Episode 22.2
September 21

Gordon: Hey there. I'm Gordon Pepper. This week, we saw a bunch of game shows dole out a lot of money. Over 3 million dollars of the stuff.
Chico: Wow. That's a lot of money.
Gordon: That's a serious economic stimulus package. And unlike the government, we know exactly where the funds went to.
Chico: A few random folks, a comic sidekick, a physicist, a chicken catcher, and a waitress. And that's just for starters. We'll be going over it, because from Somewhere in America, the Chico Alexander & Gordon Pepper Economic Stimulus edition of WLTI... is... ON!
Gordon: Yay! Let's start with a big one. You want to give out a million dollars?
Chico: Let's give out a million dollars.
Gordon: We start with the season (and maybe series) finale of Prime Time Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader. However, this is the way you'd want your last show to go out.
Chico: Million Dollar Moment?
Gordon: Yes, please.



Chico: George Smoot III is a world-renowned physicist. We all know that physicists are smart.
Gordon: Let's set the stage here. George uses a Copy to get to the $500,000 question. Based on his happy-go-lucky nature and that he was treating this as free money, you knew that he was going to go for it.
Chico: Right. But what does he know about 5th Grade US Geography? Let's take a look. The question, for the million...

What US state is home to Acadia National Park?

Gordon: The answer to the question is Maine.
Chico: Ever been there?
Gordon: Can't say I have
Chico: go there. It's nice It's also RIGHT.
Gordon: But what did George have?
Chico: He had Maine. He also never been there.
Gordon: Now he can go.
Chico: Yay!
Gordon: Congratulations to George. He becomes the first male and only the second person to win the million.
Chico: And I think Fox is going to pay this one out.
Gordon: Barring something weird, yes.
Chico: But he's not the only one to make a million this week.
Gordon: Nope. If he goes to Maine and he wants some country music, he could bring a cowboy with him.
Chico: Enter a chicken catcher by the name of Kevin Skinner. Now think back a couple of weeks. We said that if Kevin wanted to win the big money, he had to do some more heart-string tugging, right?
Gordon: Yes. And...hey look! More heartstring tugging!
Chico: Yes, but it's more current, more upbeat... Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." That was PERFECT for him. It was forceful without being overbearing.
Gordon: It was a great song - and great accompaniment.
Chico: That was what we were looking for.
Gordon: It was a perfect smart song to sing.
Chico: Also perfect was Barbara Padilla with "O Mio Bambino, Caro"... Lawrence Beamen with (and I believe we had this pegged) "My First, My Last, My Everything", and Fab Five dancing to "Circus".
Chico: It was literally anyone's game to lose.
Gordon: Well....yes and no.
Chico: I sense a Big Board coming.
Gordon: You do.
Chico: I do.

Gordon: Subject: How the West Was Won. Kevin did everything he needed to do. Everyone else...not quite. For starters, Fab 5 wasn't going to win. No judges save wins the competition. That also knocks out Voices of Glory, who impressively finished in the Top 5.
Chico: And Drew Stevyns.
Gordon: And Drew Stevyns. #2. You also NEVER repeat a performance. Barbara Padilla's repeat not only was panned, but I think it was a million dollar blunder. She finished in second, and I think it stopped her from winning the whole thing.
Chico: I thought I heard that song before. I thought it was just me, though
Gordon: #3. You must IMPROVE your game. Lawrence Beamon picked the right song, but the performance itself wasn't better. Recycled Percussion was great, but they didn't really raise their bar level. We saw it before.
Chico: That just leaves four acts. Hairo Torres, Texas Tenors, Grandma Lee, and Kevin Skinner.
Gordon: 4. You MUST be musical. We've seen this before. If you don't incorporate music, you're done. Bye Grandma Lee. Bye, Hairo Torres.
Chico: Terry Fator was a ventriloquist, first and foremost. But at least he was a musical ventriloquist. Take note. So if you're going to be a comic, be a Stephen Lynch-type comic. (Though one could argue that he can't fit his act into 90 seconds)
Gordon: Or do some sort of sing-song. Finally, 5. Storyline wins. The Tenors were fun, but they couldn't touch Kevin Skinner's storyline. In fact, with the exception of Grandma Lee, Voces of Glory and Barbara Padilla, no one could touch Skinner. The audience loves the underdog.
Chico: So put all those together, and Kevin wins easy. Seems like a no-brainer.
Gordon: It is. So now what happens if someone with no brains wins $500,000?
Chico: You get the ultimate...



