This is the point in the TV season where the networks frequently turn to fillers to stretch things out before the regular series return. Some will be interesting, others will be merely functional.
NBC has come up with a passably amusing game show filler with The Wall. The series has had a couple of sneak previews (including Monday after The New Celebrity Apprentice with Arnold Schwarzenegger), but The Wall officially premieres at 7 p.m. today with ubiquitous host Chris Hardwick (Talking Dead).
The show, executive produced by basketball superstar LeBron James, has been described as a giant Plinko game like the one on The Price Is Right. That's the game where a chip starts at the top of a board and bounces left and right on its way down to the bottom row of cash prizes.
In The Wall, there are trivia questions involved, and it's a glowing ball instead of a chip that descends the giant four-story wall.
The show will put more than $12 million on the line each night with up to $3 million at stake on a single ball drop. Here's how it works.
Each game offers couples the opportunity to change their lives in an instant. If they pass a qualifying "free fall" round of five questions, the couple goes on to Round 2, the trivia portion. Get a question correct and a green ball will tumble down the wall and add the value of the bottom slot to the players' winning total.
If they answer the question incorrectly, a dreaded red ball will fall and deduct its value from the teams' pot.
Plinko, whether on The Price Is Right or The Wall, is wildly unpredictable. NBC notes that the bouncing ball is capable of millions of different routes on its way down to the 15 slots at the bottom. In other words, it's a gamble and mostly luck despite NBC claiming an element of strategy.
Some strategy comes in from where you place the ball to begin with and is compounded when one player is sent to an isolation booth behind the wall and the couple plays the rest of the game without communicating. The outside player gets to bet on whether the isolated player will know the answer.
Round 3 has a $1 million slot.
Teasing the show with the requisite hyperbole, NBC publicity says the game is "a roller coaster of emotions. The wall gives and the wall takes away. One minute you're up and the next you're one bounce away from zero. In this game, you need both the answers and bounces -- with millions at stake every night."
At any rate, expect lots of screaming and jumping and collapsing on the floor during the season's 10 episodes. Contestants weren't signed up to be passive.
• Bones, 8 p.m. today on Fox. It's the shortened 12th and final season for Booth (David Boreanaz) and Brennan (Emily Deschanel). There will only be 12 episodes to wrap it all up, but the series, which debuted in 2005, has had an outstanding run by today's standards.
My interest in Bones waned a few seasons ago, but kudos to Fox, which promises "the return of fan-favorite guest stars and squinterns," for allowing proper closure.
The final episodes will see the return of an old flame for one of the team, a wedding, an "epic serial killer story arc," an undercover lumberjack competition and "Booth and Brennan's marriage put to the test."
"A show this beloved by fans worldwide deserves a proper send-off," said Fox Entertainment President David Madden, "and that is just what we intend to do."
Also starring in the series are Michaela Conlin as Angela Montenegro; T.J. Thyne as her husband, Dr. Jack Hodgins; Tamara Taylor as Dr. Cam Saroyan; and the cast newbie, John Boyd as FBI Special Agent James Aubrey.
In tonight's episode, "The Final Chapter: The Hope in the Horror," Booth and the Jeffersonian Scooby team desperately search for Brennan after she is kidnapped by her former assistant, Zack Addy (Eric Millegan).
• American Masters, 7 p.m. today on AETN. It's the beginning of Season 31 for the PBS stalwart. This episode features director Sidney Lumet (1924-2011), who talks about his life and career in a 2008 interview.
That distinguished 50-year career produced 44 films, including his first film, 12 Angry Men, along with Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, The Wiz and Murder on the Orient Express.
"Sidney Lumet started in theater, learned about directing in television and made a career in film," says Michael Kantor, American Masters executive producer. "His work is legendary, and [filmmaker] Nancy Buirski and her team were able to pull insights from the 14-hour goldmine of an interview and couple them with Lumet's remarkable work to create a deeply insightful master class for the ages."
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 01/03/2017