I Spy – Game Changer S8 Review
After really struggling with What's The Catch, this is fortunately a much easier episode to write about for me!
As usual, the standard spoiler warning applies, I suggest you watch the original episode first if you're interested in the show! You can watch it here:
I Spy appears to be the penultimate episode of Game Changer Season 8, and it's definitely one of the episodes I've been the most curious about. It has five contestants, including Lily Du, Vic Michaelis, and Ele Woods, but also Jacquis Neal and Brian David Gilbert, who have actually never competed in the show before despite making multiple cameos in recent seasons!
The game (as I somewhat predicted, though I won't really count it) starts as a simple game of I Spy, where they show the contestants full tableaus with real people, some of which reference real paintings, and they have to spot specific details in them; these mostly boiled down to finding specific props, such as a piece of Hollywood memorabilia, or an anachronism, or a prop from Season 1 of the show, but some rounds were more unique, like finding someone in a tableau that's related to Sam, or — of course — all of the cake rounds where they had to find the prop made of cake.
That's a very interesting idea, however, the episode also added a social deduction element in the second round that it kept building up as it went on, similar to Earwigs. A player could be picked as the spy, and they're told what the correct answer is, but their goal is to make as many people as possible vote for the incorrect answer along with them, and they receive points for how many people do.
Later on they also make multiple people spies who have to work against each other, and they also add the roles of the informant/rat who knows the identity of at least one of the spies, and the leak who also knows the correct answer and has to make other people vote correctly with them, otherwise they get no points.
To be completely frank, since I don't have much else to describe, I wasn't the biggest fan of this episode, and I feel like it could've been handled a lot better in multiple areas.
The main issue for me is that (with the exception of the very final round) we were also shown who had each role and what the correct things were, so there was never any mystery for any of it, it was just watching gameplay. Previous like Earwigs do show some of the elements, but not all of them, so aside from the gameplay itself you still have that factor of playing some of it yourself, which was completely absent from almost the entire episode and made it much less engaging for me. Another unfortunate side effect of this is that we didn't get enough time to just see the tableaus, which are incredible, and — of course — provide the actual gameplay.
For these you could argue that you could just pause the episode, or avert your eyes when they're revealing the roles and items, but I don't gel with that argument. To me it feels like telling someone an annoying section in a game is okay since you can skip ahead, it'd be better if it was changed in some way, or just wasn't there at all.
I also feel like some of the recurring jokes were very dragged out to the point of them not being as fun, I feel like when there were two spies it was way too easy to cheese and make each other not get any points, and I also had some issues with the scoring, which I do understand why they did it the way they did now, though I'm still not that into it. Also I love the eyeballs they used for keeping track of the scores, but since the episode took place outside of the podiums it felt quite unnecessary, and I also wish the "spyballs" got more focus, or something different other than the name.
My critiques for the game design and editing aside, I absolutely have to give props to the art department, which everybody has been doing, but they've really earned every single bit of it. These tableaus are incredible, easily the best thing they've made all season — if not for the entire show far. I love the recreations of famous art pieces, and I also love the original pieces they came up with that replicate styles, like the one of the 1950s couple! These are incredible, I really admire all the effort that went into making them and setting them up, as seen in the Behind the Scenes, and I wish we got even better looks at them in the actual episode.
In conclusion, this was an amazing episode when it came to all the art and care put in, but to me it doesn't balance out the game itself not being that engaging. It's easily my least favourite episode of the season so far, and even if it's still a very fun watch, I can easily see myself rewatching any other Season 8 episode more than this one, except if I wanted to see some incredible tableaus.
Seriously, those tableaus are so amazing I cannot get over them, I literally can't even pick a favourite they're all so good omg