Gordon: Now first of all, Congratulations to Jordan, for winning $500,000.
Chico: Yay. They're still dancing in the streets of Charlotte... well, Matthews.
Gordon: That being said, she did 2 - and only 2 - things right. Big Bored, please?

Chico: I can take a guess...She did what she was told, and she didn't get in the way?
Gordon: Close. #1. She won HOH and eliminated the one person that could have beaten her, which is Kevin. Now this would be a good move - if it wasn't done because Jeff told her to do it (which he did, and hence she did). #2. She won because she did nothing strategic before-hand - which also means she didn't make any enemies.
Chico: So again, did what she was told... and didn't get in the way.
Gordon: Natalie, conversely, made lots of enemies in the house, and lied about many, many things, including her age. Most of these lies were ones she absolutely did not need to do.
Chico: And, might I add... when she got caught, she denied it. The whole Pandora's box thing with her new fiancée... she would've been better off telling the truth.
Gordon: I don't think it was Pandora's box as much as it was her propensity to lie. She was better off not even trying to be 18.
Chico: Thank you, that was the point. She just thought she was in too deep...
Gordon: Yes, but there's no reason to be a bitch. These are the same people who vote to give you the rewards. Hence, the rewards went elsewhere - directly to the person who didn't piss anyone off.
Chico: Right.
Gordon: So in a game that was moron-filled. It only made sense that the peaceful moron won it.
Chico: And her house-boyfriend Jeff wins $25,000 for being America's favorite moron
Gordon: Yay! Now who's up for America's Favorite game of survival?
Chico: Me!
Gordon: Let's do it. It's time for Survivor. We have 20 contestants, and we see people starting to play early. Very early.
Chico: It's never too early... Unless it is.
Gordon: Do tell.
Chico: Well, let's start with Russell... Now thanks to CBS press, we know that he's the biggest sonofableep in Survivor history. He's already made a pact with Ashley, Betsy, Marisa, and Natalie.
Gordon: He's the girlie magnet.
Chico: Yuh. But you know what happens when you question the ringmaster early, right?
Gordon: Sure do.
Chico: The ringmaster makes you disappear.
Gordon: Right into the cannon. Or in this case, being fed to the lions.
Chico: And in this case, he did a masterful job, as Marisa lost by a 7-3 vote against Ashley. Basically, you're sending a message: I will cut my own if I have to.
Gordon: You really don't want to sacrifice your own alliance member this early, but its better than a mutiny later.
Chico: As long as alliance members are united for a common goal, that is, to make it to the merge with numbers on their side, a mutiny this early is unlikely. But it never hurts to play it safe, hence Russell organizing Marisa's ouster.
Gordon: You cant play it safe, period. You don't know what's going to happen in this game
Chico: Again, hence Marisa's ouster. This is going to be an interesting season.
Gordon: Very. You see some of the heavy players early. But don't forget that this is a social game, so Russell's strategy of rustling up the weak isn't a bad one.
Chico: Nope. It's strength in numbers. We've seen it done many times.
Gordon: What about rustling up the celebrities to play a trivia game?
Chico: That's called a season-long event to kick off year 26 of Jeopardy!. First off... A moment for Stefan Goodreau. Lasted one show on the new set... and that was it.
Gordon: Aww.
Chico: Now all this year on Jeopardy!, there will be nine celebrity matches. Twenty seven celebs who've played the game before will come back to play in a celebrity invitational. Once a month, third Thursday every month, three stars will play the game. The winner will come back in May for a tournament event... Semi-finals, then two-day final. And the one left standing at the end will win for their charity... ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS. AMERICAN.
Gordon: Woo-hoo! So celebrity tournament, Day 1. What happened?
Chico: Well, we had three stars play, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, hot actress Dana Delany, and comic foil Andy Richter. This particular game will also give rise to the terms "Blitzered" and "Richtered".  Blitzered: when a seemingly strong player is outgamed by a weaker one. Richtered: when a seemingly weak player outgames a stronger one.
Gordon: If you saw the end of Double Jeopardy, you see someone with $20,000+, and you see someone more than $4,000 in the hole. However, you wouldn't think that Richter would be in the lead and Blitzer would get the gratuitous $1,000 just to play Final Jeopardy.
Chico: Because here you have Wolf Blitzer... Situation Room... up on current events... His forte. And then you have Andy Richter... laughs at Conan O'Brien's jokes.
Gordon: Yet Richter was not only faster on the buzzer, he was right.
Chico: And Wolf was slow... and wrong. Repeatedly.
Gordon: The guranteed win would be $50,000. Richter had a shot to surpass it with a correct Final Jeopardy answer. The answer, Mr. Alexander?
Chico: The ANSWER...In "Famous Actors".

