WatchMojo Doesn't Know What The Word "Scandal" Means

Text by: Cyndi Seidelman

If you haven't heard of the YouTube channel WatchMojo, they are essentially a Top 10 mill full of random crap. They were recently in the news for ripping off one of Guru Larry's videos and had to take down their entire video because of it, inconviencing their monkeys on typewriters for about 15 minutes. A couple of years ago, they put out a video talking about scandals in game shows. While there are legitimate game show scandals out there, such as the rigging of game shows in the mid-late 50s in Twenty-One and Dotto and the Dating Game Killer, most of their picks were regurgitating clickbait articles because of people not knowing the rules to the game i.e. the Emancitpation kid. This year, they did it again with a new Top 10 list of game show scandals called "Another Top 10 Game Show Scandals." Because I don't want to do a video on this since I have enough videos I have to work on in a Games Of '90 for Let's Make A Deal and the Family Secrets induction, here is my take on all 10 of their picks and if they are scandals or not. To determine this, I will be using the definition of the word from the 2nd Edition of the Webster's New World Dictionairy which has the following entry on scandal: 1. Anything that leads to moral outrage or disgrace. 2. Shame, Outrage caused by this. 3. Disgrace 4. Malicious Gossip. With that said, here is the list.

10: Pasapalabra incident where celebrity uses Shazam during the Name That Tune round - From what I've gathered from the fallout of this moment, there wasn't really anything that would fit the definition because everybody just laughed it off. While Pasapalabra is played for thousands and sometimes millions of Euros, the money is secondary to the entertainment given by the show. Also, the Producers would have had to stop down and redo the segment or anything like that. Instead, they left it in and it became a very viral moment that is still fondly looked at to this day. So, this instance is not considered a Scandal.

9: That one Flip-Flop Cheater - Yeah, you've seen this one cheater who instead of playing the game just hit the button to reveal the prize. He was an idiot and should have been disqualified from cheating. But since this was the mid-2000s and Bob was clearly in "I don't give a damn, I'm Bob Barker" mode, he was given the prize anyways, whatever it was. The contestant should have felt shame, but he didn't, just a bit embarassed because of what he did. I can't call this a scandal either, so we're 0-2.

8: The "I've Got A Good Feeling About This" puzzle solve from Wheel of Fortune - Really? This is anything but a scandal. The contestant took a wild stab because it was a Prize Puzzle and she was right. The producers or anybody on the staff didn't tell her what the puzzle was nor did she cheat in any way, shape or form. Amazing? Absolutely. Scandal? Absolutely not. 0-3 so far.

7: Millionaire: Hot Seat's "Red Room" Incident - In this moment, Khaled El-Katateny didn't know any of the answers, but instead read host Eddie McGuire's body movements when it came to reading the answers and deduced the answers that way. This is similar to poker when you read someone else's motions in poker and try to guess what they have. Khaled did the same thing to Eddie and won $100,000 by doing it. Was he a smug git? Yes he was. But it wasn't illegal what he did and the only fake scandal part that came out was because he was an unbearable twat throughout all of it. It's not scandalous or a scandal at all. 0-4 WatchMojo.

6: The Gong Show NBC Finale - Ok, there are many moments from The Gong Show's original run that could be in Scandal territory, but Chuck Barris flipping the bird to NBC isn't one of them. Heck, this was sometimes a cutaway gag for the show with the big OOPS!  The show was announced as being cancelled before this aired, and Barris being the anti-establishment producer of his day did what many proud proudcers wanted to do to networks that cancel their magnum opus. So, not a scandal here. 0-5 is the record.

5: Our Little Genius - The first Patrick Wayne Award Winner was a bonafide scandal and it almost killed Mark Burnett's career. I don't need to discuss this one in further detail here, just go read the induction in its entirety in the Inductions section. 1-6

4: Laurel Cleri's Moment Of Truth - Of course this is a scandal and something I already talked about in the Moment Of Truth induction. Go watch that if you want to see it in further detail. 2-7 means we got a little streak going. Can we go 3 straight scandals?

3: Russian "touch the car" game show beatdown - Watching the clip here, I'm going to see if I got this right: Female contestant acts like a twat to a male contestant while wearing a thong bikini, twirls a stiletto heel around and smacks him with it and gets thrown down and punched for her efforts. I'm going to say not a scandal. She played rough first and got beat up for her efforts. She deserved it by committing the first offense. Therefore 2-8 for WatchMojo.

2: The "Bullseye" Murderer - The US had Rodney Alcala aka the Dating Game Murderer, the UK had Joe Cooper aka the Bullseye Murder. Like Alcala, he committed a pair of murders after he struck out on Bullseye. Thanks to forensic evidence, they were able to nab him and now he's rotting away behind bars. This was a scandal after the fact, unlike Alcala who's scandal happened during the fact. 3-9 for WatchMojo.

1: The Popsicle Twins - Going back to what I said earler about how many Gong Show moments were in scandal territory, this was a big one. It was so big, it had to be the catalyst for the show's NBC cancellation. If I recall correctly, the episode aired on the east coast, but was pulled in the rest of the country due to complaints. So, a Bret Hart inspired unimpressed 4-10 for WatchMojo.

I just hope there isn't a third batch of scandals coming up as there isn't much left out there. If they had just used the word "Infamous" instead of "Scandal", all would be fine. But even in the loosest sense as they say in the intro of the video, 6 of these aren't scandals at all. I guess the power of clickbait is strong with WatchMojo and the baboons that write their stuff.