I’ve seen almost three complete episodes of this god-awful NBC game show because two people I know happened to appear on it. I’ve never actually gotten through a full episode without fast-forwarding. I can’t even begin to list all the ways this show is the absolute worst. Well, actually, no, I can begin to list: 

1. Dressing everybody up as cartoonish “types” and obviously instructing the contestants to play up their “types” and boast about how “smart” they are.

2. Really, the all-around phoniness of everyone’s behavior — constants have clearly been urged to “talk out” their thoughts Millionaire-style, in the erroneous belief that anyone still finds this entertaining, especially when it’s not even natural. Or everyone’s attempts to be as cute and colorful as possible when answering a simple question. I saw one episode where two guys in a face-off appeared to be trying to out-cute each other with every answer. It makes you very grateful when the rare contestant offers a quick, confident, direct answer.

3. The egregiously long running time. A show this one-note has no right to be an hour long. Really, almost no game show should be. Jeopardy is half-an-hour, isn’t it? Price is Right can barely sustain an hour and the game changes every five minutes. This is the same damn thing a million times in a row. But post-Millionaire the recipe for game shows is to waste as much fucking time as possible on meaningless bullshit. Thanks, Regis! Anyway, Who’s Still Standing, if it insists on existing, should be a half hour of nothing but lighting rounds. 

4. The confusing, dull and rigged person-in-the-middle format. I guess game shows are supposed to have one hero at a time nowadays, but the passes mean the show is rigged in favor of the person in the middle. They seem to have corrected for this somewhat — I seem to remember three passes in the early episodes, which basically got everyone to the point where they decided to keep their money and go once they ran out of passes. This made winning impossible for the people in the circle unless they remained unpicked until the lightning round. 

5. The delayed drops. If a show is about dropping people through the floor, it shouldn’t give them a long Q&A to brace themselves. They should drop the moment they fail and then it’s on to the next person (because remember, in the good version of this show, it’s all lightning). Again, the show has corrected a bit, trying to drop people mid-response instead of gently easing them into it, but not enough!

6. The strained attempts to build up everyone’s “smart” cred by listing accomplishments that are a stupid person’s idea of what “smart” sounds like. A Bachelor’s Degree from a college you’ve heard of! Some vague academic scholarship! A fairly decent score on your SATs (unintentionally implying that you haven’t accomplished anything smart since your SATs, despite your SATs having been taken long enough ago to be in the 1600 range!).

7. Following up all the fake smart talk with really idiotic questions that have nothing to do with smarts, where they basically give you the answer with the half-finished Wheel of Fortune puzzle. 

8. The weird-ass commercial breaks that feel like they forgot to build throws to commercial into the taping, so they just kludged them together in editing with a music crescendo and a cut away at a not-terribly-suspenseful moment. Also, the return from commercial where they splice in the intro to the round then jump back to the question like that’s just how it really happened. 

9. The constant animated recaps of how the game works, because it’s a reminder of how counterintuitive the game structure is, and also because it again feels like something they forgot to get when they actually taped it.

10. The ho-ho-ho Santa voiceovers in the Christmas week editions of the game.

11. The “Look Out Below,” theme song, which makes me want to call the show “Look Out Below,” except no, it’s called Who’s Still Standing, which sounds like Last Comic Standing, which makes me think maybe this show is called Last Man Standing, but no, that’s the Tim Allen sitcom. Was this show originally called “Look Out Below,” but they changed the name at the last second and got stuck with the song? Side note, the “Look Out Below” music cue is closed captioned as “exciting music” and that is hilarious.