That's My Final Answer

September 1999

(UPDATE: Okay, so "Millionaire" finally did make their questions more difficult. No thanks in small part to the piece below, I'm sure! OK, maybe not.)

According to the ratings, most of you gentle readers have already seen the new hit TV show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." For the three people who haven't seen it, let me explain how the show works. Aging morning TV nut Regis Philbin hosts a question-and-answer game where questions grow progressively harder and with higher dollar amounts until the big pregunta de mucho buckolas, where the contestant can win a million dollars.

Pretty simple stuff, but in keeping with our low educational standards, we must help people to get the right answers when we try to test their own knowledge. Contestants get three "lifelines" for help with the answers: one phone call to a friend, cut the multiple choices in half for a 50/50 guess, and an audience poll for the answer. Most don't need them until about halfway through since the questions up until about the $64k level could be answered by an eight year-old child raised by wolves.

Apparently, however, even a Mowgli education is above some contestants, since there have been a few that couldn't even manage to reach the tough questions. The first level is always simple: "Put the following letters in alphabetical order -- 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' 'D'." The second one only slightly harder: "Which is not a meal of the day -- 'Breakfast,' 'Lunch,' 'Dinner,' 'Space Shuttle'." I actually saw someone stumble around the $1000 mark, which was something like "What is your middle name?" These are the contestants Wheel of Fortune turned away, for crying out loud; the kind that would see one blank space left on a puzzle and proudly shout the answer is "necessity is the Bother of invention!"

The Big Kahuna question on a recent show was "Which President appeared on the TV show 'Laugh In'?" (real question) Now, even if a person never saw Nixon's famous "Sock it to ME?" clip from the show, if he remembers the show was on in the early 70s, he can probably eliminate the "Theodore Roosevelt" and "John Quincy Adams" answers right away.

I guess I shouldn't expect too much high-intellect stuff from a show whose title isn't even grammatically correct (Who Wants to Use a Question Mark?). And make no mistakes, if I had the chance I'd gladly multiply my annual salary in twenty minutes by having Mr. Philbin test my vast knowledge of cartoons and 1970s sitcoms. But it would be nice to see something on TV that actually rewards smart people more than the ones with smart connections and good guesses. A big winner on "Jeopardy" takes home $10,000 after proving his knowledge in anthropology, literature, and physics. A WWTBAM guy who quits halfway through can get paid six times that much by answering questions about "Star Trek," nursery rhymes, and Pokémon, and using a lifeline to figure out if Edison invented the phonograph or sushi.

Due to a large number of winners, the "Millionaire" producers are now planning to toughen up the questions. Not only would I like to see that, I'd hope they don't announce when they do it. That way after Mr. Guessalot struggles his way to $64,000 on TV trivia, he gets hit with "How many times does the word 'prince' appear in Machiavelli's essay, 'The Prince'?" and falls into an intellectual coma. Now that's good TV!

LEGAL STUFF: All content copyright © 1996-2006 Daniel O'Leary. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication, publication, or distribution.

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He has previously written online editorials to NJ-shout.com (RIP), Great Society.org, and Songsource.com, among others. He has also been featured in ShoreGuide and AbsoluteWrite.com.

Dan is a current member of the NetWits humorist's collective.

Since his early twenties, Dan's writings have also been prominently featured on the refrigerator in his parents' home. "Sure, they make no sense," Mrs. O'Leary comments, "but we're proud of him -- no matter what everyone else says."