Gamer Girls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsSCNjbNy4I

Hey guys!  Remember Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?  Not the video game that nobody actually played but the awful children’s television gameshow.

I fucking hated it but I still watched it.

0:15 – Yeah, reason number one why I hated this shit: that acapella group.

0:30 – Here are the contestants.

Dwayne Watkins.  He enjoys singing and DESIGNING AND BUILDING TOYS and harassing (pronounced the PC way) his two sisters.

Hope Villella.  She’s won SPELLING AND STORY TELLING CONTESTS and came in second in the SCIENCE OLYMPICS.

Ned Dishman.  He plays baseball and the clarinet.

This is a farce.  Dwayne is black, Hope is Hispanic, and Ned is white.  First of all, that should raise questions.  This is pandering.  This was reason number two why I hated the show.  The chief was a black woman.  It just seemed like pandering to me.

So here you have these three contestants, the three major races in the US being represented.  But the odds certainly seem stacked against the Teutonic Mr Dishman.

The other two contestants are clearly accomplished academics.  And then you have dumbass Ned Dishman who enjoys playing sports.

Couldn’t they get three contestants who are equally academically gifted?  No, we’re going to get a stupid white kid and place him against two bright minorities to try to send a message.

This was on PBS, by the way.  America’s most “liberal” television network.

My money is on Hope.  And that’s the exact opposite of what anyone would think.  Girls don’t do well in game shows.  They usually lack the competitive spirit.  But look at this.  She’s won every nerd contest at her school.

And of course, there’s the racial element.  It’s well documented that non-Asian minorities perform more poorly in school than white students in America.  For whatever reason.  Socio-economic reasons.  But it’s reality.

So you have this dumb white kid against two exceptional minority kids as a way to “redress the balance.”

Well, let’s check it out.  Maybe Ned will prevail against  all odds.

They have to track down Patty Larceny.  A woman, of course.  Because as we all know, history is FULL of female criminal masterminds.  Also female detectives, for that matter.  And female police chiefs.

1:30 – Third reason why I hated this show: “gumshoes”.  I didn’t have a fucking clue what this meant, not having lived through the 1920s.  It’s some old term for a “detective”, I think.

Then after some god awful acapella shit, we’re introduced to the host.  I don’t know his name.  Then a shot of the audience.  The audience is about 70% black.

I’m all about equality.  Everybody should be treated with respect and dignity.  But let’s live in reality.

Where was this thing filmed?  New York City.  Well, maybe.  Maybe there was a school group on a field trip or something.  But I wonder now what the racial makeup of the audience is in other episodes.  Because are many black children particularly interested in geography game shows?  Well…I suppose there aren’t many children of any race who are interested in geography game shows.

2:15 – Yeah.  You can tell just by looking at these contestants that Dwayne and Hope are pretty sharp and ready to go and Ned is something of a doofus.

Yeah.  Come on.  First question.  Dwayne and Hope got the answer right and Ned stumbled on even giving his (wrong) answer.  This is shameful.

5:30 – Then a video clue of some African singer.  The host says, “Oh yeah this is Deevala (or something…he stumbles on the pronunciation).  He rocks.”

Oh yeah.  We all loved Deevala (or whatever) back in the day.

Then some terrible acting from this host and a multi-racial group of people come out and start dancing to this African music and the kids just look terrified.  “We just want to play the game here.  We don’t want to be involved in your stupid skits.”

So now it’s the lightning round.  All of the questions will be about Zaire.  How about some questions on Sweden instead?

That’s the end of round 1.  Dwayne and Hope are tied for first.  They’re really curb stomping Ned.

12:15 – I’m surprised that this acapella group is all white.  They must have scoured the globe for a non-white acapella singer and came up empty.

13:45 – Ned can’t even pronounce “Latvia”.  And the answer was wrong, of course.

I mean, look at this.  He looks like he’s about to kill himself.  They ruined this kid’s self-esteem for life just to make a point that minorities can do well in geography game shows.  Well, great.  We can all agree with that.  How about putting three kids of equal skill against each other?

This is insulting to these two other contestants.  The producers think that the only white kid they can beat is a borderline retarded white kid.

Wow.  Then there was a speed round on American geography and Ned killed it.  He’s like fucking Rainman on this thing.  He was buzzing in before the question was even finished.  I didn’t know any of them.  There was no time to think.

Then there’s the round where you have to bet points based on your knowledge of a certain part of the world.  The part of the world is the Caribbean.  I’ll say that Dwayne bets 50.

No, Dwayne bet 20 and he was wrong.  He’s eliminated from the game because both Hope and Ned got the answer right.

Don’t feel bad, though.  He still goes home with an atlas, a Carmen Sandiego watch, a Carmen Sandiego t-shirt, a subsrciption to National Geographic World (which I guess was the children’s version of National Geographic…no nudity), and a rubber ball/globe thing.

Total value: fuck…fifty bucks?  This is trash.

Now the two remaining contestants are looking for Patty in the Bahamas.  Let me check the demographics of the Bahamas…90% black, 4% white.  This shouldn’t be too hard.

Now they’re…just choosing locations seemingly at random.  I didn’t get this part of the game as a kid and I still don’t.  Are these locations somehow based on the speech that the chief gave right before this?  I don’t get it.

If this is random, this is a really stupid way to end the game, which has had pretty good rules up to this point.

Anyway, yeah, Hope wins.

Ned goes home with a world band radio and I think the same shit that Dwayne got.  What’s a world band radio?  Just shortband radio, right?  Yeah.  That will be fun for about two minutes.

I remember this final game being nigh on impossible.  And today, it’s Africa.  There’s no way.  I never even heard of half of these countries.  Do they still exist?

So after the inevitable loss, she goes home with a portable CD player, some world music CDs, and the fucking Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego acapella CD.  I’d rather get the fucking t-shirt and ball.

But yeah.  Way to go liberal Jewish producers.  Oh, the producer was Howard J Blumenthal.  How did I know?

He was about 30 when he produced this show.  How was he able to reach such a senior position at such a young age?  The Chosen People are just naturally gifted, I guess.