Over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched a handful of newer gameshows. A couple of them are in the style of the studio game shows we know from being sick on a school day, and one reality show. I didn’t hate any of them, but I most definitely didn’t like them, either. So let’s discuss the problems.
The first batch we’ll call the Modern gameshow. In a studio, with an audience, but each one of them is using the ‘So You Want To Be A Millionaire’ or ‘Deal or No Deal’ approach which is to slow down the content with tremendous amounts of hemming and hawing. The Box features challenges inside of a weird cube. Everything about this show I enjoyed except for the fact that a single question or challenge can last an entire segment between breaks. Cheat involves 4 people cheating on trivia questions, but each set of questions comes with a round of ‘Who was the cheater’ where the host vamps unendingly to stretch out that timeframe.
Why do they do it? Because if everyone is tense, the stakes must be important… but when you compare it to the cornball silliness of Price is Right or the spitfire trivia of Jeopardy, it all looks like the show is playing at 45 rpm.
The reality show was a newer NBC jam, The Traitors though.. this show.. it’s almost there. The good is that it has over a dozen people in the house, there are Traitors who will ‘Murder’ every night and the object is to figureeout who they are and vote them out. This should sound familiar to anyone who has played Werewolf or Mafia or Secret Hitler. Along the way there are challenges to increase the winnings and dramatic discussions about people acting weird. The problem here is, in all of those listed games, there is a mechanism for the “good guys” to solve the mystery. In this show… there weren’t. The Traitors weren’t even incentivized to screw up tasks like The Mole (which is enjoyable as hell). If the traitors say nothing, they’re playing the same game as everyone else. Votes are arbitrary based on people over-reading each other.
These shows are all almost there, and I hope as we continue to move to a streaming, watch at 1.25x, fast forwarding world, we can get back to game shows that feel like there are stakes without big synthesizer breaks and lighting to signal us to be interested because until then… I’m not.
