as flawless as I initially thought it was...
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I guess a potential way to fix it is what was done on syndie MG: have the two players play two games against each other and then whisk them away for two new players. Have the players then switch their positions and celebs each day so that, on one of the days, your team is guaranteed to be able to play twice. But, I'll be the first to admit that this would be kinda hard to pull off today from an execution standpoint because having people play for two complete shows and then not having either one return as a champion would seem very confusing to somebody just watching the show in passing: "Is this a rerun? Didn't I see these two on yesterday?" It definitely looks better on paper than in practice...
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I agree with you, Travis; at least the first two rounds allowed contestants to pick up some money and, as you said, practice the game for the important rounds. I don't have a huge problem with it; however, my concern with it is that, with the way the positions are set up, the celebs do all of the puzzle guessing in the second half of the show (unless there's a tie breaker), and so your celeb has to be on the ball for you to have a shot at winning. Honestly, if they switched the roles for the "rounds that count," and let the contestant do all of the guessing, I'd be fine.
With that said, though, I really enjoy watching BL, scoring system snafu or not...
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Anthony
P.S. I don't necessarily believe that asking "What do you think?" by itself invites criticism; I think that it's pretty much assumed that, if you post an idea for a change to a show and/or a proposal for a show, whether you asked for it or not, criticism will follow.