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Beauty and the Geek
April 8
Once you get past
"ordinary people playing simple games with household objects for huge
money," there's not a whole lot of room to maneuver for Minute To Win
It. They've done the decent Last Man Standing, the cracker jack
Head-to-Head Showdown, and the terrible Million Dollar Mission. Many
recent episodes have paired complete strangers together, with the
partners splitting the money.
Last week, the show paired a "beauty" and a "geek". Not wishing to
demolish any stereotypes, our lady beauty enters with the customary red
tank top and white short shorts, while our male geek is wearing khakis
and an argyle pattern sweater vest thing. Our intrepid pair plods along,
winning some games straight away and using lives on others, interspersed
with the required pathos, phone calls to absent family members and film
clips of their life home, but that's nothing new; the show has used
these stretching tactics since the beginning.
When things came off the rails for me was during the "Suck It Up" game,
where both partners had to create a vacuum in a drinking straw that will
hold a bite-sized chocolate candy, and to park that candy on another
drinking straw. Four candies wins the challenge and $10,000.
The geek is explaining that in his job as a visual effects artist he
tends to see things as polygons, and explains how that will come in
handy during the play of the game. At that point Guy says words to the
effect of "I have no idea what you just said." Our beauty pipes in with
"I know how to pour drinks!" with a customary "woo!" that you'd expect
from a party girl.
I shouldn't be surprised, but I am disappointed. Even if they're not
solving international problems, they did have a chance to say "Here's
something you probably wouldn't have any idea about" and instead of
allowing the guy to explain it or to have a moment in the sunshine, but
it was cruelly taken away by a host who was too dumbfounded to notice
it.
Travis Eberle can be reached at
traviseberle@gmail.com if
you want to send commisserations. |
