Classic Posts - Family Feud

An old post about Family Feud from my old blog follows. BOTG talked about how ridiculous it was that the "triple" round basically decides the game, and renders the first two or three rounds as useless. Anyway, apparently it is still on TV. My thoughts from years ago follow.

The last time I've seen the show, I believe J. Peterman from Seinfeld was the host.


Why did I watch this show often as a kid, even though the structure of the show was ridiculous? Allow me to explain.


The overall premise wasn't too bad. Each family would have to guess what responses "100 random people" gave to random questions, usually about ordinary aspects of life. Whichever family performed better did the same in a final round with a chance to win money. Family Feud certainly is part of our cultural lexicon and has been a successful show for a long time.
 However, here are the three things that have started to bother me over time, in increasing order of annoyingness:



1) Why do they ask if a family wants to "Play" or "Pass" when they win the toss-up question? Theoretically, you'd see why a family would want to pass, I suppose... but, I'm sure in my lifetime I've watched this show at least 100 times and I've seen a family elect to pass maybe twice. It seems analogous to winning a coin flip in overtime in a sudden-death football game, and electing to "kick" rather than "receive". The best case scenario is that the other team fumbles or has to kick back, resulting in your possession... why not just receive in the first place?



2) It's annoying that sometimes a family gives what seem like "better" answers and they can't win a board because they miss one answer that is ridiculous that nobody would ever guess. I think the show's writers shouldn't use results to surveys if they are counterintuitive.



3) (This is what prompted me to write this post): The scoring structure is dumb. The family that gets to 300 points first wins. The first two rounds are usually worth close to 100 each, as the "top x answers are on the board" - and since 100 people were surveyed, the maximum amount of points each round is worth is usually somewhere between 80 and 100. 

Round 3 is worth 200 points, since scoring values are doubled. So, from time to time, a family will not only sweep each of the first three rounds, but also do so by sweeping the answers, and win after three rounds. However, this is not common. What usually happens is the game goes to a fourth round, where point values are tripled. So, often, the team that wins the triple round winds up winning the entire game, hence making the entire game up until this point almost insiginifcant. It would be kind of like a basketball game entering the 4th quarter and the referee going "Ok, since nobody is up by 30 points yet, let's have every basket for the last quarter count for 8 points each."