Yeah, I said I’d have my post
up in a day or two, and before I know it it’s been over two weeks. I did type
up a review during that time…
Look, if you’re wondering how
the revival of Figure It Out differs from the version you remember, at least in
written description, let’s get that part out of the way:
- · Round one is still one minute long, but rounds two and three have been shortened to forty-five seconds.
- · In addition to the Secret Slime Action, there is a “Word Of Honor” that, if spoken by the panelists, causes the contestant to get slimed.
In other
words, the format hasn’t changed much. A kid contestant has a secret (“if you
want to guess it along with our panelists, cover your ears and close your
eyes…”) and four Nickelodeon stars wearing construction helmets and safety
goggles (seriously, have liability laws changed? Danny Tamberelli didn’t dress
like that…) try to determine it by asking yes or no questions. Each panelist
gets to continue asking questions until he\she gets a no answer. After every
round, if the panelists haven’t uncovered the secret, the contestant wins a
prize, and after all three, if the panelists still don’t know, the contestant
wins the grand prize trip. Each round also includes an incomprehensible visual
clue (think something like leaves falling from the sky for a secret involving trees).
The information the panelists have is recapped before each round as a lead-up
to a lame joke (something along the lines of “The secret involves dancing, it
doesn’t involve drums, and Victoria Justice needs a haircut.”)
After
round one, a Secret Slime Action is revealed to the viewers; if the panelists
perform it, they’ll get slimed and someone in the audience will win a prize.
The Secret Slime Actions range from something the panelists could easily avoid
to something they could theoretically avoid (“looking at the host”) to
something basically designed to get them all slimed (“being a cast member on
show X”, which of course one of them is). There are two games in a half-hour
episode, most of the little gags done between games have been dispensed with,
and the Charade Brigade has been renamed…well, I couldn’t hear it clearly, but
it was something like “the Slime Squad”.
Look,
what more do you need to know? Jeff Sutphen is always reliable, the panelists
probably make as much sense to a kid watching Nickelodeon now as Lori Beth
Denberg did to me as kid, and probably the biggest complaint I have is that the
set and music are a lot louder and tackier then I remember. This is probably
the best possible revival of Figure It Out, and I do sometimes have to remind
myself that kids TV is meant for kids,
not game show bloggers in their twenties.
Finally,
I’m just going to go ahead and say this – I’m taking a break from this blog.
Sorry. I’ll come back eventually, hopefully in time for the Fall Rush…but at
the moment, my heart just isn’t in it.
Thanks
for reading.
Aaron
