The Show

Alright, I think everyone has seen the show by now. If you haven’t, and you don’t want it spoiled, just skip this entry for now. I’m going to do a full breakdown. With screencaps! How exciting…

Holy crap, I’m on TV!

I started the show out already on the hot seat. That right there threw me off. I kept thinking about how I was going to walk onto the set, and then when they actually spring the whole “The next contestant is Thom” line it’s spoiled by the fact that they’re on a commercial. No goofy entrance for me – the energy is killed. Regardless, the show must go on…

Obviously the first question is easy, but I was totally thrown when the answer didn’t pop into my head. That’s what happens when you try to answer some of these goofy ones before the answers appear. I’m thinking of all sorts of crazy acronyms and then suddenly B pops up and I’m all “DUH!”

Thankfully the second question is an easy expression and I know the answer before it shows up. This is how the early questions should be. This was also one of the first questions I forgot about after the taping.

Same as he previous one – knew it right away and began to feel some confidence that I just might avoid making a jackass of myself.

Uh-oh, a thinker. Yeah, everybody watching at home can easily say that yellow is associated with daffodils without batting an eye. Now trying sitting in front of an audience with the knowledge that if you’re wrong, you’ve blown your chance to win a crapload of money. Every doubt gets AMPLIFIED when you sit on that seat. When Meredith first teased me with her “lilies can be yellow” line I nearly emptied my bowels. Thankfully we didn’t have Mexican that day for lunch…

Great, now they’re making up words! Yes, everybody else refers to the lower 48 as “contiguous”, but these guys insist on picking a word that Meredith couldn’t even pronounce. Once I saw the answers, I had to convince myself that they weren’t trying to trick me. They even explained that beforehand – the lower level questions are designed to be figured out even if you don’t know it. With that in mind, I nervously went with 2 and…

BOO-YAH! Boo-yah, indeed.

I think they cut out me saying something like, “I haven’t seen any of these movies.” But, come on, the answer was pretty obvious. Oddly enough, I felt like making it to $2000 was easier than some of the lesser amounts.

This one reminded me of the $500 question. I was sure that there’s a Kashmir region, but with just enough doubt that I almost considered using a lifeline. But I went with my gut, and that’s why Meredith mentioned that she was glad that I didn’t use one there.

Watching this edited is so bizarre, because I know nothing went as quickly as it seems recorded. Sometimes it even looks like I’m getting ready to answer before the question is finished. I can assure you that’s not what was going on. Pretty much every question I would pause and mumble to myself or something – but that really doesn’t make for good TV.

No, I wasn’t trying to pretend I didn’t know what a right triangle was. In reality, when it first popped up I was thinking there was a special term for the 30-60-90. Then when she said “right”, I realized that they were just going for the obvious one. I added in the bit about my sister because I hadn’t really talked much and was afraid I was coming off pretty boring. The early questions didn’t provide me with much material – and they wouldn’t let me drink before going on stage…

I first got excited when I saw Captain & Tennille – then it switched to army ranks. All I could do was chuckle when I thought about a few days earlier when I was trying to memorize them on Wikipedia and realized that I couldn’t remember them. I thought Major came next, but wasn’t certain. To make certain I decided to use my first lifeline.

Another tip they gave us beforehand was not to let the “Ask the audience” go too long, because it’s just about useless after $25,000. I was nervous that a couple answers might be close, but the audience was solid. 78% is higher than I expected, so I was very grateful for that because it was going to give me a shot at 25 grand.

When I first read the question, I had some hope. And then the answers appeared. YOU SONS OF BITCHES!! Seriously, what the hell was with this question? Do you know how many people have watched this episode and told me they didn’t know any of them? And these aren’t words that would be easy to pronounce or spell so that they could be looked up. So that led me to make what I consider to be my only mistake when I used my second lifeline.

I felt so lost at this point, and the only person I could think of was Sara Jane, since she’s an excellent cook and… well, you know… of Italian descent and living in Jersey. And thus we rushed to the phone, and I completely forgot to make sure I could pronounce any of those words. Guess what? I couldn’t…

And thus I found myself spitting out the most garbled attempt at pasta names while my friend struggled to make sense. And with only a few seconds left she at least gave me the hint that Gemelli was a pasta. So my only hope was my last lifeline.

Miracle of miracles. The entire audience gasped when, against the odds, the 50/50 gave me exactly what I needed. I’ve been saying that knowledge and lifelines should get any contestant to $16,000 – anything beyond that requires a good deal of luck. Luck wasn’t on my side with the choice of questions, here, but it was on my side with the lifeline.

Making it to this level was an incredible feeling. I really thought I was sunk with that now-infamous pasta/bean question. But I made it through, and managed to look normal with my celebratory gesture.

Aww, how sweet. They finally decided to give The Woman some air time. I really want to go through all of the previous episodes and point out how she was on TV everyday that week. But this time you get a clear shot of my cutie.

Now we get back to the game. And another crazy question. They edited out when I mentioned that I actually saw this question before the show. It was while playing Trivial Pursuit or something. But it didn’t matter – I forgot the answer. ARGH! How awesome would it have been to know that. Instead, I just made a joke that hinted that answer was in my subconscious and used my last lifeline.

Switching the question got me something I could at least reason about. And reason I did. ABC made me look a lot smarter than I am. I hemmed and hawed for a couple minutes on this one. I could easily identify C and then remembered that B came from the Great Depression (and thanks to Annie I’ll always remember that Hoover got blamed for that). Thankfully I realized that both of them were Republicans, which meant I was really debating between A and D.

I knew I wasn’t figuring out D, so I concentrated on “The buck stops here”. Finally I remembered from somewhere in my past Social Studies classes (thank you Mr. Moore and Mr. Longo) that it was a sign on Truman’s desk. Then a little bit of my Wikipedia studying paid off. Truman was FDR’s vice president. That meant he had to be a Democrat. Holy crap – I figured it out. I couldn’t believe it, but when I gave that answer I was sure I was right. And thus we get to my proudest moment:

I’m a winner!

What I wanted more than anything at that point, was for a question to appear that I knew. I didn’t get that. I’m not going to get into it, but my real guess was Kipling. I started to convince myself that maybe Milton would make more sense, and so I said that on TV. But in reality, the only guess I would have attempted was Kipling. And it doesn’t really matter, because it would have been a guess and might have lost me $25,000.

Rather than risk that, I decided to scrunch my face up in the most horrible way possible and graciously accept the 50 grand I had won.

The Woman assures me that I actually do make this face in real life, but I swear I reserve it only for the most special of occasions – primarily when there are multiple TV cameras around to capture it. When I die, I hope they can carve this image onto my tombstone – it’s how I’d like to be remembered. As some sort of retarded, money-grubbing troll.

Now I get the fake check that the bank refused to cash…

Meredith tries to grab The Woman’s ass while they make out…

And finally I wave the fake check to the audience while no doubt making more awkward faces.

I hope you all enjoyed my commentary – feel free to bug me with any questions I didn’t answer.