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Winning!
May 19
One of the criticisms
leveled at The Amazing Race pertaining to its Emmy-worthiness is the
amount of luck involved in winning the game, and viewers were treated to
a healthy dose of it on finale night. In the last leg, father and
daughter Gary and Mallory were in the lead going into the final city,
but were knocked plumb out of the running with their choice of cab
driver. He couldn't get them to the Road Block location, so adios
million bucks.
I realize that every game show and reality contest has some luck. After
all, one of my favorites involved answering questions from categories
chosen by a giant faux slot machine. But when you're playing for a
million bucks, it feels wrong to be derailed not because you fouled up
at a critical moment but because you picked someone who couldn't get you
to the next checkpoint. Survivor is certainly a game where a few lucky
breaks can move you ahead or over the top, but players have to
affirmatively play the game, they can't just fluke it; and they get
denied year after year come Emmy-time over the Race, which is certainly
chock-full of great camera-work, but it i an inferior game.
From winning to being afraid of losing, the Buzzer takes you to The
Apprentice. In the pattern of many celebrity game shows where famous
people agree to look silly in order to win money for their favorite
charity, Celebrity Apprentice has stars undertaking various challenges
in order to win money for (you guessed it) their favorite charity. For
tasks where the two teams are graded by an outside source, the winners
collect a set prize. In fundraising challenges, the money is pooled
together and awarded to the charity of the winning project manager. This
can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if your team doesn't win
you don't get a penny. This bothered Meat Loaf greatly, to a point where
he broke down in tears at the prospect of raising all this money but not
being able to give it to his cause.
Here's the problem with that: everyone is there to win. There are
sixteen people there playing for something. Many of them will be fired
without having the chance to be project manager, much less to win
anything at all. When given the chance to win a ton of money, grab it by
the scruff of the neck and hold on for dear life.
Finally, it was nice to see Rob Mariano finally win Survivor, a show
that he's been a part of for nearly ten years now. With nearly four
months of time spent in game, he's far and away one of the people who
has spent the most time "on the island," and there's good reason: he's
fun to watch, he knows how the game is played and how to play it, and he
does well.
It was also nice to see a jury who respected good game play and rewarded
it. Sure, there always seems to be one contestant who just can't stand
that she was outplayed by the three people on the jury and wants
everyone to know that she wasn't about to sell her principles for the
money, but the game exists in a vacuum anyhow. You don't go to make
friends, you go to win a game and win a million dollars. After the game
you go back home to the life you had before, and move on.
If you're not playing with the end in mind, you're doing it wrong.
Travis Eberle can be reached at
traviseberle@gmail.com.
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