NBC announces "The Wall"

[NickintheATL]

Here is the promo... I dunno about this one.

[jcs290]

There was a new promo during Hairspray last night. In typical NBC fashion they highlighted sob stories by many of the contestants. Expect a lot of flood victims and cancer survivors with this one.

[MSTieScott]

I'm surprised that they would make a game show about being pinned behind a wall by an Iraqi sniper. I guess maybe Chris Hardwick could make that premise funny?

[BrandonFG]

There was a new promo during Hairspray last night. In typical NBC fashion they highlighted sob stories by many of the contestants. Expect a lot of flood victims and cancer survivors with this one.

I'd like to thank you for saving me the potential trouble of sitting through this. I don't like the sob stories during the Olympics; I definitely don't want them in an over-produced big money game show.

/Prove me wrong, NBC
//Also...get off my lawn

[TLEberle]

Made for Tivo, just like Minute to Win it: question, >> fast forward >>, ball drops, >> fast forward>>, question and so on. I just saved you 45 minutes and you didn't even have to switch to Geico.

[BillCullen1]

A reminder that an episode of  The Wall will air on NBC this evening (Dec. 19) at 10 pm EST.

[TLEberle]

In a pleasant change of pace from the norm, it wasn't out and out offensive. Still too:

Slow
Easy
Much Money

but if they're giving it away to deserving folks and it's a joint venture between NBC/LeBron that doesn't bother me overmuch. It isn't as bad as Minute To Win It in terms of dead air, and it doesn't insult our intelligence or dignity like Take It All or Deal or No Deal. These days I will happily take something that gets more right than wrong and a host who entertains rather than capers.

[BillCullen1]

Overall, I found the show to be enjoyable. The contestants weren't over-the-top annoying. I wonder how much that giant Plinko board cost them.

[Matt Ottinger]

It isn't as bad as Minute To Win It in terms of dead air, and it doesn't insult our intelligence or dignity like Take It All or Deal or No Deal.

I have a weird soft space in my heart for Deal or No Deal, so I found this one more insulting.  DoND made no pretensions about being any more than it was.  They actually made a point in the early going about what the show didn't have.  The Wall claims to feature strategy and quiz, and both of them are there in such infinitesimal amounts as to be virtually meaningless.

[TLEberle]

There's certainly flaws/things I don't like, such as:

* The fact that we'll never see a couple fail to get out of the Freefall round with a positive balance because the episode structure is similar to that of Set For Life.
* The ending of "Are you going to take a relatively smaller (but still big amount) prize as opposed to the massive upside of millions of dollars?" when there are lots of ways they could have done that ending better.
* That for the amount of money being thrown around the questions failed to challenge or interest. One of the redeeming bits of Show Me The Money was that the questions could be challenging some times.

but I'm not going to go guns blazing at it because this is where game shows are these days. I'm not crazy about a game show that excludes 99.999% of the population and that you had to have done a one-in-a-million good deed, but I suppose that's better than the cast of characters that we normally get.

I'm imagining different things and arriving at the idea that the whole thing could have been a moderate success in 1975 as well as an interesting game and fun-to-watch show.

[Jimmy Owen]

That one ball dropped awfully fast.

[TLEberle]

Maybe the Wall underwent puberty.

[Flerbert419]

I feel like they built this huge wall and then remembered that they had to put a game show together. The trivia portion was completely bland.

I'll be interested to see by the end if their theory that choosing 5, 6, or 7 tends to make the balls end up on the right hand side is correct. There's so many pegs and the balls are quite bouncy that it wouldn't shock me if it was all a wash.

I'm concerned that, quite often, the game is going to end on a sour note and there's going to be an awkward transition to happiness. When your last bank changing action is to drop 4 balls that will subtract money, going from "you just lost $X but you have $Y left" with enthusiasm isn't very easy to do.

[clemon79]

That one ball dropped awfully fast.

Maybe the Wall underwent puberty.

No more calls, please.

[Neumms]

I'll be interested to see by the end if their theory that choosing 5, 6, or 7 tends to make the balls end up on the right hand side is correct.

A Plinko diagram once showed that dropping the chip from the middle not surprisingly gives you a better chance of hitting the middle slot, but here the side walls would come into play more. Still, choosing chutes shouldn't be the most exciting dilemma before the last five minutes.

If trivia determined the color of more of the balls, it would add skill and give them more game to fill out the hour.