Minute to Win What?

There was a time when television game shows involved thinking. Nothing could match the self-satisfaction of being able to “buzz in” the answer before a contestant or the simple pleasure of yelling random responses to a non-responsive television screen. But the days of interactive game shows are over, replaced by entertainment ploys with players racing to pull all of the tissues out of a box within a minute. TV game shows were once fun because they encouraged viewers at home to play along, but now they simply encourage viewers to sit on the sidelines and watch.

Growing up, “Jeopardy” was a favorite in my strict household since it enforced knowledge of random trivia, while educating us on the proper use of question words. Though new game shows, like “Minute to Win It,” do teach us necessary survival skills for relinquishing boredom, they do not help with other aspects of life, like school or jobs. Once, while watching a Jeopardy episode with a physics category, I refreshed my memory on important concepts I learned earlier in class. It was fun to race with the players to find the right answer. My experience with “Minute to Win It” was nowhere as worthwhile: I watched a woman try to find a ball and put it in a basket with a blindfold over her eyes. It was frustrating; how can one possibly empathize with that challenge? Game shows should test the limits of proficiency at some useful skill, but today networks use the format as a gateway for ridiculous entertainment.

This downslide is perhaps due to the corrosive influence of reality TV. I used to enjoy game shows since they were the few remaining programs that did not make me feel guilty about watching television; I had to think and strategize as well as watch. But reality TV has influenced game shows to turn into a form of entertainment as passive as almost any other TV program. Now, we are expected to gain our self-satisfaction not from struggling with the contestants and eventually “beating” them by answering faster but by laughing at them as they humiliate themselves in their scramble through a flashy obstacle course, filled with random punching fists, and impossible, huge red balls.

At least in older reality-TV game shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother,” there was something to be won by the contestants, since people had to strategize and even manipulate to gain that final money prize. But, in newer shows, this trope has been removed: contestants can only win by embarrassing themselves. These game show-incarnations have taken the thrill of healthy competition out of the genre and have become practically mindless game play. Rather than stimulating mental proficiency, TV “game shows” now check any form of thinking from the viewers and even the contestants.

While networks should be awarded for attempting to provide light-hearted fun during an era believed to be nearly as bad as the Great Depression, they should not be rewarded for promoting an idle mentality for viewers or a lack of quality programming. I liked TV game shows. I liked pretending I was a part of the game. I liked believing that television would not rot my brain as much as my parents said it would. But this one beacon of hope has become spoiled by the networks’ and American viewers’ desire for flashy, easy entertainment.

Gina Yu ’13, a Crimson editorial writer, is a Biomedical Engineering concentrator in Dunster House.