02Aug2011
ABC’s “Take the Money and Run” Debuts Tonight at 9:00PM ET
ABC is debuting its new competition game show Take the Money and Run tonight at 9:00PM ET. The show sees two contestants hiding a briefcase of $100,000 anywhere they can. Police officials will track it down through intense interrogation and hunting. It’s one of the more inventive and best themed shows we’ve seen in a while so I hope you give it a shot. Let us know what you think. Hopefully you like it.
I’m loving it so far. Like I said, it’s Ultimate Huckle Buckle Beanstock. It’s all about strategy when you play.
I actually found the premiere episode quite boring and dry. The whole episode mainly consisted of scenes with the cops interrogating the contestants. And then we saw that idiot contestant tell the interrogators exactly where he and his brother hid the briefcase. The whole thing didn’t make sense. It appeared as though he had a mental breakdown, even though in reality, there’s nothing they have to risk. It’s not like he would’ve been locked away in a cell forever if he didn’t answer the interrogator’s questions, or some other ill fate befall the contestants for not cooperating. It almost seemed…staged…to a degree…when he gave the exact location of the $100,000 briefcase.
If I was a contestant on that show, I would just keep my mouth shut for the entire 48 hours and not answer a single question the interrogators asked.
In addition, the premise of the show is to “Take the Money and RUN” but the contestants aren’t really running anywhere. After 1 hour, they have to stop what they’re doing and get arrested. The series would be much more exciting if the cops had to run after the contestants, much like with the series Mantracker. And then if the cops caught the contestants, they would then be interrogated.
In any case, I don’t think this series is going to last too long. Like I said, the whole thing was extremely dry for me. No theme song, no excitement and no intelligence on the part of the contestants either.
I took my money and RAN…over to NBC to watch America’s Got Talent.
I found it captivating, though its definitely not for everyone, particularly those expecting an Amazing Race type of pace.
Perhaps the biggest example of how polarizing this show can be is what Scott said. He didn’t like that the contestant told the interrogators exactly where they hid the money. I thought that was the highlight of the show for me. I mean here is a guy who is literally handed 100K, and 36 hours later he’s made so uncomfortable he actually confesses where he hid it, knowing full well how close he is to getting out. He even knows he’s betraying his brother, and giving up his chance at helping his mother. Can we stop and appreciate how effective those interrogations must of been if they made a contestant HAND BACK the 100,000 so close to the end?
I think the problem with the show is its branding. They make it look like a cops and robbers on steroids sort of chase show. In fact the promos remind of of Cha$e, which aired on SyFy. It’s not a chase. It’s a mental chess game. That might be it’s problem. It’s too cerebral for the reality show crowd, and too game showy for the law and order crowd.
As for the contestants, it does make sense (to me at least) that they spoke so freely in the interrogations. Remember, there strategy was to lead the detectives on a wild geese chase with several false leads. It did work for the first 36 hours at least. They just never came up with a solid concise story, so it broke down after awhile. I wonder if staying silent is really a good strategy. On one hand, you give them no false leads. On the other, you don’t give them anything else to focus on besides your route.
I’ll watch the series. But I don’t know if this will last. Here are some quick fixes they can throw in to bring in more younger viewers.
1. As Scott says, let them run! Contestants get a full hour to hide the money and create false leads. After the hour they must ditch the car, and the detectives can pursue them using the GPS. They’ll still get caught, but a sneaky team can burn precious time off the investigation’s clock. Plus it puts more chase time into the show.
2. Offer a buyout. The show creates a Prisoner’s Dilemma, but doesn’t capitalize on it. What if the interrogators offered the fat guy $5,000 of the hundred if he spilled the beans. You can’t tell me he wouldn’t budge. Plus it would make compelling television.
3. Add music! We need more compelling music to pick up the drama and the suspense. Hello ABC, remember when you had The Mole scored by David Michael Frank? I think he ought to get a phone call.
Hope it lasts. I’ll watch, but I don’t know if the masses will.
The moment that cemented the show’s awesomeness, to me, is exactly what you said. It’s so intense in there, even though it’s just 48 hours, that the guy voluntarily gave away $100,000 just to get out. I thought that was very interesting and made me want more.
I watched the beginning of the show and did not like it. It did not seem interesting to me. I would rather watch a simple half hour game show instead of a full hour game show that is too dragged out like “Take the money and run”
I agree with you. Five minutes into the show I turned it off because I thaught the plot was nonsencical.
