For those looking at the major networks, it’s often difficult to find a new game show that actually looks appealing. At this point, most of them have a handful of go-to standards that you can pop on in primetime and just enjoy an hour of your life. Don’t get me wrong. I really like a lot of them. However, it makes writing Game Show Theory difficult because for as much as I enjoy falling back on Beat Shazam! or the Jane Lynch era of The Weakest Link, there is a desire to see how people are pushing boundaries. Outside of Snake Oil, I can’t say that there was anything “new” that left me feeling promising. I even missed the nonsense that was The Final Straw. Would 2024 be any different?
Credit to the people over at Fox, but throughout December, I was bombarded with ads for this new show called The Floor. Having known Rob Lowe from his previous game show Mental Samurai, I had some preconceived notions that it would be hokey and another lame-brain scheme to fill time. After initial rejection, there was something to how repetitively those ads would pop up. Suddenly you’re given a few extra seconds to think about this mysterious show. What were the 81 people doing on that floor? Was it going to be like that Squid Game scenario and they’d execute people one by one? Lowe seemed too nice to be the leader of a murder cult, but even then I left with one major question: WHAT IS THE FLOOR?!?
One evening recently, I had some extra time to finally give it a watch. Pressing play, I found myself exposed to what might just be a strong candidate for the best new game show of 2024. It’s more than winter season filler. The framework isn’t so high concept that you need to watch three episodes just to understand what is going on. The Floor is a bare-bones reinvention of the game show format that is so brilliant that I felt the need to dig into it here. Everything about it defies the limitations of other shows and presents a style fit for event programming. So long as they can find enough contestants to do this annually, I will happily say that The Floor joins the highest-ranking game shows of the 2020s.
At its core, my ideal definition of a great game show is something that the viewer can imagine realistically being involved with. There needs to be some escapism baked in that makes you think of what you’d do if you were replaced with the contestant. At its core, The Floor is mostly a game about regurgitating information in a timed format. Having a great personality is secondary, though it helps you to get airtime if you can form strong banter with Lowe and the other contestants. When you’re not answering questions (if you’re still eligible), you’re standing in a square sizing up the competition. This is basically a TV version of those elimination bracket competitions but with a clever twist.
Before digging into what that twist is, I might as well break down what The Floor actually does. At the start of the series, 81 contestants walk onto a large checkered board. Every spot serves a deliberate purpose, which is to reflect that person’s area of expertise. It may seem silly at first, but as things move on, the real sinister magic begins to take effect.
This isn’t simply a game where you eliminate squares. Instead, they are accumulated by the winner. The person with the most space at the end of the night wins a guaranteed cash prize of $20,000. However, the real goal is to be the last man standing and have the whole board. After watching three episodes, I can honestly say that there’s nothing too predictable about this show. For instance, someone who has control of two boxes can lose them to a competitor who now has three. Everything can change suddenly, and it makes for an addictive game of chance. Will somebody fail at the trivia portion of the night? More importantly, is it possible for the current heavyweights to be taken down by one bad category?
If there’s one complicated component, it’s the way that contestants navigate the board. At the start of each round, Lowe uses a randomizer to pick a contestant. Based on their placement on the board, they will have a chance to pick who they want to play from their front, back, left, or right. At the start it’s easy. Everyone’s area of expertise is equally distributed. However, that may come at a handicap to the chosen selector because who knows how much they know about things ranging from music to hardware and bugs. While the game that follows may sound simple, the reality is that the selector only needs to be slightly faster than their competitor. As the game goes on and land accumulation factors in, there’s also concern about whether to take the big risks to win the night’s cash prize. Predictably, as more boxes are acquired, their options expand but it also makes them a big risk in case a randomizer for an unfamiliar subject is chosen.
Something that is hidden in the details is that just because somebody says they’re an expert on something like horror movies doesn’t mean that they’re scholarly. Often times the contestant will walk up as a biography is shown on screen to show how commonfolk they actually are. Sometimes it will give a sense of unfair advantage, but sometimes it shows that not every expert is made equally. As a contestant is forced to build stamina around trivia as the game continues, they may find themselves more likely to slip up or face a really bad subject that sabotages their efforts. In just three episodes constituting 24 individual rounds (eight per episode), every type of outcome has been experienced, and I’m often left with suspense. Some of it is brutal, others celebratory. All in all, it embodies what I love most about game shows: watching the common man overcome a challenge.
If you were forced to judge The Floor solely on the gameplay, there’s a good chance that you’d turn it off immediately. In each round, both contestants are shown information that they must decipher. The common examples so far have been picture recognition and fill in the blanks. It doesn’t seem hard from the outset, but remember how The Floor is set up. Everyone is an expert in a different field, so people’s familiarity with celebrities or entrepreneurs may differ.
