thejeopardyfan welcomes aboard Drew Scheeler. He'll be enlightening and entertaining us with weekly recaps of The Experts Show. And here he is:
Note: There are no spoilers in this recap beyond what appears in the questions asked on this episode of The Experts. Except for Glee. But Glee spoilers don’t matter.
Note: There are no spoilers in this recap beyond what appears in the questions asked on this episode of The Experts. Except for Glee. But Glee spoilers don’t matter.
Welcome back to another exciting season of The Experts! By now, The Experts should be your favorite internet game show unless you are still on dial-up in which case get with the times and hook up to broadband. We’re now in season two. From a production end, the format works, the episodes are running smoothly and the new blue graphics look sharp. Best of all, the contestants look like they know what they have signed up for this time around. Stronger experts will lead to better games and I expect some great things from our upcoming players.
For this season premiere we have a slight twist in the proceedings! Contestant Brad is the pianist on Glee! And one of the other contestants is a Glee expert! I’ve got a confession to make: I still watch Glee. Well, maybe hatewatch is the more accurate term. Glee began as an underdog story and now it’s just a trainwreck that I can’t give up. Jane Lynch is on her way out, and other adult characters like Mr. Schue and Emma disappear for weeks at a time. The replacement high schoolers lack the charm of the originals. And the past few episodes have handled molestation and school shootings with the tact of a hypothetical afterschool special starring Gary Busey and Tony Danza as conjoined twins who need to decide whether to unplug their comatose sister as played by Ke$ha.
Stephanie does a great job answering questions on Glee which is a deceptively complicated topic: for an hour-long show each episode features wall-to-wall dialogue to be quizzed on and still manages to shoehorn five-plus musical numbers. The appearance of “Trouty Mouth” in the opening round of questions – referring to the Jolieesque lips found on series regular Chord Overstreet – suggested that the questions would aim deep but most of her set skims the surface of askable material. Brad’s offhanded comments about his various experiences with the show provides the humor missing from many of Glee’s most recent episodes.
Breaking Bad is an awesome show and Brad knows just enough about his topic to do well and stay competitive in the early rounds. I was especially impressed of his knowledge about <name redacted> and the scene where <This is where a spoiler would go if I wanted to be evil and reveal something about a truly great drama. Breaking Bad is a wonderful show. But you should experience it on your own time with as few spoilers as humanly possible. Rest assured that I will not spoil the upcoming final scene of the series which, from my understanding, will reveal the entire show has occurred at a hospital inside a snow globe in the mind of an autistic boy. But the “snow” in the snowglobe is actually meth. Yeah. Oh wait, that’s Saint Elsewhere. Nevermind.>.
Resident Evil, as selected by returning contestant Chris Ngoon, gets my vote for easiest category of the week. Chris does a solid job with these questions. But with the questions asked, I like to think that any particularly studious novice could have read ten Wikipedia pages and done well. Chris does a brilliant job playing round three: correct me if I’m wrong but Chris becomes the first player to get the full thirty dollars from round three and enters round four in a well-deserved lead.
Round four is the great equalizer on The Experts: a single, well-placed wager can lock up the game for a strong player. Stephanie and Brad land one question each. Stephanie wagers low in her question on Regionals – one of the recurring jokes about Glee is that the students are always preparing for Regionals— and gets tossed a gimme question asking for a specific song performed at that event in last year’s episode. Brad bets big on his first question which he hits! But then he loses that same money by missing the company where Skyler works. It’s still enough to survive the conservative wagering from Stephanie and hold off Chris with his double whammy of two misses. If Chris’s questions were easier in the first three rounds they transition to brutal here.
Unused round five questions now appear in the post-game Youtube interview videos. Stephanie’s question is vicious. It’s basically asking for the entire transcript from one scene, from the most recent season no less. At least she puts in a valiant effort and identifies MIT (pronounced like the presidential candidate) as one of Brittany’s misinterpreted schools, even as she forgets “Stanford and Son” and the “University of California at Charles Barkley’s House.” I don’t think that asking Chris to name the three years that Resident Evils 4, 5 and 6 came out is particularly difficult. But Chris is able to tether his guesses to specific events and hits two of them, missing the release of RE4 by one year.
But it is Brad who gets to play for the cash moniez by making it to the real Hardest Question in the World. Brad is asked to list five previous employers of Walter White, places like Meth Lab, Another Meth Lab and Car Wash. And Brad forgets the high school where the series starts at. That’s too bad. It’s like a black fly in your underground meth lab. It’s like your wife dropping an ATM on your head. Who would’ve thought? It figures.
Isn’t that ironic?
Miscellaneous thoughts:
Chris Colfer winning a Golden Glove is a bit of a stretch, but I could totally see Sue Sylvester, or actress Jane Lynch, winning one in an alternate universe.
Have the beers been poured into the clear cups for this season? The idea that the contestants are mildly intoxicated reinforces the fun, laidback spirit of this program.
I thought for a minute that Brad said he provided the voice of a character in a Resident Evil game. It turns out that he is seen and not heard in the Glee video game. It is probably just as terrifying.
Next time on The Experts: Friday the 13th vs Bob Dylan vs Real Housewives. Which of these topics will prove the scariest? My money is on the Housewives.
Hey everyone! I’m Drew. I’ll be providing weekly recaps on The Experts from here on out. My dream subject is The Legend of Korra. You definitely don’t remember my appearance on the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament but you might recognize me as Youtube’s “Slightly Strange Guy on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” You can find me on Twitter: @drewscheeler