Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for Retards

Don't you wish there was a show where you could be almost guarunteed to win lots of money, or maybe even a million dollars without all the knowledge and hooha associated with Who wants to be a Millionaire? Good news, there is a show just for you, and it's looking for qualified retards to participate.

The show is called "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" I'm not sure who has already seen the show, but I caught my first glimpse of it today.

Before I even saw the show, I saw the advertisement and heard all the buzz about this new game show that was coming out. With a title like that, I was expecting some kind of show where they bring gullible middle aged people who volunteer to be ridiculed on national television. I was expecting something like a Jo Schmo kind of show except redone in gameshow format. But no, I was horribly wrong... You can actually win money on this fricken show!

The show is hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, who is well-known for his red neck themed stand-up comedy. You can tell with that kind of host that we're already off to a great start for this show... NOT! Oh yes, I pulled out the old 'NOT' once again...

Anyway, I didn't watch much of it because it crippled me to think that people that retarded could make more money from one single hour of gameshow than several years of my expensive 4 year college degree could ever get me, but I digress. Thanks to Wikipedia I know that the winnings are tiered very similar to millionaire, where it starts in the four digits then begins to double until you get to a million. So from I'm guessing, there's about 11 questions in all. That's the biggest obstacle that awaits the contestant, it only gets more retarded from here.

There's a board with categories for questions that you can choose from. The two columns that make up the board range from Grade 1 - Grade 5 difficulty, with assigned categories like "Grade 3 Measurement" or "Grade 5 Geography". You get to choose which difficulty question you want to tackle first and eliminate them one by one until the easy ones are left. So in reality, the hardest question that you'll ever get in this million dollar pursuit is a Grade 5 question. Wow....

Not only this, but the contestant can use lifeline like tools to help them get through those mind blowing difficult questions. They have set elementary students on stage, and you're partnered up with one to be your 'classmate' for two questions consecutively before you have to choose another student to use that hasn't been used yet. I don't remember having the ability to look off a classmate's sheet in order to help me pass Language Arts, let alone win 1,000,000 dollars. Fricken sad...

Straight from Wikipedia:

"Contestants have three forms of assistance (two "cheats" and a "save") available for use:
Peek: The contestant can see what their classmate wrote down as the answer, and choose whether to go along with it or not.
Copy: The contestant is locked into whatever answer their classmate wrote down, without being able to see it first.
Save: If the contestant gets an answer incorrect, but their classmate does not, they are credited with a correct answer, and the game continues. However, if the classmate is also wrong, the contestant loses. This can only be used once per game, and is used automatically on the contestant's first incorrect response.

If the contestant gets an answer wrong (and is not saved), they lose all their winnings (unless they have passed the fifth question, in which case they drop to $25,000). At any time, they may choose to "drop out" after seeing a question, which entitles them to leave the game with any winnings they have made."

What makes me laugh even more about this whole thing is that if you decide to drop out of the game, the host makes you look into the camera and tell everyone: "I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader". That's the only real work these contestants have to do to earn their money.

Reflecting on the whole thing, how the hell do you find these people to be contestants? I know with the Millionaire show, they had the quickest person to answer a question correctly come onto stage. That is, after they have been screened and have passed the qualifying test, then they can appear on the stage. I can just imagine Fifth grader's rigorous qualification test:

"How many ears do you have?"
"Umm............. All of the Above"
"Congratulations, you're retarded enough to not take all our money, welcome to the show!"

If I had ever appeared on millionaire or any other toughassed gameshow, I'd be pissed off right about now. Can you imagine what the survivor winners are thinking? "Frick! I had to eat snakes and stab a fellow castaway for my money! I should've just inflicted myself with brain damage, so I could be on this show.." Or even Ken Jennings, the famous alltime Jeopardy Winner. He won 75 Consecutive shows to earn just over 3 million of cash. If he had the opportunity to goto 75 Fifth grader shows, he'd be guarunteed 75 mill. Or he could've just done 3 shows and been like "Screw it, I'm done".

For some of you who are thinking that the questions on the show could be very technical and tricky to answer, you couldn't be more wrong. Here were two questions I heard today:

Grade 3 Animal Science:
"What is the continent that is native to Pandas?"

The girl said Japan first thing.. And then I said Wow..... Anyway, the REAL answer is Asia. Worth $175,000

Grade 2:
"How many months in the year have 31 Days?"

Easy, just do the knuckle counting trick. Done.... This was worth 300,000 btw...

Grade 1: Geography
"Which is the only continent in the world that is also a country?"

I'll be honest, this got me thinking a while because I didn't know which places are considered 'continents'. But still the woman proceeded to list off all the continents in thought. "Hmm well there's North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and AUSTRALIA.... I really don't know! Oh well, I'll just take my money and leave!" Dumb whore...

Yeah, I'm pretty disgusted with this show.. However it does make me think of old elementary dreams where I was convinced by Grade 6 that I would grow up to be a Professional Mathematician as a career. That career is looking more and more appealing as I watch more of this retarded show...