{"id":8850,"date":"2015-09-23T22:14:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T21:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=8850"},"modified":"2015-09-23T22:14:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T21:14:48","slug":"the-man-who-almost-broke-blockbusters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=8850","title":{"rendered":"The Man Who Almost Broke Blockbusters"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re going to go a bit arty and This American Life<\/em> on you viewers, I’m Ira Glass. We all know of the story of how Michael Larson managed to break Press Your Luck<\/strong> in the 1980s and won over $100,000 in doing so, but what about the more minor shows where there isn’t large amounts of cash on the line? Friend of the Bar the Internet Celebrity @shoutsatcows<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

Blockbusters.\u00a0 An early student TV favourite, its early 90s Bob Holness heyday led to ill-advised resurrections hosted by Aspell, Liza “nepotism” Tarbuck and, in today’s episodes, radio’s Simon Mayo.\u00a0 Once you get over the inherent weirdness of seeing a radio personality talking, it’s actually a reasonable attempt at a reboot.\u00a0 While the graphics have been updated, there’s a nice sense of the familiar, from the hexagonal board, via the gold runs, to the knowing hilarity (not hilarity) of asking for a “p” please.<\/p>\n

Today’s solo team is a ginger Yorkshire lad called Ryan.\u00a0 Ryan, it turns out, is quite good at the main Blockbusters game, easily dispatching his opponents, despite some wacky answers (“Fonichiwa?”), and them having an extra team member.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What happens next to Ryan? Find out under the cut, when our programme continues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Welcome back.<\/p>\n

Everything goes a bit mad when Ryan steps up for his first Gold Run.\u00a0 If you can’t remember the Gold Run, the board is set up like this [click for bigger]:<\/p>\n

\"goldrun\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The answer’s initials are on each hexagon, and to win, you have to make a path of correct answers from left to right within a minute.\u00a0 Ryan’s a bit of a maverick here, instead of making an efficient five-step bridge across, he answers as many questions as he can, only making the bridge at the final second.<\/p>\n

His prize? A trip across the Krypton Factor<\/em> assault course.\u00a0 In Yorkshire.\u00a0 Where he lives anyway.<\/p>\n

Simon asks him to explain his strategy.\u00a0 “I think you get \u00a310 a hexagon, so I was just wanting to build up my cash.” But there’s a flaw. “You only get the money if you don’t make it across.” “Oh.”<\/p>\n

Mayo is a little underwhelmed by the unashamed greed, and relishes in pointing out that instead of \u00a380, he’s won a bus trip out.\u00a0 “I’ll remember that for the next one”, he promises, which gets a shocked “whoa” from the audience.\u00a0 This is unprecedented.\u00a0 “I’ve won something, but it’s not worth \u00a380.\u00a0 I’m sounding quite bitter.”\u00a0 “You are, so I’d advise you to stop.”\u00a0 A full dressing down from Mayo.\u00a0 Holness would have had him escorted from the building and shot.<\/p>\n

In the second half of the episode, Ryan easily defeats his new opponents, helped massively by only one of them bothering to buzz in, answer or appear to be awake.<\/p>\n

Ryan steps up for his second Gold Run.\u00a0 “I would advise you just get from A to B as quickly as you can.”\u00a0 Brutal.<\/p>\n

The episode ends with Ryan ready to make his run, but thanks to the magic of Challenge TV showing near constant repeats, we don’t have to wait long.<\/p>\n

Will he take Simon’s advice?\u00a0 Nah, of course not.<\/p>\n

His strategy this time is to completely ignore the Good Prize at the end, and to rack up as many \u00a310 answers as he can in the minute.\u00a0 The answer’s initials are up on the screen, and the questions on Blockbusters are at the more accessible end of the scale, so you can go some distance just by shouting the first thing you think of.<\/p>\n

So he interrupts Simon with a stream of guesses:<\/p>\n

“POW.\u00a0 Prisoner of War?” “Which title\u2026” “Prince of Wales.\u00a0 OTM.”<\/p>\n

