Bloody Sunday afternoon

Got some grief from a commenter about my irreverent attitude toward Million Dollar Mind Game. Sorry, folks, but the first episode still bored me to near slumber, and I didn't go back for any more Sominex.

Very few others sampled the mind-twister, either. The show quickly vanished after ABC burned off the six episodes which had sat on the shelf for many months. The weird Sunday afternoon scheduling gave the show's dozens of fans (slight exaggeration) a convenient excuse for its speedy demise.

But a glance at the Google news cache shows that ABC will try again on Sunday afternoon. Not with Mind Game, of course, but with a reality project called Bud United Presents: The Big Time. Yeah, the title seems swell to me, too. I don't cover reality shows, and this one looks like a loser from the get-go.

The Deadline story talks about ABC's experiment in "filling its weekend afternoon time slots with original, primetime-like programming." I don't think Mind Game would have stood a chance in prime time, and Deadline admits the quizzer was just Sunday filler when the NBA went on strike or lockout or whatever. (As if anybody misses the NBA in November.)

But Sunday afternoon is one strange place for any new show.