Millionaire is Coming Back Home to ABC

I think both are very good points between playing aggressively and using lifelines, which are very essential to success in the game, and Jeremy Clarkson always tells people to use them.

That said, you have to take chances, but don't take unnecessary chances, either. Don't take a wild guess at something. Of course you use your lifelines if you need help, but don't use them if you know the answer, or you can narrow down the other options.

You don't succeed without taking chances, but you don't have to be a contestant to know you will inevitably have to use them. When John Carpenter returned to the hot seat on the Champions edition, he sure needed to use them, even though he still walked with $250,000.

That's said, let's talk about this week's episode.

They've asked obscure stuff, for sure. The UK and Australia are much more straightforward with their questions, while I've been getting vibes recently that the questions on this celebrity special have been a step below the ridiculously hard questions on the syndicated version. Of course, Dr. Phil had an incredibly easy question for $125,000. So, every now and then they throw in easy one in there for the higher amount.

I noticed Kaitlin Olson wasn't looking at the screen when Jimmy was reading the questions, which I found peculiar. I hadn't seen anything like that before, but no one can really blame her for using two lifelines on that question, or for going with Jimmy on the $125,000. Now, had somebody said they were absolutely sure for $64,000 and she didn't take their advice and wanted another lifeline, then you can understand it.

It's past the 24 hours, so here is my review from last night.

I didn't get to see it on TV because a special town hall on the virus was airing. So, my friend and I were very bummed out until we decided to try Google Hangouts and so we connected on our laptops. He was able to stream it from ABC.com, though I couldn't do the same, and he was kind enough to show it to me, even though I couldn't really hear sound and could only see it. It lagged but it worked.

I didn't catch all of Lauren's run until this morning when I saw it on DVR because it ran out here during the middle of the night. I would've needed lifelines on some of her questions, but could have potentially gotten into six figures if I used them judiciously.

The first one I knew was when my friend read me the $64,000 question and I knew almost immediately it was the speed of light. Sure enough, that was correct. I didn't see the $125,000 until this morning, and then I saw the stream the $250,000 and onward. I would've guessed A instead of B for $250,000. I figured she'd see the Million Dollar Question because I know Jimmy told a celebrity in the previews about their Million Dollar Question.

I did get the $500,000 correct, but I had to run all the names in my head, and double check just in case. I'm not sure why she had two previously recycled questions from the Regis era? I knew I had seen the speed of light somewhere, and they used the exact choices for $500,000. Britain did this, too, on Andrew Townsley's 14th question.

As far as the Million Dollar Question, I had no idea. I know some stuff, though not a lot, about the Periodic Table of Elements, and even if I did, I still doubt I would've gotten that one right.

Also, calling the dad to tell her that she won $500,000 was awesome. I like that Jimmy is suspenseful. I do think, however, his fake outs could use some work though.

I like how Lauren was all business and she went from $2,000 to the Million Dollar Question fairly quickly. She was a lot like Jane Fonda. If a contestant wants to take a few seconds during a question to tell a story or explain an answer, I really don't care, but when a celebrity goes on and on with endless chatter during a question, that is very bothersome. It seemed like Anderson Cooper did a bit of that last night and I just hope he doesn't get as bad as Nikki Glaser.

It's always a great episode whenever somebody sees the 15th question. I figured she was going to walk since I didn't see any spoilers saying she won or she lost.

I played the app last night, and I answered 13 questions correctly before missing out on the 14th question.

What are we going to do with ourselves on Thursday nights after six days from now? With the UK on hiatus and a lot of uncertainty in the US, who knows the next time we're going to see Millionaire? The good news is, it got renewed, but I'm really going to need my Millionaire fix after this last episode.

I think the folks on here summed it up pretty nicely. Last Thursday's show was great and Lauren was great. No excessive banter, no wasting time (on her part). Went from $2,000 to $500,000 in about 14 minutes (out of the 42 minutes the show had), which was good. Anderson's run was barely starting (realistically speaking) when the klaxon called time, so I won't comment on his performance. 

