Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Weakest Link’ On NBC, A Reboot Of The ‘00s Quiz Show, Now With Jane Lynch Hurling The Gentle Insults

The Weakest Link first came to these shores in 2001 as NBC’s attempt to import a hit British game show, like ABC did with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire two years earlier. It didn’t last long, either on the network or in syndication, because it didn’t carry over what made it such a hit in the UK, namely the cutting remarks by host Anne Robinson. Even Robinson’s presence on the NBC version didn’t help. So, 18 years after it left the network, NBC is bringing Weakest Link back, with Jane Lynch as host. Did they improve on what failed the first time around?

WEAKEST LINK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We pull in on Jane Lynch on the familiar darkened set of Weakest Link, standing in front of the contestants and saying, “Trivia. It’s the great equalizer.”

The Gist: Despite a refreshed set and a new host — Lynch succeeds Anne Robinson, who hosted the British original and the first American version, and George Gray, who hosted the syndicated version — the rules of the Weakest Link are pretty much the same.

A team of nine contestants try to answer trivia questions, one contestant at a time, as a clock runs. Dollar amounts available to bank increase as more questions are answered successfully. A chain of eight correct answers in a row lead to the maximum amount in the round, which ranges from $25,000 to $500,000. The chain resets if a question is answered incorrectly or a contestant banks what they’ve earned so far. Only banked amounts carry over to the next round. Ten seconds are shaved off each round.

At the end of a round, the contestants vote on who they think was the weakest link, and the contestant with the most votes are eliminated. In the last round, the final two contestants play for the pot by seeing who answers the most questions out of a group of five. The maximum amount of money people can win is $1 million, though the contestants in the first episode got nowhere near that number.

The “killer app” of Weakest Link (which lost its “The” somewhere along the line) is the host being dismissive and insulting. Some of the insults are written, like Lynch asking “Who thinks Elon Musk is a cologne?” while others, especially related to the contestants’ performance, is ad libbed by Lynch (or maybe fed through an earpiece or screen). The signature line stays the same: “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Weakest Link, 2000s version.

Our Take: If you were a fan of The Weakest Link in the early ’00s, you’ll like this version. But it suffers from the same issues the American version did back then: The show’s pacing is slow and repetitive, and the insults hurled by Lynch are more funny than truly intimidating or designed to tick off the contestants.

One of the reasons the original American version didn’t last very long (the British version ran for 11 seasons over 17 years) is that NBC and the show’s American writers handicapped what Anne Robinson could say. She became a phenomenon in the UK because her insults to the contestants were so cutting that some of the recipients either got ticked off or became combative. In the U.S., those insults were more like gentle jibes, and even when coming out of Robinson’s mouth, they didn’t sound quite right. George Gray was even more gentle.

So while Lynch reached back to her memories of playing Sue Sylvester on Glee and put up her best dismissive front, the material and direction she was given led more to joking insults than cutting ones. You could tell when the contestants laughed at her lines, even ones that were directed only to them.

Another problem: Because there’s no real variation in game play until the end, the show becomes repetitive and bogs down as we winnow the contestants down to the last three or four. There’s a little bit of rivalry as people may vote off others for reasons other than being a weak game player. But there wasn’t a lot. The most outrageous contestant-to-contestant vitriol came from a woman who was flabbergasted that the one that voted her off didn’t know what a Birkin bag was.

The available pot to the last two contestants in this episode was just over $60,000. Not an insignificant sum, but considering $1 million was available, seems remarkably low. Not enough people banked money, and too many didn’t let the chain grow too much before banking. Maybe it’s because these people saw how universally weak the contestants were. Many of them either didn’t know the answers to pretty common questions or they froze. So the ones that did know answers panicked and banked small amounts of money, especially after the second round, where $0 was banked. It took all the excitement out of the game play.

Parting Shot: The winner says something in Klingon, and the runner-up is flabbergasted that his opponent has wasted time learning a fictional language.

Sleeper Star: None.

Most Pilot-y Line: Why can’t game show sets go away from the Millionaire formula of dark sets and running lights? It’s so damn dated. Also, given the fact that there’s no audience, the laugh/applause track was especially grating.

Our Call: SKIP IT. NBC will never do this, but if they shortened Weakest Link to a 30-minute show and approved sharper lines for Lynch, the show would be so much more entertaining than it is now.

METACRITIC SCORE: 50

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.

Stream Weakest Link On NBC.com

Stream Weakest Link On Peacock