You Deserve It

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

ABC Game Show where a contestant plays a quiz to win up to $435,000 for a beneficiary of their choice. There are five rounds, each with a certain amount of money on offer ($10,000-$25,000-$50,000-$100,000-$250,000). To bank money, the contestant must correctly guess the subject of a Who, What, or Where puzzle. While a single clue is given for free, revealing any other clues requires the player to choose from one of nine hidden dollar amounts, which is promptly deducted from the money at stake for the round.

Answering correctly banks the remaining money for that question, while answering incorrectly simply banks nothing. At the conclusion of the game comes a rather melodramatic moment where the contestant's beneficiary learns that one of their friends had won them a (hopefully) large amount of money just for them, since, well, they deserve it.

The first season of 6 episodes aired near the end of 2011. It's not known if there will be another season, though.


The following Game Show tropes appear in You Deserve It:
  • All or Nothing: Averted for the total winnings. Unless a contestant is stupid enough to get all five questions wrong, there's no way to walk away with nothing if you at least have knowledge. (It's essentially a charity, they have to go easy on them.)
  • Mystery Box: Each round's prize money is divided into nine shares of ascending amounts, hidden behind 9 numbered virtual rectangles. To reveal a clue, the player must hopefully try to hit a low amount on the board, since the revealed amount is deducted from the round's prize.
  • Personnel:
  • Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: With clues like "At the bar", "Most are Asian", and "Chopsticks", could you tell at first glance that the answer was actually a piano?

Tropes used in You Deserve It include:
  • Game Breaking Bug: An eagle-eyed viewer noticed [dead link] that the total amount for the round animates down to $0 after the values are listed, but the amounts taken away each time was the same order the money amounts were placed behind the numbers. Said person also noted that given the demographics of the typical contestant on this show, they might not notice the possibility for Loophole Abuse.
  • Luck-Based Mission: The "buying clues" part of the game requires knowledge, and a little bit of luck.
  • Melodrama/X Meets Y: This show is the game show parallel to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, sans the million instances of Product Placement and Ty Pennington.
  • Padding: Five drawn-out questions, a segment showing the reaction of the beneficiary (which on at least the premiere was taped at a completely different time), having to ask for the lock-in button to be lit before you can even push it to confirm your answer, etc.
  • Pilot: In a rare example, actually aired on December 26. Differences included putting the 1-9 boxes on a second screen, the money ladder being $10,000-$25,000-$50,000-$75,000-$100,000, and answering a question wrong resulted in the round being replayed and the top amount removed.
  • Shout-Out: A contestant waiting anxiously for an answer commented that Harrison should get on with it because it "felt like a rose ceremony." Also an example of how even contestants know padding sucks.