However, that being said, there is some critical commentary to be had here (in usual pedantic and nitpicky PanAmPat fashion, of course). I think the pacing is still slow. The stalling on the $500,000 reveal was approaching Eddie McGuire levels of tediousness, in my opinion. A seven to ten second wait on the $500K answer reveal, I think, is perfect. If you include going to commercial (a practice imported from the OG version that I admittedly was never a fan of), the wait should be about 15 to 20 seconds after you come back from commercial. A nearly minute and a half wait after coming back from commercial (with the additional 20 or so seconds before going to commercial) is overdoing it in my opinion. 

My other issue with Thursday night's show is with this: "Six U.S. Presidents had what first name, the most common presidential name in history?"

Now, I generally think the question writing for this version of Millionaire has been good. The questions were of good difficulty for the level and the writing was to the point and efficient (one of the things I hate most in any version of Millionaire are what I call 'story questions' where its not so much a question being asked as it is a story being told to the contestant and the viewer, with lots of unnecessary detail; the Harrison version of syndie Millionaire is by far the worst offender).

This may be the worst question I've seen in the revival so far with respect to quality of writing. The reason for that is by explicitly specifying that there are six presidents who've had that name, any form of uncertainly a contestant may have about their answer goes away once the contestant figures out which six presidents had the same first name. If that part wasn't there, it would have been a perfect $500,000 question, but with that part there, the difficulty of the question is compromised.

What I'm saying is this (bear with me here): In this scenario, as soon as I'm confident there were six presidents with the first name James, I can confidently lock in 'James' as my final answer because every other possibility was eliminated for me by the question.

If that first clause wasn't there, there'd be much more uncertainty present because I don't know how many presidents shared the most common first name. "How many presidents had that name? How many am I looking for? I have six James and I'm pretty sure that there are only five Johns, but I may have miscounted. Maybe this name had seven holders. Maybe there are six and it is James. But there are five Johns too and there might be a sixth that I'm forgetting (for instance, from that list of utterly forgettable presidents in the late 19th century). $218,000 is a lot to lose, especially for charity. Maybe I should just walk."

Of course, a large part of being able to answer this question is dependent on knowing that there are six presidents called James (and by extension, having a decent command of the names of the US presidents). Anyone who didn't know that would be SOL irrespective of how the question was phrased. But by phrasing it without the part specifying six holders, a lot more uncertainty is created and the question becomes that much more difficult, perfectly difficult for $500K (at least in my opinion). 

At that level for that money, if I was the person in charge of approving questions, I would've taken a big fat red Sharpie, completely crossed out the question, and rewritten it as "Which is the most common presidential name in US history?" Simple, effective, to the point, doesn't give out hints. (More generally speaking, I wish American question writers wrote more short and simple but challenging questions in this style, using the word "Which") That or I would've changed the difficulty to $125,000 (a much more appropriate level of difficulty for that question with that first part)

Then again, maybe the question was intentionally made somewhat easier so as to let celebrities win that money for charity. Maybe if these were civilians playing, the question would've been rewritten to the way I wrote it in the last paragraph and the difficulty kept up.

By the way, the million dollar question is perfect in terms of difficulty, quality of writing, syntax, and quality of answers. I wish Jimmy had gone into which four elements are named after the Swedish village (this is probably the thing I LOVED MOST about the Australian version: after every answer reveal, Eddie'd always give us a quick one sentence explanation for each of the answers telling us why the answer is what it is; NO OTHER VERSION does this and I don't understand why). For those of you who are trivia buffs (like I am) and curious as to which four elements are named after a Swedish mining village, they are yttrium (Y), ytterbium (Yb), erbium (Er) and terbium (Tb) and all four are named after the feldspar and quartz mining village of Ytterby in eastern Sweden. 

My only complaint there was I wish the lighting was significantly darker when you get to that stage. All I should be able to see, really, are Lauren, Jimmy, and some traces of blue accent lighting dimly lighting the set. Here, I think we saw too much. 

Overall, it was a very good episode and I hope we see more million dollar questions soon (and of course, maybe even have a million dollar winner).