March 26, 2010

So You Think You Can…

They will refer to this post in court. Millions of dollars will be at stake. The very foundations of copyright law will be in question. Sonia Sotamayor will chime in. Sean Hannity will call someone a communist. The blogosphere will be ablaze.

Yes, for today I reveal an idea for a television program so revolutionary that someone will not only be tempted to steal it, they will be required to. The world must see this show.

The Inspiration

People love (or watch a lot of, in any case) reality television. But it’s not the Real Housewives that make the prime time network lineups. It’s the competitions, the gussied up game shows. We want singing, dancing, feats of strength and knowledge and endurance. Why can’t one show offer all these things?

The Rules

Round I – Two contestants. One chooses from a variety of categories: History, Art, Science, the standard Trivial Pursuit fare. The other chooses from a menu of food items: hot dogs, chicken wings, blueberry pies, all the staples of the competitive eating circuit. Both contestants must answer a barrage of questions from the chosen category. When they get a question right, they must eat a piece of the chosen food item within a set time period. When they get a question wrong or fail to finish the food in the allotted time, the other contestant takes over. Back and forth, back and forth they go, answering and eating, answering and eating. Vomiting, of course, means disqualification. At the end of ten minutes, whoever has answered and eaten the most moves on. Then the process is repeated with two other pairs of contestants.

Round II – Three contestants remain, and they’re all stuffed to the gills. Now is our moment for the warbling and wobbling. The host of the show, a suited-up Malcolm Jamal Warner, will introduce the finalists via some touching human interest stories. Then they will each perform a fully choreographed song and dance routine before a live audience and a panel of judges. The judges (Mario Batali, Pepa from Salt n’ Pepa, and Anna Wintour) will weigh in. The public will vote. A winner will be crowned. Again, vomiting means disqualification.

The Name

There are a lot of ways I might have gone with this. Belly Busters. Food for Thought. The Biggest Dancer. Eh. No, there’s really only one thing this can be called. The greatest television program of our era must be known as: Go With Your Gut!

So there it is. Make it so, TV executives. And when some Joey Chestnut-bellied, Ken Jennings-minded, Carrie Underwood-singing dynamo shows up on the cover of Time as the Person of Millenium, call my lawyers. Because it all started here.

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