Day 5: MXC vs. Family Feud vs. Price is Right

We've wasted our time in front of all of these, either sick, or hungover, or still drunk, or just plain psyched to see what the survey said. So which is the BEST time waster?

I've evaluated the shows based a few important characteristics:

1) Timelessness:
This is important because it ensures that the show will be a great time waster now, when we're sitting around hungover, and just as great in 70 years, when we're sitting around shitting ourselves.

We've seen that the Feud can be entertaining with almost anybody as host - Al, Jay Peterman, that old dude - and can even be a great time waster online. I feel like there is some falloff between Al and Peterman though, Peterman is a little bit too much of a sexual molester and, while occasionally funny, he more often than not makes me a bit uncomfortable. I doubt The Price is Right - well, we know what's happening there. MXC is not dependent on talent, because just about anyone can make up those voices. It may be dependent on a limited supply of old violent game show tapes, it's unclear how many remain. But that brand of violence can be funny more than once and, with enough time in between viewings, it's doubtful that you'll even notice a repeat.

Edge: MXC

2) Show Format:
All are tried and true formulas that provide endless hours of entertainment. The guessing aspect of FF and TPIR allow for more audience-involvement, which is great, but again MXC is the best. It's like a half-hour compilation of Web Gems back before Baseball Tonight got hijacked by half-retarded blowhards. It's non-stop concussive impact infused with dirty-mouthed humor and the occasional "Oh dear god" moment when a tiny Asian girl falls face-first into the rolling logs only to get whiplashed backwards into the log behind her before crumpling into a heap in the muddy pit below. The show is based on addictive violence tempered by lighthearted dubbing that - when combined with the ambiguous date of the original filming (when/where the hell was this first made?) removes the audience just enough from the serious injuries unfolding just before our eyes. The show recognizes that, and just pummels our senses from start to finish.

Edge: MXC

Now, to steal two of Simmons' criteria:

3) Unintentional Comedy:
MXC is immediately ruled out because the entire program is intentional comedy. It's almost a dead heat though between FF and TPIR. FF is more likely to show us two thundering herds of corn-fed Midwesternerns rocking the stage, or to place the recently immigrated mexicans across from the Arizona border ranchers (maybe that should fall under intentional, now that I think of it), but I feel the edge has to go to TPIR because of all the Grandmas with T-Shirts, over-excited college kids, and the odd chance that on oversized black woman is going to charge down the aisle again and scare the bejesus out of Bob Barker (Does this scare him because he's so old and is still living - in his mind - in the segregation days? Or is it just because, for the last three decades, he's been nothing more than a straw scare-crow held together with toothpicks and dental floss?) Who knows, but TPIR wins.

4) Intentional Comedy:
MXC, hands down.

5) Random Hotness Alerts
FF is, once again, out early. I would think that MXC would have enough random citrus to put up a fight here, but it rarely ever does. It is quite disappointing in this regard. TPIR and its Showcase Beauties (or whatever they're called) clearly take the point.

So that's it. FF gets no points, and the final rankings of best time-wasting TV shows goes like this:

1) MXC
2) TPIR
3) FF


Also, it's time for someone to say: A Planet Earth Century Mark? That's an absolutely incredible idea, let's get started on it right now. Come on, you know you want to...


From the winner, MXC: