It should perhaps be acknowledged that the deep
bogosity of
The Weakest Link does not stem uniquely from its infuriating
host and her brainless
catchphrase.
The Title: If a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, why do the contestants get
stronger when the 'weakest link' is removed? All of a sudden, the average available money per head has gone up, and there's one less moron to compete with.
The Rules: Screaming '
bank' before answering your question to harvest the
exponentially accreting money belongs in
Mao, not a TV quiz show. It makes it unnecessarily difficult to obtain any cash.
The Questions: 'In
nature, what is a
hornbeam?' Answer: The same as it is in a park, or anywhere else - a
tree. Many questions are needlessly or even misleadingly prefixed by the phrase 'In $field_of_knowledge'. They range from the killingly obscure to the insultingly easy, and the contestants' ability to answer them correctly seems to bear no correlation whatsoever to the commonality of the information concerned.
The Voting: We're told after every round that so-and-so was the weakest link 'statistically'. Then the group go and vote for someone different. Why waste our time with all this tedious fake suspense?
The Insults: If I want to be insulted I'll come to
E2 :-) - or better still, I'll take the show's questions seriously. Anne Robinson's
pathetic quips are principally demeaning to the networks stupid enough to screen this junk.
The 'Team': The contestants are consistently referred to as a team, even though they're there principally to back-stab one another competing for about three months' pay. Teamwork in 'survivor'-mode game-shows just doesn't happen.
And finally...
The winning strategy for 'The Weakest Link': The best strategy is this: Always say 'bank' before answering any question, and always vote for the person who answered the
most questions correctly (other than yourself). If everyone follows this strategy, the second most stupid person wins, and that person is the
only person with a guaranteed winning strategy in 'The Weakest Link'.