New Scaratings

On my way to edification on Hulu (Shin Chan), I was presented with a television series based on pub trivia. Mysteriously titled Trivia, it seems to follow a stereotypical trivia buff as he....well honestly I do not know the entire scope of the show as I am watching the first episode. However, I thought I'd share it here for those who had not heard of it.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/657438


And if you want to culture yourself here is Shin Chan:

http://www.hulu.com/shin-chan

I've seen it. It's not terrible but it is lazy, pushing the stereotype of those concerned with knowledge and trivia the most being hapless, unattractive socially inept losers. It would have been much more original and interesting had they made the relatively attractive, relatively successful team member the comic protagonist and the dumpy guy who lives with his mom the straight foil rather than going with the gimme archetypes.

It does however portray the Brit pub quiz subculture quite accurately, including the ringers, the poaching and the local domination struggle. Speaking as one who came to trivia from that environment it does a decent, if again lazy and predictable, job of showing what it's like.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

The one thing I didn't like was how rude he was to the host. Though maybe I'd do the same thing if Buzztime was not automated. The downtime between games can get annoying.

As for flipping the characters... I'm not sure. I feel like we would have seen a lot of Lawrence anyway as they definitely wanted a Larry David/Curb Your Enthusiasm angle. The funeral scenes are more than enough proof of that. It would have been odd to follow an ancillary character more than the protagonist.

And in a way it does really make sense to me that someone obsessed over trivia (or obsessed over anything) is sort of trying to fill in other areas of life where they are lacking. Particularly, personal/professional shortcomings. It's obvious, if understated, that Adam is great at trivia (the cook was fired from the team for missing one question even though they won the game). But he has a fulfilled life and can approach it very casually. Attractive people can be into trivia, but it doesn't always make for good TV.