Dumbass Game Show Contestants, Part 1

I beg forgiveness of those readers who came to this space expecting to see another slam of a stupid columnist of Peter, or perhaps Buster. I've elected to branch out a bit and blog about my other love besides sports: game shows.

First, a quick background. My love for game shows started at a very young age. My parents were too cheap for cable, and there weren't that many game shows on network TV back then: it was basically Family Feud, Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy. (I refuse to include the ! in Jeopardy; I see no reason for its inclusion. While game shows do put a hop in my step, I tend to find superfluous punctuation in show titles to be aggravating.) The Feud and Bob Barker were on weekday mornings, so I rarely got to see them. Your average kid would go out on snow days and build snowmen or get into snowball fights; I was parked in front of the tube, listening to Ray Combs crack wise and shouting out bids for the Showcase Showdown.

When we would visit my grandparents, who loved television far more than my parents and therefore had cable, it was game show heaven for me. Back then, there was a two- or three-hour block of game shows during the day on the USA Network. I don't recall exactly what they were - I recall Hollywood Squares, Scrabble, and Name That Tune, but there were definitely more.

Fast forward to about ten years ago, when we moved to Seattle and my parents, worried about subpar TV reception in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, did a 180 and purchased not just cable, but digital cable. Flipping through the channels, I stumbled across the Game Show Network, and that's when I knew that technology was unequivocally, undoubtedly a good thing. Since then, 95% of my non-sports TV watching has been the Game Show Network. When I got DVR in my apartment, I stockpiled over 50 episodes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire on the hard drive. Technology and game shows, coming together once again to make Joist a very happy TV watcher.

Anyway, from now on, I may use this space to showcase some of my favorite game show moments, specifically the ones that feature a contestant doing something particularly stupid. Our first entry comes to us from the game show Twenty-One, hosted by a wholly uncharismatic Maury Povich:

Maury: True or False: Before Mark McGwire broke the single-season home run record, it was held by Nolan Ryan.

Jason the Contestant: (Long pause) Um...I'm gonna say...false.

Maury: And you're correct. What took you so long? Nolan Ryan was a pitcher!

Jason: I know.

I'm sure you do.