Maybe I’m missing the point, but to me this show is in some way legitimising criminality. Look at the number of recent corporate crimes from Goldman Sacks down to Enron & notice how many people were prosicuted. And now there’s a loose form game show based on taking money, hiding it & withstanding 2-days of made up intaragation? Am I the only one who sees a problem here?
This show loses points for keeping elements inside the “black box” – a concept I’ve heard of in game design where you sort of keep secrets away from the players or observers of the game, like the inner works of a MMO for example. Here, Jerry Bruckheimer actually had to say in his Twitter feed that contestants must answer all interrogation questions as a part of the game and that the location must be “accessible 24 hours a day”.
The show, however, gains massive points for having its premiere episode show someone who proved that this is such a tougher than it looks. But that said, a lot of people thought they would be like Raul and would just be able to laugh it off. I dunno, but it didn’t really quell the hyperconfidence from the Facebook group because they thought they could suck it up much better than Paul knowing it was only a game.
There’s no shortage of interested contestants, but I wonder how the interrogators could play a second season of this with their secrets outed from the first. Hmm…
Like I said, law enforcement in real life can legally lie, so a buyout can’t really be enforced, but allowing the contestants to outrun the cops with perhaps a GPS bug on them pinging their location? That’d be another added game mechanic, but it’d be interesting.
This is what ruined the show – nothing that happened made sense because the rules of the game were never explained to the audience. Why did Raul or Paul answer ANY questions with anything other than “I dunno”, why did the detectives feel they could confidently say that they could rule out the first half of the hour when the friend said the brother’s had the briefcase when they left him (it was as they assumed he couldn’t be lying – which he was, but they immediately acted as if all informants told the truth without any hesitation or discussion – was there another “rule” we didn’t know). Even the interrogators knew there was an issue when they tried to cajole Paul into telling and “let(ting) your brother rot in here for the rest of…..the time (in the game)”, with the female interrogator visibly deflating when she realized she couldn’t say “let him rot for the rest of his life” with any believability.
Do the runners have to stay together for the full hour? Must they keep the car for the full hour? Why doesn’t one hide the case while the other drives around and makes 15 unrelated phone calls, only to pick up the hider in the last 5 minutes? I’m sure there are rules for all of this, but we don’t know
That said, I can see how people think the game is underdeveloped. It’s a fair challenge, but it does at times seem quite artificial. But I like the interrogation scenes.
By buyout I mean authorize the interrogators to strike a deal on behalf of the detectives. Or make it so the detectives can ask for one.
Say for example these detectives narrowed it down to the park, but still had no idea where to look. They can offer $5,000 of their own prize money as “cutting a deal” to one of the suspects if they feel they may not find the case on time. They can use the leverage of knowing it’s in the park to put pressure on the suspects.
The flip side: if the suspects feel they might have an advantage, they can request a better deal. And volunteer the case for any amount they want. It might create better drama in episodes that might otherwise have routine endings.
I disagree personally, I think there’s a risk of the show becoming too much negotiating if that were introduced, the search for the case becomes irellevant if they’re just buying the information off them, the show would become Deal or No Deal but with only one box.
I think this episode showed that money isn’t necessary, the goal of the interrogators is to break one of the contestants, which is exactly what happened. It’s worth considering though that the searching team did seem to be working their way towards the correct location before they got told the information, so it could have gone either way if the contestant hadn’t spilled the beans.
I think the field detectives actually were pretty off the pace. They mistakenly cleared a portion of the timeline that they thought the case was still in hand during. The interrogators even knew “okay, it’s sometime before then”. They could’ve been communicating better, especially considering that the detectives weren’t doing a whole lot after an initial research session, if I recall.
Although give them credit for that cheeky phone call they made probing for their home address.
I like it so far. We’ll see what the future holds.
It’s actually a lot harder on the contestants than I originally thought. After reading about some of the unaired moments, I have to say, it might be impossible for a team of civilians to win the game. The contestants have to take a lie detector test. They must answer every question, and are only allowed to sleep 5 hours a day. The cells are actually former bank vaults. The interrogators have total control over the cells and the contestants themselves. For example, the interrogators were able to make Paul sit in the interrogation room by himself for 10 minutes, go back to his cell for 5 minutes, and then immediately return to the interrogation room minus chair. I think that the show made Paul look pathetic because they didn’t show all of what he went through. I think this might be impossible.