That Awkward Game Show on Spike

[alfonzos]

This topic has yet to be commented upon so I will go first.

The format has three pairs contestants; each a baby boomer parent with an adult child. Each question is a multiple guess format with each player guessing what mischief the other has gotten into during one's misspent youth. Teams can win over $10,000.

The game reminds me of a cross between Three's a Crowd and The Family Game.

Watch at your own risk.

[TLEberle]

How much over ten grand?

[Unrealtor]

Maximum winnings are $16,500.

To expand a little bit on the synopsis: Each pair is a parent and their late-teens/early-twenties child, which, these days, means that the parents more Generation X than Baby Boomers. Each round offers four possible answers - one for each pair and one that doesn't apply to anyone. Parents guess their kids' secrets for $500 for the first question and $1,000 for the second. The kids guess their parents' secrets for $2,000 and $3,000 in the second half. The pair that has the most money after four questions goes on to play the final round - each half of the pair is asked 5 true or false questions about the other, under a 30 second clock, with each answer worth $1,000 no matter how many are right.

The multiple choice idea feels interesting on paper, but in practice watching contestants talk out their choices is not as entertaining as the dual anecdotes of The Newlywed Game. On the other hand, props to the producers for finding a scoring system where runaways are almost impossible but it's tough to win on the last question alone.

[TLEberle]

Thank you for using your words.

[SwohS Emag]

Spike appears to be burning off the show after airings of Caraoke Showdown right now.  They had ordered 11 hour-long episodes (according to the first press release), and now its website promotes it as a half-hour show.  The show aired six eps before being pulled last fall; it came back with a half-hour holiday episode and now presumably the last four are being burned off.

Question out of curiosity if anyone is paying attention to this show:  Were these half-hour episodes edited from the original hour-longs that were filmed, or was the second half of the season specifically designed as a half-hour show?

I can't think of another occasion where a new show was reedited to fit a half hour slot, if that is indeed what's happening here.  (Downfall, noted, was edited from 6 shows to 5, but those episodes were not designed to be self-contained like this show.)

[Unrealtor]

The half-hour episodes have dropped the $500 and $3,000 questions from the format I described upthread, and there's no obvious sign that those have happened but were not shown. It doesn't eliminate the possibility that they were cut down from hours, but it does mean that either the ones I've seen had $500 questions that nobody got and $3,000 questions that didn't change the outcome of the front game, or they went through a lot of trouble to cover up any evidence that the other two questions happened.