Ironically, he lost the leading role in the 1960 play "The Best Man" because he didn't look presidential

Gordon: Who is Ronald Reagan?
Chico: Correct. Because Reagan's an actor.
Gordon: He was. Famous one, too.
Chico: Yep.
Gordon: Richter also gets it right. His final total: $68,000. Richter becomes the biggest celebrity winner with a 1 day total on the show, and immediately propels himself as a threat to win the tournament.
Chico: He has the thumb for it. He has the knowledge base. But can he do what he did again?
Gordon: I think he can, it depends on the pairings.
Chico: This is true.
Gordon: Right after Jeopardy is Wheel of Fortune.
Chico: Yep. First thing we did was retire the Free Spin disk. I know you're sad to see it go.
Gordon: I am.
Chico: But we have something better in its place... a Free Play wedge.
Gordon: What makes me sadder is that people are not taking advantage of the Free Play wedge.
Chico: Now explain to the fine folks reading what the Free Play is.
Gordon: The Free Play wedge allows you to guess a wrong letter and keep your turn. It also allows you to buy a vowel for nothing. So, if the puzzle looks like this:

T _ E / _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ / _ _ _ _ T

Gordon: What letter are you NOT going to call? (besides T and E, of course)
Chico: Well, not H. Because I know that the H is in there somewhere.
Gordon: Correct.
Chico: I'm going to call a letter that may OR may not be there.
Gordon: The point of the Free Wedge is to utilize if and guess something that could be wrong.
Chico: Like, say... an O.
Gordon: And there is an O

T _ E / _ _ _ _ O / _ _ / _ _ _ _ T

Chico: Yay!
Gordon: But if there wasn't, you wouldn't lose your turn.
Chico: I'd just keep spinning like nothing happened.
Gordon: Contestants need to learn it and use it to their advantage
Chico: Well, it's early
Gordon: It's never to early to give lessons. Also never too early to have another one of these.



