I am not at all well versed in the world of hip-hop, but it's evident that this show is going for a laid-back hangout vibe, and for what it wants to be, I think it succeeds. Really, the only thing that didn't click for me was the dance troupe, which always felt a little out of place when it showed up.
With the casual mood, and in episode 102, only
11 questions played, my concern is that there will frequently be at least one celebrity that never gets selected during an episode. It's a problem with no good solution -- you don't want to lose the casualness of the show, but a half hour isn't enough time for a complete-feeling episode and an hour would be too long.
Given that they're playing for members of the public who could use the money and that it's a significant amount, I wish that they would have cracked the whip a little.
But then the individual questions wouldn't be worth as much. The producers knew that they weren't going to play too many questions per episode, so they could put a respectable amount in each square. If you try to cram in more questions, not only do you lose all of the fun, then the individual dollar amounts go down, too.
Bonus round: I'm still undecided on that modified Tic Tac Dough '90 style format. It seems too easy to win.
See, I
like that a game show is willing to have a bonus round where the majority of contestants win. I'd much rather see modest stakes that are frequently won over inflated top prizes that are rarely given away. Again, I'm not well versed in hip-hop, but I'm relatively certain that a common theme in the music is wealth and money flowing freely. It would feel out of place for a show titled
Hip Hop Squares (where one of the celebrities sits in a throne and where Ice Cube is surrounded by stacks of cash) to be stingy.
Really, the thing that bothered me the most was the amount of ADR that the host performed. Ultimately,
Hip Hop Squares does what it sets out to do. It isn't a traditional game show, but it isn't trying to be one.
