Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

The idea is fun. See what you remember of the knowledge you may not use on a daily basis. Jeff Foxworthy is a decent host. The set is elaborate and nice. But the questions come along way too slowly. I almost get the feeling that the guests are delaying their answers in order to expand the time, perhaps there is an off-camera indicator. I can only imagine what the contestant screening must be like, because I'm sure there are many people that could whip thru the questions with ease and take home the money. Anyone that knew they were going on the show could probably cram, I mean, the jackpot is a million dollars. So overall, to the producers, we want a number of questions equal to that of Jeopardy per episode or something. Of course, given the limited pool of questions they may run out pretty quickly, and the reason they move slowly could be the amount of money that is offered as a prize.

This might have been an OK show, but it is very slow paced. There are about 6 questions answered per 30 minute episode, and there is a commercial after every question. They try to make a cliffhanger by having a commercial after a contestant has chosen an answer but it doesn't work. It just helps to bore the viewer even more.

The questions range from 1st to 5th grade questions and contestants are college graduates that have great difficulty with these questions. It may not be scripted, but it is really hard not to think that it is. The contestants are just stupid and use all of their 'lifelines' (copy, peek, and save) in the first few questions.

What makes the show even more unbearable is the children. They have five 5th graders (the classmates) and a contestant can choose one kid every two questions. The kids always get the question right and do it quickly while the adult struggles with it.

When Jeff Foxworthy makes a joke they will laugh obnoxiously right on cue, and the camera has to zoom in on their faces to show you how faked the laughs are. If only the jokes were actually funny.

Don't watch this show. It may have sounded like a good concept of a game, but you will be pulling your hair out after sitting through commercial after commercial so you can look at pathetic adults struggle with easy questions.

In Fox's 20 year history, the network has been the home of the NFL, Major League Baseball and hit shows such as American Idol, The Simpsons and Beverly Hills 90210 but never a major game show hit until Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.

What makes the show stand out is the combination of the youngsters helping the contestant win lots of money until they run out of cheats, a witty first time host in Jeff Foxworthy and the home audience like me likely to shout at the screen if a contestant gets stuck on a very simple question. It's a very important element for a hit game show to have viewers involved.

Foxworthy proves that stand up comedians can host game shows without upstaging the contestants and he is very good at building drama and suspense. Fortunately, he doesn't make any redneck jokes on the show.

My only complaint about the show is when a losing contestant has to tell the world "I am not smarter than a fifth grader." I find it humiliating but it makes a great T-shirt saying.

The concept of the show is actually not half bad although the title is a bit of a misnomer. The real title ought to be "Are you smarter than all 5th graders put together?" Apparently only a few people are.. Of course, if you put even the smartest 5-th grader as a contestant on this show that 5-th grader would likely get clobbered. Still, the show demonstrates, and I think fairly convincingly, that most adults in the U. S. don't remember much from their K12 education beyond 4-th grade. It was also entertaining to see that the most universally dreaded category of questions by far was "World history".

But as many critical reviews have noted, the execution of the concept was pretty poor. The pace was too slow and the incessant commercial breaks were insufferable. The weakest point, though, was that the show used professional actors as the kids and they were clearly heavily prepped for each show's questions. The show would have been much better off using real, non-actor, kids and rotating the cast of kids from episode to episode. The show would have been much more authentic and relatable. I hope that at some point in the future the show will come back in a different format.

Silly but engaging game show that has adults answering grade school questions. A team of well-groomed grade schoolers are on hand to help the contestants. Jeff Foxworthy hosts, although he seems to spend the bulk of his time firing off one-liners. Not much more to be said about this, other than to note that it is the best new game show since DEAL OR NO DEAL. And like that show, it revels in exposing the typically American greed of many of the participants, who often do not seem to know when to call it a day and chance losing large sums of money. Just like many of them do when they gamble in Las Vegas, I'm sure. The questions are relatively easy, but often have little to do with day-to-day adult situations, so it can be funny (or conversely, cringe-inducing) to see adults stumbling over questions more or less readily answered by a bunch of grade schoolers.