The 20 Worst Game Shows of the Past 10 Years

[Loogaroo]

Part Two is now up for reading:

 

http://wp.me/pAdZQ-i0

[Mr. Armadillo]

Is it really important to the game that the clock speeds up with each pass? 

 

To keep people from winning the big money, maybe?

 

But the people winning the big money aren\'t the ones doing a lot of passing.  

 

Honestly, I watched every episode of Downfall and I don\'t think I would have even noticed the belt sped up on a pass if I hadn\'t read about it on here.  I\'d have no problems dropping that concept entirely.

 

The biggest downside to replacing the dropping of objects off a tall building with spotlights and a Minute to Win It track is that you might need a new name for your show if nothing\'s actually falling.

[BrandonFG]

The biggest downside to replacing the dropping of objects off a tall building with spotlights and a Minute to Win It track is that you might need a new name for your show if nothing\'s actually falling.

Lights Out, or with apologies to Jay Stewart, Blackout. ;-)

 

/You all do remember where the hyphen goes when you cut my check, right?

[Matt Miller]

with apologies to Jay Stewart, Blackout. ;-)

Jay Stewart? I thought Jay Wolpert created Blackout, or am I getting my Jay\'s mixed up?

[TimK2003]

Technically, Blackout had both Jay\'s -- Jay Stewart filled in for Johnny Gilbert on the last week of the show (which was Stewart\'s final announcing gig, BTW).  Jay Wolpert was the EP of the show. 

 

With that said, I think he meant to say Jay Wolpert.

[BrandonFG]

Yep...Wolpert, Good catch!

[PYLdude]

It\'s not surprising Crosswords made the list -- but I hate to admit that I\'ve found some positives in a show that I really trashed a while back. With reruns on RTV, I find myself watching the eps again and seeing a few things I\'ve mellowed on. Since it is a game played against the clock, Ty has little choice but to just go from clue to clue to clue with little chat in between. Alex doesn\'t discuss answers on Jeopardy at any great length, either, so I\'ve toned down my dislike of Ty\'s hosting. He tries to be personable. Not the warmest host, but he does keep it moving. And, like the classic games, I liked watching everyday people play, instead of the types of contestants that seem to come from central casting for shows like Deal or No Deal. Genuine happiness or disappointment, depending on how the game goes for them. The aspect of the chance of a spoiler answering only one question in the whole show and winning the game has happened so rarely that I find it less upsetting. What\'s the diff between that and a family on Feud happening to come up with 3 or 4 \"steal\" answers and winding up winning the game on them? A couple of the main gripes still remain - such as not allowing contestants to see the whole board being filled in while the game is playing. Still too many questions where several possible answers have the same number of letters - \"Five letters, a popular pie fruit\". Apple? Peach? Lemon? Without a clue letter among the blanks, one guess is as good as another -or as bad, since you lose cash. Still enough faults to make it a disappointment, but I like watching it again more than I used to.   

 

It\'s weird, because the exact opposite happened for me when I started watching the reruns on AmericanLifeTV...I was a fan of it originally but then I looked back and wondered what the hell was I watching.

[Loogaroo]

Here\'s Part 3.

 

Deal or No Deal, Set for Life, National Bingo Night and How Much is Enough? are the victims this week.

[That Don Guy]

Here\'s Part 3.

 

Deal or No Deal, Set for Life, National Bingo Night and How Much is Enough? are the victims this week.

\"How Much is Enough - the game that makes Deal or No Deal look like Jeopardy in comparison.\"

 

One problem with National Bingo Night: they made it sound like it was being broadcast live, when of course it couldn\'t be (even without taking the west coast into account) as they had to know what the drawn numbers were in advance in order to control the number of home winners.

 

The one game I remember where they went overboard on this was when they announced that \"the computer had determined that nobody at home had a Bingo.\"  Gee, you don\'t think the fact that they had not drawn any Bs (so there could not be a horizontal or diagonal Bingo), and not enough of any other column to get a vertical Bingo, in that game had something to do with that, do you?

 

My main gripe with Set for Life was, they never explained how they determine the amount of each payment, other than saying it was determined before the show began somehow.

 

(And what are the last four going to be, besides Amne$ia (although The Moment of Truth deserves to be on there) and It\'s Worth What??)

[Loogaroo]

My main gripe with Set for Life was, they never explained how they determine the amount of each payment, other than saying it was determined before the show began somehow.

 

It was essentially the exact same round, just with fewer tubes. Contestants drew an envelop with a money amount (say, $575) and had to play with a set of 8 white tubes and 3 reds to determine the value of monthly check. You had to make it at least 4 steps up the ladder to stop and continue on to the game they actually televised.

 

(The British version, \"For the Rest of Your Life\", actually did show both halves of the game. And yes, the qualifying round is just as meaningless to watch as it sounds. Especially since you knew that if a team bombed out on the first part of the game, they wouldn\'t bother airing it.)

 

 

(And what are the last four going to be, besides Amne$ia (although The Moment of Truth deserves to be on there) and It\'s Worth What??)

Next week will have Identity and Who\'s Still Standing along with the two you mentioned. As for Moment of Truth, well, you\'ll have to wait and see about that one.

[WarioBarker]

National Bingo Night had another problem, other than all the dubbing -- if the studio player finished their task, they had to hope and pray that nobody in the audience managed to get a bingo with that last drawn ball...because if they did, the studio player still lost.
 
I taped the premiere, and that was the outcome of the first game. The only reason I watched the rest of the series was in a futile hope that I\'d be a home winner. I\'ve still got the official rules on my computer.

[BrandonFG]

My main gripe with Set for Life was, they never explained how they determine the amount of each payment, other than saying it was determined before the show began somehow.

IMO, the show was already a steaming POS, but this is what irked me the most. It\'s like playing Press Your Luck, but cutting out the questions. So instead, you start with the players having 5, 6, and 3 spins. But, I just remember watching the first episode, where (in typical Endemaul fashion) the producers insisted on having Jimmy constantly make witty banter with the contestant\'s 4-year-old nephew. I believe the same episode* had a woman in a tiara constantly crying (hey, another En-dem-all trait).

 

In nominating Rossi, I’d like to also incriminate Dylan Lane, Ty Treadway, and Mark McGrath as four people who hosted their respective shows the same way – robotic, unconvincing, people who were clearly disinterested in the people playing their games. They leaned so heavily on script that every episode sounded interchangeable. They adding nothing to their productions – and given how most of their shows are on this list in some way, they needed hosts to contribute.

And not surprisingly, all four of their shows were equally forgettable. Coincidence? Prolly not,

 

*Had to be the same one...there\'s no way I would\'ve sat through this garbage twice.

[clemon79]

National Bingo Night had another problem, other than all the dubbing -- if the studio player finished their task, they had to hope and pray that nobody in the audience managed to get a bingo with that last drawn ball...because if they did, the studio player still lost.

 

That\'s correct, because everyone gets an equal number of turns. How is that a problem?

[WarioBarker]

The problem, so to speak, is that these games were generally rather boring and took at least ten solid commercial-free minutes to get through. It isn't good TV to have a contestant go through all of that and then say "Congrats for accomplishing your task, but you can still lose."

IIRC, the rules were "Accomplish your task before someone gets a bingo."

[EDIT 12/18/14: Fixed mangled quoting...by just removing it outright (wasn't really necessary, IMO).]

[clemon79]

IIRC, the rules were \"Accomplish your task before someone gets a bingo.\"

 

Yes. And the game is played simultaneously, so they were accomplishing their task as someone got a bingo. As is not before.