Minute to Win It

The mood is tense. The crowd is screaming. The music is blaring. The lights burn hot on the skin of the one contestant at center stage. Everything is on the line. It's all or nothing. We all wait. With the eager intoxication of competition, we all watch...

... as a woman uses twenty marbles to knock over a pencil standing on end ten yards away.

She has a minute to win it.

Oh, dear Lord, but this show is ridiculous. SO WHY DID I LOVE IT SO MUCH?

This show has people performing the strangest, most pointless tasks. But when the poor woman was on her third and last attempt trying to grab two rubber balls around the stage while blindfolded, I was almost shaking on the couch sending her mental waves, to the left, curse you! To the left!! Her determination in plotting out her attack, the quiet moment that passed between host and contestant ("You can do this. You know you can do this."), the short huffs of breath just before her minute (TO WIN IT) began.

Something about this show is just something I want to be a part of.

The complete randomness of the tasks (keep two feathers in the air for a full minute using only your breath) makes you want to see them accomplished. Makes you want to try it yourself in the comfort of your living room. I know I'm not the only one. You could have heard a cricket chirp in the room after the woman couldn't keep her feathers up. People were on their feet screaming their brains out, and I can't blame them for a second. Lord knows I screamed "SHE DID IT!" after the previous task with such gusto that Michael was startled in the other room.

A part of me thinks that this is just good clean fun to help me wind down my weekend before returning to work. Another part of me thinks that this is one step in the direction of mindless TV along the lines of Requiem for a Dream.

Either way, I'm planning on tuning in next Sunday night to watch a guy spend sixty seconds trying to balance three golf balls on top of each other. Are you?