The Worst Game Show of All Time

[Bamaman]

If I had been the guy in the middle, during my speech I would have said I would give the third player money from my share to equal second place if they both agreed right away so no money was lost.

[StevenH]

Even though I'm terrible at pop culture questions I actually really liked Beat the Geeks. It's probably my second favorite game show of all time. The second season was better, since the geeks actually competed against the contestants in the first round. I was also always amazed by how much the geeks knew. The show probably couldn't have stayed fresh for much longer than the two seasons that it was on the air, though.

[JayK33]

Hey, The Weakest Link should NOT be considered a terrible game show. I happen to be a big fan of it and am still hoping that the US will bring it back some day.

[BigDaddyMatty]

Hey, The Weakest Link should NOT be considered a terrible game show. I happen to be a big fan of it and am still hoping that the US will bring it back some day.

I always thought The Weakest Link was a really good game with one fatal flaw. In virtually every episode, the other players ganged up on the strongest player and eliminated him/her. That tension is good, but the strong player has to have a defense. If they simply gave immunity to the strongest link (or anyone tied for the strongest link) each round, the game would've been great.

[JayK33]

Hey, The Weakest Link should NOT be considered a terrible game show. I happen to be a big fan of it and am still hoping that the US will bring it back some day.

I always thought The Weakest Link was a really good game with one fatal flaw. In virtually every episode, the other players ganged up on the strongest player and eliminated him/her. That tension is good, but the strong player has to have a defense. If they simply gave immunity to the strongest link (or anyone tied for the strongest link) each round, the game would've been great.

I've watched episodes from both the US and the original UK versions, and I'd say that the American contestants tended to form the little alliances and vote out the stronger players much more often than the British players would. The strongest player in the UK version would have a much better shot of making it to the end because of that. Even with just three players left, it's more common to see them stick with "how the game should be played" and vote off the Weakest Link in that round, unlike in the US version. Of course, this doesn't always happen, but when comparing the two shows, I'd say the UK players played the game more "fairly". Unfortunately, the UK version has also ended by now.

[IronNeck]

Even though I'm terrible at pop culture questions I actually really liked Beat the Geeks. It's probably my second favorite game show of all time.

The main problem was how few questions and how easy everything except the three-pointers at the very end were. Look, when even I'm consistently scoring 100% on music (at a time when I was often getting 0/5 and 1/5 on music categories in Jeopardy!), nevermind the TV and movie categories, there is a problem.

To add insult to injury, there were two different hosts, both irritating and superfluous, and various scripted, eye-rolling trash talk the geeks were forced to spew.

I always thought The Weakest Link was a really good game with one fatal flaw. In virtually every episode, the other players ganged up on the strongest player and eliminated him/her. That tension is good, but the strong player has to have a defense. If they simply gave immunity to the strongest link (or anyone tied for the strongest link) each round, the game would've been great.

What Matty said. Beyond the fact that I found the host unbearably annoying and unfunny, it's a show where one was punished for doing well. I'm amused that someone who posts on the JBoard would defend the series, because it's one where a Jeopardy champion would have very little chance of winning. In other words, at some point, being better at trivia severely reduces one's chances!

Unless, of course, one intentionally sandbags, which is even worse.

[StevenH]

I agree with IronNeck about The Weakest Link. I loved the show for about the first week that it was on the air, but holy smokes did it get old fast.

And it's really a shame that ABC milked WWTBAM. While the gameplay was a little slower than I prefer and there were sometimes hose questions that would stop a good player dead in their tracks, it did have a few things going for it. On the whole the questions were good by the standards of television game shows, and I also liked that contestants had the two safety net dollar values and still had the option to walk away and keep the amount that they had already won while still seeing the the next question. It's funny that Greed was the antithesis of this.

[Bamaman]

I found a full episode of Divided on youtube. Here are the basic rules:

The players walked on stage from three different directions and the host said that was the first time they had met. The players introduced themselves and said what their trivia strengths and weaknesses were. There are five rounds. The first round has five questions, the second has four, etc. The dollar amount for a question increases each round. After the host reads the question the clock starts at 100 seconds and 1% of the money goes away each second. If a team gets a question wrong, half of their money is taken away. If they get three wrong, the game is over. After each round, they have 15 seconds to decide if they want to stop. If they do not agree before the 15 seconds is up, the next round begins automatically.

The gameplay wasn't that bad. It was hard to judge the difficulty of some of them because they were related to UK geography or pop culture. I did see a couple of celebrity photo questions, including another birth order question. They also has wordplay, with one asking them to decide which phrase was a palindrome, another looking for a word that was spelled correctly (the word was "misspelled") and another asking for an anagram of someone's name.

The game I saw the players got through four rounds with two wrong. So if they went for the final round and got it wrong, they would lose everything. The host said the last round (which had one question) would have a question that could be tricky. They quickly chose to quit and they did not show the question.

