A Lazy Afternoon With Geniuses

After the hustle of this week, I decided to take the day easy: make a few phone calls, tidy up, etc. These tasks took no more than an hour or so, leaving me plenty of time with 'Lady Grey' Twinning's tea- a light citrus blend- and British daytime television.

I don't have many channels, certainly fewer than one would get with basic American cable. I think I have roughly twelve, but there could be more hidden on there somewhere. At any rate, I don't intend to pay for the full British experience, which, as you add more channels, begins to look increasingly like the full American experience: 24/7 sports, reality shows, bad movies, etc. -- less Glenn Beck. To the Mellas household: when I find his British likeness, you will be the first to know. At any rate, my British Telecom guide assures me that if your spirits are buoyed by misfortune, classlessness, and the wholesale liquidation of men's souls, these channels can be made available to you here just as anywhere else.

I do get, however, the BBC package. This consists of roughly six or seven channels, of which one is dedicated to Parliament and another world news. At certain times, Parliament can be quite a spectacle to watch, but I'll save this for my pending post on 'British politics,' due sometime later this year.

These notwithstanding, daytime British television at first seems designed to turn you into a computer, upgrade your RAM, and think in movements of 64-bits. See 'Countdown,' a popular and long-running game show. On this program, two people compete against each other in two types of tasks. In one, random letters are presented to the contestants and audience. The players have 30 seconds to rearrange as many letters as possible into a coherent word. A legitimate lexicographer oversees the event and validates the contestant's often obscure entries. (I won a round, by the way, 'PURLOINER' is a word of the maximum 9 characters.) In arithmetic games, players are presented with six numbers and and a target number. In 30 seconds, they have to arithmetically manipulate the numbers to reach the target. In one round, the target was 684, and the numbers were something like 75, 6, 2, 12 and 8. Both contestants reached 684 in a series of steps, but the precocious 12-year old won-- for the third episode in a row.

In fact, the show is famous for presenting freakishly talented adolescents that are better than you at anagrams. There is no reason for you to watch 'Countdown' except your desire to beat the smug little bastards on the show. In this, I was humbled, judged computationally unsound, and discouraged from ever seeking a prize copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Interestingly, between bouts, seemingly to allow the contestants to rest, the resident lexicographer posits theories about the origins of random words. For this, the crowd always claps thunderously, as if moved by the etymology of the phrase: 'hot dogs.' If she is to be trusted, Yale students first used 'hot dog' as a term of endearment for the oblong provisions a local vendor purveyed about campus, delicious but of dubious origin. 'Dubious origins' are her specialty, lending America's number one choking hazard ironic power over the life and death of hapless lexicographers.

A later show that appears on British prime-time is computational of a different sort. In this show, contestants have a few days to become subject matter experts in a field selected by the game show's producers. Their preparation is not part of the show, but I assume happens in their homes, perhaps after they get off work, a few days in advance. They are quizzed with difficult questions in rapid succession.

One candidate was tested as an expert of Leeds United during the [Insert Head Coach's Name Here] years. One question went something like this: "During the November 12 1985 game against West Ham, Donald Hart took a foul from Robert Nielson that bruised his left ankle and was carried off the pitch during which minute of play?" The player answered correctly without hesitation. The host continues immediately without congratulations. The questions are read incredibly fast to test the player's hearing ability, so it seems, and familiarity with the genre. Each question is copiously detailed to deny the contestant any claims of vagueness.

And so the characters rattle off every minute detail of their expertise. The show claims to educate its viewers, but the rate of information exchanged exceeds the bandwidth of a casual computer like myself.

I also watched the British version of 'Deal or No Deal.' The player was covered with burn scars and his mother, sitting in the front row of the audience, had a serious heart condition. As the game goes on you learn more about the unending misfortunes of the player. After the nth tragedy of the contestant's life is revealed, the host interjects to jest at the mother's heart palpitations. The burn victim catches the spirit, and in a matter of moments everyone is laughing over the possibility that the stresses of the game will kill his mother before he can win the money necessary to replace his eyebrows. 

Then the banker calls, but like the American version you can only overhear the host's half of the conversation. You gather that the banker's bra is uncomfortably tight and the likely cause of her recent rash of headaches. The bank and the host chat about the weather, the wankers that work down the hall, and other matters of no consequence whatsoever. After a minute or two, the game continues.

Ultimately, the player drew all the wrong boxes and came away with 5 pence. This game of chance kindled the hopes of a desperate man just long enough to dash them. He gambled the private dignity of his suffering for a coin not worth the effort required to pick up. 

Worst-case scenario, in a literal sense.

Then I realized why the host teased the mother and son when he did, the purpose of his jarring turn of humor. By his effort the characters laughed at themselves, and in the face of their personal agony- perhaps- triumphed in the realm of the spirit. This brief, light-hearted digression reinforced the qualities that make tragedy bearable and life worth living; in truth, it was a tangent with a sublime angle, one beyond the calculations of a pre-pubescent savant, but an approach to life that transcends vicissitude. The humor was clinical, perfectly timed in anticipation of the heartbreak that could later occur. What was the extended, absurd phone call with the banker but an implicit reminder that a game is only a game? I believe that the host of that show, by either design or sheer luck, brilliantly played his game. What a lesser man would say with fumbled and marketplace words, this host created in the substance of a moment.  

The last time I saw 'Deal or No Deal' in the US, the contestant, overcome with emotion, cried tears of joy or sadness after every box. She left with several thousand dollars and a trail of tears in her wake. This man, disfigured by poor luck, penniless, arm-in-arm with his suffering mother, exited the studio without a tear, head held high.

That is the difference between American and British television.