64: The Weakest Link

A handful of the programs on this list are there because, while they didn't have great staying power, they seemed especially dominant over a period of time. The Weakest Link is on the list because it was everywhere, but this low because it was only everywhere for an extremely short period of time.

If you were cognizant during the spring of 2001, you remember the Weakest Link. It's best remembered for the chilling asexual British host Anne Robinson who captivated audiences across both sides of the Atlantic with her catch phrase, to be heard everywhere, "You are the weakest link...goodbye!" and her refusal to smile, which I had just assumed was a standard British characteristic. What I also remember about the show were the arcane and confusing rules - one of several factors that separated the originator the Great Game Show Comeback, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and its largely almost painfully simple rules with its imitators, of which the Weakest Link was by far the most successful. Basically, from what I remember, somehow there'd be a bunch of contestants who would get asked a bunch of questions in some sort of seemingly random order, the money values increasing depending on how many in a row they got right, and then they could bank the money at some point, or if someone got one wrong they would lose it all. And then I guess the contestants vote someone off. I'm really not sure who or how many people win. I don't think I even understood it when I was watching (Come on, I watched a couple. You probably saw it once also.)

Briefly, this was popular enough to convince a studio that people wanted to see it more than once a week, and a syndicated version aired, hosted by George Gray, of whom the most interesting wiki fact is that he was best known at the time for hosting Extreme Gong, which I thought I had never heard of, but upon reading the wikipedia entry, realize I vaguely remember. Wikipedia has a map of countries in which had their own edition of the Weakest Link - it would make Hitler jealous (it's not too soon for Hitler-taking-over-the-world jokes right?).



Either way, the ultimate failure of the show probably spoke to several factors. One was general game show fatigue - clearly there was an overreaction to the American people's full-fledged embrace of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (I'll try to limit the direct talk about that to its own entry - clearly no list of '00s TV shows would be complete without it), and Weakest Link didn't have some of the things that helped Millionaire last at least a little longer, and in syndication - one of these things being the confusing rules. I think maybe something has to do with the host - over the short term, Americans were attracted to the icy and foreboding Robinson - but in the long term she could be grating - people maybe got tired of her attitude, the way she dismissed contestants ruthlessly, and ran back into Regin Philbin's (and later Meredeth Viera, same attitude type) welcoming sympathetic arms - American wants to date the bad boy (or girl) game show host, but comes back to marry the nice guy host in the end. In the end, there also just wasn't that much of a show to go on aside from these things - it relied on its host more than any other game show. I'd love to say it was because the quality of the trivia was lacking, but no one but real trivia freaks like myself care about that.

For all the quick demise in America, there will always have been a time where The Weakest Link ruled the world.