Duel

Here’s a comment box to discuss the season debut of Duel today at 9:00PM ET on ABC.

Network: ABC
Airings: Fridays at 9:00PM ET
Host(s): Mike Greenberg
Vote for how many stars you think the show deserves to the right, and then leave a comment!

Duel is an intense game show combining Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and World Series of Poker. Two competitors face off against each other in a duel. Each player is armed with ten chips and two “Presses”. A question is read, and the players place a chip on every answer they think it could be; up to four chips can be used per question. After a player locks in his or her answer, that player is eligible to press the red pressure button which forces the opponent to answer in seven seconds. After both players lock in, the answer is read. The players keep the chips on right answers while all chips on wrong answers are lost. The first player to miss a question or run out of chips loses the game.

In season one, a tournament format was attempted but managed to fail in several areas. First, you can’t have a tournament and not have every contestant you select to play participate. Doesn’t seem right. The show also became a bit boring since you were playing for chump change as compared to what you will on the final day. Host Mike Greenberg felt very stiff as well. He kept waving a pen around like a crutch and constantly overused the phrase, “This is Duel on ABC.”

Season two changes the format a bit. The amount of money you win per duel is dependent on how many questions it lasts. For instance, a duel ending on question one gives the champion $1,000 while a duel lasting more than 10 questions awards $50,000. After each duel the champion can double that money earned in the previous duel by answering one more question. The player then has to decide to take his or her money or play the next one against a new opponent. Five duel wins $500,000. Now the show seems extremely cheap and they overcomplicated the money system. They’ve also seemed to dumb down the questions a bit. The question format is fine. They just can’t seem to get anything else very right, and that’s the biggest part of this show.  Plus the material was slightly dumbed down.  There’s always one (and sometimes two) throw away answers.  We’ve already seen that the money is too much for contestants to risk for double or nothing.  The only way someone’s going to win it all is if they barely get any money during the duels.  It’s going to create a really awkward scenario where if you want to win $500,000, you need to win the least amount of money possible.

[rating: 3/5]