From the New York Times comes word of Our Little Genius, an awesome new Fox prime-time game show, in which “gifted and talented” kids answer trivia questions for cash:
The game show’s questions, on topics that the child chooses, like astronomy, the Civil War or Greek mythology, increase in difficulty over 10 levels, with each level worth an amount ranging from $1,000 to $500,000. At each level, it is the parents of the contestant who decide whether to advance to the next question or to stick with the money they have already won. Once they get above $10,000, they are guaranteed at least that much. But any additional winnings will disappear if their child attempts a new question and fails.
Now, according to the article, “The issue of whether preteen prodigies might be under an unhealthy amount of pressure… has bothered some clinical psychologists and behavioral experts.” Bothered? Really?
Me, I don’t see a problem, and that’s because all smart kids, whether prodigies or merely gifted and/or talented, are under a ton of pressure, much of it from their parents, much of it from themselves, a bit of it from psychologists who worry about how much pressure they’re under, and surely a fair amount from the prepubescent norms they’re surrounded by in the school hallways. Given the threats to one’s psyche from Dr. Bob the school shrink, Dad the chess-playing almost-was, and Paulie who’s hoping to go to juvie next semester, what’s one little potential loss of a half-mil on national TV?
The thing is, kids cry. No matter how brilliant they seem to be, they fuck up, occasionally in front of other people. The show’s producers seem to want to hide this simple, if traumatic, fact from viewers. To that end, they’re taping “fake endings to be inserted into the broadcast if the child subsequently answered a question wrong,” says the Times.
Meanwhile, despite these fraudulent countermeasures designed to conceal the horrors of life from Fox viewers, the concerned parents and concerned psychologists are, well, concerned. They’d rather treat their little geniuses (genii?) as delicate flowers, and protect them not just from harm, but from the possibility of harm—which makes the absolute inevitability of pain that much worse when it hits.
Point being: If everyone knew how awful and miserable childhood is, and could see that misery enacted regularly on TV, maybe it wouldn’t seem so awful and miserable in the first place. Or at least maybe it would be more bearable.
What I really mean is: Why’d they have to cancel Freaks & Geeks?
(Incidentally, before I started at Dadwagon, I was foreman at a Victorian-era coal-processing plant staffed entirely by minors. Fun fact!)
I have only one suggestion to make: With every level up these kids make, they earn not just cash but punishment. At $1,000, you get your books knocked out of your hands. At $10,000, a purple nurple. And when you hit that half-million dollars, there’s an atomic wedgie in store for your Einstein ass. Don’t worry—we’ll wince, too.