Millionaire is Coming Back Home to ABC

It was certainly the best U.S. version of Ask the Host. I hate cricket, yes finally and Table Mountain were all great, too.

Truthfully, that was the only question on Andy Cohen's run that gave me some trouble. I figured it might have been Jimmy Kimmel since it was the last episode of the series and the question writers may have wanted a comic relief/tribute sort of question. I do remember seeing commercials about Jimmy Kimmel hosting the Oscars not that long ago, though I'm not one to watch the Oscars.

I loved how gutsy Anderson Cooper was. He was willing to take chances, take risks. He's not only very intelligent, but his willingness to go for it on questions the way that he did is something you don't see in every contestant, though it's hard to blame them for that. 

I knew for sure somebody was getting to the Million Dollar Question this series, but I didn't know there were two people who made it there as well, since only once was it teased. It’s always nice to see a 15th question on an episode of Millionaire. He was a great contestant who saved his lifelines and it really worked out well. I thought both he and Andy Cohen had a good stack of questions. 

I got the $500,000 question right, and I'm surprised nobody has brought this up yet, be it on here, or other places like Twitter and YouTube. I did not know that fact, per se, but I do know that there's a dragon on Bhutan's national flag. It's interesting that it wasn't mentioned on the show either, but an interest in flags does have its perks. 

That's one of the hardest Million Dollar Questions I've ever seen. That's right there with Chip Esten's question. It was syndicated Millionaire levels of difficulty. That made Lauren Lapkus' question look like a walk in the park, which it certainly wasn't. However, if you study enough of the periodic table, you might be able to get it right. Anderson's question? The difficulty in questions just completely heightened from $500,000 to $1,000,000. It makes you wonder who would know this.

I will say that I thought it was either Spam or Jello. A Marshmellow, and especially a Lifesaver, just sounded silly. 

Anyway, did Anderson Cooper mess up by reading the question twice? Kelly Ripa did say Jello, and we could've had a winner, but why didn't she interject to give an answer?

Let me just say how beyond thrilled I am that Millionaire is back in Primetime on ABC where it belongs and that it's going to be back. Overall, it's been a great series. I don't think it started off the greatest, but it gradually got better once it moved to Thursdays. I am really not sure what I am going to do with myself on Thursday nights. I guess I'll just have to keep studying in preparation for a civilian edition.

Speaking of which, when do you think it might come back and when they might announce it? If it's a civilian edition, will there be a website to sign up?

So now that the first season is behind us, what would we like to see out of a second season?

I’m personally hoping for higher stakes, so civilian contestants would be ideal. Regardless if celebrities or civilians are playing the game, I’d prefer that the expert can’t weigh in without limit for the first ten questions. They can remain as a Lifeline, but the game needs more tension and having a full-on conversation with a friend eliminates that. And I say that with full acknowledgement that the Cooper/Cohen banter was television gold.

Not to go off topic, but millionairenut I am astounded that you still have a local store to rent movies from. I loved rental stores when I was a kid and miss the feeling of seeing walls of movies and video games to rent.

I know I'm a couple weeks late, but I think Anderson's run, much like Lauren's run, was excellent. As many other commentators have already posted, took lots of risk, was lots of fun to watch. It's always great to see another million dollar question, especially if they follow another contestant who also had a million dollar question.

Some personal notes about the questions this time. I, like millionairenut, also knew the $500,000 question, although my reason for knowing it was because I knew that the King of Bhutan, in their native language, was called Druk something (I forget the second word, but I knew it definitely started with Druk), which translated to Dragon King (which I thought was bada--).

As for the million dollar question, I don't think it was too absurdly difficult. In fact, I think the difficulty was quite fair, because its an obscure fact that wasn't too obscure (it's one of those facts that shows up in trivia books every now and then, unlike let's say, what restaurant did Jimmy Hoffa visit when he was kidnapped, for instance). The writing (syntactically and with respect to amount of information given) is spot-on. Whoever wrote that question truly understands the essence of Millionaire question writing^TM.

I actually narrowed it down to marshmallows of Jell-O, because I had actually heard of this one before. I knew it was a dessert item (so not SPAM) that wasn't entirely solid (so not a Lifesaver), but I honestly couldn't remember if it was a marshmallow or Jell-O (I was told of the 'living' dessert when I was about 7 years old, which was over a decade ago). I probably would've gone for marshmallow, in all honesty, since that was my first instinct.

I honestly hope a civilian version comes out soon, because I'm sure as heck going to try out if that's the case. I think I'd do decently well (so long as there aren't too many pop culture questions), at least $32,000 (which, when combined with the experience of being on Millionaire makes for a pretty good day out). We'll see, but if civilian applications ever come out, they can expect to receive mine.

Also, commenting on something another commentator put up earlier, I don't think ABC will overexpose the show again. I think (I hope) they've learned. I think it'll make a fine addition to ABC's Summer of Fun and Games (although, as a fan of the show, it'd be great if they put it on once weekly throughout the year, like the British version was on ITV).

Is there any word if this is celebrity or civilian?

My concern is that ratings are going to be poor like they were on late Wednesday nights, when you consider Millionaire would hypothetically be going against Sunday Night Football.

I mean, I love football, and while I personally would watch Millionaire at 9:00 on a Sunday, I’m not sure how many people in this country would.

If the next edition is a celebrity series, does that mean they are waiting for the virus to subside for them to have civilians and an audience? It seems like the UK will be filming its next series without an audience and no mentions of celebrities.

Then again, the UK tends to do a single episode for celebrities, a series for civilians. The U.S. seems to do both.