99 To Beat, hosted by Ken Jeong and Erin Andrews, is a game show concept that debuted in Belgium in 2018 and has had a number of versions made in other countries, including a UK version earlier this year. The ultimate prize being offered is $1,000,000. The game starts with 100 players; some are solo, some are in pairs. A few of them have been on other reality competitions. The contestants play games that mostly require some sort of physical ability; there are fifty games in total, with five played in each episode. As the hosts explain, the contestants don’t have to win each contest; they just “don’t finish last,” as the person who finishes last gets eliminated.
Opening Shot: Ken Jeong, standing next to co-host Erin Andrews, says, “Welcome to the greatest competition in the history of mankind!”
The Gist: In the first game, hundreds of balloons fall down from the ceiling, with 99 of them containing flower leis. Find a lei and you go to the next round. Then there’s a game where a whistle is embedded in a block of ice and players have to melt the ice with their body heat, take the whistle out and blow it. The third game has the remaining players guessing the weights of groups of people, animals and plants. In the fourth game, players need to put dried penne on a dried angel hair spaghetti in their mouths, without using their hands.
In the fifth game, the group is split into teams, and they pour water from buckets on their heads into the one of the person in front of them; the person in the front pours into a cylinder with a ball, with the goal of taking the ball out when it gets to the top. In this challenge, an entire team of people were eliminated.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? 99 To Beat has the feeling of a pared-down version of Beast Games or Squid Game: The Challenge.
Our Take: The way 99 To Beat is structured is repetitive, bordering on monotonous. The contestants don’t interact with Jeong and Andrews for most of the first hour; Jeong comes out for the third game, but he puts on a deadly serious face (which is nearly impossible for him to pull off) as he goes through the game. The contestants are given instructions for each game by a disembodied voice coming over speakers in the studio. For the most part, Jeong and Andrews provide commentary from a booth as they watch monitors showing closeups from the myriad cameras on the game floor.
What’s even more repetitive is that, at the end of each game, the contestants circle up, the eliminated contestant picks up their “number” in the middle of the floor and walks out, and Andrews announces to the remaining contestants that another $10,000 has been added to the pot. To this point, we’re not sure about the purpose of announcing the growing pot to the contestants; as far as we know, this is a winner-takes-all contest, so what’s the point of the running tally?
There are side interviews, of course, especially with contestants that are there in pairs, like “adopted siblings” (which we put in quotes because why not just say they’re siblings?), a father and son, a married couple, and two best friends. Generally, it seems that in this early stage, the side interview indicates who might be eliminated, or at least come close to last place, in a particular game.
It all feels dystopian to us, even more than something like Squid Game: The Challenge, which is supposed to be dystopian. The producers try to get audiences to connect to some of the contestants, but for the most part we see them all acting like idiots as they try to complete these not-that-easy physical challenges. We do get that some are there for the 1-in-100 chance to take home that massive prize, but others seem to be there just as much for the competitive aspect than the money, like two-time Survivor winner Sandra Diaz-Twine and Cara Maria Sorbello, who won on The Challenge. But it yet again shows us what people will subject themselves to for even a small chance at a life-changing amount of money.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After the first five games, both Jeong and Andrews come out and address the remaining contestants.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the oldest contestant, Janice, because of how willing she was to mix it up during the balloon game.
Most Pilot-y Line: Andrews’ constant football analogies are actually more annoying than Jeong’s constant dad jokes.
Our Call: SKIP IT. 99 To Beat should be more exciting than it is, and we wish the hosts actually interacted with the contestants instead of just providing commentary.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.