Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.
Crowning Music of Awesome: The music played during Supercoin (which is by no means exclusive tothis show). The game will own your ass up one side and down the other, but at least you get to listen to some killer music while it does.
Based on its increased usage outside of Supercoin of late (it's practically become the show's second theme song), it seems even the producers are aware of this.
However a certain episode also revealed that they have more than one soundtrack for said game available. All are equally epic, thankfully.
Growing the Beard: Nearing the end of its initial run of episode, the producers began to make improvements to the show's style and pacing, such as some tweaks to the set design (among other things, the audience seating got changed from a theater in the round to a grandstand style layout), a looser feel throughout, an experimental "Last Man Standing" episode, and a little less padding. By its return in the summer, the show began to do more celebrity specials, a few more Last Man Standing episodes, and episodes with teams (usually couples) playing together (either taking turns having a go, or playing a cooperative game), and toying around with a Million-Dollar Mission to force people into playing their Unwinnable trap of a Final Boss. Ratings also improved greatly upon its move to a weekday timeslot in NBC's Summer lineup as a lead-in to the popular America's Got Talent, from its original Sunday-night slot.
Replacement Scrappy: If the victory song is anything but "Get Up", it's bound to fall into this Trope.
Seasonal Rot: Fans will tell you that the end of Season 1 was the best — the contestants were relatively normal, the atmosphere was lighthearted, and the show was extremely fast-paced. But by Season 2, MTWI began to show signs of Deal or No Deal syndrome — increasingly obnoxious contestants, sob stories for just about everyone, generous amounts of Filler, the manifestation of Viewers Are Goldfish, and liberal use of Commercial Break Cliffhangers at the drop of a hat. The foreign versions, unsurprisingly, managed to avert this and are still much like the American version was in its prime.
Surprise Difficulty: Although the games are played using typical household items, quite a few of them have proven to be very difficult.
That One Level: Supercoin is the only known Level 10 game. Out of anyone who have played it (with it either forced upon them as a bonus level for winning a group competition, being a lucky audience member, or being the few to make it this far in an actual game), it has never been won.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The Summer episodes added a "Million-Dollar Mission" at the end of each show, where a selected audience member got a free shot at Supercoin. People complained that it smacked too much of Deal or No Deal, and the contestants chosen from the audience to play it typically were of the kind you'd see on Deal...well, if the show was still on.
Though Minutes Million-Dollar Mission was far superior to Deals in that you still had to earn that cash (and with Supercoin, earn it you shall), whereas Deal was all but giving the money away.
In another aversion, some thought the competitive "Last Man Standing" episodes (10 contestants, eliminate the worst performing player after each game, winner gets $100,000 and a chance to also play that game for $1,000,000) were also a great idea
After a good aversion halfway through season one (lightening up the show, reducing the padding, making it an all around better package), the changes on the summer episodes made the show unwatchable for this troper. Getting rid of the nice, jazzy theme tune for a generic pop piece, using library and pop music throughout the entire show, bringing back unbearable padding and Deal Or No Deal-esque dramatics ("You haven't seen your dad for 10 years, now turn around!" *cue lots of crying and hugging and not getting on with the game), and ditching the nice beeping for the clock at the beginning of each game for a bizarre hum.
They Copied It, So It Sucks: Early in development, the show was going to be a ripoff of The Cube — a more elaborately produced British stunt game that had been shopped around to CBS and FOX around the same time MTWI's pilots were taped. It ended up being changed significantly later in development and even post-production, with the final product more influenced by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Beat the Clock. Despite this, the show gained a significant Hatedom by some fans of The Cube for this reason, especially on Game Show website BuzzerBlog...whom some have argued has taken it to Hate Dumb levels.
YMMV • 
Radar • 
Quotes • (
Funny • 
Heartwarming • 
Awesome) • 
Fridge • 
Characters • 
Fanfic Recs • 
Nightmare Fuel • 
Shout Out • 
Plot • 
Tear Jerker • 
Headscratchers • 
Trivia • WMG • 
Recap • 
Ho Yay • 
Image Links • 
Memes • 
Haiku • Laconic • 
Source • Setting