When considering a modern reality competition show—and especially one that deliberately patterns itself on an extremely familiar children’s game—you have to ask yourself a simple question. I.e., is this Squid Game‘s fault, or MrBeast’s? (The answer, inevitably, being both—with one in slavish, extremely expensive imitation of the other.)
At least, that’s where our minds immediately drifted upon hearing news today (courtesy of Deadline) that Netflix will soon be rolling out a game show version of Simon Says, the classic kids game that teaches the planet’s youth that they’re probably going to wind up getting yelled at by people in authority whether they obey them or not. And while we can joke about the game’s authoritarian leanings, we’re honestly mostly inspired here by Netflix’s own press copy, which goes pretty damn hard in terms of making this thing sound like a life or death struggle—including the utterly wild line, “Obedience may buy another day, but every choice comes with consequences.”
In addition to this “Submit or perish” shit, the streamer promises that Grown-Up Simon Says isn’t “the Simon you remember from recess. In a mischievous and high-stakes twist, contestants will face a gauntlet of cunning challenges, strategic mind games, and unexpected pivots as they compete for a life-changing prize. One rule remains the same: if Simon says it, you’d better listen.”
And, hey, it’s not like you can’t make good TV from Simon Says. (Dropout’s Game Changer has done three extremely good episodes of TV based on this exact premise.) It’s more that we don’t necessarily trust the kinds of people who make reality TV for Netflix (in this case, Emer Harkin, from MTV’s The Challenge) to steer into the necessary playfulness such a premise demands—especially when they’re issuing proclamations that sound like the tagline from a tween-aimed dystopia film from the mid-2010s.
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