When discussing the fact that I love game shows, certain things must be clear. While I would greatly prefer one that is perfectly streamlined, able to convey its purpose in immediate ways, I also am a sucker for a good premise. I’m talking about shows like Floor is Lava where you initially scoff, but slowly come to realize its appeal. There is a strategy that pushes a person or team to think in ways they normally wouldn’t. You root for them as they find themselves cornered, moments from elimination. Your heart breaks as the final grasp of victory fades and all that’s left is another victim.
This is because the best of game shows play on something subliminal in all of us. These are shows that work as escapism, making us envision ourselves playing these games. As the contestants work through the course, you’re left thinking about what you’d do differently. Maybe it’s answering a question a little differently, or taking a different route altogether. You can’t help but imagine yourself there, fantasizing about usually winning that cash prize.
I’ll confess that while I have affection for dumb game shows, I still have my limits. There has to be enough substance there that keeps the show moving. For instance, I can see the appeal of something like Family Feud or Match Game, but they’re ultimately hollow shows I don’t get anything out of. I need competition, a sense of camaraderie, and a great host to ground things through this knowingly hokey premise. I don’t need theatrics, just enough peril to make the experience have this bigger sense of purpose.
This is a long way to say that I kind of love The Cube.
For me, most Thursdays this past summer have involved watching Holey Moley and The Cube back-to-back. While I would say that the former is closer to genuinely great TV, The Cube has this strange advantage of being nonsense that still captures the key components. It turns the most mundane act into high stakes, often turning a two second moment into a 10 second elevation of suspense where host Dwayne Wade looks nervously from off-stage, hoping that things pull through. Wade wants you to succeed. Nobody is rooting for you harder than this NBA all-star. And sometimes, when The Cube really wants to mess with the audience, they’ll cut to a commercial before revealing if that two second act was a success or failure.
So let’s back up. What is The Cube? Like most game shows these days, it’s a remake of another show. Based on a British series, the premise is deceptively simple. Over the course of seven games, players will have nine lives to complete them in order to win a cash prize of $250,000. Despite being a physical game that at times feels like glorified parlor tricks, it reminds me heavily of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? for how it progresses. Before each round, there is the option to walk away with the money accumulated to that point. Short of just playing the ominous music under it, the contestants talk things out and determine if they’re capable of going further. Wade, ever the consummate professional, will often offer words of encouragement. He’s the man you want giving you a pep talk, very non-threatening and honestly at times sounds like he won’t judge you for giving up after one game.
This is what I like about the show. From the outside, it sounds so simple. As The Cube, a character unto itself with an imposing voice, introduces each game the players determine how well they can do them. It gets progressively more difficult though I’ve seen early rounds decimate players quickly. Along with introducing each game, The Cube will suggest that each game takes approximately x amount of lives. So long as each player has lives, they can play until they succeed. In fact, they can’t get out of The Cube until they either win the round or lose everything. It’s easy for these obstacles to fall apart quickly and nine lives to go down to five. In fact, it can get inside a player’s head and make their focus on winning much more difficult.
This is most evident in how few people have gotten far up the board. While the first few are often confidence builders, there comes a point where suddenly something difficult happens. A ball misses its goal and The Cube turns red, taunting them for taking their eyes off the prize. That is why the later games often take up the most screen time, finding players talking to each other, trying to determine what they need to do to succeed.
In one of the more Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? moves, The Cube incorporates the equivalence of “lifelines.” Basically, the players will have either the choice to Simplify or Assist. To Simplify, the game removes components that may be perceived as difficult. Sometimes this is in the number of balls to throw into a hole, or adds time to give them that extra edge.
Meanwhile, Assist features an interesting twist of providing Wade a chance to play. As he enters The Cube, it cuts to an over-produced animation of him being consumed by cubes while embracing his fate. On a nearby screen, there will be a video of Wade’s family taunting him just to psych him out. In what may be the more interesting twist in the series, this one play doesn’t always guarantee success. Wade is as fallible, making the whole exercise much more tense. If you use Assist poorly, it will cost a life and remove a potential saving grace later in the game. There are no guarantees in The Cube, and that is the show’s ultimate success.
