One Versus 1 vs. 100

I might as well get this out there: I never really got into 1 vs. 100. It just seemed to me to be a pretty basic Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? clone (Millionaire with a bunch of other people involved!) and the vaguely worded questions just seemed gimmicky. I realize it's silly to like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? (Millionaire with easier questions!) and not like 1 vs. 100, but there you go.

What did impress me about 1 vs. 100 (in as much as anything did) was the set - the single player facing these rows and rows of people brought to mind the Imperial Senate from Star Wars. Naturally, that was the first thing Game Show Network dropped for their new five-day-a-week version of the series.

The actual mechanics of the game haven't changed too much. A single player is competing against a group of 100 dubbed "the mob." The mob this time is prerecorded and displayed on a monitor, but does still seem to come in groups - like Bob Saget on NBC, Carrie Ann Inaba reminds everyone at the start of each game that the mob contains five MENSA members and eight professional cheerleaders. A vaguely worded question is asked, and the mob is given a few seconds to lock in their answers. The single player then can answer in his\her own time, and if that answer is correct, any mob members who got the question wrong are eliminated. Every time you eliminate ten mob members, you advance on the money ladder towards $50,000, and are given the option of quitting ("Money...or the mob?") The contestant also has two helps sponsored by Progressive Auto Insurance - Poll The Mob and Trust The Mob.

So...is it good? Well, as I said, I wasn't a major fan of 1 vs. 100 when it was on in primetime, so a scaled down version isn't going to change my opinion. They took away the one thing about the show I really liked - the set. Carrie Ann, too, looks to me like she's drank too much coffee, and while they kept the theme music from the primetime version, I always thought said music just sounded generic. If you liked 1 vs. 100 in primetime, by all means, check this out - but that wasn't me.

Aaron