arman
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Post by arman on Dec 2, 2020 18:06:15 GMT -5
And so did Portugal, The Netherlands and every other country that had a top prize winner during the COVID pandemic...
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Post by kplewisvox on Dec 2, 2020 19:08:38 GMT -5
Did the other countries with wins also have audience sweetening? That's what we don't have, only the crew cheering. I think the confetti would have been out of place without raucous cheering, real or no.
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RegisFan
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Post by RegisFan on Dec 2, 2020 22:57:51 GMT -5
I think part of the issue with Kimmel is honestly the same issue we are all having with this version of the show. It’s hard to get excited when the contestants are celebrities and they basically have 13 lifelines to answer 15 questions with very little personally at stake. We know it, and Jimmy knows it. He seems a lot more emotionally invested with the civilian contestants, and who can blame him? That’s not to say that Regis or Meredith wouldn’t have done better and put on a great show regardless, but I think Jimmy sees what’s happening and is as unimpressed as we are.
Davies is surprising me. It’s hard for me to imagine that the guy who continuously made US Millionaire better for 10 years lost all of his instincts. This man brought us Super Millionaire and the Clock Era, which comprise some of the best produced game show programming I’ve ever seen. Maybe COVID-19 is throwing him off his game (it can’t be helping), but I hope he sees what’s happening here and finds a way to course correct soon.
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Post by panampat on Dec 2, 2020 23:03:49 GMT -5
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. A couple of questions with respect to the Million Dollar question. 1. You have critiqued the question writing for the one Lauren Lapkus got for $500,000 multiple times on this forum. Yet, she admitted she didn’t know her presidents. May I ask what it is that you find David Chang’s choices for the Million more forgivable than the way Lauren Lapkus’ question was written, since they were both in the same boat and could’ve known more about the presidents? 2. Was Grant really the worst choice out there? He was in office from 1869-1877, Hayes 1877-1881 and Garfield during 1881. When you factor that in, was the end of Grant’s tenure not that long before Hayes and Garfield, whom you proposed both being as viable options? I can understand Andrew Johnson being a bad option for this question, but if Grant was a bad choice, I’d say it was definitely to a lesser extent. To answer your questions: Looking back on Lauren Lapkus's $500,000 question, allow me to slightly tweak my position. I think, in the context of this being a celebrity special, the way her question was written was (barely) forgivable. It was about as forgivable as David's million dollar question. Celebrities, as I've said many times, are generally less sharp than civilian contestants who apply to be on the show, and offering such guidance towards the correct answer is acceptable in that case. But if that question (exactly as it is written) was given to a civilian contestant, it, just like David's million dollar question, would have been absolutely unforgivable. To me, when you get to the really big money questions, especially questions 13, 14, and 15, dropping hints into the question or making the answer choices easy to deduce is a huge no-no. The contestant ought to have some certain amount of knowledge about the topic the question is asking. Of course, it is up to the writers to not make the questions too particular or difficult. But they ought to construct a question that, on its own, with no additional information whatsoever, is as difficult as the situation calls it to be. In Lauren's case, the question gave the contestant a hint to the answer, specifically a target number to hit. All the contestant had to do was hit that target number, then they can answer that question with confidence. The problem with the target number is that it makes the question go from a $500K question to a $64K question. By providing a target number, all Lauren/the contestant has to do is find whichever name has 6 holders. If she can't find a name with 6 holders, for whatever reason, she wouldn't answer, because the question told us the name had 6 holders. As soon as she found the one with 6 holders, then she can just lock that choice in without even having to consider the rest. In short, it reduces the amount of risk and uncertainty there is in answering the question, and it also allows the contestant to get away with answering the question correctly without necessarily having as much knowledge of the topic as they should (had the target number not been provided). If the target number was not provided, then she/the contestant would have to figure out how many holders there were of every first name, then be confident that they remembered to count every holder of every name, then be confident that no other name had more holders than the one they determined to have the most holder. By not providing the safety net that comes with having to find 6 holders, the contestant is forced to use more knowledge and be more gutsy, knowledge and guts worthy of $500,000, in my opinion. I think at that level, you ought to have some idea of who all the presidents are. Not necessarily their backgrounds and what they did. Just who they are and perhaps when they served/were relevant. Which brings us to David's question. The question, while wordy and excessive (in true American Millionaire style; they could've written "Who was President when electricity was first installed in the White House?" and been perfectly fine), was actually okay in terms of how much they give away in hints (which is nothing, no hints). It that question was written like Lapkus's $500,000 question, it would've had the words "in 1891" somewhere in there. Which would've transformed the question from "Who was President when electricity was first installed" to "Who was President in 1891?", which I think is (comparatively) a FAR easier question and extremely bad writing for a question 15. The problem with his question was the answer choices. I'm going to walk you through my thought process/reasoning for that. Let's assume that electricity (safe for domestic use) was discovered sometime in the 1880s (a ballpark estimation). Johnson, as most of us know, succeeded Lincoln, who died at the end of the Civil War in 1865. We know he was impeached (a rare honor, and a fairly well known historical/political fact), meaning that he was spectacularly unpopular, so he couldn't have lasted to the 1880s. Grant was of Civil War fame. If he was president, surely he would've been president sometime in the decade after the War (which he was, he succeeded Johnson in 1869). Any later and he either would've been too old or fallen out of prominence (or in Grant's actual case, dead). Assuming he served two terms, he wouldn't have made it too far into the 1880s, which makes it statistically unlikely for him to have been President when electricity was installed. To me, I think a (civilian) contestant ought to know/be able to deduce all three of those main points to merit a million dollars: - Domestic electricity was discovered/popularized in the 1880s
- Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln when the latter was shot in 1865 and was deeply incompetent and unpopular, as indicated by his impeachment and near removal
- Ulysses Grant was a famous Civil War general, and if he were to become president, surely he must've ran within a decade of war's end, which was in 1865.
