Win Ben Stein's Money, on Comedy Central
IMDb; TV.com; TV Tropes; Wikipedia

Probably the coolest and funniest and most fun quiz show ever. Ben Stein's always been a fairly funny guy, in his own deadpan way. And the categories of questions were funny. It's had like 3 different cohosts, starting with Jimmy Kimmel, who was probably the funniest one. (He'd later cohost "The Man Show" with Adam Carolla, but that didn't really interest me. Later still, he became the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live, which is okay, but I haven't seen much of it.) Anyway, after Jimmy left this game show, he was replaced by Nancy Pimental, who was herself later replaced by Sal Iacono (Jimmy's cousin). But the main host was always Ben Stein himself, of course. And he'd always spend part of the show as an actual contestant. Basically, the premise was that players would compete to win part of the $5000 Ben was supposed to be paid for the episode, by answering questions. Of course, there was also lots of witty banter. And if anyone inadvertently answered a question in the form of a question (a la Jeopardy), they'd be made to wear a dunce cap. Damn, I miss this show.


variety index