Have You Seen BET’s “Pay It Off”?

I think the title speaks for itself: have you seen BET’s new game show Pay It Off?  I feel like I haven’t seen or heard much about it beyond the initial release made for the show.  Regardless, try to check it out Fridays at 10:00PM ET on BET.  It’s a neat little show with incredibly good production values and money for a cable show.  This show actually has a few GSN connections.  Pay It Off is hosted by Kim Coles who was the host of the pilot of The Dating Game pilot for the network.  I also heard through some connections that Pay It Off was originally pitched to GSN but they turned it down.  I think they could end up regretting it, as it’s a fun and different quiz show.  It’s not without its faults, though.

The basic idea is you play seven different mini games.  Each game is some sort of a puzzle or trivia round.  Each win pushes you higher up the money ladder.  It starts at $1,000, $2,500, $4,500, $7,000, $10,000.  You can’t lose any money during these five opening rounds.  If you win the round the money is yours to keep and you play the next one.  If you win the $10,000 round you then play the bonus round for an additional $15,000 to bring you to $25,000.  In the bonus round you get a base answer and you have to determine if the next answer is higher or lower in number than the previous.  Each right answer earns you more money.  You can stop at any point with your bonus money but one wrong answer and you lose it (but you still keep the main game money).  If you can clear the entire round you win a total of $25,000.

Again, overall it’s a fun show.  The one big difference between this and basically every other show on television right now is it’s a bit uplifting without being in your face about it, like Deal or No Deal does.  These people need the money to pay for what they need but there’s no sob stories thrown in.  It’s also nice to see that the people can play the games without any monetary risk until the bonus round.  There are so many shows like that on TV now that it’s glad to see a show that says, “You won it, you earned it.”  It helps keep a fun, upbeat atmosphere also.  There’s no huge depressing loss of money bringing the show down.

Kim Coles does a great job as well.  I understand why she was sought after for The Dating Game.  She keeps the game moving nicely, works great with the contestants, and manages to get her comedianne side in as well.  I said it at the start but Pay It Off does have a really nice production going on.  The set looks great, everything seems put together fine, and there’s no huge issues that plague basically every single brand new cable show.  It looks like they actually put time and effort into it and it pays off.

The only major issue with the show is the content.  To be frank, it’s a little bit easy.  I don’t know if that was a conscious decision or whatever, but the question material is really pretty pedestrian until you get to the end game.  Well, it’s either easy or you’re not in their target audience.  I don’t think I could name a single rap song in the past decade or so and there is some material about that.  Not much, but some.  If you don’t know that stuff then you’re screwed.  But again it’s mixed nicely with generic material at least so you’re not out of luck from the start.

In terms of cable game shows Pay It Off is one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while.  It flows nicely, it’s hosted nicely, and looks nice.  You can’t ask for much more.  Well, I can.  Again, the game feels pretty easy most of the time and I’d love to see some more challenging material in the future.  But overall they did a really nice job.  We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it.  Check it out Fridays at 10:00PM ET on BET if you can.  You can also go to their website and watch full episodes there.  I’ve embedded an episode above as you’re probably aware so you can see if you like it.  What do you think?