In this game, they argued for 50 seconds until the clock stopped. I think they all bid for the big share (no one was clearly the brains of the group) but after time started again, someone chose to take the small share and another agreed to take the middle.

I also saw a video of a montage of the final part. One of them had a team drop to zero. One guy said he didn't need the money so was willing to take nothing unless he could get the biggest share.

I really don't see it lasting long here. The part where they argue over the money will get old in a hurry as it will be the same most of the time and they will rarely win a bunch of money because I see at least half of it vanishing every time. If I lived in LA I might try out just for a chance to win some money and be on TV, but nobody is going to incur any big personal expense with no guarantee of getting anything.

Another problem with the game is the questions where nobody knows the answer. They are reduced to a group guess under a time pressure, which is no better than picking a name out of a hat.

I also saw a version where the host came out speaking Arabic.

[Vermonter]

Ben Ingram once turned me on to Malcolm, an unsold pilot hosted by Alex Trebek

[Armandillo]

Anyone know where I can watch Beat the Geeks?

I was called to audition for Divided, but turned it down, luckily (for scheduling reasons). The person didn't mention to me ANYTHING about arguing/competing with other contestants for money. Hmmm......

[dinghammer]

Ben Ingram once turned me on to Malcolm, an unsold pilot hosted by Alex Trebek

I was hoping it wouldn't be that bad so I could say I rate it somewhere around the middle, but good lord...

[IronNeck]

Ben Ingram once turned me on to Malcolm, an unsold pilot hosted by Alex Trebek

And people claim it was only the 70s that were a crazy time in television. The one amusing aspect is Alex's straight-faced enthusiasm throughout. A real fucking pro, that guy.

Anyone know where I can watch Beat the Geeks?

Wow, there were a bunch of episodes on Youtube as recently as December of last year. Now, the only portion I can find is the second half of this episode;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ_c7NKQx8A

Someone must be cracking down.

[Bamaman]

When I saw the intro to Malcolm I thought it couldn't be as bad as it looked. Actually. I think it was worse. I could handle the cartoon co-host if the actual gameplay wasn't so lame. It said in the credits this was made in 1983. Can you imagine if some network executive was dumb enough to pick it up and Alex was committed to doing the show and he was unable to take the Jeopardy! job?

[BobF]

Malcolm looks like a game show dreamed up by Weird Al Yankovic.

[opusthepenguin]

Can you imagine if some network executive was dumb enough to pick it up and Alex was committed to doing the show and he was unable to take the Jeopardy! job?

I wonder if they would've used Pat Fleming to host the show then. If not, who else? Peter Marshall? Wink Martindale? Chuck Woolery? Bob Eubanks? An unknown? A known, but who hadn't hosted a game show before? I could see Charlie Rose doing it.

[triviawayne]

Anyone know where I can watch Beat the Geeks?

I was called to audition for Divided, but turned it down, luckily (for scheduling reasons). The person didn't mention to me ANYTHING about arguing/competing with other contestants for money. Hmmm......

I've heard for the original, producers never told contestants this was part of the show. They wanted genuine reactions without pre-planning by the players.

What I don't know is if that would be allowed here. It's possible that's what will be done, then after the fact, players are given equal shares with a signed NDA.

[Vermonter]

Returning to the genesis of this thread, how can Winsanity be considered one of the worst game shows ever? It's slow and somewhat gimmicky with the Win Watches, yes, but it's challenging and has a high play-along value

[IronNeck]

Returning to the genesis of this thread, how can Winsanity be considered one of the worst game shows ever?

I actually called it "terrible", not "one of the worst game shows ever". Although I will note that it's worse than the episode of Malcolm you posted.

It's slow and somewhat gimmicky with the Win Watches, yes, but it's challenging and has a high play-along value

"Slow" is the understatement of the year. There is one new quantity to order sandwiched between two commercial breaks. There is endless empty banter between the two hosts, contestant, and audience. The entire show features less trivia than most 2 minute Sporcle quizzes.

It's the most tortuously slow, quiz-light show I've ever seen.

And the difficulty spike is ridiculous; most of the game is easy enough, and then, the last question or two is some stupid, random shit, which causes a contestant to lose. This is their "formula".

[Anachronism]

For its purely empty strategy, randomness, slow pace and apparent popularity, I'm surprised Deal or No Deal remains unmentioned.

[econgator]

For its purely empty strategy, randomness, slow pace and apparent popularity, I'm surprised Deal or No Deal remains unmentioned.

DoND was kinda like the train wreck you couldn't help but watch. Actually, the US version all glitzed up wasn't too bad. The UK version was really bland.

There is strategy for it, but like wagering in J! no one ever followed it. I've never checked on this, but I suspect that almost everyone who played would have done better than they did simply by taking the Banker's first offer.