100 Questions

One thing I forgot to mention in my post about this 100 Questions show: as I noted in my post about the ill-fated remake of the almost-as-ill-fated Cupid, shows that give themselves a specified number of missions to complete are usually jinxing themselves. E.g. Cupid flopped twice by defining the mission as 100 couples; Star Trek probably shouldn’t have put in that “5 year mission” announcement; and a commenter brought up Brimstone, where a character was “on a mission to return 113 escaped souls to Hell,” and only managed 13. There’s just something about telling the world in advance that you’re going to get to 100 episodes and building that idea into the premise — not that it can’t work, just that it’s tempting fate.

Every successful show inspires imitators, but How I Met Your Mother hasn’t had many imitators — probably because until 2008, it wasn’t actually a success. Now that it has achieved something resembling hit status, NBC has picked up what appears to be a somewhat similar show, “100 Questions.” (Originally titled “100 Questions for Charlotte Payne.”) The New York Times has the preview clip of this show, about a young woman who goes to a dating service where they try and find your perfect mate by asking you very personal questions about yourself and your love life. The format, according to early reviews, is something like this: every week the lead character is asked a question, and in the process of answering the question, she tells a story from her life or the lives of her young friends. The question from the pilot is “are you an honest person?”