Preview of “Million Dollar Password”
Edit: We’ve got a video of the set. Click here.
An audience member who wishes to remain anonymous sent us a look into the rules of CBS’s new bastardization of a classic: Million Dollar Password. I’ve already started off negatively because they really, really screwed up the show. Not nearly as bad as something like, say, Temptation. But this is bad. They’ve transformed it into an extremely lackluster revival of Pyramid. Get ready for speed round after speed round after speed round.
Of course the set is a stereotypical game show set. Circular, audience all around, different entrances, huge monitors, neon, dark colors, and so on. Honestly if you were expecting anything different you were crazy, so no use dwelling on this. It’s become a device game shows use so much that I’m fine with it at this point. Plus, honestly, I like the neon sets. I think they are very nice looking.
And now the format. It’s the same celebrity and contestant setup as every other version of Password. There are four rounds in the front game of trying to get five words in 30 seconds. Each word is a point. Celebrity/contestant trade off giving each round. After round two the celebrities switch. Opposites are allowed as clues. Most points plays for $1,000,000. So far not so bad, but be careful. Money chain alert!
In the end game, the entire premise is to get five words out of a certain amount in 90 seconds each time. There are six tiers to the end game.
Tier 1: 5 words out of 10: $10,000
*Tier 2: 5 words out of 9: $25,000*
Tier 3: 5 words out of 8: $50,000
Tier 4: 5 words out of 7: $100,000
Tier 5: 5 words out of 6: $250,000
Tier 6: 5 words out of 5: $1,000,000
$25,000 is a milestone. If you get to that, you don’t leave with less. If you beat a level, you decide to play the next tier or go home. The words get harder as you go up the money chain. If you lose, though, you go back to either $0 or $25,000. The really strange part is that you can only give THREE clues per password. That’s right, just three. After that, you’re screwed. Whenever you are done with the end game, two new contestants come on.
And there we have it. It’s been well documented at this point that I’m not a big fan of the classics, but there are three that I love, and Password is one of them. I wouldn’t have a problem if it wasn’t just constant speed round after speed round. It truly turns the show into Pyramid with a costume on. I hate to complain about the money chain also, because it’s probably the safest, though least inventive, game play device. If you can keep a nice chain, it’s hard to go wrong. It just seems awkward in this format.
I always had a bad feeling about this show, and I was fully expecting to be proven wrong. However, this actually worries me more than I figured. It was going to be excessively hard to turn Password into a $1,000,000 game show, and they did it really poorly. It’s not totally wrong. It has the heart and soul of the original in it. But so does Temptation. We see where that went. Hopefully it’ll look better played on TV, but right now, looking a bit scary.
I remember the 1960′s Password. I like the old password. I like Super Password.
There seems to be a misconception that thought, strategy, and quiet are boring. The original Password, which was introduced on Garry Moore’s show, featured two teams (contestant and celebrity) alternating, trying to guess the SAME password. They even went through up to 25 guesses before throwing out a word. It was that thoughtful, quiet, banter that made the game so fun to watch.
All subsequent versions of the game (including Password Plus and Super Password) followed the same concept for the general game, although annoyingly attempted to “speed it up” by limiting guesses to a paltry 4 – 2 for each team.
The only thing I liked about the later versions of the game was the “Alphabetics” bonus game, which added the excitement of guessing 10 words in 60 seconds.
But trying to make the whole game essentially one-on-one (losing the back-and-forth action and strategy) and adding the time pressure of the bonus round to regular play is just too much change. The original fun of the game is gone.
Heck, even the original password featured a hushed golf-type announcer saying “The Password is…” How unexciting by today’s standards!
This version of Password is tantamount to playing golf with bazookas instead of clubs – just to make the game faster. And forget the golf carts – let’s make the players run as fast as possible to get to their next shots. Wouldn’t it be great to add a sprint and shot clock to golf? That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?
But that wouldn’t be golf. And this, my friends, is NOT Password.
One more thought – if the producers think the fast paced music and timers are so critical to the show’s success, I would refer them to the hugely popular myriad of poker television programs now. Maybe that’s why they’re so popular – it is the only remaining game show genre with quiet, strategy, and competition without gimmickry.