Millionaire is Coming Back Home to ABC

It was obvious that going against football was a mistake, I say this as a huge football fan in addition to somebody who loves Millionaire.

I find it ironic, though, that one of the worst years of all time was the year both the UK and US saw their Millionaire droughts come to an end, the latter its first celebrity top prize winner. It’s been a horrible year, but Millionaire is one of the reasons it hasn’t been all bad.

Well, on the bright side, David Chang was the 9th top prize winner of 2020 worldwide.
So that’s a good thing!

That’s the one. If that’s a Strachan cue, it must be a new one.

Somewhere, FinalAnswer19 is stirring.

One of the better big winners, definitely. A very deserving celebrity contestant, very humble guy. Simply put, he was a joy to watch. Congratulations to David Chang and his chosen charity.

Now, onto the analysis and review. I must admit that I haven't watched the last couple episodes of the show, and I think it that sums up my attitudes and feelings toward this revival pretty well. A lot of other commenters before me already summed this point up perfectly: It's just not particularly exciting and to be frank, it's starting to get to be a bit of a chore to watch. Jimmy's just not that excited or suspenseful. I don't know, his style of delaying the answer is just grating to me. There is an art to stalling. Meredith and Chris nailed it on the head. Jimmy overdoes it, almost to Eddie McGuire levels. The fact that the host is so laid-back and sort of... mild all the time I think is the single factor that hurts this revival the most. As someone said earlier, I get why he was chosen, but I think someone else would've been better. I don't necessarily think it's Chris Harrison. I think he suffers from the same lack of excitement Jimmy does (if there's any evidence to the contrary, please let me know). Cedric had perfect energy. Same goes for Terry. 

The question writing is still appalling, although I must say it matches up perfectly with Jimmy's occasional long-windedness in revealing the answer. I mean, I get that we're talking about celebrities and they're a bit thicker than civilian contestants, but come on. David's $250K and $1 million questions had what could be some of the worst selections of answers I've ever seen. For $250K, you'd think they'd put up 4 global fast food chains with strong name recognition up there. Instead we get the very American Denny's and the almost as American Red Lobster as choices. Why not Burger King and McDonald's or something, something that seems reasonable? The selections in the million dollar question are forgivable, seeing that this is a celebrity edition and David didn't really know his chronology of presidents anyway (and neither did Jimmy, as he would imply after the win). But if this were a civilian game and those were the choices to that question, it would've been... tragic. I mean, why Grant and Johnson (two figures who were really associated with the Civil War, which predated electricity by 20 or so years)? Why not Arthur, Harrison, Hayes, and Garfield, for instance? With Grant and Johnson as choices, those two can basically be instantly eliminated through deduction based on the approximate time frame of their prominence (and they probably would've been the ones eliminated in 50:50, had David still had it and used it) and basically made it a 50:50 shot between Harrison and Arthur. I don't think a million dollar question ought to be that easy to deduce (at least for civilians).

When I first saw that question, I instantly thought Harrison before the answers came up. I momentarily doubted myself when I saw Arthur, but then decided that it couldn't have been him, since "he was shot 7 or so months after taking office" (I had confused Arthur with Garfield) and thus couldn't have been around long enough to reap the benefits of electricity. It's one of the few million dollar/pound questions I got correct when I first saw it, and I must admit that I'm quite proud.

David took such a gamble. Like, I don't recall anyone taking as big of a gamble on question 15. Nancy Christy and Ogi Ogas both took incredible gambles on their 14th question, but were extremely confident and went for it or not confident enough and walked on question 15, respectively. David is the first contestant I've ever seen in any English-language version of the game to be unconfident on question 15, go for it anyway, and get it right. That was exciting and incredible to witness. (Although it would've been a billion times more suspenseful and incredible had ABC not spoiled it for all of us) Congratulations again to him and to Mina. 

What wasn't as exciting was the atmosphere surrounding the win. David was ecstatic, so was his in-studio help. Jimmy was... lesser so, although I don't think he was as bad as some people made him out to be (that being said, there was much room for more excitement). I didn't like the lack of confetti, or the way the studio just remained blue and white (come on, exciting colors! Orange! Red! Look at British Millionaire!), or the rather uninspiring graphics (although again, this is just a problem with this era of Millionaire on both sides of the pond). 'Total charity winnings - $1 MILLION' is nice. 'DAVID CHANG - MILLIONAIRE' would have been much nicer. 

So yeah, that's my review of Sunday's show. I'm frankly very concerned for the future of this show. IF this show survives this season, and I'm praying it will, it will definitely NOT survive another one featuring celebrities IN ANY CAPACITY. It just isn't anywhere near as exciting and it's frankly becoming a bit of a chore and bore to watch, between the lowered stakes and the grinding banter and playing strategies of some of the celebrities (how will we ever forget Nikki Glaser?). 

I'm hoping ABC and Davies pull their heads out of their behinds and get back to what makes Millionaire great - the (civilian) contestants. If British Millionaire and KBC and Die Millionenshow (fantastic win by Christoph a couple days back, by the way; that was also a joy to watch - you got the sense he knew every one of the upper third answers the moment the questions came up) and CVEM and Hot Seat in Australia can do it, we sure as heck can too. I'm hoping ABC is willing to give the show another season and everyone else is willing to make it work, because right now, it kinda feels like everyone's just going through the motions, but there's no love or care put into it. And as a big fan of this format, it really hurts me to see that.

P.S. What the heck is that font they're using nowadays on the two transatlantic versions of the show? What is it called? It's certainly not ITC Conduit anymore (tragically) and I've been trying to find out what is it, but haven't gotten anywhere.

As an incredibly awkward person myself, I'm tempted to defend Kimmel, because he's rather relatable, but I really can't. Especially after re-watching a bunch of old Harrison episodes, funny enough. Harrison actually had a solid amount of energy, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that he fit the standing setup really well. He wasn't the type to raise his voice a huge amount as much as it was to be incredibly animated, sitting in a seat probably would've stifled him a good deal.



Fair point, but the mental image of people getting excited to go to a Denny's is hilarious. I'm pretty sure you couldn't pay me enough to step inside a Denny's.



Ken Basin definitely wasn't too sure of Yoohoo, I'd say. He definitely was just feeling a ton of pressure from a well-known millionaire drought and the devil on his shoulder simply won out. In general, I'd agree that David's move was ballsier. Harrison was never even on his radar, it was all having faith in Mina.



Yeah... the set and the classic music are pretty much slowly becoming the only two reasons to watch. Even I find myself dying to tune out occasionally, and I haven't felt that sensation since the shuffle days.

To be quite honest, if there is one single thing Sony has done very piss poor, it is the graphics. Disney/ABC was light years ahead with the clock era graphics and even the shuffle/Harrison graphics (pre-parallelograms), while a step down from clock, was still leaps and bounds better than the mediocrity of the Sony graphics around most of the world.



I believe it is the Interstate font. A.k.a. the really generic font that you see on all the highway signs (at least here in North America). Hell, I believe it is the default font of this very forum!

Yeah, at this point, I am never watching a Celebrity Millionaire episode again in the US. Also, ABC, PLEASE REPLACE KIMMEL. Why Chris wasn’t brought back is beyond me, especially since he’s already on ABC’s payroll with The Bachelor. Anyway, I think Davies might be losing his touch. I don’t want to be negative, but I honestly think the show is being mismanaged once again, just like it was in the syndicated show’s final nine seasons. I don’t think this is a good omen for the show.