Why didn't anybody cheat on Just Like Mom?

Remember the game show Just Like Mom? It was basically like the Newlywed game except it was a mother and one of her kids that would try to match their answers. Read about my problems with this whole scenario.

Yeah, it's true; even as a kid, I would ridicule stupid things that didn't make sense. Especially things like this. After all, it's not like it's Jeopardy! or anything, this is "Just Like Mom" for shit's sake. The questions that were asked on this show were so predictable that any mother deserving of that title who wanted to win her kid a trip to DisneyLand would try and practice some of these forseeable Q and A's in advance. Questions like, "What do your mom and dad argue about the most?" came up constantly. If they had reviewed previously taped episodes and put a little bit of legwork into it, they could have run away with the victory like the guy on Press Your Luck in 1984.

However, the worst part of this show by far, was the "Bake Off" finale portion. All bets are off here, the winner of this final round can still win the game almost no matter how far they were behind. The premise is this: the kids are put in a little kitchenette, each with identical sets of ingredients and are told to mix up some cookie dough. The moms are then supposed to guess which cookie (out of three) their kid made within 60 seconds. Pretty daunting task, eh? Get real. This is the easiest challenge of all. All the mom/kid team has to decide on is what will be the distinguishing ingredient. Think about it, "Ok little Jimmy, all you have to do is dump the whole box of raisins in your cookie batter, and mommy will know it's yours." Substitute raisins for another unusual or easily identifiable cookie ingredient in case they don't happen to have a certain one available that day, and BOOM! you're on your way to DisneyLand.

It all comes down to this, a creed of sorts that has helped me through many a situation:

If they didn't really want you to cheat, they wouldn't make it so damn easy.

Originally posted on Thursday, 2001-10-11 at 09:32:16.