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Where are the experts on Millionaire's "TV Week?"
I don't usually watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire after my local news in the afternoon. After the news is over I usually switch to another channel, but this week they're having a "TV Week," (though it could be a repeat week since it's summer, not sure) so I've been watching every day. And I have to tell you, these contestants don't know much about television.I don't say this as a guy who writes about television for a living, I'm talking about as a television fan. The questions have been remarkably easy, especially in the early rounds, even up to $25,000, and the players are just failing miserably. Even with the lifelines the show offers! That's inexcusable. Of course, the audience hasn't always been a help either. They screwed over one contestant by saying that Eliza Dushku's show was called Tru Colors and not Tru Calling.
That Tru Calling question was probably one of the harder ones I've seen. Most of the questions center around classic TV shows that we're all familiar with. The stuff you see on TV Land and Nickelodeon and in primetime right now. I shook my head when someone didn't know an answer about Family Ties. I sighed when they didn't know the answer to questions about The Facts of Life and Mad Men. I cringed when one contestant was going to answer China Beach when asked which TV show turned out to be just the fantasy inside a snow globe owned by a child. China Beach? The hell? The only reason she didn't is because she used two lifelines.
What gets me is that these aren't just regular contestants who, by the luck of the draw, find themselves in a "TV Week" on the show. These are players that have specifically been picked because they know a lot about TV. They talk about how they're so obsessed with TV that their relationships suffer, how they own a giant TV and watch it all the time, how they're finally going to use all of the TV trivia they have inside their head. Then we see them stumped by the second or third question and they have to start using lifelines to figure out the answer to a question about a TV theme song, even after the audience sings the song to them.
Joel suspects that they look for attractive contestants with TV-ready personalities and not necessarily the ones that know the most about television. If that's the case, I think they should have an "average-looking/shut-in" TV week and see the real experts win some cash.
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