The Sentinel

Issue date: 5/29/07 Section: Humor

Media Credit: http://www.donandmurph.com/

I wasn't buying it for a second, Lori Beth Denberg.
I saw right through your charade. While my fellow grade-schoolers were caught up in trying to "Figure It Out" before you did, I was watching YOU. There was always something a little shady about the way you played "Figure It Out." Some saw a smart girl with a smart mouth who could figure out that an 11-year old boy "Ate Twelve Pounds Of Watermelon In One Minute" by feeling a box of rubber ants. Not me, Lori Beth; I saw greed sparkling behind those beady little eyes.
I ask you, the Nickelodeon viewer of the early '90s, did it ever seem suspicious that on some episodes, LBD would be completely stumped by the simplest of puzzles, but on others, she'd guess a ridiculous talent by the second round?
Did you ever stop and wonder how it came to pass that Lori Beth was, somehow, always seated in the all-important anchor seat to the far right?
Sitting in that seat gave the panelist the final guess at the puzzle, which means that the panelist often held the contestant's chance at a pair of Skechers in his or her hands.
The only conclusion I can reasonably draw is an ugly one; one which threatens to shake the foundations of most American childhoods. I'm weeping inside even as I write these words - there was point-shaving on "Figure It Out".
The sanctity of the early 90's Nickelodeon game shows that we knew and loved has been violated.
It's not too hard to imagine, is it? Before the show, Lori Beth (easily the best guesser on the panel) pulls aside the contestant, an incredibly nervous eleven-year-old She makes her fellow kid an offer she can't refuse: in exchange for not guessing the puzzle, she gets a cut of the Prize Pack. It's the classic kickback- you keep the Huffy, I get the Tiger handheld.
Naturally, during the course of this chummy little heart-to-heart, an unusually kind Denberg is reassuring the star-struck kid's butterflies away. It's insignificant whether or not Lori Beth actually knows what's on the other side of Billy the Answer Head After all, what kid is going to risk calling Lori Beth's bluff? The scheme is beautiful and bulletproof.
When you think about it, can you blame Lori Beth and her accomplices? It was the perfect crime, really. The witnesses were television-loving six-year-olds, most of whom knew as much about point-shaving as they did about shaving in general. The perpetrators themselves were practically children! Who would have suspected a thing?

Continued...

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