You know, I had seen this show years ago somehow and it still holds up all these years later! If you don't know, Mastermind is probably the most intellectual game show on earth (unless you know another).
So it goes like this - when you register for the show you have to give them an area of expertise you want to be quizzed on during the first round of the show. You can pretty much pick anything you want as long as there's enough material to base questions on. Examples of topics include: European Birds, Anne of Green Gables Novels, J.R.R. Tolkien, The life and career of Bishop William Colenso. So they go out and get experts to come up with really detailed and specific questions which you'd better actually be an expert, if you want a chance to answer. Then in round two it's time for general questions.
Here are some example general knowledge Questions: "Which metallic element has the symbol W standing for wolfram which was an old name for it?" , "Which English born ballerina married the Panamanian diplomat Roberta Arias in 1955?" "Sinead is the Irish equivalent of which English girls name?"
Answers: Tungsten , Margot Fontaine , Janet <- Highlight text for answers
Yes it's not exactly Who Wants to be a Millionaire is it? Okay and you really have to check out the site to see the set, because even a description can not do justice to it. (Still) You are basically in a single chair being bombarded with these questions at a vigorous pace, in the dark, under a spotlight.
What I love most about it though is if you win you get essentially nothing. By essentially I mean if you keep winning eventually you get a cup/trophy or something, but all this is done pretty much just for bragging rights about how smart you are. Only in England, got to love it.
Posted 03:20 PM to TV - (2) Comments
I'm really not sure what it is that causes these phenomena, but I swear they seem real. Okay, really I know it's just the human predilection for finding patterns in everything, but let's pretend.
Every time you see a show you almost never watch it will be the same episode
This is probably the most commonly held TV myth I can think of. It almost seems like the less you watch TV the more likely this is to occur as well. There isn't really that much more I have to say on that, I only mention it to make the next one (the real point of this post) seem more insane.
Every time you have a day off, it will be Paternity Test day on Maury
Yeah okay I admit everything above was just a smokescreen for talking about this. The only thing sadder than Paternity Test day is the fact you can't listen to half of it because the obscenity filter bleeps out about half the show - clearly just based on the audience. By far the craziest thing I've seen was this one time a woman was back on the show to have 2 guys tested at the same time. Now this is maybe not so strange [just wait] except these were guys 9 and 10. That's right, apparently this woman is either so bad at math or so slutty there are 10 potential men she had unprotected sex with. No no.. and that's not the crazy part even - neither of those guys was the guy!
That said I feel as guilty for being the voyeur of these people's tragedies as Maury should be for turning it in to entertainment.
So I'll agree that the last two Family Guy episodes were not the best. They both kind of trailed on inconsistently, and looked more like a few great bits filled in with a plot. That said I'll take a new episode of Family Guy over almost anything else [save maybe a new Daily Show] any day.
But when you go ahead and do something like smacking Peter Griffin in the middle of the classic "Take on Me" video by A-Ha, well that's just genius! I almost feel sorry for people who don't get the reference because it goes on so long. That said you can go on over to MTV.com [requires IE - Boo!] and have a look at the full video. It was pretty revolutionary at the time, but just remember that time was 80's synth-pop heaven :) Still, if you didn't love/hate this kind of music when it was fresh, you might not love/hate it as much as you'll need to for it to be funny.
The good news is it doesn't usually get any worse than this. The bad news is Big Brother 6 has started, which means it is officially the low-point of the TV viewing year. There is reality TV, then there's bad reality TV, then there's boring reality TV. Yes it's time to watch the hamsters in their cage, playing all the cheesy party games left behind from the 60's. Imagine Survivor, but without the tropical paradise, the starvation, the gross food, and Jeff. I Know! The good news is they've replaced some of the old standard stereotypes with some new ones, and no more old folks because [Surprise!] when all the young women leave the show viewership drops like a rock.
The only upside is that in the future, losing contestants will be ground up in to little Dalek Bits. Now that's something I can get on board with.
Posted 11:30 AM to TV - (0) Comments
