As for this being a rubber stamp, I could probably tell you the steps of the money tree right now.
The show is done by Mark Burnett, so I bet I can do you one better. Eleven steps to the money, which will be a million dollars. Five steps gets you to safety at $25,000, and the last step will take away any lifelines that had not yet been spent.
[quote post=\'230433\' date=\'Nov 11 2009, 09:05 PM\']I imagine that at least 2/3 of games will end with the family crashing and burning because mom and/or dad thinks that their perfectly immaculate child is too perfectly immaculate to fail.[/quote] And I didn't even mention this. I bet the kid gets to see the question, and AFTER that, the parent decides to play or bail." But the kind of people who would put their kids in this sort of thing would be the type to try and go for the million.
[quote name=\'chris319\' post=\'230465\' date=\'Nov 12 2009, 11:30 AM\']We used to have kids' weeks on Card Sharks. The kids played the main game by themselves but the parents were along for the end game where the player risked his winnings.[/quote]It would certainly look LESS bad when the kid loses thousands of dollars on the Big Bet because the parent told Junior to slow his roll a bit.
But then the CBS version had teenagers playing the game by themselves, with no problem.
A problem that no one has thought of, possibly because there are so many OTHER problems is that I don't think it will be that interesting watching a youngster dissect Latin, or cube roots, or recite Chaucer's tales. Fifth Grader works because anyone can play along with the game. Where's the play along when the questions are taken from a trig textbook?