We deserve this?

Mix Queen For a Day and a run-of-the-mill quizzer, and you get lots of tears in between the puzzle-solving. That's basically the idea for You Deserve It.

The game format is okay but nothing special. Each round starts with some money and a hidden answer. Contestants have to spend money to buy clues to the answer. When they finally guess the answer, whatever is left in the money pot is...well, not theirs.

Instead, the loot goes to deserving friends in need, who the contestants are playing for. You might imagine that this format produces a lot of waterworks, and you'd be right.

In the debut last night, the deserving friend was a young mother of two who recently lost her husband in a diving accident. When the young widow was surprised with the prize money at the end of the show (over a hundred grand, at least the show ain’t cheap) things really got lachrymose.

I know I'm sounding like a hardhearted old Scrooge here. I'm sure the lady can use the money and I'm happy she got some help with the bills. But the constant tug at the heartstrings pretty much tugged me out by the end of the hour.

Then again, I'm not the target demo. This one is for the ladies.

UPDATE: Preliminary ratings for You Deserve It were okay. TV by the Numbers warns of possible downward football-related adjustments, though. Against tough competition from Two and a Half Men and House, the show got a 2.1 18-49 rating (#3) and 10.0 million total viewers (#2). By no means a blowout, but hardly embarrassing by today's standards.

UPDATED UPDATE: As expected, You Deserve It got dinged in the final adjustments, down to a 1.7 18-49 rating and 8.6 million total viewers. Ah, so-so at best.