The real kicker comes with HOW people answer questions. Each contestant is given 45 seconds. As each takes turns, their job is to answer the information correctly. Any time it takes to figure that answer out will be subtracted and won’t be halted until a confirmed answer is given. As you can guess, this could be a matter of seconds, but for those who must take a few to figure it out, they are put at that much more of a disadvantage. When a contestant decides to pass, they are not giving their opponent the time. Instead, three seconds are subtracted from their clock and are forced to try the next one. The next person doesn’t get a turn until a correct answer emerges. More often than not, the loser is stuck in a 20-second spiral of confusion. The few examples of people being seconds within each other at the very end are the most delightful as it makes it that much more unpredictable. The fact that either could blow it despite seeming like the victor makes this quintessential game show TV. It may not be any different from the Goodson-Todman days, but the stakes feel so much worse because it’s as much about intellect as it is strategy and agility.
When a contestant loses, they are removed from the board. The winner is then made an expert on the loser’s respective subject. Even as they acquire boxes, they will be stuck with that category. Given that one of the largest accumulations as of episode three was Veggies, this could produce an interesting conflict for competitors. Each winner along with those selected from the randomizer isn’t playing their field but instead the opponents that they choose. Because of this, a lot of presented categories aren’t likely to be played.
And yet, the real moment of strategy is what the winner chooses to do with their recent win. Do they keep playing or return to The Floor? The hypothetical of staying up is that they’re not going to be picked to play their new expertise, which could be really dangerous. However, a winner who keeps winning acquires more space and thus is more at risk of being picked when they do step down. The best that can be said is that they acquire enough boxes that they can pick from a wider array of topics that might be in their wheelhouse. Given the point of the show on a weekly and seasonal level, there is that gambler’s mentality to keep going. In the case where they choose to not play, they return to the floor and the randomizer picks the next person. This goes on and on until the whole board is cleared.
So, what makes The Floor one of my absolute favorites at the moment? The answer is that it fulfills a lot of techniques in game shows that I think are often ignored. More often than not, I am stuck watching a game show that feels overlong because of its hour format. The Floor may not be the fastest-moving show, but Lowe knows how to fill in the gaps and build a great dynamic with the contestants. It also has enough uncertainty that even for its basic structure, it leaves you unsure of how things will look at the end of the night. It’s the type of show that I could imagine be even played on a smaller half-hour scale. It’s a malleable format and one that has limitless potential.
Not only that, but it’s one of those hour-long game shows that breaks free of an awkward trend I’ve noticed in others. As much as I like The Cube, it has the terrible gimmick of rarely finishing a game within its running time. Sometimes you’ll even be in the middle of gameplay and the credits will begin to roll. Sure, it builds suspense and heightens its silly gameplay. There’s a never-ending quality to it that is addictive if viewed as a piece of serialized TV, but really annoys anyone who likes a show to begin and end within the framework.
With that said, The Floor is even more serialized than The Cube and has an arguably better cliffhanger. You want to know who will win. While I don’t think enough contestants have garnered a personality worth rooting for, there are aspects to it that make them endearing. Unlike pressing play on a future episode of The Cube where you have no idea how you got there, you’ll know where The Floor is. The action may look way different out of context, but it’s an easy to follow format that makes it easy for syndication. You’re going to watch eight rounds play out. Someone is getting that prize money.
In an era of binging content, I’d argue it even works as one of the most immersive game shows potentially. Whereas most game shows suffer from continual resets episode to episode, there is a story being formed as you watch. It may not be the densest, but you begin to have a strategy of survival and wonder if someone who is an expert in cats can handle the field of automotives, or even if either person is even an expert on them. There are so many paradoxical elements that leave you wondering what will happen next.
I know that I’ve accused The Floor’s gameplay of being simple, but it’s honestly a relief compared to what a lot of game shows, even on its network Fox, have generally done in recent years. There is almost too much time spent having to explain the different rules of how to progress that it becomes a headache. Instead, The Floor cuts it down to the basic core and makes it digestible whether as a series or as an episode. Given that Lowe is also a likable host, the show has everything it needs to potentially thrive. I don’t know how often it could happen given the expansive contestants required, but I’d like to think we’ll get something interesting each time around.
The only downside, which may be true with every game show with this simple of a framework, is that the appeal may quickly die down. The information right now is based on recognizing words and patterns, and one has to wonder what happens when those are exhausted. Does the game mix it up, and if so how do you do so without losing the intensity of a 45-second competition? I can only hope that in the case of this, they have a good answer because I would hate to see this show become another minor work almost immediately.
As for now, it’s one of my must-see series. Everything about it fits the addictive nature of game shows while appealing to the common folk mentality that I feel the best shows have. As it stands, I’m currently anticipating what happens next and who will get most of the board. It’s an everchanging experience and one that may have even more surprises on the horizon. Who is the underdog one night that becomes the new leader? As far as a piece of TV, this is one of those that causes the viewer to ask more than the contestant, and that’s a good thing. Without resorting to too many gimmicks, The Floor is one of the most dramatic game shows I’ve seen in a long time. I just hope the payoff will be worth it.
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