Chico: Another one of these! I believe we all huddled up for this one while I was in NYC.
Gordon: Dyana Heeley wins the game with $24,500. More importantly, she has the Million Dollar Wedge as we get to the bonus puzzle - Thing:

T O _ G H / _ O _

Chico: TOUGH JOB!
Gordon: Now to his credit, Chico got this in my apartment.
Chico: I actually nailed it before you did. :-)
Gordon: Dyana Heeley also gets it. She wins...$40,000. Not the million, but $64,500 is a nice haul for Dyana. And by the way, the puzzle before:

T H E / C H I C O / I S / S M A R T

Chico: Yay.
Gordon: Here's another puzzle

R O L L / T H A T / B E A U T I F U L / B R A I N / F O O T A G E

(Doug: Live, local, and latebreaking... From the four corners of the globe to your frontal lobe, this is WLTI Brainvision News, and now here's Gordon Pepper, Chico Alexander, and the award-winning Brainvision News Team)

Chico: Thanks, Doug. First up...Baseball!
Gordon: Business end time! (Hands Chico the bat)

More info is coming on the two season premieres of GSN faves The Newlywed Game and Catch 21... and the password is...

Gordon: Can I give?
Chico: Okay.
Gordon: Shark.
Chico: ... Clue.
Gordon: Jumping.
Chico: ... Clue.
Gordon: Technique.
Chico: Celebrities!
Gordon: YAY! (DING DING DING DING)

On Catch 21, we have reality show hosts, the casts of "Fresh Prince", "Deal or No Deal" and "the Biggest Loser", Child Stars, prime time soap stars, daytime soap stars... and that's all we know right now. As for the Newlywed Game, there are some celeb couples coming, but arguably the one that's been getting the most ink is George Takei & Brad Altman.

Gordon: I know it's a technique that's used, and I know that it does work (see Millionaire, and yes, Thursday on Jeopardy), but you don't want to fill the show with celebrity over-kill.
Chico: See, if you needed some show filler, just put in a Tournament of Champions. Worked for Lingo. ... a LOT of things worked for Lingo.
Gordon: There's a difference between 5% celebrity shows and 55% celebrity shows.
Chico: Right
Gordon: And just as a reference point, Newlywed Game + Celebrities = Tattletales.
Chico: Right. Except no funky headphones. No Bert Convy. No banana section...
Gordon: The bananas are the people who are currently writing on WLTI :P
Chico: *raises hand*
Gordon: Now here's a banana-shaped datebook.

Monday starts more syndies: 5th Grader and The Price is Right. Also on Monday: Dancing With the Stars.

Chico: Chairman to win! =p

Sunday is the big one for Phil Keoghan fans - The Amazing Race

Chico: .... no favorites yet!
Gordon: Should be fun. It looks like a good group.
Chico: Yup.
Gordon: Since they will be travelling all around the world, what's all around the world for us?
Chico: Well, I don't know if they're going to Jamaica, but that's where we're going, mon.

Sunshine...And now, Deal or No Deal, as the island gets its own version.

Chico: It plays like the primetime version.
Gordon: What does first place win?
Chico: $1 million
Gordon: Would the banker offer 50,000 kegs of Red Stripe?
Chico: Hooray BEER! (Remember, 21 means 21)
Gordon: Hooray!
Chico: But before you get too excited... that's about $11,000 US.
Gordon: Aw. I'll take an extra $11,000.
Chico: So will I.
Gordon: What about an extra blackboard?
Chico: I'll take that too
Gordon: Now you know the history of people on Dancing With the Stars and their bodily injuries.
Chico: All too well. See Jewel.
Gordon: So to even put yourself in peril would be very very silly, right?
Chico: Very.
Gordon: So therefore...

Are YOU Smarter than...Kathy Ireland, who injures herself while doing, of all things...surfing. That would be a wipeout.

Chico: Wrong show :-)
Gordon: You know you're going to be dancing. Why are you even putting yourself in that position?
Chico: Ideas, I have none.
Gordon: And here's something else you don't want to be doing.

Russell, the self-proclaimed 'most evil contestant ever' is sure starting early. Forget the alliance. He decides to drain the water out of contestants canteens and burn another players clothing (Jeff's socks). Aren't there rules preventing the destruction of someone else's property?

Chico: I believe so.
Gordon: Apparently, not now.
Chico: Oh, this'll be brought up. Maybe. Possibly...
Gordon: Oh wait! I found Jeff's socks. Look who has them.



