The spin-off is finally here. It might cause you to question your faith in humanity.

Such a thing as pop culture already exists Danger! The game show has in the past leaned toward the more bookish end of the spectrum with its onslaught of questions about chemical compounds, Beethoven overtures and bodies of water that begin with the letter “P.” But I would argue that Jeopardy!’s An enduring strength is his ability to combine his insular nerdiness with a barrage of wide-angle crowd-pleasers, ideally rewarding the most diverse participants on stage. (The show recently dedicated entire categories to Taylor Swift and George Clooney’s film roles.) This formula has delighted trivia fans of all stripes for decades, but unfortunately, as America’s new dark age begins, the powers that be have chartered a newer and much sillier version of it Danger!

The actual Pop Culture Danger! The film, which premieres today, is scheduled to run for 40 episodes on Prime Video. (This is actually the franchise’s second spin-off after the short-lived Sporting danger! On Crackle.) The series is hosted by Saturday Night Live‘S Colin Jost, and it works almost exactly like the main line Danger!: There are six categories divided into 30 questions, each offering increasing prize amounts. But now Sony executives have directed whistleblowers to focus on what they have defined as “pop culture.” That’s a tall order in a country with increasingly fragmented cultural consumption, and in the series the results can be truly frightening. The essence of Pop Culture Danger! is a contestant who hits his buzzer, steps up to the microphone and announces, “What is it?” Left shark?”

The show is clearly aiming for a more casual atmosphere – similar to the bar trivia competitions doled out on Tuesday nights – and that’s the other big change here: the contestants are in charge Pop Culture Danger! They play in teams of three and usually appear in front of the camera in coordinated costumes and with their own group name. (In the pilot episode, the “Pop Queens” compete with “Oops We Guessed It Again.”) That’s all well and good. Everyone seems to be having a good time. And Jost, the archetypal blue-blooded Harvard comedy guy, is quite affable, even if he can barely hide his disdain as he rattles off references to Taylor Swift or Nickelodeon’s “Cruel Summer.” The rather strange parentswhich appears in a category aptly titled “Time for Cartoons.” To make things more interesting, the producers have also added a few new niceties to the rules: There is a new Daily Double-style bonus on the board called “Triple Play”. It is a question with three different answers and each team member must find one of them to get the maximum score. It’s a fun idea! Until you realize that the first triple play focused on a TikTok trend about a “man in finance” – the mutual answers are “trust fund,” “6’5,” and “blue eyes.”

Danger! is in a period of massive expansion, with executive producer Michael Davies open about his desire to transform the perennial weeknight quiz show into a new American sport with an extensive roster of returning stars. And in that context, I think it’s appropriate to ask a central question about this latest spin-off: Who exactly is this? Pop Culture Danger! for? It is certainly not designed to be distributed by die-hard trivia fans, who will certainly find the limited scope and banal topicality below their pay grade. Nor is it optimized for my 65-year-old mother, who, for example, would be completely confused by a category that requires memorizing esoterica Friends Tradition. If you want to be generous, you could say that Pop Culture Danger! is in some ways a little friendlier to the tastes of women and queer people who may have more of an iron grip Real Housewives Questions that straight men just don’t have. But honestly, my interpretation is a bit more cynical. Pop Culture Danger! is intended to be a simpler version of Danger!– less a reflection of one’s own mastery of the eponymous topic than a breakdown of acceptable intellectual terrain. Because I’m sorry, there are just more people on this earth who know that Drew Barrymore starred 50 first dates Who knows that both apples and cherries belong to the rose family? (This knowledge was recently worth $800 in the Botany category of the Mothership show.)

All of this is to say that I am much better at Pop Culture Danger! then I’m with the alternative. I breezed through the episodes in no time, and I nailed the Left Shark question, because at heart I’m a half-witted pseudo-intellectual who lacks the rigor of a true quiz star. Experiencing the enormous human potential has always been one of the greatest joys of Danger, Especially if you enjoy the synapse-tickling joy of giving a correct answer yourself. But that feeling was missing during my time there Pop culture Variant. Somehow, after each correct answer—which I barked out with astonishing literacy—I began to feel worse, as if I was being overwhelmed by the weight of all the things I needed not knowledge. Yes, I had cleared my brain of botany, trigonometry, and Dostoyevsky and instinctively found a TikTok trend instead. We win, but at something cost?