Written by DJ Chapman
500 Questions is the latest primetime game show to grace our presence as television viewers. There haven’t been many primetime game shows recently: the days of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Deal or No Deal, and Minute to Win It are behind us. NBC attempted to spark the next game show renaissance with last year’s game show event Million Second Quiz; however, the ratings told us that was a failed experiment. This year ABC brings us 500 Questions, a much simpler game show: answer 500 questions without getting three in a row wrong, winning a lot of money along the way. While straightforward on the surface, there are lot of obstacles Questions presents, and it is a lot of fun.
During 500 Questions there is a single contestant answering the questions who faces off against a challenger who is there to trip up the contestant and make his/her job of answering the 500 questions that much more difficult. There are ten categories with five questions each that a contestant may choose to answer, with the option to request a random question. The contestant has ten seconds to answer the question – the contestant may guess as many times as he/she pleases – but only a correct answer on the first guess yields $1,000. If the contestant cannot answer the questions within ten seconds they get a “wrong” — three wrongs and you are gone, but a right answer at any time removes all wrongs.
There are a few other types of question formats a contestant can receive: “Battle,” a question with multiple correct answers that is answered back-and-forth between the contestant and the challenger; “Top 10,” where the contestant must correctly guess five out of ten within fifteen seconds; and “Triple Threat,” where the contestant must provide the three correct answers within ten seconds, receiving $3,000. All of these questions types (at random intervals) make for an exciting game that keeps the show interesting and fresh.
The challenger provides and interesting angle to the game. Aside from participating in the “Battle” questions, the challenger selects the contestant’s possibly-last question once the contestant accrues two wrongs. If the contestant does receive three wrongs, the challenger takes the contestant’s place, and the game starts over. If the contestant is able to complete a round (50 questions), the challenger is replaced with a new challenger (up against the still-winning contestant). It is nice to see an adversary in this game besides the incredible difficulty of the questions. During the premiere episode the challenger opted to select from the random category for the contestant’s potential third wrong. This challenger aspect provides something missing from traditional game shows: the contestant is no longer the only one to cause himself to fail, since his fate is in the hands of another.
So, aside from getting to the end of 500 questions, how can the contestant win money? As I previously mentioned, every question answered correctly on the first guess typically yields $1,000 (special event questions aside). At every 25th question, if the contestant answers correctly, the contestant automatically banks $5,000 no matter what happens. At the end of a round (50 questions), the contestant banks all of the money previously earned. This basically means that if someone can complete the 500 questions, they will be receiving anywhere between roughly $160,000 and $500,000.
British accents make everything better.
I very much enjoyed CNN cool-guy, Richard Quest. He did a good job of limiting the banter to appropriate times and kept the pace of the show very upbeat. It’s hard to take a lot of dramatic pauses when we know there is nearly 500 questions looming (this particularly became apparent when he informed the contestant that after 25 questions he was “5% completed”). It was also dangerously easily for the contestant to get two wrongs fairly frequently, but on this episode, he managed to get out of it every third-strike (for now). This element puts a lot of pressure on the challenger to bounce the contestant so he can get his chance at money and glory.
For its premiere, I greatly enjoyed 500 Questions. I knew maybe three of the questions so it didn’t feel too easy, and the ten second time limit flies by. My biggest disappointment is that it is only seven nights! ’m not sure what ABC is doing, but I would gladly watch this show a couple of nights a week. Perhaps ABC is doing a trial-run to see how it pans out. The game did a really good job of keeping me in through the commercial breaks – I didn’t even flip over to the Cavs-Hawks game that night, which I feared I might have done. In a new prime time world of dwindling game shows, 500 Questions is just what we need.
500 Questions Rating: 10/10
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