Chico: You zombies and your socks.

According to The Futon Critic, these shows have gone past the year of expiration and are unofficially zombie chow: The Gong Show with Dave Attell, Reality Bites Back, Date My Ex: Jo & Slade, and everyone's favorite show to make fun of (and 'winner' of our worst show of 2008-2009 award), HURL!

Chico: Real shame for at least two of those. And I'll give you a hint... Hurl ain't one of them;
Gordon: I liked Reality Bites Back. I thought it was very clever.
Chico: Very clever. And the Gong Show... while not a by-the-book revival... wasn't THAT bad.
Gordon: Yes it was.
Chico: You think anything with Andy Dick is bad =p
Gordon: I don't mind Andy Dick. I minded him chasing after little wrestling midgets all over the set. The midgets would have been more entertaining if they were fully loaded.
Chico: Hic. Today, it's MySpace and deceptive advertising.

When is a million not a million? Apparently when you're totaling up all your episodes and counting ad hits as views. Such has been revealed as the case on the show BFF.

Gordon: Oops. So how many hits do they actually have?
Chico: Now think about it... 6 million viewers... and of them, only 9 commented. That's a hell of a ratio...5,999,9991.... to nine. Now season 2... so far has got over half a million on each of the first two episodes. Then it drops into five-figures. LOW five-figures. Episode 3 had over 50,000. Episode 4 had almost 25,000. Ep 5... almost 25,000. And it just goes from there.

http://news.tubefilter.tv/2009/09/17/is-myspaces-bff-buying-views/

Chico: It just kinda... trails.
Gordon: Now getting 12,000 people to view your content is not bad.
Chico: No.
Gordon: That being said, deception is not a good practice either.
Chico: Honesty is the best policy.
Gordon: If the 500,000 is inflated as to bought hits, then youre devaluing your product, It would be much more impressive to build it up and go from 5,000 to the current 12,000, instead of a big number that's never going to be matched.
Chico: Precisely. And imbedded ad space isn't exactly being upfront with your consumer either. It's almost like you're sneaking in a hit here and there hoping no one will notice. Not a good practice.
Gordon: No, Maybe you'll feel better if you had a big red couch.
Chico: Maybe

Lets start in Las Vegas.. Let's make a deal is looking for contestants. They are already starting tapings. Go here for more info: http://www.cbs.com/daytime/lets_make_a_deal/

Gordon: And then, we have another opening - but its for a Production Assistant for 'The Price is Right Live'

You MUST be in the Las Vegas area, but it would certainly be a great opportunity to get your foot in the door. If you're interested, go here:
http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/tfr/1376638505.html

Gordon: And now for some Media Hoes.
Chico: (Plays "Pimpin' All Over the World")

In this week's Hodometer, Ben Stein speaks in Sioux City, Ellen Degeneres and Simon Cowell are already feuding, Chima Simone does not get invited to the Big Brother 11 Reunion...Patrick Swayze gets honored on Dancing With the Stars, LaKisha Jones welcomes a baby boy, Kara shops a show called 'Dropped' , about second chances to people dropped form their labels...Ethan Zohn's cancer returns, Lucy the Elephant stays put at her zoo (which disappoints Bob Barker), and Adam Shankman joins So You Think You Can Dance as a judge.

Gordon: But none of them are your ho of the week. Your ho is Betty White, who gets a SAG Lifetime Achievement award. In my mind, it's well-earned and well-deserved.
Chico: Booyah
Gordon: And those...are your hoes.
Chico: Nice. That'll do it for Brainvision. Still to come, the most balanced news you'll get on the net.
Gordon: But first, we give you some Vitamin C. This is WLTi, You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you 22 winners. Maybe not all of them deserving, but winners, just the same.

(BrainVision has been brought to you by Mopped. We know chefs can cook, but can they clean? The best chefs must show us how well they can take care of their messes.)

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