Identity the Hottest New Game Show Despite Lukewarm Reviews

Identity the Hottest New Game Show Despite Lukewarm Reviews by Roxanne McDonald

While the traditional game show is all but lost, “Identity” has some interesting elements and moments. But can it sustain our interest?

Just when we thought the traditional question and answer or guessing game TV show was going the way of the obsolete, along with the once-great “What’s My Line,” for instance, “Identity” catches our interest.

Hosted by Penn Jillette, whom we can see is just barely restraining his opinion when a contestant can’t, for

instance, figure out who the child star (Jerry Mathers) is or cannot read how number 11 (Bruce Jenner) is the Olympic Gold medalist, “Identity” is quick and clean. And challenging enough that the contestant turnover is high. Hell, in the second episode, three contestants played in the one-hour space.
The contestant is faced with 12 strangers and a kind of leader board list of identities—rodeo wrangler; Vegas stripper; rocket scientist; cancer survivor…. And he or she must guess correctly all 12 identities. There are three forms of help: ask the experts; one mistaken identity forgiven; and ask your support group (friends or family members who come along and stay downstage for the duration of the contestant’s stay.

I found it a fun and watchable show, and couldn’t help but muse that it would be a great exercise for critical thinking students—as one needs to use what “Identity” producers say are perception and instinct combined. So, for instance, while one player was quite smart about inferring that the hand model was the stranger who was hiding her hands, he was also a bit silly (or too young) for assuming that because Bruce Jenner was in a tux he was the ventriloquist.

New York Post Online’s Michael Starr confirms the “okay-ness” of “Identity”, noting that on the night of its debut, about 8.2 million tuned in and stayed tuned in for the second installment, which aired the next night.

“Identity” is fun and interactive enough that you are not

just a lazy, passive absorber of junk. Besides this, it beats the few other remaining game shows, like Deal or No Deal, which I still cannot stand, and even 1 vs. 100, which is starting to suck me in with the tension of building the bank very carefully, lest the contestant blow the whole wad with one answer. (This is unlike the tension of just wanting a bunch of money in a platinum briefcase, however, for at least 1 vs. 100 requires intelligent answers to sometimes tough or tricky questions (which, hey, stump a huge percentage of the 100. But more on this show later.)

Where “Identity” is now on the itinerary is hard to guess, so now that I am moderately hooked, I guess I will have to use some inferencing skills of my own to find its regular slot. That, or look it up online. Duh.

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