Wednesday, June 22, 2011

PILOT REVIEW: 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show

101 WAYS TO LEAVE A GAME SHOW











Directed by J. Rupert Thompson
Hosted by Jeff Sutphen

I knew going in that 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show would be nothing more than mindless summer unscripted programming which is commonplace on broadcast TV these days. However, I choose to review each new show because you never know when the next big hit will come - remember Survivor and American Idol started as quiet summer shows.

But this show is not going to be that. It's utterly stupid. In fact, it's one of the stupidest summer shows I've come across in a long time and that's saying something. I don't know where to begin to criticize this show but I'll start with the premise. It's not a horrible idea on paper but it just didn't pan out. It wants to be in the vein of Wipeout because of its outrageousness but it's not nearly as entertaining. We all know that these death-defying stunts will turn out fine so there's not much fun in watching them. And did we really need to see each exit three times? Plus we've seen everything on TV already on one show or another and some of these stunts seemed quite lame. The questions weren't very interesting either.

But this show could have been saved to an extent with a likable host and/or contestants. This show accomplished neither. Host Jeff Sutphen is incredibly annoying. He's snarky and tries so hard to be funny that it's almost hard to watch. And the contestants are even worse. They are so heavily coached that they don't even seem like real people. So much time is spent on banter with contestants who leave in the blink of an eye. It seems like this show took all the bad cliches about reality/game shows and made them worse. It's not mindless summer fun at all, it's really bad and stupid. Don't waste your time like I wasted mine.

2 comments:

  1. Wow out of all the reviews I have read and posts that I have done you are the first person that agreed that the host wasn't funny, and the more he tried, the worse it got. The contestants were annoying, especially that Beiber girl, and the Gaga tattoo guy(Really? a tattoo of Lady Gaga?) On top of showing every exit three times, how about the minute it recapped after every commercial, like it was redundant enough, the host repeating himself every round was enough to make me skip ahead just so I could see who won and be on my way. Working nights at DISH I record everything and choose something to stream to my iPhone while I on the bus for an hour, and I choose wrong, I would have been better off streaming Jay Leno to my phone over the live feed instead, at least I could have forced out a chuckle or two. Well now at least we can say there are 101 reason to cancel the show. Side note as well, the cling adapter I use to stream all my tv to my phone, well DISH subscribers can now qualify for a free sling adapter, check it out at http://bit.ly/kUGI7J

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  2. Haha very well said! That's true about the recapping after the commercials... this could have easily been a half hour show!

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