Everything about the show is formless. Outside of the central structure, very little of it actually has time limits that require an average episode to satisfy completion. In the premiere episode, Wade introduces the second group of contestants with roughly five minutes of the episode to go. It’s built as a cliffhanger, to make the audience come back next week. The unpredictability of the show in this way keeps anything from feeling finite.
With that said, there is so much time consumed on theatrics and drama. For starters, it dubs itself the most difficult game show simply because it involves placing contestants in confined spaces. The claustrophobia definitely makes everything feel more intense, but ultimately you’re watching people do parlor tricks. Some of it is physical and other times mental. I for one know that I couldn’t complete those addition or memory games, making it already feel a lot more terrifying than it actually is. In others, characters are blindfolded and asked to walk around a room without knocking over poles. Trust me, it’s difficult. I’ve seen players lose five lives over walking in the wrong direction altogether.
But if there’s one thing that will come to represent The Cube, it’s the ridiculous pacing. I am used to series taking their sweet time to reach a simple conclusion. Shows like The Wall have been overblown by this overthinking strategy, cutting a progressive flow. I think what gives The Cube a slight advantage is that it is so in love with the dramatic pause that it almost does it just to mess with audiences.
Then there’s The Cube itself. This thing is a work of art. If this show had Game of Thrones-level numbers, I’m sure more people would adore making fun of the camerawork. The Cube structurally is designed as a transparent box. While an engaging aesthetic, it feels like it exists mostly for optimization. Endless times the game will be interrupted by the camera zooming out, freezing, and rotating around in a way that is meant to emphasize the severity of the act. Given how many slow motion shots and dramatic close-ups there are, the whole thing has this surreal touch that makes it almost cinematic. It makes one mistake feel like the biggest moment in TV history. Again, Wade is watching in hope that you succeed. Will you?
Come back after this commercial break!
This show teases the audience so efficiently that I have to applaud. While some of these games are difficult, very little of them would make for interesting TV without some sort of over-produced touch. It needs to feel cornball, like what you’re watching is the most important thing in the world. It will never join the echelon of game show greats. Even for British imports, this isn’t on par with The Weakest Link. It lives and dies on the premise, and I’ll give them credit for drawing everything out in a way that is simultaneously tense but also way too slow.
When reading about Wade’s involvement with the show, certain things became clear. He was a fan of the original series and wanted to get involved. While originally signed on as producer, he took on the hosting job in part because he liked the idea of making it a show about helping families. It’s not emphasized in the show itself, but knowing this allows contestants that have included recreational staff to teachers and Paralympic athletes, makes the show a bit more charming.
Again, it makes the show more exciting. More than anything the show does, I want to be able to imagine myself trying to win. Everything on this show is doable. Most of all, it feels deceptive because even if I think that I could complete it in one try, there’ plausibility that I could fail. As a result, the contestants’ anguish over losses feels more real.
To be completely honest, I don’t think Wade is reinventing the role of host. He’s often more memorable for how intensely he gets into the competition, silent and tapping his fingers in anticipation. He’s calm and collected, doing everything to bring out the best in the contestants. It’s The Cube’s job to undermine their confidence and often does with tame dad joke-level responses that are more likely to make you laugh. Also, The Cube will constantly remind you that it’s a robot and doesn’t have emotions. Hope you don’t mind hearing that a few times an episode.
Overall, I wouldn’t consider The Cube an exemplary game show but one that hits the sweet spot when it needs to. Whereas I’m more drawn to quick paced trivia shows, I’m also a fan of watching games that require strategy, making one determine their path to success. As of this writing, the website features a digital version of The Cube that can be played to test your skills. To be completely honest, it’s not as fun if just because the lag of a mouse really throws off strategy. Still, it emphasizes perfectly how appealing the show is in theory.
The ultimate legacy that I imagine The Cube having is one of novelty. It will stick around for a few seasons so long as Wade or an appointed heir want it to. It’s entertaining enough even if it lacks a rigid enough structure to make any episode a guaranteed success. Sometimes it will just end on a cliffhanger or even an introduction that holds no deeper weight yet. In that way, it’s a throwback to a less regimented time for game shows and that’s exciting unto itself. Even then, it’s mostly fun because it embraces the goofy premise with such sincerity. Rarely have I seen a show so inconsequential get such perfectly over-produced moments thrown on top of it. This may never be a great show, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a good time.
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