Regis Philbin, I accept you as my lord and savior

orgive me, Charles Van Doren, for I have sinned. It has been 14 days since my last confession and in that time I have seen 27 game shows on television. On any given night, I watch (insert game show here) with host (insert cheesy septuagenarian here) on (insert network here.) I have even resorted to taping "Twenty One" since it airs at the same time as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

On the plus side, I've figured out why they call it the idiot box: There are idiots on it, but I'm also an idiot for watching.

I sit there and feel superior because I know what my final answer is before Reege spits that vapid phrase out from between his dentures. But in the end, I'm no better than those monkeys on the screen. In fact, I'm the perfect audience, the one they desperately want. There are two different audiences for these shows. One group watches because they have no idea what's going to happen next. They want to see the common man succeed and win thousands of dollars with information that could be gleaned from a quick perusal of last week's National Enquirer.

The other is far more dangerous and culpable, and that's the one I fall into: I watch because secretly I enjoy screaming at the idiots on the television. I can't turn it off because then I lapse back into my little life with my little activities and my little thoughts. In that painful hour of trivia mania, I have something to live for: Superiority.

A few years ago a poll was conducted of Howard Stern listeners; I don't have the exact statistics, but the conclusion was that Howard Stern haters listened to the disc jockey for far longer than those who actually liked him. The same principle is at work with the game shows and I. Most of you probably root for the good guy to "feel the need for greed" and walk home with the big bucks. I'd rather see them go home empty-handed so I can laugh at them.

Part of the problem is the circus-like spectacle that has sprung up around these shows. Late last week, I was horrified to discover I had absolutely no idea which game show I was watching. The dizzyingly mechanized camera moves swooping down, godlike, on contestants from above, the disco lighting changes stolen from a Ricky Martin concert, the set that was originally crafted for Epcot, the sound effects borrowed from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" - it's all so confusing. Is that my final answer? Has the terminator chosen me? Audience, help me! I need a freebie! I have to call my friend Giuseppi in Springfield because he knows the scientific name for the art of swimming pool cleaning! I accept Regis Philbin as my lord and savior!

It gets worse. Innocent game shows like "Jeopardy!," once so austere with Alex Trebek's bourgeois joy in out-enunciating his contestants, have resorted to playing the pop culture card as well. I suspect that all of these shows are engaging in some gladiator-like competition whose main tenet can only be described as "survival of the dumbest." My horror at seeing a round of "Jeopardy!" that contained category titles all relating to Madonna was mitigated only by the fact that I knew every answer and the poor contestants, rich with encyclopedic knowledge but woefully uninformed about such activities as vogueing, crashed and burned.

The saving grace in all this madness comes from a man whose show isn't even on network television, but on Comedy Central. "Win Ben Stein's Money" remains one of the most innovative shows, game show format or not, on TV today. Stein is deliciously droll, but never hokey or smarmy. He, co-host Jimmy Kimmel and his contestants aren't competing for the million dollar payout. There isn't thirty seconds of forced suspense while the host dramatically waits for the panel to confirm or deny an answer. They're enjoying trivia for trivia's sake. I don't watch Stein's show to feel superior or satisfy my own pathetic need for moral greed. I watch it because it entertains me, pure and simple.

That's something the bigwigs at the big four have forgotten. So I'm going to try to remind them. Tonight, I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. Tonight, I'm watching nothing but my personally autographed boxed set of "The Best of 'The Price Is Right.'" Take that, Regis. And don't forget to get your pets spayed or neutered.

- Erin Podolsky can be reached via

e-mail at oppsie@umich.edu.

Erin Podolsky

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