The WWE's latest attempt to draw ratings fell rather flat on Monday night, as Vince McMahon's "Million Dollar Giveaway" was a bore-fest that took away from anything going on in the ring or on the show as a whole. The premise was that McMahon, doing his worst game-show impression, would give out a password at the start of the show, then during the show "at random" call those picked that entered the contest, and give them a prize amount provided they could give the password.

Everyone that he called had the password, and for the most part each of them sounded very scripted, which later on we found out was somewhat was the case, as it came out a few of the winners were contacted beforehand. The segments were long, drawn out, not entertaining whatsoever, and flat out boring to watch. McMahon, usually solid on-screen, seemed totally forced and out of place here, and it got to the point where he was even mis-dialing the phone numbers.

They tried to spruce things up with at one point Charlie Haas getting kissed by Hall of Famer Mae Young, which was gross to say the least, and having a sing-a-thon between Jillian Hall and Trevor Murdoch, both of which were bad which resulted in Vince giving a caller $2 (they got a trip to NYC later on we learned as well as the $2). I don't think anything could have saved these segments, unless you maybe got Steve Austin and/or The Rock to maybe have come out and done them.

Now I'm all for the WWE doing giveaways and giving away tons of cash. With that said, there simply has to be a better way of doing it other than having to put viewers, tuning in to watch matches and storylines progress, sit for about 40 minutes watching McMahon struggle through lame attempts to be a bad game-show host. It was noted on various sites that Vince was not happy himself with the segments on Monday night, and truth be told that is a good thing.

Maybe because of that he'll get it in his head to either A: record the segments backstage and play them throughout the show and limit them to 1-2 minutes, or B: simply skip them and just announce winners on the screen in a scroll during matches. It means nothing to the viewer to hear someone win $250,000 to be honest with you. This show seemed very WCW-like, and trust me when I say that is not a good thing.

Labels: charlie haas, vince mcmahon

Posted by Matt Loede on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 6:33 AM | Permalink