101 Ways to Leave a Game Show
101 Ways to Leave a Game Show is an ABC Game Show that, at the surface, may seem like a normal elimination quiz show with a $50,000 grand prize. Starting with eight contestants split into two groups, each set of contestants answers an estimated guess question to determine the order they will play in (closest to the answer goes first, etc.). Then, a question with four choices is given, where three of which are correct, and one isn't. In order, the contestants make their claims for each answer. Whoever is unlucky enough to be stuck with the incorrect answer gets eliminated, and whoever answers correctly stays. The process continues with the two groups of three, with only three choices and two correct answers. Then, the final two from each group get back together for the final round, where they must answer one more question with only one correct answer. Whoever answers correctly wins, it's just that simple. Right?
Wrong! Because this is not a normal game show, the producers have (supposedly) come up with 101 different ways to eject eliminated contestants from this show, whose levels of ridiculousness increase every round. All are hopefully guaranteed to ensure High Octane Nightmare Fuel for the contestants, and Ensued Hilarity for those watching it at home. These have included, among other things, being flown off strapped to the top of a biplane, doing a stuntman styled drive over a ramp (complete with explosion), riding a pickup truck going off a cliff while attached to a cord on a helicopter (with an explosion below when the truck lands), being blasted down a zip line on a jetpack (which involves rockets, and may qualify as an explosion) or being blasted into the air with the use of explosives under your chair (which may also qualify as an explosion). You see where we're going here?
And then for the final four, it gets worse. The final question is played while contestants stand on platforms that give way when a player is revealed to have answered incorrectly. The platforms, are of course, high above a pool of water. Sound familiar?
It's an uncomplicated premise, helped along by a good helping of cheese courtesy of the host, Jeff Sutphen, and an altogether lighthearted tone.
- Deadly Game: It's a given that they put in some safety measures for obvious reasons, but unlike 2010's Obligatory ABC Post-"Wipeout" Summer Game Show That Has a Slim Chance of Returning Next Season, this one actually does try to play itself off as being something dangerous.
- Personnel:
- Game Show Host: Jeff Sutphen
- Catch Phrase:
- "[If you answer incorrectly], you're off the show, and here's how!"
- "The wrong answer is..."
- Comedic Sociopathy: A good half of the show is Jeff gleefully tormenting the contesants over whatever doom one of them is about to face.
- Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Did you expect otherwise from a modern game show? Hilariously subverted in Episode 3:
"The wrong answer, is..." (music sting) "Wait, I thought we were going to commercial..."
- Fluffy the Terrible: In Episode 5, the vicious guard dog that is sent after the unlucky contestant in the second round is named "Twinkie".
- Getting Crap Past the Radar:
- In an elimination involving putting the contestants inside metal cage spheres (much like the ones of a certain other show), he invited the contestants to "check out our balls".
- Driving a pickup truck over a cliff with an explosion, is known as "What the Truck".
- Hey, It's That Guy!: The kids will recognize Jeff Sutphen from Nickelodeon's Brain Surge.
- Luck-Based Mission: If you are last in the estimated guess game, better hope the other contestants don't pick all the right answers, leaving you with the wrong answer. And in the final round, better hope anyone in front of you doesn't pick the one right answer. Downplayed, in that ending up in this position means you had messed up on the educated guess and thus more or less deserve it.
- Manipulative Editing: When a woman is sent rolling down a hill in a metal cage sphere, the in-cage camera shows that she is keeping her mouth clamped shut (presumably to keep out the dirt getting kicked up). Yet all the distance shots are accompanied by the sound of "her" screaming....
- Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Jeff reading off the answers for educated guess game:
"10,000, exclamation point. 5,000, I love my mom."
- Refuge in Audacity: One of the penalties for answering incorrectly is being dumped into shark-infested waters. Properly chummed and everything. No safety gear, either, and they appear to be Left for Dead as the ship speeds away.* Shout-Out: The in-house monster truck is named Truck Norris.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Ejections (barring the final round's ten-story drop) tend to involve (as Jeff puts it) fiery explosions. Cause why not?!
- Trans-Atlantic Equivalent: The format made its premiere in the United Kingdom before it did in America, so of course there was some Early Installment Weirdness that was cause for concern when the U.S. version was announced, mainly because:
- It was a game for The BBC, so of course the champion only won £10,000 (about $16,000 US) because Doctor Who is the only BBC show legally allowed to have a decent budget, and they must have (again) wasted their budget sending the contestants to film in Argentina.
- Most of the ejections involved being dropped into a pool. (the U.S. version saves that for the final round)
- The game started with all 8 people at once, it just dragged on and on and on and on.
- And then there was that Emergency Exit round.
- And you thought the countdown to an answer reveal was slow...
- Thankfully, the U.S. version averted all of this, had an actual budget, and ended up being pretty fun.
- X Meets Y: Trivia Trap in reverse meets Fear Factor and/or Wipeout-style humiliation.