“Delight\u2026” “Over The Moon. SJP.”<\/p>\n

“American act\u2026” “Sarah Jessica Parker. SC.”<\/p>\n

Here, Simon lets out one word, which belies all the secret thoughts around what a dick Ryan is being. It’s a muttered “yes”, with an implied, “as though it matters”.<\/p>\n

Ryan doesn’t try to get across the board, answering nine questions (he’s clearly seen counting them while Simon is trying to talk) for \u00a390.<\/p>\n

“You’ve done the calculations for yourself”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, \u00a390”<\/p>\n

“That’s right. It’d be a shame if the prize you deliberately didn’t\u2026”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, it’ll probably be an iPhone”<\/p>\n

“I can tell you that it was worth considerably more than \u00a390, so you’ve messed up again”<\/p>\n

Boom, such cutting delight.\u00a0 It may have cost them \u00a390, but Simon’s knowledge that the smart-arse has done it wrong again is priceless.<\/p>\n

“You’re pulling my leg”<\/p>\n

“No.” Simon’s smile vanishes. “I’m not.”<\/p>\n

“I bet it’s a weekend away”<\/p>\n

“Well, you’re not gonna find out”<\/p>\n

“Oh, that’s okay, I’m best off not knowing”<\/p>\n

“No, no, we’ll tell you.\u00a0 You might regret it.”<\/p>\n

Simon’s toying with him now.\u00a0 Look at that!\u00a0 Not going to tell him what it was, sees the relief, and flips it 180.\u00a0 Harsh stuff from Mayo, pure coldness.<\/p>\n

“Bizarre tactics from Ryan there, but it’s his Gold Run – he can play it how he likes”, he lies.<\/p>\n

With a third team sent on their way with \u00a330 and an Elonex e-reader (sample Amazon review: “It is far away from todays technologie \u2026 The whole handling is contrary to ‘intuitive’ handling – you really have to always remember that everything is different to any other ‘nortmal’ handheld units.”), Ryan steps up for his third Gold Run.<\/p>\n

“I’m intrigued to know how you’re going to play this one”, asks Simon.<\/p>\n

“I think I’m going to conform this time, just try and get across the board”<\/p>\n

The prize he turned down was worth at least \u00a3180, double his cash prize.\u00a0 Simon points out that each Gold Run has a higher value prize than the previous one, which master tactician Ryan seems to have over-looked.<\/p>\n

This time, he takes things seriously.\u00a0 Amusingly, the first question, “BTB”, is about following the rules.\u00a0 Simon’s obvious irritation at him has worked, and he plays the game properly, his individuality stamped out under a system of oppression and falsehoods like “you can play it how you like”.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen Mayo as the tyrannical dictator that he is, upset when things don’t go his way and a young upstart tries to show him up.\u00a0 It’s sickening, sort of.<\/p>\n

Ryan’s prize for the third Gold Run is a tablet computer.\u00a0 The brand isn’t mentioned, so you can assume it’s something high quality and high budget, an iPad 9 or something.<\/p>\n

“It’s better for me to have won that prize than to have gone around the houses”, he meekly concedes.\u00a0 And with this submission, it appears to be all over for Ryan.\u00a0 His next opponents, Fiona and James, smash him at the regular game.\u00a0 Will they go on and win overall? We’ll never know, because two episodes of low-effort pop-culture questions from yesteryear are more than plenty.<\/p>\n

That’s Blockbusters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shouts at Cows writes about pop culture and has a Twitter<\/a> and a website<\/a>. Join us again soon for more stories of This American Life.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re going to go a bit arty and This American Life on you viewers, I’m Ira Glass. We all know of the story of how Michael Larson managed to break Press Your Luck in the 1980s and won over $100,000 in doing so, but what about the more minor shows where there isn’t large amounts\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pLcmt-2iK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}