(I made the mistake of introducing this topic near the end of another thread that is mostly played out, but I'm really curious what others think about this, so let me re-introduce it here...)
On shows like "Go" and "Pyramid"--shows that have timed rounds--technical flubs will often happen in the middle of taping that will stop gameplay in the middle of a round. The way I've seen that handled on numerous occasions is that they'll resume taping in the midst of the round--at the precise second where the mistake occurred, giving credit to the contestant for however many answers were gotten right up to the moment of the problem.
This is not an unusual occurrance, it seems to happen on almost every taping I've ever been to of a show of this kind.
Now on the surface, this would seem like a fair way to handle things, since they are giving credit to the interrupted contestant for things they've already gotten correct.
But what I've observed is that this often seems to give an unfair advantage to the contestant who is interrrupted, because that contestant now gets to anticipate that upon resuming, they need, say, one more answer in 4 seconds, or 3 more answers in 10 seconds. I've seen many occasions where a contestant, having time to catch a breath and reflect on the number of answers needed, and sometimes even knowing how many seconds are left, changed their energy entirely, suddenly focused more and pulled out the necessary answers in the remaining time, when, before the interruption, it looked like they were on their way to probably losing.
My team was a victim of this on Go, where the opposing team needed to beat our time of 45 seconds, looked like it was floundering, got interrupted with a technical miscue, and then had a chance to re-group and was told they needed one more answer in five seconds when taping resumed. The pieces of the round got edited together, but you can see between the edits that the team's energy unaccountably picks up to a huge degree and they speed through the last question to get it in under five seconds.
As a recent contestant on Pyramid, I've seen similar things happen when front game rounds get stopped and resumed for technical difficulties. This almost always works to the advantage of the player who is interrupted, and I've always wondered if any contestants ever complain to Standards and Practices about this phenomenon?
I, for one, never complained, because I wanted to stay on the good side of the coordinators so I could get on future shows. But I'm curious if that strikes anyone else as unfair. I've often thought that they should re-examine this method of resuming taping, even though to fix the practice would involve throwing out entire played rounds and taking more studio time and causing more material to have to be written.
I think this is one of the great overlooked issues of game show play. Opinions, anyone?