Dr. Evil Week on Prime Time Game Shows Continues

Just like our friends at NBC were spoiling Deal or No Deal’s first million dollar win on Monday, our friends at Fox are spoiling in promos the fact that Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? is kicking off its second full season tonight (8 p.m. ET) with the first contestant to answer Jeff Foxworthy’s eleven grade-school level quiz questions correctly appearing in the expanded two-hour episode.

If we read the promo correctly, the winner will be–RIGHT AFTER THIS JUMP!

The promo has a “list to remember”:  A new night for the show (from Thursday), a new panel of borderline child actors to help the hapless contestants, leggy supermodel Kathy Ireland as a celebrity contestant and “OUR FIRST MILLION DOLLAR WINNER!”

Now we can safely count Ireland out as the big winner–she may not be Kellie Pickler (and she sure can’t act, although that’s for another post), but I don’t think she’ll get through the gauntlet.  Which makes our possible ONE MEELION DOLLAR winner…

(ominous music)

(looonnnggg pause)

Kathy Cox, the superintendent of schools for the State of Georgia!  (Coincidentally, the home state of host Foxworthy.)  An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article last month placed doubts as to why Cox would want to risk her reputation as an educator on a show that aims to mock the adult tendency to not retain much of our school learning (not to mention representing a state where schools have suffered budget cuts and unsatisfactory test scores)–but it looks like she may have the last laugh here.

Of course, the sad news is that Fox is airing …Fifth Grader?  tonight instead of the fund-raiser Stand Up to Cancer–their excuse for not joining with CBS, NBC and ABC (and cable networks E! and mun2) is that they want to focus on “the global outreach of Idol Gives Back.”  We say that Fox is NOT smarter than a fifth grader.