Quiz Show

I've been quite disappointed with Korean television. Every morning I wake up hoping to catch something uplifting and the only comprehensible program I can find is Sesame Street or a random movie on the movie channel. One morning it was Secretary. Another morning, Blade III. It's just a grab bag of good or bad movies in that short time frame between just-woke-up and I'm-late-for-work. When I return home at night it's either a thrilling night of Deal or No Deal, 1 vs. 100 or if I'm lucky I can rinse my tear ducts with an old episode of the Biggest Loser. As for Korean programming, I usually sit there, unaffected by men with bad haircuts and women who really do look the same. It's not just a Caucasian affliction! We really DO look the same!

There is, however, one program. I don't know when it comes on; it's just happens to come up on the weekends when I sit down with my scrupulously prepared ramen noodles. It's a game show of sorts except the contestants aren't money-grubbing, ass-bearing, aspiring actors; they're middle-schoolers. SMART middle-schoolers. At least the ones left at the end are smart. Kids sit in a grid on the floor and a woman with a pleasing voice calls out questions. Then the students write their answers on their dry-erase boards and hold them up in anticipation of the correct answer. I recall playing a game similar to this. It was called school.

In between certain rounds, the students clear the floor and the teachers of the respective schools and have a competition of their own: jump rope competitions, lip-syncing competitions, who-can-dance-better-in-drag competitions. It's all a big pep rally for...academics. The ousted students cheer on their peers who are left on the grid and eventually the floor clears out save for just one lone student and his/her dry-erase board. I think the point of the game is to get to the final question and answer that correctly, but I've never seen a student reach that level before. The student usually falls just shy of that last question, tears are usually involved, and all of the students surround their champion and console him or her.

Although most of my students lament the extraordinarily strict and rigorous Korean school system, it seems kind of nice that this type of thing is nationally televised in Korea. I've never been on television for playing my clarinet and I certainly didn't get any recognition for my short-lived career as a top UIL speller. My parents never really set me on the track for any sort of televised career. If they had, I'd probably be working out right now instead of releasing meaningless verbal diarrhea onto the world wide web.