Game shows can either fade into obscurity in the neverending world of variety television programming or become the stuff of pop culture legend. Fox’s The Floor is still figuring out its place on this spectrum.
The game show, based on its Dutch counterpart of the same name, premiered in Jan. 2024 with actor Rob Lowe taking on hosting duties. In it, 81 contestants occupy a 9-by-9 floor grid divided into squares representing a specific field of knowledge that its owner dominates. The first challenger is selected at random and must pick a trivia duel with a neighbor based on the topic. The game then consists of looking at images and associating them with a word — in “Band Names,” an AI-generated picture of beetles stands for The Beatles. Whomever the 45-second clock runs out on first loses, like a game of Hot Potato.
The winner steals the loser’s conquered territory, making their way across the floor one duel at a time, until the last contestant standing takes home a cash prize of $250,000. The player with the most territory at the end of each episode wins a secondary monetary prize.
Is The Floor coming back for a second season?
The future of The Floor still hangs in the balance. Fox has neither canceled nor renewed the show for a second season. The first averaged 2.5 million viewers per episode, per Programming Insider, about 6 million viewers short of game show royalty like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.
Some viewers have criticized the rules of The Floor which allow some players to sit idle while others battle it out, then swoop in for a challenge and steal the hard-earned territory of their fellow contestants without taking any risks up to that point. You can call it strategy or injustice. There’s also the question of speed — the winner makes the fastest decisions, whether that’s passing on the answer or giving one quickly. Someone who gets every question right might still lose if they take too long to answer.
Other game show fans have also complained about the accuracy of the pictures shown for word association. In one instance, leading contestant Stephanie dueled Anne on the topic of BBQing. One of the answers she got wrong was mistaking a “smoker” for a “grill,” although, as those watching pointed out, the photo did not include a smoke stack.
“I’m honestly so disappointed that Stephanie was clearly rigged out. That was NOT a smoker. There literally was not even a smoke stack in the picture! That was a grill clear as day. Not to mention the image of BBQ sauce that you were wanting her to say “basting brush” for some reason – make it clearer then! I have been invested for weeks, but now I know not to watch anymore,” one commentator expressed underneath a YouTube video of the heated face-off.
The Floor wasn’t exactly a hit, but it has potential. If Fox considers tweaking some issues and making it fairer, maybe viewers would be more motivated to tune into a possible second season.