This is subjective, but I don't think they're particularly obscure facts either. If I had written that question, I would've made the answer choices Arthur, Garfield, Cleveland, Harrison. I feel that at the million dollar level, you either know it and are at least semi-confident, or you don't and walk away (or you can do the third thing, which is what Chef David did, which is go for it anyway and risk hundreds of thousands of dollars). You shouldn't really be playing the deduction game. I can't really think of a million dollar/pound question that wasn't a 'you know it or you don't' kind of question. To succinctly answer your second question, Grant was a bad choice, but not nearly as bad as Johnson. That said, there are better choices (Cleveland and Garfield, for instance) and at a million dollars (especially if it had been for a civilian contestant), the four answers should all be the most reasonable and realistic choices the writers can come up with. Also, if Grant and Arthur, why not Garfield or, better yet, Hayes instead of Johnson? P.S. If any of that didn't make any sense whatsoever, I do apologize. I admit it's kind of a difficult concept to explain, but I'm hoping you get what I'm getting at. P.P.S. Upon watching the win again, did anyone else notice that the moment Jimmy told David that he had won, the wide shot revealed that someone had already brought out the giant cardboard check, and that it was kinda just there on the ground, leaning against a piece of the set?  |
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trevor
Just a guy who loves Millionaire
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Post by trevor on Dec 2, 2020 23:22:30 GMT -5
I see it. A version with love and care would have put it out of sight until it was given to the winner.
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arman
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Herzlich Willkommen zu "Wer wird Millionär?"!
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Post by arman on Dec 3, 2020 3:10:45 GMT -5
Did the other countries with wins also have audience sweetening? That's what we don't have, only the crew cheering. I think the confetti would have been out of place without raucous cheering, real or no. Yes, every country except UK and the US. |
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Post by JCEurovision on Dec 4, 2020 7:16:02 GMT -5
Still, this is the perfect example of why celebrity editions aren’t compatible with a format like Millionaire. What would be high stakes on civilian versions are completely gone. Look at what happened when ABC went overboard on them after 9/11. And I really should have known Kimmel was a poor pick anyway. Even Cedric and Terry showed genuine enthusiasm, and neither were good fits with the format. The lack of confetti also sets how wrong this win feels. COVID can’t be used as an excuse because the British and Austrian versions had confetti for their most recent top prize winners. If it got cancelled again because of that argument saying about the lack of confetti, I don't know what gives. |
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trevor
Just a guy who loves Millionaire
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Post by trevor on Dec 4, 2020 8:59:07 GMT -5
I apologize for saying this. The reason I said this was because I was angered at how wrong that win felt. Aside from lacking confetti, Kimmel didn’t seem nearly as passionate about the celebrity as he probably would have with civilians.
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wwtb3am
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Post by wwtb3am on Dec 4, 2020 16:17:36 GMT -5
Every once in a blue moon, fine. But ABC brought the show back, for TWO seasons with celebrities! I just can’t understand their thought process behind this. Are they thinking, wow! Everyday people surely want to watch rich people play for a million dollars. And on top of everything else, these are not big celebrities. Some viewers even fail to realize they are playing for charity. Also, everything you guys are saying is 100% accurate. Where was the confetti, where is the tight production team that was so precise with the lights and music? No, football is surely not helping the ratings but they aren’t helping themselves either. Where’s the excitement? I’m also not sure Millionaire should be part of a game show night included with Card Sharks. Millionaire is it’s own show with drama and suspense that works better on its own, at least for me.
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RegisFan
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Post by RegisFan on Dec 4, 2020 19:53:54 GMT -5
I think the lack of confetti, while disappointing, was a COVID-driven decision. I think we all need to let that one go.
Everything else is fair game. There’s some great discussion happening here, and I hope someday that someone from ABC gets to peruse these last few pages and glean some insight.
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Post by WWTBAMFan02 on Dec 4, 2020 20:47:49 GMT -5
The good news is that Sunday's show will not feature any celebrities playing. I doubt the ratings will go up, but here's hoping it does fairly well to some degree.
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Post by JCEurovision on Dec 4, 2020 21:30:33 GMT -5
I think the lack of confetti, while disappointing, was a COVID-driven decision. I think we all need to let that one go. I think COVID cannot be used as an excuse for the lack of confetti. |
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arman
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Post by arman on Dec 5, 2020 3:58:21 GMT -5
It can’t. 6 out of 9 countries that had their winners this year were during the COVID pandemic, 5 out of those 6 had confetti (Austria even had pyro), and the US had nothing except some boring flashy lights.
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Post by millionairenut on Dec 5, 2020 15:50:57 GMT -5
David Chang has been making the rounds in the past week.
Also, Mina Kimes discussed her role as a phone a friend for around the first four minutes here:
And here at the beginning with Rich Eisen, too.
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wwtb3am
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Post by wwtb3am on Dec 5, 2020 16:03:09 GMT -5
It’s possible there was no confetti due to COVID reasons but judging from everything else that I have witnessed since the revival, the lack of confetti seems to be ABC saying we’re just going to wing this and see how it does. Maybe they will offer an explanation in the future. It’s hard to believe we had a million dollar win, and the episode was the lowest rated one since the revival started. I think this should sound alarm bells. Something is WRONG.
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) I guess the next on will be Poland then...
Nov 21, 2024 14:43:39 GMT -5
) I guess the next on will be Poland then...
Nov 21, 2024 14:43:39 GMT -5
