OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, officially rolls out a new game show Monday at 9 that is annoying on so many levels it ultimately raises a question no one wants to either ask or answer:
If this is what we need to save OWN, is it worth saving?
With a slightly different tweak, “Are You Normal, America?” — which had a sneak preview Sunday — might be merely one more routine time-killing game show.
The setup is that two contestants, who until that point didn’t know each other, are paired as a team that must guess what most people would do in some common situation.
They must identify “normal” American behavior.
For example, after staying in a hotel, do more people take the toiletries or tip the maids?
The contestants agree on their best guess and then they find out whether this matches the behavior that the show’s producers found in what they say is a survey of at least 1,000 people around the country.
While they do this polling, the show’s producers also film random respondents. So we see someone in Chicago, or Utah, or Miami, explaining the answer a little more fully.
The show also selects 10 respondents to come to the studio and sit in chairs on the stage during the game.
After each poll result has been revealed, host Barry Poznick or Kim Coles says at least one member of this panel has admitted to some unusual or mildly scandalous behavior involving the question at hand.
The host identifies the behavior and the team guesses which panelist ’fessed up to it. If they’re right, they win more money.
A team that gets all the questions right and identifies all the correct panelists can win more than $100,000.
As you may gather, “Are You Normal, America?” is basically a mashup of a dozen other game shows. It’s also a little complicated. But the veteran Poznick is a likable enough host, so it all goes down easy until it reaches the “pee in the shower” question.
The question is whether most people do that.
And boy, does the show latch onto this one. Contestants and audience are instantly reduced to giggling third-graders who have just heard a naughty word.
Then it turns out that one member of the panel not only does this, but has turned it into a game — and the giggling starts all over again.
It’s more juvenile than offensive, except it quickly becomes clear this segment is designed to become the episode’s takeaway.
That’s when a number of viewers may think, y’know, this is not why I watched Oprah.
She made her fans laugh, cry or maybe think. She didn’t try to keep their attention with, literally, bathroom humor.
It’s hard to believe this is why she knocked herself out to start a network — and harder to believe this is what she wants it to deliver.
